Marketing Cloud Connect enables integration between Salesforce Sales or Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Generally speaking, this connection enables three main features:
1. Send Marketing Cloud emails directly from the CRM.
2. Track email engagement metrics at the contact level in your CRM.
These features are beneficial for sales departments. They can easily use pre-defined assets, all the while, being able to track email activity (opens, clicks, unsubscribe, etc).
3. Specific events or actions in the CRM act as triggers for specific journeys in Journey Builder.
The installation process itself is quite easy and requires step-by-step following the prompts described in detail in the corresponding Trailhead.
Nevertheless, there are some important considerations you should have in mind before installing the Marketing Cloud Connector.
- Come up with Salesforce CRM objects and fields you want be available in Marketing Cloud. While the easiest way is to map all the objects and respective fields it is important to understand the purpose of each object and field usage, get a sense of how they are populated to prevent the duplication and system friction.
- Identify which records should be accessible via Marketing Cloud? Please note that you need to configure Salesforce Sharing Rules to Private for the case, not all records will be available in Marketing Cloud. If turned on Sharing Settings impact all Salesforce CRM users and therefore must be thoroughly discussed.
- There is also another security consideration. Think through in advance the opportunity for Marketing Cloud users to send to private Salesforce reports (stored in the ‘My Reports’ folder).
- Salesforce CRM access to certain business units. It is essential for access to specific emails within Business Units.
- Clearly define the roles while the connector installation. Since the installation process takes part in both systems, Marketing Cloud and Salesforce CRM Production Environment (Marketing Cloud Connect is a managed package and it cannot be migrated from a sandbox to production), several potential hiccups may arise during or after installing the Marketing Cloud Connector. Thus, it is important to provide necessary access rights and specify the scope of works in each system.
- ">Think through in advance how do you plan to use Journey Builder. Be aware that building complex Journeys in Sandbox requires all the work redo in a productive environment. Work in production does not eliminate the need for testing, moreover prod org provides enough opportunities to create test data sets and perform "as real as possible" tests. It means you create all the necessary fields (create a custom checkbox field for the test records, e.g. ForTest checkbox) with limited visibility to this field. Use this test flag to build relevant sharing rules, filters, etc. during the training and testing cycles.
If you're looking to get started with Marketing Cloud and need more guidance, feel free to contact us. JET BI experts support you during the implementation and set-up process to deliver the result surpassing your expectations.
