SFDC Campaigns Sync - Benefits and Pitfalls

[Rachel_Egan]

Our Marketo instance is synced with SFDC and I am developing our events strategy. This includes syncing our Marketo programs with SFDC campaigns. I have everything connected, but I have not set up a SFDC Campaign Sync with a program because I'm nervous that I will see un-anticipated consequences. Up until now, I've been running my SFDC campaigns with smart campaigns; AKA, every time someone registers for the event, I then change their status in Marketo and have a flow step that also changes their status in the SFDC campaign.

I'd like to make this process as clean on myself as possible, and I've read through the documentation in the Marketo Products Doc pages, but I wanted to turn to the community to see if anybody here has insight they can share with me about what worked/didn't work for them and how they are using SFDC Campaign Sync.

Any insight or thoughts would be helpful. I'm very interested to hear from people!

[Anonymous]

I have a similar problem, but my campaign members are not being Synced to SFDC until days/weeks later. This is problematic, because I need to capture "responded" triggers within minutes. When a lead responds and completes an action, they become a contact, which is not visible in our Marketo instance. How can I speed up the sync for this particular action?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Todd Baker,

Are the leads already in SFDC and are you just trying to get the campaign membership? Are you using a sync'ed program or some "add to SFDC campaign" flow steps?

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Yes, they are already in SF, I am adding them to a campaign through the sync, prior to scheduling the campaign, but will need to create batches for past campaigns once I get this ironed out.

[Anonymous]

Even with the "head start" feature, my campaigns are taking several days to complete the send. (Largest sends would be 400K.) And this delay will cause me to drop responses with the sync. Also, do I need to add campaigns to capture the Opened and Clicked?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Todd,

As you may know, if the program is sync'ed, you do not need to additionally use the "add to SFDC campaign" or "change SFDC campaign" flow steps. The "Change program status" will be enough.

But there are 2 things in what you wrote:

• The time taken to complete the sync
• The time taken to sync with SFDC

I would see with support why is the send taking so much time. And the first thing I would probably look into is the smart list. You say you are using the head start. But you may want to check that it works as expected and that the leads are indeed selected before the send time you have set.

With regards to the campaign member synchronization, if you are adding 400000 members to the campaign, no surprise it takes time. You may do 2 things here, IMHO: check that you are not hitting the SFDC API daily limit (in SFDC setup -> company information) and work with support on how this can be optimized.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

I checked with my IT team, they say that we are no where near our API Limits. I understand that there may be a limit via Marketo of 20,000/hour??

Is there a way to ensure that if the members respond, that I can prioritize pushing those members, along with their "responded" status to SF?

Thank you so much for your assistance.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

You can and probably should ask support to increase that limit if you have enough quota on SFC side. It will solve at least part of your problem.

More globally, as soon as you are pushing hundreds of thousands of records to SFDC every other day, you need to have a reflection on what info you really want to see sync'ed between the 2 solutions.

In this program, you have 2 definitions of the "engaged". Does that correspond to a real need? for program performance measurement? because you extract lists of leads with this status? If you cannot answer that "necessity" question, better stop these 2 smart campaigns.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I will take these out. I do not report on these through SF. You have been so very helpful.

[Anonymous]

Also, do I need to have the "Click" and "Open" steps in the campaign? or will this automatically track in the program status?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Todd,

Not only this is not mandatory, but it is even not recommended, UNLESS you really want this info at lead level or measure program success by this criteria. For emailing, you can have that info with email performance reports.

-Greg

[Rachel_Egan]

I'm also wondering: if I change the SFDC Campaign name in SFDC, will it break anything in Marketo? Will it still maintain the same link regardless of SDFC Campaign name?

I'm assuming the link is based on the SFDC Campaign ID and not the name, but I just want to make sure before I do it.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Rachel,

AFAIK, you can change the campaign name afterwards without any problem. I have done it already, no issue detected.

-Greg

[Kenny_Elkington]

This is right, the link is based on the SFDC campaign ID, not the name of the campaign.

[Rachel_Egan]

Thanks Greg! Didn't want to try it and have it break on me I appreciate the insight!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Try on a dummy one first Campaigns and programs can always be deleted.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

I'll explain one of my pitfalls that relates to Primary Campaign Source. When it comes to events, I'm a bit weary of the Campaign/Program sync. If we need to add people as Invited for email sends, then I don't want the Program to sync to Campaigns. The biggest reason is that they really aren't engaged in that Campaign and it can mess up my Opportunity reporting. The example I can give is our user conference. It's a year-long Program with over 70K invitees, so if we add them to the Campaign via sync, suddenly Primary Campaign Source is filled in for every opportunity with a Campaign that doesn't technically happen until next Fall.

We also don't use the program/campaign sync if there's a possibility of more than one SFDC Campaign for that program (which is often the case for content syndication and online advertising).

For Programs such as webinars the sync works fantastic.

[Rachel_Egan]

Yeah, that's one of the main things i'm concerned about.

For the Opportunity reporting, is it possible to block the "primary campaign source" from filling out for people who are at a certain member status? For example, if we send the invite, they are marked as "invited" in their member status. Then, when they RSVP Yes, their member status is updated to "RSVP'd Yes" and the Primary Campaign Source field can be filled in.

Next, can you give me an example of how you organize your Programs and SFDC Campaigns so that you have more than one campaign per program? Just trying to figure out the best way for us to organize ours as this is the first time we are implementing this strategy and I want to make sure we get it right

Finally, what do you do when an event is over? This is what I was thinking of doing: let's say we invite 250 people, receive 100 RSVPs, then 75 of them actually show up. I would then create a new campaign with only those 75 people so that it tracks their opportunities properly (although I'm not sure that it will...) Then I will delete the old campaign so that it's not tracking anything on the opportunities for the other 175 who didn't end up attending. I'm just not sure if that would work properly or what issues I'm not seeing if I do it that way.

[Anonymous]

I have yet to find a workaround for the Primary Campaign Source as it's a standard SFDC functionality and hasn't been updated in years. It's possible there will be some workarounds with Process Builder but I haven't had any luck so far

I have the team set up their SFDC Campaigns first as it's how we track against our plan. Usually I ask for these to be set up the beginning of each quarter. Then programs are built out second. We organize our programs into regional "Active" folders so we know if there's a program we can reuse for advertising, but most programs are cloned from the Master Program Templates into the regional "Active" folder.

When an event is over we update the Attended/Visited Booth/Hot Leads and then from there the automated follow up actions take place. I would almost never delete a campaign as it's storing those records with time stamped information. Plus, it can be useful to have an SDR follow up on the tradeshow attendees that didn't stop by, and the Campaign Member Status gives you a quick way to build a list view.

[Rachel_Egan]

Got it. I will have to look into this deeper, however this is super helpful! Thanks so much.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Rachel,

There are a lot of advantages to sync programs with SFDC campaigns, one of them being that Marketo will do the job of keeping member statuses in sync, as well as success info (responses in SFDC), with no effort on your side, and little risk of forgetting.

The main drawback is that Marketo will push all program members to SFDC. If some of them are not ready to be transferred to telemarketing or sales, you need to make sure that you have all the necessary mechanisms in place in SFDC to assign leads to queues and "hide" them from the sales.

-Greg