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Step-by-Step Guide for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

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Monica Barthalomeo,

April 13, 2022


Step-by-Step Guide for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

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Having Customer information and Marketing Data in a single place is truly a game-changer for marketers. However, ensuring this is quite a challenge. But with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect (MCC), it’s not one anymore! Salesforce MCC is a comprehensive tool that helps you integrate your Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, allowing you to fully leverage your business data to create personalized marketing messages.

In this blog, we’ll learn about the features of Salesforce MCC, its benefits and some considerations in using it effectively. We’ll also look at the prerequisites for marketing cloud integration with salesforce and what it takes to effectively integrate Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Before that, let’s try to understand what is MCC.

What Is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect?

MCC is a robust tool from Salesforce that helps you combine the platform’s digital marketing prowess with its campaign management, segmentation, and data management capabilities. From advertising and analytics to social media engagement and multi-channel campaign execution, MCC connects various business functions such as service, marketing, and sales to help you present a personalized, consistent customer experience.

Why is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration Critical to your company?

MCC empowers you to access all your customer details in the Salesforce environment including sales, marketing, and customer service. To be precise, this tool lets you acquire customer information from all touchpoints seamlessly from Salesforce CRM. Thus, it enables you to personalize your digital marketing strategy at a microscopic level. By doing so, you can ensure better customer engagement across all customer journeys. Moreover, it lets you create a single view of the customer across your organization and use it for your marketing efforts.

Pre-requisites for Marketing Cloud Connect Implementation

Step-by-step Guide for Salesforce Marketing Cloud CRM Integration

For a seamless Marketing Cloud Connect Integration, you need to create the following two users:

  • Salesforce Tracking User
  • Marketing Cloud API User

Salesforce Instance

Step 1: Install the Marketing Cloud Package from Salesforce. While installing the package, select Admin Profile only. Use either of the following links for the installation

Production:

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

Sandbox:

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

Step 2: Adhere to the following steps to add a user at the Admin level

  • Enable Marketing Cloud for AppExchange User and Marketing Cloud for AppExchange Admin checkboxes in the Add field in the User Page Layout. Ensure that the user has ‘API enabled’ permissions.
  • Add “Marketing Cloud Connector, Marketing Cloud System User, and Marketing Cloud Connector Admin” in the Permission Set Assignments.

Step 3: Create a custom application with the name, “Marketing Cloud.” Add the “Mobile Sends, Send Analytics, and Email Sends” objects to the application. Also, add custom links, VF page, and package fields to the Marketing Cloud database.

Step 4: Add IP whitelist ranges using the following link in Salesforce.

Step 5: Enable the Email-Opt-Out field in the Lead and Contact section to auto-update your subscriber count and data every time a subscriber clicks the unsubscribe link.

Step 6: Use the Marketing Cloud package to create workflows provided in the link below: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/marketing/marketing-cloud/guide/packages-overview.html

However, you need not create workflows if you use the ‘Triggered to Send’ functionality.

Marketing Cloud Instance

Step 1: Ensure that your API users enable Marketing cloud Administrator and Salesforce Administrator roles.

Step 2: Log in to Marketing Cloud, navigate to Email Studio, click on the Email app, and then, click the Admin tab. Next, choose Salesforce integration and click on Connect Account to enter your Salesforce Admin credentials in the Marketing Cloud.

Here, you need to enter your username, password and Org ID, while you deselect the Scope by a user. For a secured data transfer between Marketing Cloud Support and Sales Cloud enable and upgrade the “Connected App.”

User Mapping for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

Marketing Cloud Connect user and Salesforce user accounts can be mapped by sending emails. Sending emails from Salesforce User Account to recipients helps them get access to Marketing Cloud. Go to Email, click on the Admin tab, and tap on My users. Select API user and tap on edit. Next, tap on Integrate Link, select Salesforce.com as a field, enter the SFDC username and save changes.

Configuring Marketing Cloud Connector

Step 1: Go to the Marketing Cloud Object section to verify Remote site settings.

Step 2: Select Automatic Setup and tap on Start Wizard

Step 3: To track and monitor information flowing from Marketing Cloud to Salesforce, enter the Marketing Cloud Connector username and password to configure the connection.

Step 4: To map your user systems, enter Marketing Cloud credentials once again. Also, configure basic settings for Email sending, and Email Tracking.

