Are you ready to ignite your digital marketing efforts? The collaboration between Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Advertising Audiences, both powerful tools in their own right, will skyrocket your success in digital marketing. In this blog post, we’ll show you how Account Engagement and Advertising are powerful tools when they’re coupled with one another.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
Account Engagement is the Salesforce B2B marketing automation software. Its main uses are account-based marketing, cross-channel campaigns, and lead generation. And though it does so much more than that to optimize your marketing efforts and provide out-of-this-world analytics, it cannot help you run your digital advertising campaigns.
Marketing Cloud Advertising
Advertising Audiences, powered by Marketing Cloud Advertising, seamlessly integrates with online advertising platforms, including social media, Google Ads, and more, to target your Prospects specifically. It enables marketers to easily reach existing customers, generate new leads, suppress a subset of Prospects, and re-engage.
This all sounds great, right? Absolutely! But wouldn’t it be cool if your advertising efforts were linked to your marketing automation efforts?
Why should I connect Account Engagement with Advertising Audiences?
That’s easy! Pairing these tools can help you to automate your processes, improve cross-channel campaigns, and expand your footprint. Who doesn’t want this for their business?
Automate Processes
Getting leads from social media campaigns is often a manual process of exporting and importing. Bleh! Who has time for that? With this integration, you can automate lead transfers directly from your social media and paid ad campaigns to Account Engagement. This also lessens the chance of human error and ensures that you are staying within legal guidelines at a global level.
Improve Campaigns
There are many digital touchpoints: email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Ads, etc. With Account Engagement and Advertising Audiences, you can unite all of these touch points into a centralized hub and be able to track and report on them seamlessly. This combo gives you a more accurate preview of sources and measures of what is and isn’t working for your company. It also allows you to use first-party data to create and target lookalike audiences, improving your chances of getting new leads.
Expand Your Footprint
When running campaigns via media buys and email, you can now target and re-engage inactive Prospects, target Prospects based on behavior, and enable exclusions based on data, demographics, or purchase history. And this is all done in real time. Does this not seem like a great return on investment?
I’m ready to launch Advertising and Account Engagement. How do I make this happen?
The setup can be cumbersome and often requires work with a Salesforce Partner, but it’s quite straightforward if you are comfortable in the Salesforce ecosystem.
The good news is that it’s done once it is in place. It’s all about building new audiences or tweaking existing audiences from then on.
You will need access to Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, and Marketing Cloud Advertising to get started. You will also need to ensure that all connectors are active.
Here’s a high-level look at what it takes to get this launched:
Sales Cloud
Create a Salesforce Campaign
Build a Salesforce Report
Account Engagement
Build automation(s) to populate your audience(s):
Automation Rule
Page Actions
Completion Actions
Engagement Studio
Advertising Audiences
Generate a Data Import
Create an Automation
Build your Audience
If you are ready to expand your digital footprint, the obvious next step is having all the tools you need at your fingertips. The power of Account Engagement combined with Advertising Audiences is among the most effective tools.
LinkedIn Lead Gen forms are definitely a favorite for those creating LinkedIn Ads, but what happens after people fill out the form? Ideally, you continue to market to LinkedIn leads by sending them your newsletters or adding them to a nurture program. If you are like me, you don’t want to manually export leads from LinkedIn and import them into your marketing platform. This is where Zapier comes in.
Zapier is a user-friendly platform that allows you to automate a wide variety of workflows. With over 5,000 apps available, you can easily set up integrations without coding, including Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (f.k.a Pardot) and LinkedIn Ads. In this blog post, we’ll show you how you can automate the flow of leads from your LinkedIn Ads to Account Engagement in under five minutes.
Deciding between two ways to automatically create Account Engagement leads from LinkedIn using Zapier
There are two ways that you can use Zapier to automatically create Account Engagement leads:
Use Zapier Apps LinkedIn Ad to Webhook, which uses an Account Engagement form handler
Use Zapier Apps Linkedin Ad to Pardot
Here are the key things to consider when deciding which method to use:
API Call vs. Webhooks
The Pardot App within Zapier operates like an API call so there are some specific considerations:
API calls are not supported with basic editions of Account Engagement, so you can only use webhooks.
Records created by API calls will create a duplicate, so it would require additional steps in the Zap to prevent this if you’re using the Pardot App.
Duplicates from personal email addresses
Leads from LinkedIn Lead Gen forms usually come in with personal email addresses, so you might have duplicates with different email addresses.
However, the webhook approach does allow for more control to ensure that a record is updated to reduce the risk of duplicates that can be created via API calls.
Webhooks Require a Zapier Paid Account
Account Engagement, LinkedIn Ads, and Webhook apps are considered Premium Apps and will require a paid Zapier account. Learn more about Zapier pricing here.
