Campaigns in Salesforce are an easy way to organize and track leads, opportunities, and events. But what if you could make a campaign more effective? Here are 11 best practices for improving engagement and reporting with campaigns.
Salesforce Campaigns are a powerful tool for sales and marketing teams. The campaigns feature is designed to help sales reps better understand their sales pipeline, increase sales rep productivity, and drive more revenue.
Marketing teams can also use Campaigns to deliver targeted content that connects with prospects at the right time in the buyer’s journey.
This guide will walk you through everything from setting up your first campaign to implementing 11 best practices for increased engagement and reporting!
Campaigns are the sales and marketing cloud’s answer to email, text message, direct mail, social media posts – anything you can think of that helps sales reps better understand their sales pipeline.
By sending relevant content at just the right time in your prospects journey with sales or marketing automation, sales reps can drive more revenue.
Marketing teams use Campaigns to distribute targeted content that connects with prospects at the right time in the buyer’s journey.
The sales and marketing cloud’s answer to email, text message, direct mail, social media posts – anything you can think of that helps sales reps better understand their sales pipeline.
By sending relevant content at just the right time in your prospects journey with sales or marketing automation, sales reps can drive more revenue.
Sales and marketing cloud's answer to email, text message, direct mail, social media posts – anything you can think of that helps sales reps better understand their sales pipeline.
By sending relevant content at just the right time in your prospects journey with sales or marketing automation, sales reps can drive more revenue.
Marketing teams use campaigns to distribute targeted content that connects with prospects at the right time in their buyer's journey. Sales reps can also use the feature to better understand their sales pipeline and increase productivity.
Marketers need Campaigns, but many don't take advantage of them to their full potential.
I wanted to write this post based on what I've learned as a Salesforce and Pardot Consultant over the last few years –
at a time when attention has shifted away from Pardot's first-touch, individualistic tracking and toward multi-touch attribution with Campaigns and advanced strategies like Account-based Marketing (ABM).
1. Standard Object, Many Use Case
Salesforce Campaigns is a sales and marketing cloud standard object, so it's available to all sales reps and marketers.
That said, some sales reps might never use the feature because they're happy with their existing workflow of logging calls in Sales Cloud or entering opportunities directly into Salesforce CRM.
Here are some use cases for campaigns:
2. ‘Active’ CheckboX
Salesforce automatically checks the ‘active’ box when sales reps update an opportunity or contact record, so they don't have to remember that step.
However, sales teams often forget about Campaigns and leave them in a paused state with no end date because checking "Active" is one more thing that gets forgotten between Outlook / CRM updates.
Marketers, sales and service reps must remember to set the end date (or active checkbox) for campaigns – otherwise they're left in a paused state with no way to report on them!
For sales teams who use Sales Cloud, the ‘active’ box is automatically checked when updating opportunities or contacts within CRM.
However, sales teams often forget about Campaigns and leave them in a paused state because checking "Active" is one more thing that gets forgotten between Outlook / CRM updates.
3. Campaign Custom Fields – Recommendations
Marketers should add custom fields for campaigns because it makes reporting / segmentation much easier. I recommend at least ‘Campaign Name’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Source/Referral Code'.
One of the best ways to get more value from Sales Cloud is by adding campaign related custom field data to the opportunity record.
I recommend campaigns marketers add at least "Campaign Name, Medium and Source/Referral Code" to the opportunity record as soon as possible.
Here are the fields I recommend adding to your campaigns:
Campaign Name – use naming conventions that make it easy for sales teams to identify different marketing channels (i.e., Social - Facebook Ads, Email - Gmail Sponsored Promotions). This field is required if you're using Marketing Cloud / Pardot.
Medium – sales reps can quickly identify different lead sources and sales opportunities (i.e., Webinar, Email). This field is required if you're using Marketing Cloud / Pardot.
Source/Referral Code – it's important to be able to track the source of a lead in Salesforce because that information can be used to create sales territories. This field is required if you're using Marketing Cloud / Pardot.
4. Campaign Hierarchies – Parent vs. Child Campaigns
Sales reps can use salesforce campaigns hierarchies to group (and report on) related sales opportunities.
This means that sales teams can segment and track parent / child relationships between marketing channels, mediums and sources/referral codes in the opportunity record rather than having them all mixed together like this:
Marketers should avoid mixing campaign tracking data into sales opportunities because it makes reporting / segmentation much more difficult.
Instead, sales reps should use hierarchies to group related sales activities for better organization and reporting.
For example, if you're running a trade show booth in the US (medium = tradeshow) and also advertising on Facebook (source/referral code = facebook), you can create a campaigns hierarchy that looks like this:
Trade Shows – US – Facebook Ads. However, if you don't have any salesforce campaign hierarchies set up and all of your sales activities are mixed together in the opportunity record, it will look something like this:
5. Campaign Hierarchy Reporting – ‘In Hierarchy’ Fields
Marketers should use salesforce campaign hierarchy fields to create custom reports that show when sales activities occur in a related sales opportunity.
This is the most valuable insight you can get from Sales Cloud / Pardot because it helps marketers and sales teams prioritize which marketing channels deserve attention (and budget).
For example, if you're running Facebook Ads for a sales event and you want to know if sales reps are using those ads to create sales opportunities, it's important for marketers to track which Facebook Ads lead directly into a Sales Cloud opportunity.
