Why and how to integrate Salesforce CRM with Adobe Marketo

A solid technological foundation and internal understanding of how your systems communicate with prospects and customers at every point of the customer journey are essential for marketing and sales alignment. According to Salesforce, a Forbes article noted that 67% of marketing leaders rely on marketing automation, and 21% intend to install a new platform in the upcoming year.

Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM are two popular tools that revenue teams rely on to manage leads, execute campaigns, and maintain customer records. Additionally, if you work for one of the many companies that utilize both, you’re already familiar with Marketo’s native Salesforce integration. To maintain data consistency across the two systems, the integration lets you sync leads, campaigns, and other records bi-directionally.

Salesforce CRM and Adobe Marketo Engage: An introduction

Adobe Marketo Engage, also known as Marketo Engage or simply Marketo, is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) based marketing automation software. It allows you to streamline, automate, and measure marketing engagement, tasks, and workflows to improve operational efficiency and accelerate revenue growth.

Salesforce is the most well-known SaaS-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. It offers a full range of customer services. Additionally, it has built-in applications for leads, opportunities, marketing, servicing, sales, accounts, and more. By saving customer data, contact information, and marketing information, it aids in maintaining relationships with customers. Moreover, it manages platform integration with ease on various platforms.

Syncing data in Marketo and Salesforce?

The typical flow of the lead lifecycle. Source: Root3

The lead cycle is the process used to generate, qualify, and convert your leads into paying customers. In the typical lead lifecycle, leads are first acquired and qualified by marketing, which are then forwarded to your sales team to further qualify and convert them into customers.

Integrating Marketo with Salesforce allows you to streamline the handoff between sales and marketing by keeping your leads, accounts, and other records current across your revenue funnel. Tight alignment between your sales, marketing, and support teams is ensured by a successful sync, which can boost customer retention and sales win rates.

How Sync Works

Marketo syncs with Salesforce all day, every day. Each sync takes some time, pauses for 5 minutes, and then starts again.

Only leads, contacts, and Salesforce campaigns are synced bidirectionally between Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM. In these cases, any changes you make to either Marketo or Salesforce will automatically be reflected in the other system without you having to do anything manually. Other than that, only Salesforce and Marketo are synced.

Depending on how much data is being synchronized, synchronization will take either less or more time. As a result, the time it takes for syncing to finish will vary, particularly as your business grows and your databases fill up with more actionable information. You can set your sync interval to any duration longer than 5 minutes by getting in touch with Marketo support.

What is Synced between Adobe Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM?

• Customer objects
• Contacts
• Tasks & Events
• Leads
• Campaigns & Members
• Accounts
• Opportunities & Roles
• User & Lead queue
• Activity
• Salesforce campaigns

Setting up Salesforce for Marketo Sync

The first step is to check two key prerequisites. Prior to integrating your programs, make sure the following steps have been completed:

• Salesforce API permissions: Before you start syncing data, you’ll need access to Salesforce APIs.
• Full admin access: You’ll need administrator access in both Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM in order to complete your Salesforce-Marketo integration.

After completing those two preliminary steps, you’re ready to start integrating.

Step 1: Adding Marketo Fields to Salesforce

• Go to the lead object from the Customize menu and then Click on Fields.
• Create these three fields, namely – Score, Acquisition Date, and Acquisition Program fields on the lead object.
• Create the same fields on the Contacts object as well.

Step 2: Mapping Custom Fields for Conversions

• Click on Map Lead Fields under the Lead Custom Fields & Relationships section.
• Now, click on the drop-down list near the field you want to map.
• Select the corresponding contact custom field. For each field you’ve created, repeat the previous steps. Once you’re done, click Save.

Step 3: Creating a Profile

• Create a profile with a standard user, name it “Marketo-Salesforce Sync” and click on Save.

Step 4: Set Profile Permissions

• Ensure the following boxes are ticked in the Administrative Permissions section:

• Ensure the following boxes are indicated in the General User Permissions section:

• Ensure that Read, Create, Edit, and Delete permissions are indicated in the Standard Object Permissions section. Click Save after you’re finished.