LinkedIn Access Considerations
The LinkedIn Account used for the integration will need access to the LinkedIn Ads account, specifically the lead gen forms.
Approach 1: Using Zapier Apps LinkedIn Ad to Webhook
Step 1: Create Lead Gen Forms in LinkedIn Ads
First, you’ll create your LinkedIn Lead Gen form. To help make testing easier, submit a test submission.
Step 2: Create Assets In Salesforce and Account Engagement
1. Create Salesforce Campaign
Update campaign member status as needed
2. Create Form Handler
Next, you’ll create your form handler in Account Engagement
Settings to configure:
Use Kiosk/Data Entry Mode – so that we don’t cookie Zapier!
Set Success and Error Locations
Add any completion actions needed, examples include:
Add to list
Add to campaign
Send Autoresponder email
Add/map fields
Only make the email address required
Step 3: Create a Zap in Zapier for LinkedIn Registration
Step 1: New Form Response in LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Choose app & event as “LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms”
Trigger event as “New Lead Gen Form Response Response”
Choose Account as “LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms”
In the setup trigger, choose LinkedIn Account and select the respective Lead Gen Form
Test trigger for this action by submitting a test lead on the LinkedIn Lead Gen form
Step 2: Action Post In Webhooks by Zapier
Search “Webhooks by Zapier” and select Action “Post”
Configure Actions by updating URL and mapping data fields with the External Field Name in the Form Handler.
Test the webhook
The final zap will look like this:
Step 3: Verify Submission in Account Engagement
Navigate to the form handler to confirm that the test submission appears
Step 4: Activate the Zap and LinkedIn Ad
Don’t forget to turn on your zap and your ad!
Approach 2: Using Zapier Apps Linkedin Ad to Pardot
Step 1: Create Lead Gen Forms in LinkedIn Ads
Step 2: Create Assets In Salesforce and Account Engagement
Create Salesforce Campaign
Update campaign member status as needed
Create List
Create other marketing assets as needed, examples include:
Autoresponder email
Add list to any engagement studio programs
Create an Automation Rule
Rule:
Prospect List is a member of the LinkedIn Lead Gen List
Actions – add as many as necessary but here are a few recommendations:
Assign Prospect
Add to CRM Campaign xxx with “Responded” status
Adjust Prospect score
Update any field values
Step 3: Create a Zap in Zapier for LinkedIn Registration
Step 1: New Form Response in LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Choose app & event as “LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms”
Trigger event as “New Lead Gen Form Response Response”
Choose Account as “LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms”
In the setup trigger, choose LinkedIn Account and select the respective Lead Gen Form
Test trigger for this action by submitting a test lead on the LinkedIn Lead Gen form
Step 2: Find or Create Prospect in Pardot
Choose app & event as “Pardot” and Action Event as “Find Prospect”
Choose your Pardot account
Update set-up actions to map fields, and add all fields gathered in your lead gen form:
Email Address
First Name
Last Name
Test your step
Step 3: Add Prospects to List in Pardot
Choose app & event as “Pardot” and Action Event as “Add Prospect to List”
Choose your Pardot account in the next step
Update set-up action with the following fields
List – Choose the list you have created in Pardot for this campaign
Prospect – Update this field with Prospect ID
Test your step
Your final zap will look like this:
Step 4: Verify Submission in Account Engagement
Navigate to the list that you created and confirm the test lead submission is showing on the list.
Step 5: Turn on the Zap and Automation Rule in Account Engagement
Once you have finished testing your Zap and know that the leads are flowing with the data as expected, you can turn on your Zap. Avoid technical debt by pausing your automation rule when your LinkedIn Ad is no longer active.
Now that Zapier is configured, what’s next?
Go forth and build more Zaps! Remember, you have to create a new Zap for each LinkedIn Lead Gen form.
We get it. With all the reporting tools out there it is hard to know which one is correct (or what a tool is named this week). In this blog, we will guide you with four questions to help you decide which Salesforce reporting tool fits best with your goals.
4 Things to help you choose which Salesforce reporting tool to go with
To help you figure out what Salesforce reporting tool fits your situation, we are comparing these tools:
CRM Analytics (Formerly Tableau CRM, Einstein CRM, and Wave)
150+ APIs out of the box and numerous flat file options
Over 50 standard data connectors
If it’s a field in Salesforce, it is available to report on
Audience: Where does it live, and who needs to see it?
Lives in Analytics Studio or native in the app under the Analytics Tab. You can also embed it on Salesforce Lightning pages.
Most users will access via platform.datorama.com. You can embed dashboards for anyone you want to view.
Tableau has desktop and cloud-based versions, and you can buy licenses that include full data control or just view access
Natively in the Salesforce Org
Staffing considerations: Who will build it?
