Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Simplified 101

Last Modified: December 29th, 2022

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration_ Featured Image

Do you want to have your Marketing data and the Customer details in one place? Then Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration is what you need to understand. Marketing Cloud Connect is a complete package to integrate your Salesforce CRM with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. With Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration, you can leverage your business by following personalized marketing strategies.

In this blog, you will be introduced to Salesforce CRM and Marketing cloud Connect along with their key features. The purpose and benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration are emphasized. The steps in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration are elaborated in detail.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Salesforce

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Salesforce logo
Image Source: Wikipedia

Salesforce is a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that is designed to support companies in managing their Sales and Customer related data. You can use the Salesforce CRM without any technical background as it is easy to set up and manage. It has redefined the relationship between businesses and their customers by developing a more meaningful connection between them. By providing a single view for each of your client interactions, Salesforce CRM can give you unique insights into the customer’s journey and at the same time empower you with tools that can enhance your customers’ experience.

Also, Salesforce is Cloud-based, which implies that it can provide high flexibility and scalability to its users. Salesforce is the ultimate solution for your business as it provides all the necessary elements for your business on an automation platform with embedded intelligence.

Key Features of Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the most widely used CRM tools and the following features are responsible for its immense popularity:

  • Ease of Setup: Unlike other CRMs, which on average take up to nearly a year to get installed and deployed, Salesforce can be set up from scratch and be deploy ready within few weeks only.
  • Straightforward: Businesses don’t have to spend much time training their employees for using this CRM. It is quite straightforward and does not require much training or technical experience.
  • Customizable: Salesforce’s specialty lies in the customization that it offers. Users can customize this CRM tool according to their business requirements. This particular feature plays a huge role in Salesforce’s immense popularity.
  • Account Planning: Salesforce supplies you with enough insights about each Lead so that your Sales Team can tailor-make their approach for every potential Lead. This will surely increase their probability of success and the customer will also get a personalized experience.
  • Accessibility: Salesforce being a Cloud-based software, is accessible from all remote locations if you have a working internet connection. Moreover, Salesforce offers an application for mobile phones thus making it super convenient for the users.

Introduction to Marketing Cloud Connect

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Logo
Image Source: Wikipedia

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is one of the most popular tools in the Digital Marketing domain. It aims at providing the users with Digital Marketing Automation and Analytics software and services. It is a Marketing platform that has the ability to help with numerous aspects of Marketing including advertising, social media engagement, analytics,multi-channel campaign execution, etc. It connects every vertical of your business, be it sales, service, or commerce with marketing to build a consistent and personalized experience.

Marketing Cloud Connect integrates Salesforce /marketing Cloud with Salesforce CRM. This replicates all your Sales, Service, and Community clouds data. This benefits all the stakeholders from marketers, sales reps, and customers as well

Key Features of Marketing Cloud Connect

  • Journey Builder: Journey Builder connects every step a customer takes while making a purchase, as well as long-term loyalty activities. It collects data from email, mobile devices, advertising, and the web, allowing you to create a Single Customer View (SCV).
  • Email Studio: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio helps you get the best return on investment from Email Marketing. It enables you to create customized one-to-one email communications on a large scale, with end-to-end campaign development.
  • Data Studio: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Data Studio enables marketers to target various types of audiences through simple integrations into other channels.
  • Data Management Platform: Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides a complete customer profile as it updates in real-time with every new data source.

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Purpose of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

The Marketing Cloud Connect Integration provides you complete access to all your customer details in Salesforce. This includes all the data from marketing, sales and services, and every touchpoint. This Marketing Cloud Connect Salesforce Integration brings in data effortlessly from all the parts of the CRM. This will help you personalize your digital marketing strategy. You can plan one-to-one marketing across all your customer engagements. And also it allows you to build and leverage that single view of the customer across your entire organization.

Pre-requisites for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

The following are the pre-requisites to follow before Marketing Cloud Connect Salesforce Integration.

  • It is necessary to have an Enterprise 2.0 account.
  • Use Marketing Cloud Connect version 5.494 or higher versions available.
  • Use the Connected App Authentication.
  • It is also essential to use a Customer Profile Center.
  • Enable Multi-org for the entire Enterprise 2.0 account.
  • Pause the Salesforce CRM Audience from sending Contacts, Leads, Reports, or Campaigns until the upgrade is complete.
  • Re-connect the previously connected business units and users after upgrading.
  • It is essential to have two users for the integration: Marketing Cloud user and Salesforce Admin user.

Steps in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

It is mandatory to first create two users to establish the Marketing Cloud Integration Integration.

