Anyone who has used Marketo or Salesforce knows that, like peanut butter and jelly, they work best together. That’s why you’ll want to pursue one critical plan: integration.

Marketo & Salesforce: The Basics

Marketo and Salesforce are both powerful platforms that offer significant value to marketers. But they do play slightly different roles. To briefly summarize each:

• Marketo: As a robust marketing automation platform, Marketo empowers businesses to engage prospects and customers across their journey. With tools spanning lead generation, nurturing, and comprehensive analytics, Marketo facilitates targeted email campaigns and meaningful interactions.
• Salesforce: Renowned as a premier CRM solution, Salesforce offers a comprehensive suite tailored to manage customer relationships holistically. From sales to service and marketing, Salesforce is a central hub for nurturing leads into loyal advocates.

Together, Marketo and Salesforce give your marketing strategy a significant boost.

What Can You Expect Following Integration?

Once your Marketo-Salesforce integration is complete, you can expect to see an improvement in:

• Unified customer insights: Integration eliminates data silos, providing a unified view of customer data. This cohesion enables precise segmentation and personalized engagement strategies.
• Streamlined lead management: Seamless syncing of leads between Marketo and Salesforce accelerates the lead-to-opportunity process, empowering sales teams with timely access to qualified leads.
• Holistic reporting: Integration facilitates closed-loop reporting, enabling marketers to track campaign performance through to revenue generation. This insight-driven approach optimizes marketing strategies for tangible returns.
• Personalized engagement: By leveraging comprehensive customer data from both platforms, marketers can craft hyper-targeted campaigns, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.

What Data is Synchronized Between Marketo and Salesforce?

Following an integration, Marketo and Salesforce synchronize virtually every piece of data, most notably:

• Leads
• Contacts
• Accounts
• Users
• Opportunities
• Salesforce campaigns
• Custom Objects
• Activity

It’s also important to remember that edits to leads, contacts, or Salesforce campaigns in either platform appear in both systems following an integration. However, all other synchronizations occur solely from Salesforce to Marketo.

Key Integration Features

A Marketo-Salesforce integration offers a suite of features designed to foster collaboration and efficiency:

• Automated lead syncing: Bidirectional syncing ensures real-time updates between Marketo and Salesforce, maintaining data integrity across platforms.
• Attribution models: Sophisticated attribution models track campaign effectiveness, providing invaluable insights into the impact of marketing efforts on revenue.
• Scoring and routing: Lead scoring models developed in Marketo inform lead prioritization and automated routing in Salesforce, optimizing sales efficiency.
• Data enrichment: Integration allows for enriching lead profiles with additional data from both platforms, enhancing targeting precision and personalization.

Best Practices for Implementation

Successful integration hinges on meticulous planning and execution. Here’s how to ensure a seamless implementation:

1. Hide fields: Be sure to hide all fields you do not need in Marketo from the sync user before clicking Sync Fields. This duplicates all the visible fields permanently—you cannot delete mistakes later.
2. Sandbox sync: Check Sandbox if you are syncing a Marketo Sandbox to a Salesforce Sandbox.
3. Start sync: If you want to look over the mappings and customize them, this is your only chance to do so! Once you click Start Salesforce sync, it’s done. Remember also that your first sync can take hours or days as Marketo copies the entire database. Later syncs will go much faster as they only update altered data.
4. Clear objectives: Define integration objectives and KPIs upfront to align efforts and measure success effectively.
5. Data hygiene: Prioritize data cleanliness and consistency across platforms to mitigate issues during integration.
6. Stakeholder engagement: Involve stakeholders from marketing and sales teams to gather requirements and foster collaboration.
7. Comprehensive training: Provide thorough training to users on integrated features to drive adoption and maximize utilization.
8. Continuous optimization: Regularly monitor and optimize the integration based on feedback and evolving business needs to sustain long-term value.

Successful Marketo-Salesforce Integration

Your first Marketo-Salesforce integration will take some time and effort. But once you get past the initial hurdle, future syncs and updates will go much faster. Better yet, you’ll enjoy the benefits of both platforms working together. Your marketing strategy will get a very helpful boost.

To kick off your integration, contact our team today and schedule a call.