This can be done by someone who has an intimate knowledge of salesforce schema and object relations. If you can create a custom report type, you can be proficient in CRMA
Marketers can take Trailhead training and try to self-implement, or marketing agencies and consultants can also implement
Tableau is a widely adopted tool with knowledgeable users in many organizations, and there is a consultant marketplace on Tableau’s website
Whoever has a permission set that gives access in Salesforce
Licensing Costs
Additional Cost by how many seats and licenses you purchase.
Licensing is mainly determined by data row usage, with user licensing costs as well
Licensing is heavily user and enablement subscription-centric, with a pricing calculator found here
Comes out of the box with your Salesforce Edition. Wouldn’t count toward data storage, but they do have configuration limits
Data input
“Where is my data coming from, and how should I harmonize it?”
CRM Analytics
When it comes to CRM Analytics… it is all about Salesforce data. Think of it like Salesforce reports on steroids. If it is in Salesforce, you can easily pull it into CRM Analytics. That doesn’t mean there aren’t connectors for additional insight, (Hello Data Cloud!), but generally are limited to data lakes and warehouses.
Unlike Salesforce reporting, which imposes significant restrictions on the data sources (objects) you can include in a single report, CRM Analytics overcomes this limitation and lets you get pretty creative with joins. The downside is that you have to know your data really well so when you are joining you are confident what you report on is accurate.
Marketing Cloud Intelligence
When it comes to Marketing Cloud Intelligence… this is where Marketing Cloud Intelligence shines. If you have numerous marketing sources you need to report on — for instance, site data from Google Analytics, CRM data from Salesforce, and engagement data from Google AdWords — this is a marketer’s delight in terms of tools to work with.
You can see the breadth of out-of-the-box marketing-centric connectors below — from Facebook, Adobe Analytics, or any other tool you have credentials to as simply as logging in, or simply uploading any data file you can imagine using the TotalConnect function. Intelligence also has a set of recommended data models for each type of connector with variation allowed upon ingestion and after the fact as well.
Tableau
When it comes to Tableau… you can find a holistic source list here (including numerous Salesforce connectors, among them Marketing Cloud Intelligence). Like Intelligence, you can upload raw files to Tableau and visualize the data accordingly with flexibility.
There are no standard data models, however, so you will need to set these up upon ingestion for your data sources (they will often mirror source data models).
Salesforce Reports
When it comes to Salesforce Reports… The adage “if it’s not in Salesforce it doesn’t count” is a phrase in the ecosystem for a reason!
Whatever data is physically available in Salesforce, generally a standard or custom Salesforce report can see it. This one is pretty easy and probably the piece you are most comfortable with, but don’t count it out.
Sometimes you need something quick and visible to a multitude of people. Let’s just say… if it was a horse, its name would be Ole Faithful. There is no limitation on company size per se, but be cognizant of data storage limits, data fatigue, and how clean that data is in your Salesforce org.
Final Thoughts
If you are an Enterprise customer, really think through different departments that need analytics and if there are data row limits for your products. Processing power can mean all the world when trying to load a report that takes 20 minutes.
What are you already paying for? There might be a way to reach your goal without purchasing an additional tool- this can help guide you to what your pain points are and to decide on a new tool if necessary.
Audience
Where does this report/dashboard live, and who needs to see it?
CRM Analytics
When it comes to CRMA… there are two answers. Most people view this in Analytics Studio, which opens a new browser window when you click on it from the app launcher in Salesforce. However, you can have a tab right in your Salesforce app that points to Analytics or embed the dashboard on objects in Salesforce. The caveat is that to view those reports you would need a license and permission set.
A great silver lining is that you can give the correct permissions to users even where they cannot edit or mess with anything just like you can in Salesforce. Based on the cost, that it requires licenses could limit who in your organization can engage with those dashboards. Another silver lining is that you can always download the dashboard as an image and include it in presentations or post in chatter.
Marketing Cloud Intelligence
When it comes to Marketing Cloud Intelligence… You need credentials to get into the Intelligence platform, and that can come in the form of admins (who can see everything and upload new data sets), power users (who can do reports and dashboard maintenance but not update data sources), and viewers who can, to certainly much surprise, view dashboards. You can also freely send out embedded versions of dashboard pages or activate reports to send to tools like Google Drive, Slack, or email regardless of platform access.
Tableau
When it comes to Tableau… Tableau has numerous views and versions of the tool. There is a desktop version of the tool as well as web versions that allow users to freely access data views as they would like. Recently, Salesforce has allowed users to embed Tableau dashboards into Salesforce Lightning pages as a simple way to broaden their viewer base. Otherwise, you will be paying for different types of licenses in the form of Creators, Explorers, and Viewers.
