Useful Tools for SFMC Professionals

 In the dynamic world of digital marketing, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) professionals constantly seek tools that enhance their efficiency and streamline their workflow. Here’s a compilation of essential tools every SFMC user should consider incorporating into their toolkit, alongside brief descriptions of what they offer:

Ampscript.io: This tool is invaluable for those using AMPscript in their SFMC campaigns. Ampscript.io provides a user-friendly environment to write, test, and debug AMPscript code directly in the browser, without needing to first test it in SFMC. This speeds up the development process and helps avoid common pitfalls in campaign setups.
URL: www.Ampscript.io 

Dataviews.io: Dataviews.io offers visual diagrams and detailed descriptions of SFMC Data Views, making it easier for users to understand the complex data relationships within SFMC. This tool is especially useful for those looking to enhance their SQL querying capabilities within SFMC, providing actionable insights into data structuring and optimization.
URL: Dataviews.io

SFMC Companion (Chrome Plugin): I use this chrome extension everyday and I believe it is a must-have for improving navigation and functionality within the SFMC interface. This can be used to quickly navigate through your Marketing Cloud objects (such as Automations, Queries, Data Extensions and more) to find where they are saved, what activities are using them, and what other objects they interact with.
URL: SFMC Companion

Postman: While Postman is widely used across many software development environments for API testing, it is particularly beneficial in SFMC for testing and debugging API calls. This tool can simulate API requests to Salesforce, helping users verify and troubleshoot their integrations and data exchanges. For example you can trigger and test your API trigger based emails and journeys.
URL: Postman

Data Extension Finder Tool: There are sometimes going to be a situation where you may not be able to use a chrome extension like SFMC Companion. In such cases you can use SSJS to create a cloud page tool that can be used to search for data extension via its name or external key. Here is a page that shows how to do this. Example 1. Example 2.

Cloud Page to Find Queries & Automation that Target a Data Extension: While this feature is available out of the box with the SFMC Companion, you can also use SSJS and WS proxy to build a cloud page for this functionality. Here is a useful YouTube video by Camron Robert with sample code. 

Query Studio: Query studio allows you to quickly run queries in the Marketing Cloud with a similar experience to SQL Server Studio or MySQL workbench. Instead of creating a query activity each time, you can quickly write and run queries and immediately see the results. Query Studio results are saved in a temporary data extension with retention period of 24 hours. If you like the data that you see and would like to save it, you can open it in a data extension, remove the retention period, rename the data extension and you are done. This saves a lot of time. Query Studio can be downloaded from App Exchange. 

Email Countdown Timer:  If you work for a retail company, you may be required to build countdown timers in emails for special shopping events like Black Friday, Boxing Day etc. While it is easier to build the functionality on Website landing pages, it is not that simple in case of emails. There are a lot of applications that offer free and paid services and let you configure the timer and add in your email via a script as a GIF image. I have used Sendtric several times in the past and have found it simple to use and very accurate. Even the free version works perfectly fine and I have used it for campaigns that were sent to over 1million+ subscribers. However, the paid version offers much more customizations and I recommend using it. https://www.sendtric.com/

Tool to Extract Text from Images: As an email developer, there are going to be many situations when you will have to write the copy that is in the design to add as an Alt-text. Sometimes it is short and easy but on occasions it can be too much and for a business operating in a Bilingual country like Canada, you may have to do that in another language as well. In such situations you can use tools that pick the copy from an image. Here is one that you can use: https://brandfolder.com/workbench/extract-text-from-image

Awesome icons: A curated list of awesome Web (font, svg, whatever) Icons for use in your email code. https://github.com/vkarampinis/awesome-icons

Awesome emails: A list of resources to build better emails https://github.com/jonathandion/awesome-emails

Tool to replace spaces with underscores: I have found this useful in creating tracking aliases. So tracking aliases are required to track how a particular content piece performed in an email. Tracking aliases do not allow spaces. You can use the alt text and add to this tool to generate a copy without any spaces and use it as a tracking alias. https://www.mefancy.com/textchange/replace-space-underscore.php