It's embarrassing. We've been using web forms to push Sitecore analytics to Salesforce leads with S4S since 2013 but not, for a second, thought about not using web forms. Then along came a customer who said, "We need to see web analytics in Salesforce but we don't use Sitecore web forms!". What! Who does that?
Before revealing the solution, a quick note on why you need Sitecore analytics in Salesforce. Simply put, it provides the sales team with more intelligence about their prospects and customers. More information leads to higher conversion rates i.e. more sales and money.
It's a simple task to create a unique identifier in Salesforce whenever a lead or contact is created - for example, use a formula field or a trigger. It's even simpler to use the Salesforce object id but that introduces a security risk. Now that you have a unique id in your lead or contact record you need to map that field to your Marketing Automation Solution (MAS). Of course, your MAS needs to have the Salesforce mapping capability, as does Salesforce Pardot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Oracle Eloqua, and Adobe Marketo, to name a few.
The MAS is all about sending automated emails and usually, the email should have links to drive traffic to your website (hopefully built with Sitecore). When composing the email link in your MAS you need to ensure your unique identifier is a parameter of the URL to your website. That way, when a visitor arrives at the site, Sitecore code can strip off the identifier and use S4S, or your integration code, to find the Salesforce lead or contact record that the identifier belongs to.
At this point, there are many paths you can go on because you now have a primary key in all three systems, Sitecore, Salesforce and your MAS. Taking the easy path with S4S, simply update the matching Salesforce record with the Sitecore Contact Id (or the Alias Id for Sitecore 9+), and the next time the S4S Analytics scheduler runs, the Sitecore analytics are pushed to the Salesforce record. Job done! Your sales team are now armed with a raft of data that will help them prepare for their sales call.
If you are keen to go to the next level and start personalizing your MAS emails based on what the visitor has been doing on the Sitecore website, that can be achieved by mapping the S4S Analytics fields in your Salesforce lead or contact records to the MAS. Your emails can then have content tailored to the products they reviewed, or goals they have reached, on the website.
FuseIT is expert at integrating Sitecore CMS websites with Salesforce CRM using S4S. To learn more about how to add value to your business in this way please contact us for more information.
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