Salesforce Reports
When it comes to Salesforce Reports…Locking down sensitive data is really easy in Salesforce and a great way to make sure you are being cognizant of data security internally. On the opposite end, Salesforce reports also let you be very open and transparent across your organization leading to the breaking down of silos. Whether you need to get super granular for one individual or macro for company reporting, Salesforce reports can get the job done for your internal teams.
✨
Final Thoughts
Some tools can host an online dashboard through a URL that your customers can see and engage with. (Great for certain industries like the public sector).
A lot of these tools are integrating or have integrated with Slack. Be aware of any gotchas or limitations if that is a priority.
Breaking down of silos can really be achieved with most of these tools. Just try and meet your audience where they live day to day. Make it easily accessible for them.
Staffing considerations
Who will build it? What do people on your team know how to use?
CRM Analytics
When it comes to CRMA… This is easy to learn if you have Salesforce experience. The interface is very user-friendly and once you get over the initial learning curve you can move pretty quickly.
But being transparent, if you haven’t really had experience with building report types on Salesforce or how objects interact in Salesforce it might be a challenge. There are also coding with SAQL and JSON that add an additional layer of flexibility and creativity that isn’t required, but really helpful.
Generally, you want someone who has a few years of Salesforce Report building experience or SQL/ JSON experience/ data modeling. To gain experience, there are great Trailhead Resources as well as getting your Salesforce Admin Certification to help get you started.
Marketing Cloud Intelligence
When it comes to Marketing Cloud Intelligence… There was previously a set of free certifications, but those have transitioned into Trailhead learning modules, found here. The tool is based on a very user-friendly UI for modeling and building out views of your data is relatively easy to learn, and is made even easier by the access to standard API connections.
This tool is also used heavily in marketing agencies and well known for marketing data. Some Salesforce Marketing Cloud users may also be familiar with Intelligence Reports for Engagement, which has some light versions of the full-fledged Intelligence platform’s features.
Tableau
When it comes to Tableau… Tableau is one of the most widely adopted visualization tools on the market right now. While the back-end processes may be a bit of a deep dive for newer users, familiarity with data mapping and formula creation in other tools will go a long way. You can also get certified or find Tableau knowledgeable on Tableau’s certification page at https://www.tableau.com/learn/certification.
Salesforce Reports
When it comes to Salesforce Reports… Salesforce reporting and who has access to build is dependent on permission sets. This means you can give the ability to users as you, the admin, see fit. The ability to create custom report types is also customizable through a permission set but should be thought of as to who would best serve to manage because that can get out of hand. (Too many cooks in the kitchen if you catch our drift).
Final Thoughts:
Who is going to build it might not be who is going to use it. Can you imagine your manager trying to piece together a Tableau report? Let’s let them spend time on other things :]
Licensing costs for users and data
CRM Analytics
When it comes to CRMA… CRM Analytics is generally an additional cost for licensing. However, some clouds have app templates in Analytics Studio that give you a degree of access. Be on the lookout for tools that have app templates (B2B Marketing Analytics) or can be added on at an additional cost (Sales Cloud Analytics).
Another thing to note, you aren’t charged for creating dashboards, transformations, or filtering, but your org has a limit on how much data is being processed called a data row limit (basically how much data you bring in). Just something to keep an eye on home data you are bringing in.
When it comes to Marketing Cloud Intelligence… You can read the full pricing breakdown here-the main difference between these options is best captured in row usage (though users also scale according to package), which is best determined by the breadth and depth of the data you are pulling (for instance, keyword level data across ten sources will be more row-heavy than campaign and media buy data across four or five sources).
Tableau
When it comes to Tableau… You can find the pricing here, which breaks down on a user-by-user basis depending on the type of user license, all of which come with different features and permissions (ranging from viewer-level permissions to interact with already built dashboards to Tableau Creators, who have the full tableau suite of features available to them). There is even a pricing calculator on Tableau’s website if you want to get a clear sense of what it would look like for your organization.
Salesforce Reports
When it comes to Salesforce Reports… Thankfully this is fairly easy! Reports and dashboards are considered metadata and are native out of the box with your Salesforce edition and wouldn’t count toward data storage. They do have configuration limits that you might want to consider when looking at your Salesforce Licensing and Cost.
No wrong answers for Salesforce reporting tools
In conclusion, there isn’t a wrong answer when it comes to which reporting tool to use. Many of them overlap and have similar functionality. But to make heads or tails of which reporting tool fits your goals best, you can start with these 4 simple questions:
Data input. “Where is my data coming from and how should I harmonize it?”
Audience. Where does this report/dashboard live, and who needs to see it?
Staffing considerations. Who will build it? What do people on your team know how to use?
Cost of use. What are Licensing costs for users and data?
