Navigating through the tech world can feel like stepping into a labyrinth, but our guest Danielle Larregui has found her own unique path. Now a Senior Developer Advocate for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, Danielle shares her experiences that have transformed her from an accidental admin to a ‘casual teacher’ of developers. We chat about her intriguing journey into the tech world, her engaging first public speaking experience, and how she embraces each new challenge as an opportunity for growth.
We also dive deep into the world of customer data platforms (CDPs). Our conversation with Danielle is inspiring and packed with insights, offering a fresh perspective on the evolving tech industry.
Show Highlights:
- Danielle’s journey from an “accidental admin” to a senior developer advocate for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, discussing her career trajectory and experiences.
- The role of customer data platforms (CDPs) in consolidating customer data from disparate sources to provide a comprehensive view of the customer journey.
- How Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Data Cloud can be used together to create intelligent, data-driven marketing campaigns.
- The significance of data in modern society and the differentiation between data lake objects and data objects.
- Exploration of Danielle’s work with Marketing Cloud, including her projects involving AMPScript, server-side draw script, and the platform’s REST and SOAP API.
- Discussion on the role of Data Cloud in AI and its future prospects.
- Introduction to Salesforce’s Data Cloud, its structure, and its difference from standard Salesforce objects.
- Insight into the connection between Data Cloud and Tableau and how they work together for data analysis.
Links:
- Danielle on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DnLarregui
- Danielle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-larregui-1567b973/
Episode Transcript
Danielle Larregui:
I feel like that’s something I kind of fell into, by accident. But, I originally started in a global rotational technology program fresh out of college.
Josh Birk:
That is Danielle Larregui, a Senior Developer Advocate for Marketing Cloud here at Salesforce. I’m Josh Birk, your host for the Salesforce Developer Podcast, and here on the podcast you’ll hear stories and insights from developers, for developers. Today, we’re going to sit down and talk with Danielle about Data Cloud and how developers can interact with it, but we are going to continue right where we left off with early years.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah, even though I didn’t go to school for computer science or anything like that, I’ve just stuck with technology ever since then.
Josh Birk:
Interesting. What lured you into the realm of tech then? What was very interesting about it to you?
Danielle Larregui:
I think the thing that was most interesting to me about tech was that it seemed like this mystery that I didn’t know what was going on. It just seemed like this thing that I had no idea about, but I was very interested and curious as to how it worked. It was like, “Okay, I’ve had exposure to all these other things in life, and I know what finance, math, accounting, all that is, but tech? How does the Cloud work or how does all these cool technology things work?”
Josh Birk:
How do you break open the black box and get inside?
Danielle Larregui:
Basically.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
Nice. When did you first get into Salesforce?
Danielle Larregui:
I first got into Salesforce, I was an accidental admin, like a lot of admins out there, and I was actually working for a large food distributor and they had a Salesforce project that they need someone to help out with and be a little bit of a miniature admin, do some data loading with data loader. I got involved, and then I just got more and more interested about what Salesforce was, and then just took off from there.
Josh Birk:
How would you describe your current job at Salesforce?
Danielle Larregui:
The most fun job ever.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Danielle Larregui:
I love it. I love it. I love this job.
Josh Birk:
Well, for people who are not familiar with a Developer Advocate, how would you say… See, this is a hard one because I know from experience, if I ask you what’s your day-to-day like as a Developer Advocate, you’re like, “I don’t know, it’s different every day.”
Danielle Larregui:
Yep.
Josh Birk:
Tell me your mission statement, in general.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah. Developer Advocates are mostly here to inspire developers and to help them to be successful. I think developer advocacy is really about helping developers to learn new tools, demystifying things that might be a little bit scary for them to get into. We’re really more of the casual teachers, I would say, of developers, but also we’re just people that love to build things and work with code.
Josh Birk:
I like that phrase, casual teacher. We’re not the professor who’s going to throw an eraser at you. We’re like the teacher’s assistant that you get to hang out with after class.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I like that.
Josh Birk:
All right. Well, let’s start with your work around Marketing Cloud in general. For people not familiar with Marketing Cloud as a platform, what’s that platform like? What kind of applications are you building there? What kind of development tasks are getting done?
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah. Similarly to becoming a Salesforce accidental admin, I think I became a Marketing Cloud accidental admin as well. I was working for another company and they’re kind of like, “Hey, we need somebody to learn Marketing Cloud and help out our marketing department.” I was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it.” As far as my projects I’m mostly working on with Marketing Cloud, I’m doing a lot of stuff with AMPscript, SSJS, which is Server Side JavaScript, a lot of things with different Marketing Cloud programming languages. I’m trying to work on some stuff with the REST and SOAP API, but mostly I work on stuff that extends Marketing Cloud beyond the out of the box capabilities.
