Lauren Hosimer, Author at Sercante

Getting Real About Marketing Automation Platform Migration Projects

Migrating from one marketing automation platform (MAP) to another can be nerve wracking. You are bound to be overwhelmed and not know where to start. But I once had a high school coach say “nervousness equals readiness.” And while that didn’t always ease the nerves before a big race, it has stuck with me all these years. So embrace the change as you prepare for your marketing automation platform migration!

I have been on both sides of a marketing automation platform migration project — both as a person who owns the platform and as a consultant. I want to share some of the learnings from those experiences to make the process a little less painful for anyone who’s just getting started.

Remember the reasons you are changing MAPs

Since we work through so many marketing automation migration projects where we help our clients switch to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), we’ll use those migrations as an example for the purposes of this blog post.

Marketing teams are usually migrating to Account Engagement for one of a few reasons:

It works better with Salesforce
Their current MAP is not easy to understand
They are looking for better support
Budget

Migrating to Account Engagement means you get one unified platform for sales and marketing, which for marketers means one less system to have to log into!

With Engagement History on leads, contacts, and accounts, your sales team has insight into engagement with marketing activities right on their record. And a lot of marketing technology (martech) integrates with Salesforce.

That means you can, more often than not, pull that information into Account Engagement to use in your audience segmentation.

Account Engagement is not ‘Insert Marketing Automation Platform Name Here’

Regardless of the reason you are migrating to Account Engagement, you need to remember that Account Engagement might not be able to do everything the same way as your existing MAP — but that isn’t a bad thing! There is most likely a solution for it using native functionality or customizing code.

I have seen clients say they want everything in Account Engagement to be how it is in their current MAP. This approach will most likely cause some headaches down the road. Take a step back and get an understanding of what the end goal of your process is today so it can be translated into Account Engagement, and then look at how it can be done within Account Engagement.

Make sure you spend time on Trailhead to get an understanding of the basics of how Account Engagement works before you dive into migrating systems.

Documentation will be critical for success — marketing ops rejoice!

The first step before starting to move over assets is to make sure that you have your processes documented. Not only will this help during migration but it will allow you to take a good look at how things are done today and try to improve where possible.

Here are a few to make sure you document:

User management – Who needs access? What type of access do they need?
Lead routing – When does a lead go to sales? What information is required before it goes to sales? Who is it assigned to? What happens if the lead is not ready?
Reporting – What are your KPIs? What system does reporting need to happen in? How do you need reporting – by campaign, by channel, by quarter, by month?
Lead and customer journeys – How and when do you engage with a lead? What about a customer?
Legal requirements – Is there specific language on forms, emails, and landing pages that we need to have?
Overall martech stack – What tools are in your tech stack? How do they all work together? Do you have any new tech you are adding soon?

Channel your inner Marie Kondo throughout your MAP migration

Regardless of how clean you think your current MAP is there will always be old assets and outdated processes. Channel your inner Marie Kondo and make sure you only migrate over what brings you joy — well, migrate what is still necessary for the future. Don’t worry you can always export reporting on old assets so you are losing that data.

This is not only about cleaning up your assets, now is the time to take a good look at what isn’t working well today and make improvements. This applies not only to processes but nurture programs and email and landing page experiences.

Bonus: Account Engagement Cleanliness Resources

Marketing automation migrations take time

While yes, technically, you can do a migration in 30 days, I suggest taking as much time as you can. This is especially true if you have lots of nurture programs, email templates, and complex processes to migrate to the new system.

This is not always possible. There are so many factors that go into this — especially budget and resources.

So, have an honest conversation with your team about the timeline. Don’t forget to factor in overlap with your current MAP (at least a month), and try to give yourself a little padding for the unexpected and time off.

Something will not go as planned

No matter how much you plan and prepare for a migration, something will not go as expected. AND THAT IS OKAY!!!

You might find some custom code on a form you weren’t aware of. Or you could experience sync errors with Salesforce due to a validation rule you didn’t know existed.

Just take a deep breath and know that it can be fixed.

You don’t have to go through a MAP migration alone

Again, migration projects are scary. But you can work with consulting companies that go through these MAP migrations every day. Not only do they know all the processes and logistics for migrating to the new platform, but they’ve worked with companies that weren’t fully utilizing their MAP investment and found ways to improve user experience and adoption.

Working with a partner, like Sercante, can help make it less scary and make sure you get the maximum value out of your tools.

Reach out to the team at Sercante as you get ready for your marketing automation platform migration. We’ve seen it all, so bring us your juiciest challenges!

Original article: Getting Real About Marketing Automation Platform Migration Projects

The post Getting Real About Marketing Automation Platform Migration Projects appeared first on The Spot.