We hope that the tidbits we’ve given in service of these questions are helpful, and welcome you to reach out to our team if you have any further questions on these topics or other reporting tool questions.
Keep it going
Here are a few resources to get you started as you figure out which reporting tool works best for you and what it takes to manage those tools.
Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly known, and forever in my heart, as Datorama) is a deep platform for marketers who have Salesforce in their tech stack. It’s a robust tool for optimizing data across various channels, enabling you to track spend, engagement, and conversion data, among other options. If you’ve landed on this page, I assume that you already have a working knowledge of the Intelligence platform. Now, let’s take your skills to the next level with insights you didn’t even know you needed to unlock greater insights through Intelligence formulas.
We also recommend you check out this blog post to understand how you can get more from your Intelligence implementation through an audit.
Let’s dive in.
What’s on the Horizon?
In this blog post, we’re going beyond the basics of your standard Trailhead module. Our journey will uncover hidden Intelligence formula secrets in the following areas:
Formula Syntax with JavaScript
Parsing Dates
Referencing CSV/Data Model Fields and When to Use Each Syntax
Formula Fears – Goodbye!
Intelligence Formula Syntax with JavaScript
Let’s start on some behind-the-scenes basics to give everyone a little bit more working knowledge, and then we’ll hit some deep cuts.
You’ve probably wondered what governs the formulas in the Intelligence platform that somehow you can write Excel-esque statements but also do JavaScript work (more on this in a moment). Basically, the platform was programmed to contain Excel-like formulas while also allowing for MVEL, a Java-based language, to do some variations of formula work that can work a little differently in processing and possibility than Excel formulas.
You can read more of an overview here directly from Salesforce on the governance of formulas and the basics to fiddle with, and below you’ll get my deeper cuts that don’t really get elaborated on anywhere I can find, officially.
The Writer’s Strike did not affect this (Java) Script
There are two common experiences I’ve had for the last five years when it comes to if statements:
Someone implemented the platform and used JavaScript language, and no one still on the team understands how to read or manipulate the formula.
Someone made an unruly Excel-like IF(condition, true, false) statement and it’s become unwieldy.
Luckily, I have your fix, and I’ll give a brief why on this too, beyond the notes above — I want to introduce everyone to using lowercase ‘ifs.’ Let’s take the below-calculated dimension (there would be no difference if this was setup in mapping of a data stream, to be clear).
We define our first if statement — in a lowercase if context, you just do if() for the first line. Unlike in EXCEL IFs (henceforth capital IFs), you do not need to define a false condition, just a true condition (in this case, if the campaign name contains ‘Facebook’).
If our first condition is true, ‘Facebook’ will be the value returned, as defined by line 2. This is defined by the squiggly brackets {} and the defined value is ended with a semicolon {‘Facebook;’}
*This is an exciting performance element that adds up across large statements, and especially if the value is in a calculated field, which loads in real time, not before a page is loaded. If the statement finds a true match, it doesn’t run through every line of the code, it just stops and computes the next value. An uppercase IF statement, on the other hand, would check through every true/false possibility and then load the next row, which en masse could make a performance difference.
Else if defines some other condition to check for specifically. If you wanted a simple true/false, you could skip straight to the else statement on line five. But for example’s sake, we will assume there’s an else if. This is effectively how you can nest ifs. As noted, the platform stops checking as soon as it hits a true value, so you want to be mindful that you stack this accordingly in your checking if multiple conditions could be true.
Once again, you return a value if true on line 4, no variation in formatting to the first true value.
Finally, we close by doing a return value with the word “else”, indicating for all other conditions we close off here.
This is about as far as you need to know for JavaScript usage in Intelligence. But if you’re making deeply complex conditional formatting, this will hopefully make the process much cleaner and decipherable for you!
Parsing Parsedates
Magic letters you should write down, and yes this probably looks nonsensical before my description, but roll with it: “EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy”
This is your fix to one of two likely parsedate situations I have seen regularly. It’s a string that dates frequently get passed into Intelligence as, and you inexplicably get a “cannot parse data” error in your mapping. This is infuriating. The formula in full that you are probably looking for is PARSEDATE(csv[insert field name here], EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy”).
I’ll also note here that this is likely what is being pushed into the platform, even if you see something different in your Excel file/csv file from an Intelligence log (highlighted below from the data streams list in Connect & Mix, in case you need guidance on how to find your log files). You should, anytime you get this error, open your log files using a note program (Sublime Text was my go-to for years as a Windows user for bigger files, though for most people programs like notepad will work just fine). Even if not the above format, you can see definitively (with your columns instead separated and broken out by commas, hence the term csv, comma-separated values) what format your dates come in as (and the magic of a program like Excel to just know how a human reads this data cleanly).
