MarCloud Podcast #1 - 5 Things Marketers Need to Know About Salesforce

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And thanks for joining us on the very first episode of the Markloud podcast. I'm Carl. I'm a senior consultant here at Markloud. Across Account Engagement, Sales Cloud, and Marketing Cloud. I'll be hosting these conversations moving forward. Hopefully I won't do too bad a job of it either. I'm joined today by Ellie. So, Ellie, you're the very first team member on the very first Markow podcast on. On a scale of 1 to Buzzing, how buzzing are you to be here?

Completely buzzing. I can't contain my excitement. Honestly, Carl.

It'S visible as well. Cool. You can do a much better job of me than intro yourself. So why don't you introduce yourself to everybody and why they should be listening to you today?

Yep. So I'm not sure I can say why they should listen to me, but just as a quick introduction, I'm a delivery consultant here at markcloud and I've got experience in both sales cl and I dabble a little bit in Account Engagement. And what I do is I essentially deliver the work that is set out by our lead consultants.

Cool. So it's fair to say that Sales Cloud is your first love when it comes to Salesforce, right?

Yeah, completely fair to say that.

Cool. Which bodes well for this conversation then, because the topic we're going to be discussing today is for marketers that spend all their time in Account Engagement, maybe they don't have as much experience in Sales Cloud, but there's certain things that they should know if they want the two systems to sing together and get the most out of this connection between Account Engagement and Salesforce. So to start with, I know you wanted to talk to everybody today about the sync between the Prospect record in Account Engagement and the lead and contact record in Salesforce. So why don't we start there? What should they know about that sync relationship?

Yeah, so I think one of the most important things is knowing where is the data going to be in both systems. So fields from Prospect Record in Account Engagement will sync to either a lead or contact record in Salesforce, and you can choose which fields are going to sync between each on the systems. You can create a custom field on both if you want to kind of track, like data that's not standard field. So there's lots of options here just to make sure that the data is reflected on both.

Cool. Okay. So if we want the data on the Prospect record in Account Engagement, we need to create that custom field and essentially link it to the correct field in Salesforce, right?

Yeah. And you will need to give access to that field to the B2BMA integration user in order to be able to set that up. Another key point.

That's a very good point. Essentially, the B2BMA integration user is the eyes into Salesforce. Right. So whatever that can or cannot see account engagement won't be able to see. Okay.

Yeah.

Cool. And you can do this at field level, right? Like, you can set the like the relationship between the two. Like which one is the master, which one kind of wins the battle between the updates and all that kind of stuff. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. You can set that up as well. So a really good example of what for like would be driven by account engagement is like the email opt out field. So they should only ever kind of be sent across the sales cloud from the control of engagement. So if it wasn't, then prospects could be trying to opt out, but their records won't be updating because Salesforce is reverting back to the original value.

That's a really good point actually. And a cheeky little reminder for everybody that the June deadline to actually set the master of that field. So what you're saying is that the email opt out field should 100% be driven by account engagement. Right. So when prospects opt out, it will update Salesforce. If it's the other way around, Salesforce would revert back. There's never been a position to opt out or opt back in.

Yep, completely.

Right, Cool. Good to know. Okay, so yeah, everybody, don't forget about that June deadline. We need to start that. Cool. Is there anything else to be aware of in terms of field thinking, like with blank values or anything like that?

Yeah, that's a really good point. So blanks will be reverting back to the system that does have a value. So if a current engagement is blank, but that's the master, but sales cloud isn't blank, then Salesforce will allow that update in sales cloud and revert it back to a current engagement. This goes for checkboxes as well as a false value. In Salesforce, it's still a value.

Okay, yes. They're actually having a null checkbox in Salesforce isn't actually truly null. It is a value of false.

Yeah, exactly.

That's really good to know. Okay, perfect. The next thing I know you wanted to talk about was the campaign object, which is a big object and probably the object that most marketers would be using in Salesforce. That I goto. But I know you wanted to talk to them specifically about campaign member status and not just the Campaign object. So yeah, why don't you just give us a little bit more detail about what you wanted us to know about campaign member status?

Yeah. So campaign member statuses are really important and it's not something that is given as much thought as it should be. So you're given a set of default statuses whenever you set up sales cloud. However, these can be customized to be more better suited for your system.

Cool. And should they be customized?

I would say most of the time, yes. I think it's really beneficial to customize them, especially if some of the statuses aren't really applicable for what you need them to reflect. So I would say yes to that one.

Cool. Could you give us an example of like why you would customize this? Is it based on campaign type or how would you customize them?

So they're just whatever way you need to basically segment engagement within the campaign member list. So yeah, you can have a different set of statuses depending on the type of campaign that's being run. Such as events might have different statuses on an email campaign and you can customize both.

Cool. Okay. Yeah, that totally would make sense. I guess if you had a webinar campaign type, you would have things like attended, not attended, which obviously wouldn't make sense for an email campaign.

