The "Typical Workflow"

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is split into a few different areas: Content Builder (emails, content blocks, images), Automation Studio (automations, server-side javascript, queries), Journey Builder (1:1 customer flows).

Let's talk about Content Builder, SFMC's email and content block builder, as it's arguably one of the most used areas of SFMC. In Content Builder, you can create HTML Paste emails and Template Based emails using the WYSIWYG editor.

In addition to the emails themselves, you have the ability to create re-useable modules called content blocks. These content blocks can be included in Emails, Scripts, CloudPages (we'll get to CloudPages in other posts), even other content blocks.

Depending on your project, it's typical (and a good practice) to split out code into modules. Splitting code into modules when possible, keeps like AMPScript blocks or Server-Side JavaScript functions together and helps when it comes to troubleshooting. If you take a fairly complex Email with a handful of modules, throw in some organization (cause who doesn't love a good folder structure), just setting up a project can become a time-consuming task in-and-of itself.

Let's go through the (abridged) steps

1. Log into SFMC
2. Navigate to Email Studio (wait for it to load)
3. Navigate to Content Builder (wait for it to load)
4. Left Click > Enter Folder Name > Hit Enter
5. (Find your folder because it doesn't automatically take you there)
6. Click on the Create button > select your content type
7. Code or Copy/Paste

Congratulations! As long as you made it past the infamous blue wheel, you created an asset!

As you can imagine, a project with a handful of content blocks or emails could take a while to set up.

Introducing BLDR for SFMC

Bldr is an open-source CLI tool that allows you to pull your files out of SFMC, update them, send the updates back to SFMC, and push them to version control; all from your command line, all without copy/paste.

As a CLI tool, it allows you to use any code editor that you want and since bldr does not try to re-invent the GIT flow, it fits into your existing git provider; you can use the terminal or a GUI to manage your git files.

If you even know a little bit of how to use git...

git clone {{ repository url }}
git add . or {{ path to file(s) }}
git commit -m "commit message"
git push

...you will feel right at home with bldr; and if not, it's really quite straight forward.

bldr clone --cb -f {{ folder id }}
bldr add . or {{ path to file(s) }}
bldr push

No more Copy/Paste, No more browser hiccups that make you loose code, No more 4 clicks to create/update an asset.

In the following posts, I'll go into each core area of bldr; detailing how to use each command and how they interact with SFMC.

If you're looking for more details or interested in getting started, visit bldr.io.