Episode 2. Connect Salesforce CRM with Marketing cloud using Marketing cloud Connect
The idea is to document & walkthrough the steps of connecting your Salesforc CRM (sales or Service) with your Marketing cloud instance using Marketing cloud connect.
Why.. ?? asked yourself — the answer is easy.. :)
Your business landscape usually have varients of products (systems) designed and integrated to perform a specific business operation but 2 important ones we wanted to draw your attention are a) Salesforce CRM platform on one side where your customers data resides along with their peripheral transactional data & b) Marketing cloud on the other side used for digital markting capabilities (e.g. triggering welcome emails, abandon carts, SMS, engage on social channels etc.)
Use case: You would like to engage a customer in a specific journey as soon as the customer monthy spend turns > $1000 monthly and update the customer buyer indicator as High Value Customer so that next time customer calls in or connects with the brand sales / support agents are able to assist & engage accordingly.
Definition: Marketing Cloud Connect combines the digital marketing capabilities of Marketing Cloud (consistent branding) with the data management, segmentation, and campaign management tools in Salesforce.
Ingredients: Salesforce.com Developer Account & Marketing Cloud Enterprise 2.0 accounts
Steps to follow: In order to connect Salesforce CRM with Marketing cloud using markting cloud connect, essentially its a series of 5 steps, lets follow along from A to E:
AMarketing Connect Package Installation on CRM Org. and System user Creation (i.e. Your CRM API user)
- Install the markting cloud connect package from here, https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.mc_co_install_marketing_cloud_connect.htm&type=5
- Once Installed — Open the users pagelayout, Add these 2 fields on the layout , Save.
- Next, go on to your user level (ensure you are systm administrator) and click edit, you would see 2 checkboxes (marketing cloud appexchange user and admin, turn them ON)
- Next, is to create another system admin user which we will use separately to connect to markting cloud instance. , create following below and once done LOGOUT.
B. Configure Marketing Cloud side: Connect your Marketing Cloud account to the corresponding Sales or Service Cloud org at the account level to continue Marketing Cloud Connect setup.
P.S: Here most important thing we need to do is create a new marketing cloud Connect API user similar to above. and this user will be used to connect to Salesforce CRM.
- Login to your marketing cloud, email Studio → Admin → Salesforce Integration.
- Click edit, Scope by user (uncheck) and click connect account.
- You need to add your Salesforce Account Credentials. Add creds. for the new system user we created Step A., click allow to grant access for the Salesforce system user to access the Marketing Cloud account.This will connect your business unit to your salesforce CRM instance.
- Next, step is to create a Marketing cloud connect API user - which is typically a unique user that connects to the → Salesforce System User in Marketing Cloud Connect Setup.
- Next, Connect the Marketing Cloud API user to the →Salesforce system user to enable core system communication activities in Marketing Cloud Connect. These activities include pushing tracking data from the Marketing Cloud into your Sales or Service Clouds.
- Assign applicable business units to the Marketing Cloud API user. and LOGOUT from marketing cloud.
C. Configure Salesforce CRM. The Salesforce CRM administrator performs these tasks to configure Sales or Service Cloud for Marketing Cloud Connect. This is basically to connect from CRM side to marketing instance.
- After package installation, it creates a connected app, few permission sets. now we need to edit & assign them respectively.
- Login to SF using credentials from new CRM user we created.
- And first, we need to create a new permission set manually say a name Marketing Cloud Connected App (keeping default settings) and assign this permission set to the salesforce CRM API user (system) we created above.
- Also, Apply the following permission sets to the API User: Marketing Cloud Connected App, Marketing Cloud Connector, Marketing Cloud Connector Admin, and Marketing Cloud System User.
- Next, open Connected Apps, search for : Salesforce marketing cloud: Edit policies; → set admin approvd users are allowed, Relax IP restrictions; token policy as Immediately expire refresh token & Save
- Scroll down on the same page under same connected app, Manage permission and assign the newly created Salesforce Marketing Cloud permission set.
- Go to Process Automation Settings: and select Dfault workflow user; this is required for time-dependent workflows used by Marketing Cloud Connect.
- Lastly, look for the Marketing cloud tab in your salesforce org., andclick Connect to Marketing Cloud.
- Add username and password for the new markting cloud connect API user and login.
this completes our all steps from Configuration prspective. to Tst inisital configurations and see if connection between SF cRM and Marketing cloud is working. I am ignoring step D(Configure Settings) and moving directly on to Step E (Test the connection)
E. Test the connection:
- Jump to Markting cloud and create an email message in markting cloud, Open email studio → Content → New, Create an email.
- Select Text Only., give a name and Description and give a subject.
- Paste this content and save
Sent to: %%emailaddr%% <br> JobID: %%jobid%% <br> <table cellpadding=”2" cellspacing=”0" width=”600" ID=”Table5" Border=0><tr><td><font face=”verdana” size=”1" color=”#444444">This email was sent by: <b>%%Member_Busname%%</b><br>%%Member_Addr%% %%Member_City%%, %%Member_State%%, %%Member_PostalCode%%, %%Member_Country%%<br><br></font></td></tr></table> %%jobid%%<br><br> <a href=”%%unsub_center_url%%” alias=”Unsubscribe”>Unsubscribe</a> <custom name=”opencounter” type=”tracking”>
- Jump back to Salesforce CRM, Create a new lead with email address
- Next, create a report on lead (include recordId and email address) and save it under Marketing Cloud Admin report folder.
- Lastly, Navigate to Marketing cloud tab in your SF CRM
- click on find to select the email content (message) from markting cloud
- Click Recipients to select your report containing leads.
- Select I certify all of ths pople have opted in and Send. email will be sent from markting cloud to your recipients.
- Yeey we did it I see the email in my inbox!!
This concludes our all steps rquired to connect Markting cloud and Salesforce CRM using Markting cloud connect.
I will also give an example how we can utlize connect product to make a salesforce record enter a markjting cloud jorney and update record status from markting cloud
for more infom, please refer salesforcr Official help documntation
Thanks — Mohit