By Lauren Hosimer|2023-06-27T17:41:21+00:00June 27th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Real Talk, revive, Setup & Admin|

Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) and Salesforce integration can be used to pass data back and forth between Pardot and Salesforce. In this article, learn everything about the Salesforce connector including what objects are synced, what happens if the prospect already exists in Pardot and how Pardot, and how to map Salesforce users to Pardot users.

Two different sync methods

All Records
Select Records using Marketing Data Sharing

Objects that sync from Salesforce to Pardot

Leads
Contacts
Accounts
Opportunities
Campaigns
Custom Objects (Available in: Pardot Advanced Edition and Available for an additional cost in: Pardot Plus Edition)

Synced but requires mapping in Pardot

Users
Custom Fields

Syncing prospects from Pardot to Salesforce

A prospect is synced to Salesforce when the record has been assigned to a user. A user can be assigned using a completion action or by using an automation rule.

Since Pardot uses email address as its unique identifier**, Pardot will check to see if there’s a contact in Salesforce with the same email address and then check if there’s a lead with the same email address. If there’s no email address that matches the prospect in Salesforce, Pardot will create a new lead in Salesforce. This can be illustrated with this flow chart.

You can also navigate to the connector settings and run a full sync. Learn more about what causes a prospect to sync from Pardot to Salesforce here.

** If your Pardot account allows for multiple prospects with the same email address, there are some requirements for the record to sync to Salesforce.

Syncing Prospects from Salesforce to Pardot

By default new leads and contacts within Salesforce will not sync over to Pardot automatically. There are 3 ways to sync new leads and contacts from Salesforce to Pardot:

By clicking the send to Pardot button on the lead or the contact record in Salesforce.
By manually uploading the lead or contact’s email address into Pardot.
Enable the option in the Salesforce connector to ‘automatically create prospects if they are created as a lead or contact in Salesforce.com’. This feature is not retroactive so you will need to upload a CSV into Pardot that includes the CRM ID and email address to trigger Salesforce records to sync.

Run a full sync (Pardot Settings > Connectors > Gear Icon > Sync All Prospects)

Once the Pardot prospect and the Salesforce lead/contact are connected, Pardot will check for changes in Salesforce every 2-4 minutes.

Hot Tip: Learn more about Salesforce and Pardot sync behavior in this blog post.

Connected Campaigns: Salesforce Campaigns and Pardot Campaigns

The launch of Connected Campaigns in 2019 streamlined how Salesforce and Pardot campaigns are used, allowing management of campaigns to be managed within Salesforce. Plus, if you enable Campaign Member Sync your prospects will be added to campaigns as campaign members.

Prospects can be added to a Salesforce campaign using the following methods:

When you set up a rule using one of these methods you will be able to see the action criteria to add to Salesforce campaign.

Mapping Fields Salesforce Fields to Pardot Fields

When you verify your Salesforce connector with Pardot, the default fields for leads/contacts and accounts are set up automatically. Any custom fields will need to be created in Pardot and mapped to the corresponding Salesforce field.

Mapping Salesforce Users to Pardot Users

Each Salesforce user will need to be created in Pardot as well, so you can assign Pardot prospects to a sales rep. You can create users in 4 ways:

Manage User Sync In Pardot (Pardot Settings > Connectors > User Sync) by mapping Salesforce Profiles to Pardot Roles
Manage User Sync In Salesforce
Create directly in Pardot (Pardot Settings > User Management > Users)

Uploading a CSV file

Troubleshooting

I changed a contact’s email address in Salesforce, but the change isn’t syncing to Pardot.

This is the expected behavior of the Salesforce connector unless you have the setting Automatically change email addresses in Pardot to reflect changes in Salesforce.com enabled under the Salesforce connector settings.

My Prospects aren’t syncing to Salesforce.

First, check to see that there wasn’t an error while syncing the prospects to Salesforce. You can view sync errors by navigating to Pardot Settings > Connectors > Sync Errors

Fix any errors and try syncing the record with Salesforce again.

If you have no errors, make sure the record is assigned to a user. You can check this by clicking into the prospect in Pardot and looking for an assigned user under the Insight table.

Have other questions about the Pardot and Salesforce Integration? Ask in the comments!

Original article: Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The post Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration appeared first on The Spot.

By Lauren Hosimer|2023-01-06T16:03:03+00:00January 6th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) and Salesforce integration can be used to pass data back and forth between Pardot and Salesforce. In this article, learn everything about the Salesforce connector including what objects are synced, what happens if the prospect already exists in Pardot and how Pardot, and how to map Salesforce users to Pardot users.

Two different sync methods

All Records
Select Records using Marketing Data Sharing