Josh Birk:
Got it. I want to follow up on that, but I’m just going to say I’m noticing a trend here where you just keep taking the next challenge, and that seems to be your career trajectory.
Danielle Larregui:
Yes, yes. I mean, for this job, I was completely scared, I was completely frightened. I told Renee when I first took this job, I was like, “Yeah, let me ramp up talking to big audiences. Let’s not do, the first talk is a hundred people, maybe I could ramp up a little bit.”
Josh Birk:
Yeah, that’s wise. I still remember my first time at whatever we were calling them at the time, they were Dream Tours or something like that, this was back in 2012, and I’m sitting on stage with Dave Carroll and we’ve practiced and we’ve prepped, we’ve done demos and stuff. And then before he gets up on stage, he just turns to me, and just, I don’t know why he asked me this then, but he turns to me and he’s like, “How many times have you done this?” I’m like, “Done what?” He’s like, “Public speaking.” I’m like, “Counting today?” You know, not a bad way to go through it.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah, that was me also.
Josh Birk:
Yeah. Nice. What was your first public speaking?
Danielle Larregui:
My first public speaking was actually Southeast Streaming last year.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Danielle Larregui:
Yes.
Josh Birk:
Nice. Yeah, I think another way I put it, when I did get this job or whatever, how many jobs ago was, I’m like, “I would rather fail at this job than succeed in another one.” That’s how fun I find advocacy and working with the community and stuff like that.
Danielle Larregui:
I agree. I completely agree.
Josh Birk:
Let’s dig back into what you were talking about with extending out the Marketing Cloud platform. What are some examples of that kind of integration?
Danielle Larregui:
With Marketing Cloud, there’s a lot of stuff you can do out of the box, with sending email messages, creating email messages, email message templates, but sometimes people want to trigger the email from another system. That might be Salesforce, or even a different CRM system that’s not Salesforce, or just a random system. In order to do that, they have to use APIs and integrations in order to do that. We have a wide variety of REST APIs, and SOAP APIs that allow them to trigger both email messages, mobile messages, and including Journey Builder Journeys as well, using our APIs.
Josh Birk:
Where does AMPscript fall into that? Because I’m only slightly familiar with AMPscript, so give me the elevator pitch for it.
Danielle Larregui:
AMPscript is if you want to customize your email message, or you want to customize even a landing page. AMPscript can be used across the entire Marketing Cloud platform. But if you want to customize it, like inserting information into a table or any type of data that you’re bringing in from an external system, if you want to start inserting data, doing customization with the template, like “Hi,” and then you’ve seen the email messages where it’s had your first name and your last name in there, like “Hi Josh Burke.”
Josh Birk:
Right.
Danielle Larregui:
Stuff like that, any type of personalization that requires AMPscript.
Josh Birk:
So it’s somewhere in between a scripting language and a template?
Danielle Larregui:
Yes. Yes, it is considered a scripting language.
Josh Birk:
If somebody was going to learn it, would JavaScript be a good backbone for picking it up?
Danielle Larregui:
It’s very different than JavaScript.
Josh Birk:
Okay.
Danielle Larregui:
I would probably recommend that they probably just start flat out with AMPscript.
Josh Birk:
Got it. Okay.
Danielle Larregui:
JavaScript might confuse them a little bit. The reason why JavaScript might confuse them is because in AMPscript you don’t actually have any methods or classes. It’s not an object oriented programming language, and neither is JavaScript, but JavaScript can do a little bit more, it’s a little bit more robust than AMPscript. They might go to JavaScript, and then come back to AMPscript and be like, “Man, I could have just started with the AMPscript to begin with.”
Josh Birk:
And just got to the end.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
I love that little tug at JavaScript, it pretends like it’s an object oriented language, but yeah, it likes to, it likes to. So then with the REST APIs and all that kind of stuff, do we have SDKs for specific languages? Or just a bring your own language to talk to Marketing Cloud kind of?
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah, so we actually have six SDKs that Marketing Cloud developers can work with, or any other developer. We have the C# SDK, Java SDK, Node SDK, PHP, Ruby, and even Python. There’s a wide variety of SDKs out there to work with Marketing Cloud.