Step 5: Set Field Permissions

• Find the fields for each object that are not required, and make sure Read Access and Edit Access are not selected for those fields. Once you’re done, click Save.
• Once you have disabled all the unnecessary fields, check Read Access and Edit Access for the following object fields. Once you are done click on Save.

Step 6: Create Marketo-Salesforce Sync Account

• Create a New User.
• Fill in the needed fields. Choose the User License: Salesforce and the Profile that you already created. Once you’re done, click Save.

Step 7: Retrieve Sync User Security Token

• Click on My Settings under the sync user’s name.
• Search “reset” and then click on Reset My Security Token.

Step 8: Setting Up Sync User Credentials

• Go to Marketo’s Admin page, click on CRM, and then choose Sync with Salesforce.com
• Fill the Salesforce Sync User credential and click on Sync Fields.
• You’ll see a warning, then click on Confirm Credentials.

Step 9: Start Salesforce Sync

• To start the Marketo-Salesforce sync, Click on Start Salesforce Sync.
• Click on START SYNC.

Step 10: Verifying Sync

• In Marketo, click on Admin > Salesforce.
• The sync status is visible, and it will show one of three messages: Last Synced, Sync in Progress, or Failed.

Use Cases of Marketo Salesforce Integration

Marketo has all the functionalities a user could need to improve their marketing performance. The data can be used in both directions after Salesforce and Marketo’s sync is complete in order to maximize benefits. Here are some features that this integration offers:

1. Track Customer Behavior

With Marketo Salesforce integration, you can track customer activity throughout the buying cycle by knowing how users access your platform, what they see, how frequently they visit a site, when they move in, and other details such as a customer’s phone number, occupation, postal address, email, contact information, and so on.

2. Create Custom Campaigns

Because of the integration between Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM, you can generate email campaigns and follow up with a lot more customers utilizing automated but personalized responses. Additionally, lead-specific data, including name and company, can be automatically retrieved from your own CRM system and added to these templates.

3. Real-Time Information

The data transmission between the two systems provides the sales and marketing teams with useful real-time information in addition to data collecting and analysis. With this real-time information on how leads interact with advertising efforts, sales would be better equipped to offer the appropriate answer at the ideal time for maximum effect.

4. Streamlined Content Management

The performance of your advertising campaigns depends on the quality of your promotions. Some CRM software should make it simple for you to create, maintain, and customize your content. The Salesforce CRM and Marketo integration lets you quickly edit your content, add additional elements, and modify it to suit your particular requirements.

5. Data Consistency Across Systems

At its base, marketing automation is a statistical process. Data from different sources must be fed into the marketing automation tool automatically and manually. Data management across numerous digital platforms, like websites, applications, social media, ticketing machines, etc., is made simple with Marketo Salesforce integration.

6. Effective Lead Management

Marketers benefit from Marketo Salesforce integration because it empowers them to draw in customers, give them tailored promotions, and generate sales-ready leads. Using a lead management solution, you can connect with potential clients at scale throughout their entire lifecycle through structured and personalized promotions.

7. Email Marketing

By enabling customized communications and understanding the return on investment for each email sent, Salesforce Marketo integration supports the creation of long-lasting customer relationships. With the help of your clients’ comprehensive datasets being in one place, you can create meaningful interactions with each of your present and potential customers based on their interests, individual habits, and statistics.

8. Enables Account-driven marketing

With the Marketo Salesforce integration, you can identify and target the accounts with the highest sales potential. Share them with others so they can quickly move through the sales funnel. Additionally, you can obtain revenue-based account monitoring, proven lead management capabilities, tailored cross-channel interaction, and account tracking and identification in a unified platform.

How can we help?

Marketo Salesforce integration is the way to go as it can boost business productivity, improve marketing ROI, and develop specialized campaigns to gain new customers. Salesforce Marketo integration is being used by many companies to regularize their advertising campaigns.

With 180k+ integration hours, 150+ technologies integrated, and dashboard customization, Ranosys certified experts could assist you effortlessly in integrating both systems and enabling a bidirectional flow of leads, contacts, accounts, campaigns, and custom objects, and opportunities.