Exactly. Yeah. I don't think many people know that they can be customized. So it's a good tip.

That is a good one. Okay, cool. So in terms of actually creating these campaign member statuses then, is that a manual effort to you marketers or the salesforce companies need to create these statuses each and every time a campaign is created.

You will need to manually create them up first, but then we can automate it going forward. So what we could use is a thing called a salesforce flow. And this will create a specific set of statuses depending on the type of campaign you've selected. Such as if you select it's an event or an email campaign.

Cool. Can you just explain to everybody what a salesforce flow is? Like the math and what flow is?

Yeah, it's just a way that you can build an automation to. Instead of doing anything manual in the system, a flow can do it in the background for you. So you'll set some entry criteria that will trigger the flow and then you can determine different outcomes depending on like, for example, like the campaign type you selected.

Oh, cool. So you can set a criteria at the beginning of this flow that basically says it's campaign type equals webinar, then create these campaign member statuses. If it equals email. Create these campaign member statuses. Oh, cool, okay. And I guess that would probably remove. I think the reason that people don't create these campaign member statuses is probably because it is something that they have to do each and every time, either forgotten about or not really given too much thought. But what's the benefit of having the correct status? Like, if we were to look at a campaign record of a webinar and all the campaign members that were part of that webinar, what's the benefit of having these statuses being a little bit more descriptive to the campaign site?

I think it just reflects the interaction that the campaign members had. It just increases your ability to report, to actually be able to determine where your campaign member is sitting. Like, how they've interacted with gets you more valuable data that you can use rather than having a status that isn't really applicable for what you need to see.

Cool. Okay, perfect. That makes total sense. And I think the other side of the campaign coin is not just campaign member statuses and how people have engaged, but we obviously want to tie opportunities and revenue and pipeline back to that campaign record as well. So can you just talk to us a little bit about how we go about doing that?

Yep. So if you want to tie a campaign member to an opportunity, you would use a function called contact role. This is really super important in order to be able to do that is where essentially, in a similar way to campaign member, you're going to add a contact as a contact role against the opportunity. And you can select the status of kind of the part they play in that opportunity. For example, if they're a decision maker, you can then reflect that on the record.

Cool. Okay. So you're essentially building like a view within the opportunity of the different members of the prospect's team and what they're playing. So if they are the decision maker, if they're the purse holder or anything like that, the salesperson can essentially build up this view of the team.

Exactly, yeah. And it's just really important for them even knowing who they need to reach out to as well. Kind of saves a lot of time on their end.

Cool. So why should marketing care about that?

Well, without this, you can't get the value of that opportunity linked back to the campaign. So, yeah, the prospect will go being a campaign member and a contact role. And these functions kind of tie them together in order to kind of report on it and determine the value the campaign had on that opportunity. So it's super, super important.

Cool. So then being a campaign Member in a campaign in a contact role and opportunity. That's effectively like the bridge between the campaign and the opportunity to be able to tie that back. Right?

Yeah.

Cool. Okay, that makes complete sense. What are some of the issues that we've had? Because this doesn't happen all the time. Right. I don't know about you, but I've been in so many client orgs where the campaign object is completely null of like influenced revenue. Close one opportunities. Those fields are completely blank. So something's falling down there. So that to me would say that there isn't anybody as a listed as a contact role on an opportunity. So can you talk us through how the ways in which we can attribute somebody to contact role opportunity?

Yep. So you can do this through lead conversion. You can create an opportunity from an existing contact record and that will automatically pull them through. So where this process could fall down is just by people forgetting the add in a contact role. So if they create the opportunity from the opportunity object or from the account object, they will need to manually input those contact roles. And obviously if a user forgets, then that data is not linked there.

Okay, cool. So when somebody converts to lead, you can obviously create an opportunity off the back of that lead conversion. Right. So we're saying that Salesforce automatically adds them through a contact role as part of the opportunity. As part of that process.

Yeah, exactly. So that's like a really good way just to make sure that you're always linking that prospect and then contact to the opportunity.

Cool. Is there any way that we can effectively stop that from not happening?

Yeah. So there's different ways you can customize the system. My favorite way is just to remove ability to create opportunities from anywhere other than the contact object. So you can remove the ability to create it from a coin or opportunity and that way it's kind of a more streamlined process. Like the users will need to go to the contact record if they're not creating an opportunity on lead conversion and then the contacts automatically pulled through as a contact role. So it's a bit cheeky, but that's my favorite way to make sure that's kind of enforced.

Okay, so what you're saying is you would completely remove the ability for sales to create opportunities from accounts?

Exactly. Yeah. It's strict, but it works well.

Yeah, it will work, but yeah, I can't see you being sales best friend after that. But never mind.

They'll get into a habit of just going to the contact object and then, you know, after a couple of weeks, everyone will be happy that's true, that's true.