Josh Birk:
If I got a nickel for every time I get Python on the show, I’d love it. All right, let’s move a little bit into Data Cloud. Data Cloud has gone through a few name changes in the last year. It is still Data Cloud, right?
Danielle Larregui:
Do you still want your job, Josh?
Josh Birk:
Yes. At its core, though, when we say Data Cloud, we’re still talking about CDP, a Customer Data Platform, right?
Danielle Larregui:
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I’ve actually gotten into this discussion quite a few times with some of our lovely Marketing Cloud champions and MVPs. At the core, Data Cloud is a Customer Data Platform, which is something that’s not necessarily completely new. I think that when we first came out with CDP, we named it exactly after what it is, it’s a Customer Data Platform.
Josh Birk:
Right, it’s what’s on the tag, yeah.
Danielle Larregui:
It’s what it is. Now, some people are like, “Well, it’s still a Customer Data Platform,” which they’re absolutely right, Data Cloud is still a Customer Data Platform, that’s just no longer the name of it.
Josh Birk:
Got it. It allows us to talk about the whole umbrella product, it’s not just CDP. But, really quickly, what exactly is a Customer Data Platform?
Danielle Larregui:
A Customer Data Platform allows you to pull together your information about a specific customer across many different systems where that customer may be stored. A lot of the times, different systems are holding different types of customer information, and all of that information is living in a silo. Sometimes we want to be able to see all that information integrated into one, and that’s typically what a Customer Data Platform does, is it allows you to pull together all that siloed information about a customer that’s stored in all these different disparate systems, and allows you to view it in a single view.
Josh Birk:
Got it. I can ask almost two questions at the same time. What are some common examples of those silos? And what kind of connectors do we provide to talk to them?
Danielle Larregui:
I think the first silo is usually customer purchasing or any type of ordering data. A lot of times, companies are retail based, or they’re product based companies, and they’re making sales to customers. All of the data and history of all the sales, or abandoned cart information, or order information, is usually living in one system for that customer. In our case, we offer Commerce Cloud as one of our solutions that typically deals with the sales and the ordering of a customer. And servicing a customer in the retail shop and all of that. We do have our Commerce Cloud Connector out of the box that we offer with Data Cloud. I would say another huge silo is usually that email messaging and mobile messaging and marketing piece. A lot of the times, companies are sending email messages about different promos, deals, reward programs, coupons, sales. I’m sure you’ve gotten a ton of them in your inbox all the time. Usually, any data related to that is living in their email tool.
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
We have Marketing Cloud that allows us to build this journey. And then Data Cloud, it sounds like, is trying to help us create this unified view of a customer, and those two are what’s working together to make a more intelligent marketing campaign. Is that accurate enough?
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah. Yeah, because I think the real power of it is being able to use the data that lives in one system in another system. If a customer already made a purchase, or is already buying something, you don’t want to keep marketing to them for something that they’re already purchasing or already buying.
Josh Birk:
Right.
Danielle Larregui:
The opportunity is to start marketing and emailing them about something that they’re not buying.
Josh Birk:
Right. Don’t sell me the washing machine I just bought, sell me the repair kit for the washing machine I just bought.
Danielle Larregui:
Exactly.
Josh Birk:
Yeah. It’s nice. Now, in some conversations I’ve had with people about CDP, because I’m old, I’ve been around the block, and all of a sudden it seems like everybody’s talking about CDP, and I’m just curious your thoughts on that. Their take on it was, “Well, because we’re getting rid of all the cookies, we’re losing this picture of people that we can track on websites, so we have to figure out another way to create that identity.”
Danielle Larregui:
Oh, that’s an interesting take on it. I think that tracking is still happening very effectively, but I am definitely one of those people that’s necessary cookies only.
Josh Birk:
You’re better than I am. I’m just like, accept all, give me my news article, and yeah, I’m a lazy programmer. They get me, they get me every single time.
Danielle Larregui:
But I think that there’s probably a few lazy moments where I’m like, okay, accept all cookies because this is painful to sit here and reject or manually select the cookies that I want.
Josh Birk:
Right.
Danielle Larregui:
But I think that really we’re in an age where what’s really, really important to companies is data. I think-
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Danielle Larregui:
… every company wants to know the data behind anything and everything.
Josh Birk:
Right. I mean, it’s what powers our social media. It’s the reason why things like Instagram are free. We’re the product, right? We are the data, and the data is gold in the backend.
Danielle Larregui:
Exactly. Exactly. I think that’s why Data Cloud has really taken off so much is because data is hot.