There’s also an error I’ve gotten numerous times in platform and have helped people with but have not been unfortunate enough to encounter recently myself, so I am approximating here with a known fix instead. This happens entirely in calculated dimensions, and it effectively amounts to “Unparseable date: 1234”. This will fully stop you from saving a calculated dimension and it’s infuriating. My fix:
At the top of your formula, set a condition: if([insert field here, likely day but whatever the error tells you] == 1234 )
{‘error’}
else if… and continue on with your calculated dimension as planned
*note: if this does not work, you may also want to try “1234” instead of 1234, as a string of text instead of as a number, depending how the platform is reading the problematic value.
csv verses Dat
Through the course of the above pieces of guidance, you may have noticed something: in my calculated if example, there were yellow highlighted fields simply called “Campaign_Name,” and in my examples referring to mapping, I surrounded fields with the language of “csv[field name]”. Why would I do that to you (the answer is not that I am cruel and seek to confuse you further as I write this blog, I promise)?!?! Well, it’s because there are three variations of referencing fields in Intelligence.
When you map data, the csv syntax is needed to establish we expect a column from the inbound file. Even if you use Excel format, tsvs, pdfs, etc., this context will always be referred to as csv in your mapping formulas to establish a recurring column. Commonly this looks like the below, and is probably not something you’ve thought about a lot.
So you may be wondering, if this is so commonplace, why even explain it? Surely the easy explanation is that csv appears in mapping, and the highlighted field appears in calculated dimensions. Well, kind of, yes. There’s a twist coming below, but yes in calculated dimensions, because you are operating outside of a data stream and inclusive of your whole workspace, you get the highlighted yellow names, showcased again below, to indicate this is a field in the platform.
It’s important to understand those two variations because the third is a marriage of them: referencing data stream fields, not source file columns, in data stream mapping. I have very rarely seen any use of this outside of Vlookups, but for that case alone I’ll highlight what this does: it notes that a value is meant to reference an already existing data point in platform. In the context of a vlookup below, you can see the reason for differentiating these items.
We have a csv field we reference at every ingestion of data, which we then use to look into first our campaign advertiser data already in the platform, and return us the associated campaign name, also already in the platform. You can see the data model section of the formula editor below, where these existing data model fields can be referenced in mapping.
Else…
Hopefully, these tips have been helpful and can act as an easy cheat sheet as you use Intelligence going forward. Whether it’s using if statements, parsing dates, or understanding how to reference different types of fields, you hopefully found some new information today to help make you better at the platform (I won’t call you a Dato-dork yet, but I happily will wear that cap and keep trying to take more of you with me)!
Keep an eye out for more in this series. We look forward to growing your Intelligence!
Remember to drop us a line when you’re ready to realize the full potential of your Intelligence implementation and how it fits in with your overall marketing strategy.
Scores in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement play a critical role in getting the right lead to the right person at the right time. However, scores can become unreliable and actually distract sales if they are not periodically decayed. In this post, we’ll address the importance of score decay and provide several methods that can be used in your organization.
A Primer on Scoring
Before we get into score decay, let’s level set on Account Engagement scores. Account Engagement scores are a measure of calculating engagement with your account engagement assets. Prospects with higher scores have had greater engagement and are therefore more sales-ready.
Base Scoring
All Account Engagement accounts come with base scoring rules configured. These rules add and subtract points for actions like email opens, form submissions, page views, link clicks, and more and are intended to be a starting point. It’s highly recommended that you customize these rules based on your organizational needs and conduct periodic reviews to ensure that prospects are not scoring up too slowly or too quickly.
Scores can also be increased in Account Engagement manually at the prospect level, using automations (automation rules, completion actions, and engagement studio programs), or in bulk when importing prospects into Account Engagement (by mapping to “Add to Score”).
Suggested Reading
If you want to learn more about scoring and grading, check out the following posts:
Time is possibly the most important consideration that influences the quality of leads.
Think of leads as fresh-baked cookies. Who doesn’t want a chocolate chip cookie hot out of the oven? Those same cookies are still pretty good after they’ve cooled a bit, but they get a bit stale after sitting around for a few days. The same applies to your leads.
It’s important to make sure the hot leads get to sales as quickly as possible and that they are easy to identify. Let’s say that 100 points is your threshold for passing a lead to sales. Which lead would you want to call?
“Roy” has a score of 150, but his last engagement was 30 days ago.
“Katie” has a score of 101, but engaged today and passed the 100-point mark as a result.
It’s pretty clear that “Katie” is the better lead in this scenario, but we have all the facts. The reality is that your sales team has a lot of leads assigned to them and they don’t have time to learn the story behind each. It’s very possible that sales could prioritize “Roy” over “Katie” based on score alone. This would be logical, but incorrect. We can take the guesswork out of this situation by applying score decay so that “Roy’s” score falls below the 100-point threshold based on his inactivity.