  1. Salesforce Tracking User
  2. Marketing Cloud API User
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration
Image Source: MSTSolutions

Salesforce Instance

Step1: Install the Marketing Cloud Package in Salesforce selecting Admin Profile only. Use the following links to install the Marketing Cloud Package:

Sandbox:  https://test.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04ti0000000Tj9E
Production: https://login.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04ti0000000Tj9E

Step2: Follow the below two steps to Add an Admin User level

  1. Enable both the checkboxes in Add fields in the User Page Layout. Make sure that the profile has ‘API Enabled’ permission. The checkboxes to enable are:
    • Marketing Cloud for AppExchange User
    • Marketing Cloud for AppExchange Admin
  2. Add the following in the Permission Set Assignments.
    • Marketing Cloud Connector
    • Marketing Cloud Connector Admin
    • Marketing Cloud System User
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Permission set assignments
Image Source: MSTSolutions

Step3: Now create a custom App in the name ‘Marketing Cloud’. Add package objects such as ‘Email Sends’, ‘Mobile Sends’, and ‘Send Analytics’ under the Marketing Cloud App. Also add package fields, custom links, and a VF page to access the marketing cloud data.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Marketing Cloud
Image Source: MSTSolutions

Step4: Use the following link to add IP Whitelist ranges in Salesforce.

http://help.marketingcloud.com/en/documentation/exacttarget/resources/exacttarget_ip_addresses_for_inclusion_on_whitelists/whitelisting_ip_ranges_for_salesforce_managed_packages/#ip

Step5: For the Email Opt Out functionality to update correctly when the subscriber clicks the unsubscribe link, enable the Email Opt-Out field in Lead and Contact.

Step6: Create workflows provided by the Marketing Cloud package. If you use Triggered to Send Functionality,  then there is no need to create workflows. Otherwise, use the  link below:

http://help.marketingcloud.com/en/documentation/integrated_products__crm_and_web_analytic_solutions/marketing_cloud_connector_v5/connecting_the_clouds/first_time_configuration__connection_crm_admin/

Marketing Cloud Instance

Step1: The first step here is to ensure that you have the Administrator and Marketing cloud Administrator roles with API User enabled. them.

Step2: Then enter the Salesforce Admin User credentials in the Marketing Cloud to connect. For this, login to your Marketing Cloud and navigate to the email studio. Now click on Email App and then on the Admin tab. Select Salesforce Integration and click Connect Account.

Enter your user name and password, and also select Org ID and deselect Scope by User.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Credentials entry
Image Source: MSTSolutions

In order to have a secured data transfer between Salesforce and Marketing Cloud, contact Marketing Cloud Support to enable and upgrade the Connected App.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Entering password
Image Source: MSTSolutions

User Mapping for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

To map Marketing Cloud Connect User with Salesforce User, the Salesforce user can send an e-mail to recipients and access the Marketing Cloud. Navigate to Email and click on the Admin tab and then click on My Users. Now select the API User and click on Edit. After this, navigate to Integrate Link and select Salesforce.com as a field. Provide the SFDC User Name and save the changes.

Configuring Marketing Cloud Connector

These are the steps to configure marketing Cloud Connector for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration.

Step1: Navigate to the Marketing Cloud Object tab in Salesforce and verify the Remote site settings.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Remote site verification
Image Source: MSTSolutions

Step2: Then choose the Automatic Setup and clock on Start Wizard.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Marketing Cloud Connector setup
Image Source: MSTSolutions

Step3: Enter your Marketing Cloud Connector user credentials to configure the connection. This is done to track the information flowing from the Marketing Cloud to Salesforce.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Marketing Cloud API User
Image Source: MSTSolutions

Step4: You need to enter the Marketing Cloud credentials again to map the user systems. Also, configure the essential settings for Email Tracking and Email sending.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration: Marketing Cloud Connector settings
Image Source: MSTSolutions

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration is successfully done now. Ensure to verify the connection and configuration settings by sending emails from both systems.

Data syncing process is one final step before sending data in real-time. For this contact Marketing Cloud support to enable the Data Stream feature in Marketing Cloud.

Benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

The benefits of Marketing Cloud Connect Salesforce Integration include:

  • Replicate data from Salesforce to Marketing Cloud: The Synchronized Data sources feature helps the Marketing Cloud Connect to synchronize data from Salesforce to Salesforce Marketing Cloud automatically. This will help the marketers to create targeted and a highly interactive environment.
  • Send Personalised E-mails: The Email studio is used to create personalized emails within the comfort of the Sales, Service, or Community Cloud.
  • Connect Journey Builder with Salesforce CRM: The Marketing Cloud Connect aids the Journey builder to note various events in the Salesforce CRM. This in turn will help to inject subscribers into the journey and then target them for email/SMS campaigns. 

Conclusion

From this blog, you would have learned the entire process of Marketing Cloud Connect Salesforce Integration in detail. You would now understand
about Salesforce CRM and Marketing cloud Connect along with their key features. The purpose and benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration are add-ons.

As a matter of fact, being an expert or recurring Salesforce CRM User, you are most likely working with a large number of data sources, both internally and through external Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers. Having all of this data in one location like Data Warehouse facilitates analysis and speeds up the decision-making process. This necessitates integration with all third-party Apps and Services. 

When you work with Hevo, you get this superpower to load your aggregated Data from various SaaS Applications and CRMs such as Salesforce (Free Source Connector with Hevo), HubSpot, Zendesk to Data Warehouses like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift Google BigQuery in a completely hassle-free & automated manner. 

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mm
Business Analyst, Hevo Data

Sherley is a data analyst with a keen interest towards data analysis and architecture, having a flair for writing technical content. He has experience writing articles on various topics related to data integration and infrastructure.

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