It's just a change, a slight change. I'll get back on board. It's fine. But that is a good point, actually. So removing the inability to create an opportunity from accountability ultimately forces us to create opportunities through a mechanism that will automatically add somebody as a contact role.

Yeah.

Then feeds back to the campaign record.

Yeah. And I mean, the positive for, you know, the sales users is it's one less manual step that they have to kind of input there. And then they maybe don't have marketing getting frustrated because the contacts weren't linked. So, yeah, it can remove quite a lot of issues that could like follow just from forgetting that.

Cool. I like it. I think that's one of my bugbears anyway, when I go into norg that they've got this function to be able to essentially look at a campaign and be able to tell what pipeline that campaign has affected won opportunities against that campaign. So the fact that it's not being used is almost criminal. But yeah, I totally see your point that actually it should be criminal campaign just create campaign ROI automatically. I like it. That's cool. But with that, that brings us on to campaign influence as well. So obviously with campaign influence, what we're saying there is that we pick a model in which we want to look at the world of these campaigns. So whether we want to look at them as a first touch. So if we run a first touch model, we're essentially, through your way of doing it, we would give 100% of the revenue to the very first campaign that brought this prospect or contact in last touch. What we can do is the reverse of that for the very last campaign before close one. We can see that on the campaign record. Or even Touch, which is the most common. If that campaign member or that contact is part of five campaigns, then ultimately that revenue from the opportunity will get split evenly across those five campaigns as well. So again, having that process in place, like you just mentioned there, where it doesn't fall down, gives you that foundation to have campaign influence kind of running on autopilot, really.

Yeah, exactly. And like, there's different ways we can even define the criteria for influence as well. So for example, yeah, we could use a cutoff date for that first campaign to be attributed. So this could allow us then to use the first campaign, say within 90 days of an opportunity being created, rather than always going back to that first campaign over all time that was attributed. So that's probably. Yeah, it's one of my favorite ways. And then there's different Things we could do to even like exclude some criteria. So maybe certain campaign member statuses like, were necessary. So an example of this would be you might want to exclude those statuses that have just been sent an email as they haven't engaged yet. So yeah, there's different ways that we can kind of tweak the criteria for influence on this.

I like it. That's a really good point and often misunderstood as well, because without that cutoff, what you're essentially saying is if I came in two years ago and then I suddenly become part of an opportunity, that first campaign would get some attribution. Right? Without having to call.

Yeah, exactly.

Cool. And I like the thing with campaign member status as well, because campaign member status is all created equal. Right. So in your example there in an email send, you would have a list of people that just been sent an email and you would hope they'd engage, but ultimately some people won't. But it would be pretty remiss to say, okay, this campaign has influenced that opportunity when they haven't done anything.

Right, yeah, exactly. And excluding them can just get you a more accurate campaign influence result.

I like it a lot. Okay, cool. Perfect. Which ultimately brings us down to if we're imagining all these fixes as like a kind of journey towards the end goal, the end goal being reporting and being able to see all of this data and be able to see it. So assuming that we've got contact role. Right, which means that we can attribute revenue to the campaign. Assuming that we've got campaign influence. Right. And assuming that we've got everything else set up correctly, what is it that you wanted us to know about the reporting side of things in Salesforce?

Yep. So I mean, the main difference between like our standard Salesforce reports and dashboards and B2BMA is that the Salesforce reports dashboards can only use the data that is in Salesforce sales cloud. So that's a big difference. You'll have to make sure then that any account engagement data that you want pulled through to these report is synced over to a field in sales cloud and then will be pulled through to the necessary reports. So then what B2BMA can see that Salesforce reports and dashboards can't is that they have access to see straight into account engagements data as well. So the data will need to be mapped to a Salesforce field to report on, but yet it can directly access the current engagement too.

Okay, cool. So even though it's a par metric, technically mapping it to a custom field in Salesforce, it becomes a Salesforce metric. Right. So for Salesforce reports and dashboards to work, it has to have a home in Salesforce.

Yeah, exactly. It needs to have a home in Salesforce.

Cool. Okay. But the obvious area or gap there is things like visitor data, I think, an account engagement. So what you're saying is for maybe Salesforce reports and dashboards work for custom fields that have already been mapped to Salesforce. Obviously, as you mentioned earlier, if you get that think behavior right, that will be accurate. But if anything outside of that B2BMA, the routes go down, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Cool. Okay, perfect. I think all of what you've just gone through there highlights that there is this kind of compartmentalized approach of having a marketer. And Salesforce, there should be like an admin between both systems. Right. That understands both systems.

Yeah. I think it's really beneficial being able to have that. Like, I know I would be lost if I didn't know anything about incurrent engagement as well. So I always try to make sure I know both systems as well and how they interact.

Cool. Perfect. Well, we do have more information on these topics on our blog and we'll put more links to articles in the show, notes in the show description and things like that. But for now, Ellie, thank you very, very much for joining me today. Really appreciate that. That was great. Thank you.

Thanks for having me.