Lookup(Answers) – Marketing Cloud Connect live Q&A

In case you missed the Lookup(Answers) session on Marketing Cloud Connect that we ran together with Markus Slabina last month, you can watch the recording below.

The presentation used during the session can be viewed here.

Webinar questions

Here’s the full list of questions from the sessions with answers provided by Markus and me:

Can you synchronize the “Email Opt-in” field in Sales Cloud with SFMC All Subscribers Status through Marketing Cloud Connect? (If you wanted to see subscription statuses in Sales Cloud, can an unsubscribe through a Marketing Cloud Email be synced automatically with the email opt in/out field in Sales Cloud) [duplicate question: How do you keep your unsubscribes in sync between clouds (RMM, Complaints, etc.))

  • The status of a subscriber changes from Active to Unsubscribed in Marketing Cloud and the Email Opt Out field is enabled in Sales or Service Cloud when any of the following occurs:
    • A subscriber clicks the Unsubscribe link in an email or the profile center.
    • You click Marketing Cloud Unsubscribe on a contact, lead, or person account record in Sales or Service Cloud.
    • RMM is configured to unsubscribe manual requests and an unsubscribe keyword is detected
    • A subscriber uses the list-unsubscribe feature of an email client

Could you show us again where to find the tracking setup?

  • Switch to the Salesforce Classic UI and go to Marketing Cloud tab > Marketing Cloud Connector Settings > Tracking

When syncing formula fields through the connector, formula fields are not getting updated unless there’s an event that triggers a refresh on the record. How do we work around that?

  • Depending on your use case you could access this data using AMPscript directly from your Salesforce Core instance. Otherwise you’ll have to make sure, there is an update on the record containing the formula field in order to get an update in the synchronized data extensions.

Would refreshing the Last Modified Date at the same time refresh the Formula field in SFMC?

  • As this is a system field that is only updated if the record has been changed this marks the record for synchronization, yes.

Can we resend from Service Cloud email that were initially sent from SFMC through the connector?

What kind of users typically setup and manage MC Connect? IT or Marketing power users or a combo?

  • You need administrator rights in both systems, so depending on your organization that might be both, but usually it is IT in alignment with marketing power users who tell them which settings need to be done in order to have all the desired capabilities (tracking level detail, etc.). If you are a tech-savvy marketer and worked through the Marketing Cloud Connect module on Trailhead, you should be able to set up the connector if you have the necessary permissions in both systems.

What’s the best practice to restrict what data users in various child BU’s in SFMC can see through MC Connect?

  • Setting up a subscriber filter on the parent BU level, as well as restricting access to the All Contacts list.

What are the pros and cons of the various segmentation tools in CRM (e.g. reports) vs. those in SFMC (e.g. Contact Builder, SQL queries)? As a marketer, I find the tools in SFMC to be more intuitive and powerful and would seem to me that just bringing over data via MC Connect and using SFMC tools to segment, join, and otherwise manipulate. Is that a common usage?

  • That depends on the skills of the users that do the segmentations, the system the work with the most and where the data resides – if you need a specific object only once a year for a segmentation, you shouldn’t sync it to Marketing Cloud, but rather do the segmentation in the CRM for example.

How detailed is the Individual Level Tracking in CRM relative to the native tracking/reporting in SFMC?

  • The following fields are displayed on the Individual Link Level Detail Detail: Link Name, Unique Link ID, Marketing Cloud Link ID, Individual Email Result, Last Clicked, Link URL, Number of Total Clicks, Created By

Can you please explain us about the SFMC Multi org connector?

  • See slide 6 for more detail.

Can we use different API users in a SFDC org to connect with different BU’s of the same org? purpose is to sync specific records per MC business units

  • If the purpose is to synch different objects without preserving data separation, then one API user can be used for up to 5 BUs
  • If the purpose is to synch specific records which are either filtered during setup in SFMC’s Data Sources or controlled by Sharing Rules, etc  in Salesforce, then use 1:1 mapping, that is 1 SFMC API user is connected with 1 SF org Admin user

Do we have any documentation explaining what is considered in contact counts?I don’t think so accounts are considered as contact count unless its person account (duplicate question: whats is counted as a contact? I know contactID are counted as a contact in all contacts. does accountID count as a contact?)

  • Contacts, Leads and Users added via Synchronized Data Sources count as “Marketing Cloud Contacts”. Other objects like Opportunities, Custom Objects, etc. aren’t counted towards the contact count. In addition to that every contact/lead/user to whom you send a message is counted as a contact (so even if you have sync restrictions in place, but a contact is injected into a journey based on a SF data event, it is added to the contact count).

If the filters were not applied initially and Sales cloud objects were synched to SFMC then what is the best way to delete the unwanted contacts?

Removing data from SyncedDE will also remove from All Contacts or we need to initiate all contacts delete process?

  • In order to be sure that those contacts don’t count – even if they have already been sent to it is best to initiate the contact delete process

Is there a way to make Leads not count as Contacts in SFMC? We use Leads but we don’t actually send anything to Lead IDs, since they already exist as Account/Contact

  • There is only one way: if you don’t send to them, don’t sync them.

Can we limit Individual Email Results within a period? E.g. only having tracking for the last 30 days

  • You can configure the “Number of Days to Track” setting in the connector to the desired period, as this is also the configuration used for the “Tracking Data Cleanup” tool, that is accessible via the Marketing Cloud tab within Sales/Service Cloud. However, by default the tracking data is retained, so you need to manually initiate a cleanup. More information can be found in the documentation: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_co_tracking_data_management.htm&type=5

If I can’t see the email thumbnail, what would be the reason? (in IER Detail)

  • A missing doctype in an HTML email is known to cause this issue, but there might be other reasons depending on the content of the email.

When a new field is created in service cloud does it automatically create that field in MC in the sync de?

  • No, you need to select it in Contact Builder, as only selected fields are added to the synchronized data extensions. Please be aware of the best practice to only sync necessary fields.

What’s the best way to de-duplicate contacts?

  • If you have any way of deduping them before even entering the CRM by having a lookup via the API that would be great, otherwise there are a bunch of deduplication addons available on AppExchange.

Can we connect more than one Sales/Service cloud to Marketing Cloud?

  • You can connect multiple onse to an Enterprise 2.0 account when using Multi-Org, but you cannot connect multiple instances to a single Marketing Cloud Business Unit. See Slide 6 for more detailed information.

What are the things need to consider while setting the Subscriber Key and how we can avoid duplication?

  • In order to utilize the full potential of Marketing Cloud connect, use the ContactId, LeadId or UserId as Subscriberkey. Furthermore, deduplication should be dealt with in your CRM, to reduce contact counts in Marketing Cloud beforehand. If your current data set allows this, you could set the email address fields to unique, but be sure to carefully plan and align if this is possible in your setup.

When we use AMPScript salesforce object retrieve and update functions, under the hood are they accessing salesforce org using MCC?

  • They are accessing the Salesforce org via API using the authentication and connection user that has been set up during configuration of the managed package.

Can we sync Salesforce external object?

  • As the data doesn’t reside in SFDC, external objects aren’t available for Marketing Cloud Connect.

Is bidirectional syncing on the roadmap?

  • There are some customer requests for this, so Salesforce is aware of the request, but it is not specifically on the roadmap. Possibly we might see this through a different method like a future update to Customer 360. Forward-looking statement: Please make your buying decisions based on the current features and not on any roadmap items, etc.

Questions? Comments?

Leave a comment below or email me at zuzanna@sfmarketing.cloud.