With these steps, your Marketing Cloud Connect Integration with Salesforce is successfully done. Verify your configuration and connection settings by sending emails from both systems. The last step before you send any data in real-time is the data syncing process. Contact Marketing Cloud support to help you enable the Data Stream.

Benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

Integrating Salesforce Marketing Cloud with Salesforce Connect offers a wide range of benefits, including improved customer experience, better data management, and more efficient marketing campaigns. Learn more about the advantages of this integration today!

  • Synchronize Data Seamlessly MCC allows Marketing Cloud users to access real-time data from the Service Cloud and Sales Cloud. With synchronized data extensions from Marketing Cloud Connect, users can avoid manually exporting data from either Service or Sales Cloud into the Marketing Cloud. Thus, it helps them save time and get accurate data without any errors.
  • Send Marketing Cloud Emails from Service and Sales Clouds MCC lets users send Marketing Cloud text messages and emails from Sales and Service Clouds without any hassle. This not only makes it easy for marketers but also those working in sales and service teams of the business to send personalized and on-brand emails with data in these respective clouds.
  • View Tracking Information in Service Cloud and Sales Cloud One of the benefits of using Salesforce MCC is it lets Sales Cloud and Service Cloud users view customer tracking and customer engagement data in real-time.
  • Engage Contacts in Marketing Cloud Journeys Worried about exporting or manually entering contacts? Salesforce MCC lets users to auto-add contacts from Sales Cloud and Service Cloud into Marketing Cloud.
  • Connect Journey Builder with Salesforce CRM Salesforce MCC allows Journey Builder, a key component of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, to record various events in the Salesforce environment that will help add subscribers and target them for SMS and email campaigns.
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  • Utilize Marketing Cloud APIs The Marketing Cloud offers two APIs that share a common authentication mechanism based on OAuth 2.
  • The REST API exposes broader access to Marketing Cloud capabilities.
  • The SOAP API provides comprehensive access to most email functionality.

Using these APIs, other systems can also trigger emails and text messages. You can use Marketing Cloud to build journeys using the API event and directly inject the customers into the journey.

  • Facilitate FTP Integration We can import CSV files from FTP to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and vice versa. This helps to trigger the campaign from any other sources if they are not using Salesforce CRM.
  • Leverage Mobile Studio We can also reach customers on any mobile device with personalized mobile messaging using Mobile Studio. It supports the following.
  • GroupConnect
  • MobileConnect
  • MobilePush
  • Harness Social Studio We can connect marketing, service, and sales teams to the customers through social channels to build meaningful relationships.

Which key considerations are needed in integrating with Salesforce marketing cloud connect?

  • Migrating Subscriber Key Data Salesforce MCC requires every subscriber to use their Lead ID or Sales Cloud Contact as their subscriber key in Marketing Cloud. However, if a contact already exists in Marketing Cloud with the same subscriber key, it results in duplication. Automatically eliminating duplicates in Marketing Cloud is one of the ways to address this issue.
  • Synchronizing Additional Data You can use MCC to extract data from Service Cloud and Sales Cloud into the Marketing Cloud. However, MCC’s capabilities are restricted to what it can auto-sync with the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. You can overcome this concern by using Server-Side JavaScript (SSJS) and AMPscript to enable synchronization of additional data back to Service Cloud and Sales Cloud.

Displaying the Thumbnails of Sent Emails in Sales Cloud and Service Cloud with Full Resolution

Salesforce MCC lets users of both Sales and Service Clouds display an array of email thumbnails that are sent to a contact or lead. Sometimes, these thumbnails may end up being too small to reveal any detailed information to users. To tackle this issue, you need to create an in-line Visualforce page to showcase a full-resolution of Marketing Cloud emails in Service Cloud and Sales Cloud.

As you can see, Salesforce MCC is a robust tool that helps you successfully integrate Salesforce CRM with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Now that you know how to integrate Salesforce MCC and are aware of its benefits and the challenges in using it, it’s time that you leverage it to make the best out of Marketing Cloud and enhance your processes.

At Solunus, our experts can chalk out a robust strategy for your business and help you reach your business goals at affordable costs. We lay a strong emphasis on understanding your unique business needs, and this coupled with our unparalleled Salesforce expertise enables us to provide the ideal solution to the needs.

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About Solunus

Solunus is a dedicated Salesforce partner organization, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Our unrelenting focus on comprehending the unique needs of our clients coupled with our unrivaled expertise of the Salesforce platform enables us to deliver the perfect solutions that create the best value for IT and business analytics firms.