Score Decay Methods
There are two primary ways that scores can be decayed – Activity Based Decay and User Based Decay.
Activity Based Decay is based on activity (or inactivity in Account Engagement). This method simply decays scores to a set value (or reduces by a set amount) based on the last activity date of the prospect.
User Based Decay is score decay that’s triggered by internal Salesforce users based on updates to the contact or lead record. This could be actions like updating the status or any other field.
Activity-Based Decay
Activity-Based Decay is very simple to implement but requires a few decisions to be made in advance.
When should a lead be decayed?
By how much should the score be decayed?
The “when” question differs greatly between organizations and is often related to the length of sales cycles. Organizations with longer sales cycles tend to tolerate longer periods of inactivity while those that are more “transactional” in nature tend to decay scores quicker.
The decay amount is also based on the organization and its scoring model, but I can offer some guidance and best practices based on experience.
Tip #1 – Don’t decay all the way to 0. I like to keep some points associated with the prospect as an indicator of past engagement. As a starting point, I would recommend decaying by 50% of your threshold for passing leads to sales. If 100 is your threshold, decay to 50.
Tip #2 – Decay to a set number vs. by a specific amount. Scores in Account Engagement continue to increase over time – if measures are not taken. It’s not uncommon to see some older prospects with very high point values. As an example, if a prospect has a score of 275 and you reduce by 50 points, you still have a lead with a score of 225 points who has not been active in an extended period of time. This really does not help at all. My recommendation is to reduce it to a set value so you can be assured that the lead drops off the radar or your sales team – until new engagement is recorded.
Implementing Activity-Based Decay
Create an automation rule in Account Engagement with a descriptive name.
Example: Score Decay – Last Activity > 45 Days Ago
Make use of the “Description” section to summarize what actions the rule will take and when.
Example: Decays scores that are greater than 50 to 50 if the last activity is greater than 45 days ago.
Set the rule to repeat and specify the number of days before eligible to repeat.
Configure the rules and actions.
The example below is very simple, but you can add additional rules as needed. For example, you can omit records that have open opportunities or are being worked by sales so their scores are not decayed.
Since this rule will be altering the scores of prospects, be sure to preview the matches before activating. Also, be sure to review all automations in Account Engagement and Salesforce that could be triggered as a result of score adjustments.
User-Based Decay
Account Engagement scores are intended as an indicator of engagement within Account Engagement. Since scores can only be changed in Account Engagement, decaying scores based on actions taken in Salesforce requires a bit of ingenuity and a “handshake” between the platforms. The goal is to tell Account Engagement to decrease the score based on an action that occurred in Salesforce.
In this example, we are going to use flows and custom fields to trigger score decay in Account Engagement from Salesforce. I like this option due to the ability to easily set the criteria that triggers the action and the fact that code is not required.
Scenario
Scores should be decayed to 50 if the status is changed to “Nurture” by a user in Salesforce.
Implementing User-Based Decay
Create “Trigger Score Decay” custom fields on the contact and lead objects in Salesforce.
Data type = Checkbox
Default value = Unchecked
Create a “Trigger Score Decay” custom field in Account Engagement.
Type = Radio Button
Sync behavior = Use the most recently updated record value
Values (these are case sensitive)
true
false
Create flows on the contact and lead objects to update the “Trigger Score Decay” checkbox based on the defined entry criteria. This is a straightforward flow that uses a single element to update a checkbox field. The checkbox will later be used to trigger an automation rule in Account Engagement.
Full Flow
Entry Conditions Configuration
Update Triggering Records Element
The final step is to create an automation rule in Account Engagement that will decay the score if the “Trigger Score Decay” checkbox is checked. The rule will also need to uncheck the box as a way of “resetting” the record.
Score Decay – Status – Nurture Automation Rule
Test, validate, and activate. As with all automations, be sure to test by debugging your flows and previewing automation rule matches before activation.
Address Overinflated Scores
Scores in Account Engagement are meant to identify prospects that are actively engaging with your marketing. If scores are not decayed, identifying prospects with recent activity can become a challenge and lead to confusion for your sales teams.
Score decay is fairly simple to implement, but should not be done in a vacuum. It’s very likely that there are processes in your Salesforce or Account Engagement orgs that could be triggered when the score of a contact or lead is decayed. For this reason, it’s highly recommended that testing is conducted in a sandbox organization prior to implementation in production and that key stakeholders are included in the process.
Need help along the way? Send us a message to see how we can help you reach your goals.
Salesforce web forms can be a game changer by empowering you to create personalized experiences for customers. Complex forms using multiple steps and conditional logic tailor digital journeys to meet the unique needs of the individual. These engaging forms enable savvy sales and marketing teams to foster interest in their product or service and close deals faster.