Josh Birk:
Got it. Speaking of buzzwords, when somebody says Data Lake to you, what does that mean? Tell me please.
Danielle Larregui:
Every time someone says Data Lake, I actually really envision a blue lake.
Josh Birk:
I do too. Right? And that’s it, I just have this tranquil moment. I’m like, so there’s a bunch of data under there I guess.
Danielle Larregui:
And they’re just hanging out in the lake.
Josh Birk:
Right.
Danielle Larregui:
Floating.
Josh Birk:
Right. But is that how we describe this unified structure between Data Cloud and all of its connectors?
Danielle Larregui:
Yes. Technically, Data Cloud is built on top of a data lake.
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Danielle Larregui:
For some people, that’s a little bit hard to grasp sometimes because of the fact that when you’re in Data Cloud, because most of the configurations and most of the things that you’re viewing in Data Cloud, it looks like you’re actually in your Salesforce.org. A lot of people have trouble sometimes understanding that no, no, no, this is not Salesforce custom and standard objects you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with data lake objects and data model objects, and it’s a lake.
Josh Birk:
What’s the distinction between a data lake object and a data object?
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah, that’s a great question. When you first ingest your data via a data stream, and so we got a lot of water references here.
Josh Birk:
We do. I love it. I love it.
Danielle Larregui:
You’ve got streams and lakes. Okay, so when you first ingest your data via a data stream, and a data stream is basically something you set up just to ingest your data. The data first hits what’s called a data lake object, and that data is completely unmapped. It’s basically just your raw data going into an initial container within Data Cloud. After that, what you have to do is you have to start mapping that data from that data lake to the actual data model that Data Cloud understands, basically. Once you do that mapping from that data lake to that data model, what the end product is the data model object, and that’s what you’re actually working with that is actually holding all of your field datas and values that’s being harmonized and absorbed via all these data streams from all these external systems.
Josh Birk:
Got it. What’s the similarity to a data object in an external object? When we say ingested, are we pulling the data in and then transforming it? Are we basically just still pointing back to the ingestion point, but just doing it in a really, I really like the words you used, in this really nice harmonized way?
Danielle Larregui:
The data is not actually transformed when it first hits the data lake object or when it’s mapped to the data model object. Once you get the data into the data model object, then you have the ability to start doing a little transformation on the data after it’s in the data model object.
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Danielle Larregui:
But right now it’s more of just like a copy and paste, basically, from your original data source to Data Cloud.
Josh Birk:
Got it. As a platform developer, can I think of these data objects as custom objects? Or are they less flexible than that?
Danielle Larregui:
They very much look like a standard or custom object in Salesforce. If you actually go into Data Cloud, what you’ll see is there will be a lot of objects that are almost a one for one match to your Salesforce standard objects. You’ll see that there’s an account object, there’s a lead object. Contact is a little bit unique where it’s divided across multiple contact type of objects, but they are very similar to standard and custom Salesforce objects. One of the ways that they are most like them is that you can extend them by adding custom fields on them, and you can also create an altogether brand new data model object or custom data model object that’s not one of the standard out of the box ones to map your data to.
Josh Birk:
Got it. Does Apex and LWC treat them as adjacent to custom objects? If I’m the developer working with the data model you created, for instance, is it mostly just that I need to understand what that data model looks like?
Danielle Larregui:
I might have to double look up this answer for that question, but it is my understanding that you cannot use Apex on the data lake or data model objects.
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Danielle Larregui:
That is my understanding.
Josh Birk:
Okay.
Danielle Larregui:
And as far as Lightning Web Components, you can build custom Lightning Web Components, I know that for a fact, on the data model objects.
Josh Birk:
Got it. Well, and similar to that, what role does Tableau play into working with this data?
Danielle Larregui:
Tableau has its own connector.
Josh Birk:
Oh, nice.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah. It connects natively via a special connector to Data Cloud, and you can start building Tableau dashboards and analytics, and lenses and all that stuff with the data stored in Data Cloud. Now, one of the reasons that Tableau is so powerful with Data Cloud is because Data Cloud actually does not have the same object structure as Salesforce, you can’t use Salesforce out of the box reports and dashboards.
Josh Birk:
Ah, gotcha. Got it. Nice, nice. Tell me a little bit about scale. When we say data, and I not going to ask you for specific numbers, probably on a slide somewhere, but give me a concept of just how big does a data lake really get?
Danielle Larregui:
Data Cloud can hold trillions of records.
