Sitecore EXM and S4S

Sitecore EXM is an alternative marketing automation platform to the systems offered by Salesforce (Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot) and others like Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot and more. S4S is a Sitecore to Salesforce CRM integration that supports Sitecore EXM and what follows is an overview of how it works.  

The process starts with S4S List Builder, a wizard in Sitecore that pulls Salesforce campaign members into new or existing Sitecore email lists. The lists can then be used by Sitecore EXM (Email Experience Manager) to mass email the targeted recipients. The responsive behavior of individual recipients is collected in Sitecore xDB and made available to the marketing team in Sitecore.

The optional S4S EXM module pushes Sitecore email analytics to Salesforce lead and contact records. The module uses a Sitecore scheduled task and S4S to regularly sync email response behavioral data to Salesforce. This allows users in Salesforce to see, or create reports, on the effectiveness of email campaigns executed in Sitecore. S4S EXM picks up Sitecore EXM interactions related to the following types of Sitecore contact:

• Sitecore contacts imported from S4S List Builder
• Sitecore contacts that have a Salesforce entity ID and Salesforce org ID in the S4SInfo facet
• Sitecore contacts where the email address matches the Salesforce entities (Contact or Lead) email address

Unlike S4S, it's been a couple of years since we've updated S4S EXM. We have a number of customers using the module but not so many upgrading to more recent versions of Sitecore.

The latest update targets Sitecore 9.2 and the Sitecore 9.x xDB changes. The release includes the following:

1. New Sitecore and Salesforce packages
2. The ability to support multiple Salesforce instances
3. Changes to the global and campaign opt-in and opt-out

S4S EXM uses a number of techniques to optimize transactions with Salesforce and overcome Partner API constraints.

To learn more about S4S EXM you can contact us or request a demo at a convenient time.