While native Salesforce forms have many advantages, they also come with challenges. Specifically, if you want to create complex forms involving detailed steps, containing dynamic content, or with a customized UX, you will need to invest in some kind of development or code.
Using complex web forms without coding knowledge
If you have time and money to burn or in-house developers to tap for help, then this is no problem. However, if you don’t have knowledge of code or access to a development team or want to speed up time to market, you might want to consider alternatives.
In this article, we check out how you can get all the perks of complex Salesforce forms without having to write a single line of code. To do this, you will need to venture away from Salesforce native solutions, and their associated limitations, and check out some of the leading tools on the Salesforce AppExchange.
Want to learn more? Keep reading!
Creating leads in Salesforce using web-to-lead forms
Let’s take a look at web-to-lead forms for Salesforce and how these forms can further the aims and objectives of your sales and marketing teams. In the process, we will discover some of the limitations of native Salesforce functionality and find ways to navigate them.
Web-to-lead is a feature that empowers you to create leads in Salesforce via forms embedded on your website. Setting up forms with the native Salesforce web-to-lead feature is relatively easy and doesn’t require any code at all.
When a user fills in your form and submits it, real-time data gets pushed into Salesforce where the CRM automatically creates a lead. From here, your sales and marketing teams can ensure high-value leads are routed to your best salespeople. That information on your lead is analyzed against relevant metrics and consumer trends.
Finding flexibility with Salesforce web-to-lead forms
The challenge with the Salesforce web-to-lead is that the out-of-the-box version may leave teams wanting more. For example, you can’t connect your form to other objects in Salesforce such as Case or Opportunity. In addition, you can’t attach files to native web-to-lead forms to provide supporting information on your lead.
You can accomplish these things and collect detailed information on the preferences and needs of each lead, but the solution requires the implementation of custom code.
Implementing complex web-to-lead forms in Salesforce
To kickstart next-level lead generation and close deals faster, we recommend creating complex web-to-lead forms that capture robust information on a prospective customer such as their likes, dislikes, and purchasing preferences.
Using a Salesforce form that allows attachments also means you can get comprehensive data on leads and execute deals more effectively. Similarly, complex web-to-lead forms for Salesforce that contain conditional logic and multiple steps are more exciting to the user and give you a more granular picture of their personality and profile. For example, if a user says they are interested in purchasing a particular product, then you can prompt them to fill in follow-up questions such as the specifications they are looking for and the amount of money they are willing to spend.
On the other hand, if a lead expresses no interest in a product or service, then there is no need to ask them further questions. In this line of thought, if a user answers a question indicating they want to learn more about your organization, you can give them the ability to download a pamphlet or ebook. If not, you don’t need to bother them with this. This kind of dynamic logic saves time and holds the interest of users a lot longer.
You can achieve this level of flexibility and create dynamic, multi-step web-to-lead forms in Salesforce, but it will require coding and development. So, what are your options if you want to skip the heavy dev work but still get all of the perks?
Alternatives to native Salesforce forms
If you are a seasoned Salesforce user, you will know that the Salesforce AppExchange is a giant marketplace where you can find thousands of platforms that integrate with the planet’s leading CRM. And while there are countless tools with which to create forms in Salesforce, some tools do this more seamlessly than others.
The best solutions give you the freedom to build forms in Salesforce using any logic or object you want without any limitations or code. This frees up your schedule, saves you money, and requires zero compromise when it comes to your dream solution.
While it’s up to you to choose the tool that best suits your organization, we will zone in on one app: Titan for Salesforce. Taking its name from the most powerful of Greek gods, Titan is a no-code platform that can implement any custom solution for Salesforce.
Web-to-lead forms by Titan allow you to:
Connect your web form to any object in Salesforce such as Contact, Opportunity, and Case.
Include attachments on your web form for Salesforce.
Create tailored customer journeys with multiple steps and conditional logic.
Generate leads in Salesforce.
Make forms with a custom UX.
Gather comprehensive information on leads.
View comprehensive data on every lead in Salesforce.
Data is validated in real-time so you can make sure form data is sent to the correct object:
Go-to-market fast!
And all this requires no code or any special technical expertise, though experience with Salesforce or having worked as a Salesforce administrator will certainly help you work at optimum speed. Learn more about Titan’s Web-to-Lead powers here:
Salesforce Forms Wrapped
And that’s a wrap on building complex forms for Salesforce using zero code. We hope you learned more about how more complex forms can create intuitive and guided digital experiences for users and help you make deals that much faster.
Web-to-lead forms automate the lead creation process for marketing and sales teams but Salesforce’s native feature is limited. We suggest finding a no-code alternative on the AppExchange. Titan is one great option, but it’s up to you to choose the perfect solution for your business needs and objectives.
