Optimize Customer Journey and Drive Growth with Salesforce Marketing and Sales Cloud Integration

Effective collaboration between marketing and sales departments is pivotal for businesses to optimize their performance and deliver consistent results Amongst the multiple lead generation activities of the marketing team, the market research activity is the most important. Such activities also help generate ads designed to cater to customers’ specific needs.

Marketing provides sales teams with important leads and supporting materials. The sales team then follows up on the lead generation to drive conversions and close sales. The traditional boundaries between sales and marketing are increasingly blurred, with both teams now working more collaboratively. Marketing teams concentrate on developing and nurturing leads before they pass them on to Sales. The delay in between helps the sales team in forming a reliable connection with customers. An expert sales team knows how to close the deal efficiently to generate good revenue that is in tune with the marketing efforts.

The ability to combine the various aspects of sales and marketing functions by using Salesforce integration services makes way for a strong partnership that boosts growth. Marketers of today are expected to track and capture different aspects of service, sales, and commerce. This makes sure that timely and appropriate content gets delivered to sales teams in their communication with the target audience. One such platform that provides multiple possibilities to improve different marketing aspects is Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a CRM platform for marketers that permits them to develop and manage marketing campaigns and relationships with a target audience. It is a dynamic platform loaded with various tools to effectively manage the interactions of a brand with its present and potential customers across multiple channels. Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration allows users to generate multi-channel experiences, and connect with customers on the right channel at the right time via different mediums like SMS, email, social ads, push notifications, etc. This helps boost customer acquisition and sales. Marketing Cloud helps in effectively planning, monitoring, analyzing, and devising marketing campaigns.

Salesforce Sales Cloud empowers sales teams by offering a platform to manage and boost customer relationships. What differentiates this platform is its ability to consolidate both conventional account data of customers and key insights garnered from their social media platforms. This results in higher possibilities of converting and closing sales. Salesforce Sales Cloud integration not only enhances sales processes but also improves customer satisfaction and retention.

Why Should You Integrate Marketing and Sales Cloud?

While Marketing Cloud is centered on the marketing automation aspect of Salesforce, Sales Cloud comes under the CRM category. Let’s understand this with an example. When a customer joins a loyalty program with your business, the Marketing Cloud system is used to send a welcome message. The same event triggers data updates in the customer contact record in the Sales Cloud.

When an environment contains both these systems, an integrated experience is established that helps prevent customers from getting contacted numerous times across different groups. Integration of the Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud by leveraging Salesforce integration services also promotes advanced email marketing capabilities of the Sales team. This is attained by combining lead and contact data from the Sales Cloud with Marketing Cloud campaigns. The combination offers a unique perspective on how customers interact with your business.

Advantages of Integrating Marketing Cloud with Sales Cloud

Here are three important benefits when your business integrates Marketing Cloud with Sales Cloud:

1. Consolidate Sales and Marketing Efforts

The goals of the sales and marketing teams often vary from each other. While the end goal is to help the business grow, both teams tend to have their view as to how to reach there. Salesforce Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud integration enables you to receive better insights about the messaging and offers that resonate with customers. This empowers you to utilize this information to modify your sales and marketing efforts accordingly. This is one of the most important benefits of integration.

For instance, the sales team will be able to share the right marketing collaterals at the right stage of the funnel directly from the Sales Cloud when both clouds are integrated. This eliminates the need to separately upload marketing collateral into the Sales Cloud. Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud integration ensures that marketing and sales teams are able to work alongside each other to move a prospect down the sales funnel. The integration also guarantees easy automation of marketing-to-sales handoff. Let’s say, sending out an automated message when the sales team moves a prospect down the sales funnel.

When a deal is closed by the sales team, the prospect embarks on an onboarding journey to become a customer. If the sales team determines that the potential customer is not ready to convert or if a deal is lost, the prospect can be put into a nurture campaign in the Marketing Cloud. This way, marketing automation helps move the prospect forward, while the sales team focuses on other prospects.

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Integration with the Sales Cloud also makes way for more opportunities for cross-selling. Consider this – when a new customer completes their onboarding process, the marketing team starts marketing new products and services to drive more business. You also get to track your customers’ website engagement metrics and learn their interests in specific products/services while identifying their pain points. This way, your sales team will be able to connect with them through personalized messaging to upsell, cross-sell, or take steps to reduce customer churn.

In case you feel upselling is not an appropriate option, you will still be able to drive engagement with other forms of communication like events, announcements, newsletters, etc.

2. Improved Customer Retention Through Customized Messaging and Audience Segmentation

Salesforce Integration of the Sales and Marketing Cloud helps both sales and marketing teams to work together and learn from each other. This way they segment prospects and customers into smaller groups with personalized messaging and strategy for each segment. In doing this, you are speaking to your customers at their specific level, which boosts customer sales and loyalty.

3. Comprehensive View of Customers to Open New Opportunities

When there is integration within a working environment, sales and marketing teams receive access to valuable information and gain insights. When you watch a prospect move through the sales and marketing processes, you effectively understand what encourages buyers to convert. Marketing teams receive insights into what customers want, how they interact with a brand, and on which channels they are active. Sales teams would want to use the insights to deliver highly customized pitches to these prospects. Different customer touchpoints offer opportunities for collecting more insights. When these are shared between sales and marketing teams, your chances to improve customer loyalty and boost sales significantly increase.