Some of you will already know that in Pardot there is officially a functionality called “Connected Campaigns”. This is functionality which is not quite yet available for its brother from another mother: Marketing Cloud.
Personally, Marketing Cloud is its own beast… one that you should tame before it gets out of hand. Comparing super briefly Marketing Cloud to Pardot is that the latter is so easy to get started and is intuitive, always with the mantra of What You See Is What You Get.
Let me drop here a Marketing Cloud system(s) overview diagram to give you an high level sense of its architecture:
Image credit Pluralsight Salesforce Play by Play: Demystifying Salesforce MarketingCloud
As you can see, it has a lot of different bits and potential ways to communicate across different areas. To reduce complexity we could get inspired by Pardot Connected Campaigns.
“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” ― Albert Einstein
Any fool can make things complicated.
Connecting to Salesforce
The simplest way you can implement the communication between Salesforce and Marketing Cloud is leveraging the standard connector and taking advantage of the Campaign Object.
This means that Salesforce will send over to Marketing Cloud subscribers via Campaigns and Marketing Cloud can send the interaction results into Salesforce via the Individual Email Results object from the standard connector. It’d look something like this:
If you do not need at this point relational data, then you are about to discover the simplest way I find to get customers started with it: simply, easily and quickly whilst sending emails without convoluting the process.
You need 4 steps there, well 5.
The ingredients are:
- Connector
- Salesforce Campaign
- Synced Data Extension
- Email via Content Builder
- Multi-step Journey via Journey Builder
- Salesforce standard Report
Prep Work
First you need to get the two systems talking to each other, check this module as it is a step by step guide to do exactly that.
Make sure synchronized data extension of leads/contacts is setup and includes the fields you want for your sends.
The Steps
1. CAMPAIGN (CRM)
(from Salesforce) Create a campaign within Salesforce CRM, at this point we haven’t discussed hierarchies so just create a simple one, chose dates and make it active (checkbox)
2. EMAIL (MC)
(from Marketing Cloud) This time from your Marketing Cloud login create your email from content builder including the merge fields you may want to include such as %%firstname%%
In properties Create email from Template > select any of the templated emails and create your email. One you have edited the content blocks and all, Save and Exit.
3. JOURNEY (MC)
(from Marketing Cloud) Step three is navigate in Marketing Cloud to Journey Builder, you do so from hovering over ‘Email’ top left then Journey Builder > Journey Builder.
Use a Multi-Step type of journey even if it has one step only. The reason for this is simply the functionality, you can access elements from the canvas including the related campaign that you can’t do with the other options.
Give it a name, edit the journey settings for example No-Reentry (is the one that you’ll most often use).
As Entry Source select: Salesforce Data and drag it into the canvas. Then ‘Salesforce Campaign’ click Next. Select the Campaign you created in Step One in Salesforce CRM, select next twice and ‘done’
If you added a merge field, after selecting your campaign, click on ‘Campaign Member’ to add that merged field .
Then drag the Email element into the canvas and fill the information, selecting your email message you created in Step 2.
Message Configuration for subject line and preheader also if it need to change from commercial to transactional email.
Within Message Configuration you can select the Sender profile for the message. Meaning the Default or custom From Name and email address if have been customised.
Delivery Options are key to send only who has accepted to be in a list, so you can define the relevant publication list.
Once you are ready click ‘Activate’ > review any errors and await for the popup letting you know your journey is now active.
**Note: your journey must be active before next step, this is KEY.
4. REPORT(CRM)
(from Salesforce) This is the last step and is there to add the individuals into the active journey (this must be done the last step), so now navigate back to your CRM.
You add people into campaigns with reports. You add them as ‘Campaign Members’, to do so go to Reports.
Create a report of leads/contacts you want to send the email to, make sure you add lead/contact ID and email. You can change filters in the report to better suit best send, as this is how you are defining your segmentation for your send.
Once you are ready, from the right handside dropdown select ‘Add to Campaign’. Make sure you select the campaign that you have created in Step 1 being the same as the journey selected in Step 3.
Once this is done the email is on its way! In a few minutes you should see the subscribers and metrics populated within the journey.
**I’d recommend doing all that on a test journey and add yourself as a lead to the test and ensure you are happy with it. Even better if you get a teamy to check after you (this is called peer review, and is super powerful!).
Recap
Salesforce CRM contains the individual’s data, and to be able to send it over to Marketing Cloud application to send emails you can use reports.
Reports in Salesforce CRM are used to segment and add individuals/contacts as Campaign Members (that is to be done as the very last step, remember).
Marketing Cloud is where you craft your emails, create a journey to ‘fetch’ your audience and send your message.
Marketing Cloud in exchange sends over individual email data into Salesforce CRM as contact related record called ‘Individual Email Result’, where you can view what was sent, the opens, clicks etc
BAM!
Let us know how do you get on and what does this mean to you?
Informative blog, Helpful for Salesforce developers.