In this case, the "Campaign Hierarchy - In Hierarchy" field will be set as ‘Yes’ when a sales activity occurs in an opportunity record.
The salesforce campaign hierarchy fields show when sales activities occur in a related sales opportunity and it's the most valuable insight you can get from Sales Cloud / Pardot because marketers and sales reps will know which marketing channels deserve attention (and budget).
6. Customise Your Campaign Hierarchy View
Marketers can use salesforce campaign hierarchies to group related sales activities for better organization and reporting.
In Sales Cloud / Pardot, you should set up a custom view that allows sales reps to see all opportunities by hierarchy level (i.e., top-level campaigns at the top).
In this case, marketers will be able to click into a sales opportunity and see all of the related sales activities in that particular hierarchy.
For example, if you're running Facebook Ads for a sales event and you want to know if sales reps are using those ads to create opportunities, it's important for marketers to track which Facebook Ad leads directly into an Sales Cloud opportunity record.
In this case, the salesforce campaign hierarchies fields will be set as ‘Yes’ when a sales activity occurs in an opportunity record.
This is the most valuable insight you can get from Sales Cloud / Pardot because marketers and sales reps will know which marketing channels deserve attention (and budget).
Source/Referral Code – it's important for marketers to track which sales activities occur in a Sales Cloud opportunity record when using the salesforce campaigns hierarchies feature.
7. Connected Campaigns
Marketers should use campaigns to track and compare marketing activities that are related to a single sales event or campaign.
For example, if you're running advertising for an upcoming sales conference (campaign), it's important to connect those ads to the sales event they support (e.g., Facebook Ads – Sales Conference).
This way your marketers can measure the success of that sales event (sales activity) based on how many people attended.
In this case, your marketers will be able to create a custom report and compare data from connected campaigns throughout time periods such as "Last Month” or “This Quarter".
This helps marketing teams understand if their advertising is working and what needs to change to improve sales event engagement. However, creating reports and comparing data from specific marketing campaigns can be difficult if they’re not automated. It is where connecting Salesforce to Google Sheets comes in. It can help you export relevant data to Google Sheets without too much coding effort.
Moreover, when you integrate Salesforce with Google Sheets, you can obtain some essential benefits. For example, this integration process may allow you to get complete control over your marketing data by gathering information, processing it, and keeping it in any format. Consequently, your marketing team can instantly keep track of certain information from any device. Another benefit is that it streamlines your team’s analytics and reporting efforts by using Google Sheets’ functionality features, including formatting and pivot tables. In turn, your marketers can monitor marketing reports and other business indicators with ease.
Lastly, Salesforce integration with Google Sheets allows your marketers to collaborate with other teams by obtaining essential information on company performance and connecting it with other business systems and platforms. After that, you can generate aggregated reports that you can work on with other teams, making cross-team collaboration more effective for your overall marketing efforts.
With all the things mentioned above, there’s no doubt that integrating Salesforce to Google Sheets can be crucial when carrying out connected campaigns. Therefore, if you want to understand everything about delivering and tracking connected marketing activities using salesforce campaigns, this guide will help you get better insight into what’s working for your sales funnel by understanding how sales activities are related with each other in a hierarchy.
This helps marketers use the best practices for improving engagement and reporting.
8. Campaign Engagement History Metrics
Marketers should use salesforce campaign engagement history metrics to measure the amount of time between when a marketing activity is sent and when it begins
In this case, sales reps will be able to track the exact amount of time between when a sales activity occurs in an opportunity record and when it starts receiving responses from that sales activity.
This feature gives marketers insight into how long each part of their sales funnel is taking to build momentum.
9. Related Objects & Related Lists
Marketers should use salesforce campaign related objects & lists to see other opportunities and activities that are connected.
In this case, marketers will be able to track which sales activities lead directly into an opportunity record in Sales Cloud / Pardot’s related object fields.
This is important for marketers because they can understand how many leads were generated for sales reps, how many sales activity records were created for each sales rep and what types of sales activities are most effective in converting to opportunities.
You will be aware that a CRM is a collection of objects that are related to each other in different ways. The Campaign object has the following related objects:
10. Campaign Members
Leads and Contacts associated with a Salesforce Campaign are known as Campaign Members. In a nutshell, a Salesforce Campaign and a Lead/Contact have no direct relationship, which is why Salesforce is built to employ Campaign Members instead.
A new Campaign Member record is produced when you add someone to a Salesforce Campaign.
Any seasoned Salesforce user has encountered the differences between Leads and Contacts, which has been a long-standing reporting issue.
As a marketer, you can use Campaign Members to bring Leads and Contacts closer together for a more complete view in reports and dashboards. Despite this, Campaign Members are an unappreciated resource, and there are ways to make the most of them.
Pardot user? Be aware that a Prospect must first be a Lead or a Contact before you can add them to a Campaign, and create a Campaign Member – so don’t forget to assign Prospects to allow the connector sync!
11. Types of Campaign Records
Because these records have a lot in common, Record Types are a technique of grouping multiple records for one type for that item. With Record Types, you can have a distinct page layout, different fields (mandatory or optional), and different picklist values.
A Tradeshow, for example, would have a different record type than a BDR Calling Campaign; a BDR Calling Campaign would not have linked forms and Landing Pages, and neither would share member statuses (think Registered, Attended, Visited Booth vs. To be called, Contacted).
Record Types are considered advanced administration and should be discussed with a Salesforce administrator before proceeding.