Josh Birk:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah. It is made to scale from the beginning, so it is designed to be able to hold trillions of records. Obviously, you still want to use some of the best practices to ensure there’s not data skew and stuff like that, but it’s made to scale.
Josh Birk:
Got it. Got it. Well, speaking of trillions of records in data lakes, another topic you might have heard recently is AI. One of the things I have conversations with people is, it’s like these AI models, they’re really only as good as the data behind them, right?
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
Trust me, my audience can hear, and every now and then you can hear air quotes, we hear the asterisk. That is the forward looking statement that everybody just sort of assumes. But where do you see this going? What role do you think Data Cloud will play moving forward with AI?
Danielle Larregui:
Well, AI can’t work without data.
Josh Birk:
Right.
Danielle Larregui:
I think that I definitely see Data Cloud, and data in general, definitely being a huge power of a source for AI, definitely being the engine behind AI. I’m really, really interested to see how this takes off because I’ll admit that when the whole Web3 craze hit.
Josh Birk:
Yes,
Danielle Larregui:
I was not really on board that train, but this train, I’m like, “No, guys, this is legit.” Everyone’s like, “But do you think this is real? Because Web3 and NFT and crypto.” I’m like, “No, no, no, this is legit.”
Josh Birk:
Yeah, yeah. I am 100% with you there. It reminds me of the early days of IOT, and it’s like we started getting more and more use cases, and the technology started getting more and more abundant, and eventually it just sort of faded. It’s not that IOT went away, it’s just it’s faded in the background because we’re all using it every day anyway.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
I feel like we’re moving in that direction, and I completely agree. I don’t think this is going to another, there’s whole companies, I guess there’s whole companies around crypto too, but they haven’t been doing well.
Danielle Larregui:
Exactly. I think AI companies will do really well, and they have been doing really well. I mean, look at the ability, I always think the ability to get a product into the hands of just everyday people, how certain AI products have been the craze-
Josh Birk:
Yeah.
Danielle Larregui:
… amongst normal everyday people, not just developers or techies. I think that also shows the true power of how prominent a technology.
Josh Birk:
And that’s our show. Now before we go, I did ask after our Danielle’s favorite non-technical hobby, and well, it’s a fairly common one for the show.
Danielle Larregui:
What’s my favorite non-technical, sorry, what was that?
Josh Birk:
Hobby.
Danielle Larregui:
Oh, you mean I have hobbies that are non-technical?
Josh Birk:
This is why I have to have the caveat, yeah.
Danielle Larregui:
Well, I am an avid video gamer. Actually, I’m talking to you through my gaming headsets, actually.
Josh Birk:
That’s awesome.
Danielle Larregui:
These are very my high quality gaming headsets. I’m not very good at games though. I will say, I’m not good.
Josh Birk:
What games do you play? What’s your latest?
Danielle Larregui:
My latest that I recently downloaded was Diablo IV.
Josh Birk:
There you go.
Danielle Larregui:
I gawked at the price. I was like, “Dang, these games are getting expensive.”
Josh Birk:
They are. Yeah. My wife and I did not leave the couch during the beta, so we’re tiptoeing our way back to Diablo IV before, I might lose my job.
Danielle Larregui:
I played the beta too. It was in between travel, play the beta, go give a talk, play the beta, beta’s up again, and now it’s like, okay, it’s the full blown game but I’m so far behind.
Josh Birk:
Yeah.
Danielle Larregui:
Everyone’s beating the game. They’re all leveling up, and I’m like, “Yeah, my character’s still level 18. I’m still going through the storyline.”
Josh Birk:
We are right there with you. My brother just finished the campaign last week, and a friend of mine took a week off, and they’re both level 92 or something.
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
I’m like, “Okay, I’ll just sit over here with my level 15 rogue, and-”
Danielle Larregui:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
… run behind you all, on your horses.
Danielle Larregui:
My friends are all on their second and third characters. They’re like, “I’m on a different class now.” I’m like, “Okay.” But yeah, that’s my guilty pleasure. If I’m not doing anything with code, I’m literally just playing. I’m a big Team Fight Tactics fan.
Josh Birk:
Okay.
Danielle Larregui:
It’s a spinoff of League of Legends, it’s the auto battler. I love, love, love that.
Josh Birk:
I want to thank Danielle for the great conversation information, and as always, I want to thank you for listening. Now, if you want to learn more about this show, head on over to developer.salesforce.com/podcast where you can hear old episodes, see the show notes, and links to your favorite podcast service. Thanks again, everybody. I’ll talk to you next week.