Prioritizing SFMC Use Cases When the Client Has 20 Ideas

The Marketing Cloud kickoff always hits the same wall. The client has 20 use cases they want ("welcome series, abandoned cart, loyalty emails, personalized recommendations, re-engagement, birthday, VIP, SMS, push..."). The budget funds 4-5 of them this quarter. How do you pick?

After enough engagements we now use a three-column scoring framework. It's not fancy. It works because it forces a conversation about trade-offs that the client otherwise won't have with themselves.

The framework

Score each use case 1-5 on three dimensions:

CriterionScore 1Score 5Business impactNice to haveDirectly drives revenue or retentionCustomer impactNobody would notice if we skipped itVisibly improves the customer experienceEffortTakes months and multiple teamsShippable in days

Sum the three scores. Use cases with the highest totals go first.

Note: Effort is scored 1 for hard, 5 for easy - the way we want the weighting to run. Higher score = faster to ship = cheaper risk.

Quick wins we always ship early

These score high on business impact + low on effort, and they're usually the first things to hit production:

• Welcome email / series - High impact on retention, low effort. Most opens of any email type. Build this first.
• Transactional emails (order confirmation, shipping notification) - High impact, medium effort. Customer expects them; missing them creates support tickets.
• Re-engagement campaign for inactive subscribers - Medium impact, low effort. A simple "we miss you" send lifts 3-5% of the dead list.
• Abandoned cart email - High impact for commerce clients, medium effort if the cart data feed is available.

Things we defer to phase 2+

These need discovery + infrastructure first, or don't pay back early:

• Recommendation engine (product recommendations) - High effort, requires Einstein Recommendations or custom model + trained data. Revisit once the data model is mature.
• Real-time personalization - Requires Interaction Studio / Personalization integration + tagged website events. Multi-month build.
• Custom Preference Center - Every client asks, few clients actually need custom over the default. Ship default first; customize when the default falls short.
• Loyalty program emails - Depends on loyalty system integration. Often blocked on upstream work.

Running the exercise with the client

The actual workshop takes 45 minutes:

1. List use cases - 5 minutes. Client dumps every idea onto sticky notes (digital or physical).
2. Score each - 15 minutes. Walk through the three columns with the client. Their number, not yours - you explain the criteria, they score.
3. Sort by total - 5 minutes. Stack-rank.
4. Draw the line - 15 minutes. Budget permits N use cases in this phase; everything below the line goes to the backlog with its score recorded.
5. Commit - 5 minutes. Get verbal buy-in on what phase 1 ships. Write it down.

The part that matters is step 4. The client resists cutting anything, and 30 minutes in someone says "but we really need X too." That's when you show them X scored a 7 versus the top-of-list scoring 14 - and the trade-off becomes concrete instead of political.

Two traps we watch for

Trap 1: Shiny-object inflation on Business Impact

Clients tend to score everything a 5 on Business Impact. Everything feels important when it's on a list. Push back by asking "if we shipped this alone and nothing else, would the quarter be a success?" That forces real 5s.

Trap 2: Under-scoring Effort

Sales engineers over-estimate Effort (it looks like work) and under-estimate Business Impact (it's not their job). Involve a client stakeholder for scoring Effort. They usually know their team's actual velocity better than the vendor.

Takeaway

Prioritization isn't about finding the objectively best use case. It's about forcing a conversation that otherwise gets deferred until the budget runs out and everyone is surprised. When the client has 20 ideas and the team is already sprinting, this framework buys everyone 3 months of sanity.

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Need help prioritizing your SFMC roadmap? Our Salesforce team runs kickoff workshops and phase planning on production engagements. Get in touch ->

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