7 Benefits of Salesforce and Marketo Integration (and How to Do It)

Want to use one of the world’s best CRMs with the latest rockstar marketing automations platform? A Salesforce and Marketo integration is the way to go. There might be hundreds of CRM options available, but only one reigns supreme. Salesforce is the original customer relationship management tool.

It made the industry and is still the go-to option for leading enterprises. It’s also spurned secondary industries around automation, customer experience, and maximizing the value of customer data.

Marketo is a marketing automation SaaS app. It can automate pretty much any online marketing activity: lead management, emailing, entire multi-channel digital campaigns, and marketing analysis like revenue attribution.

So, why connect them? Read on to find out.

Reasons for a Salesforce and Marketo Integration

Did you know that the Salesforce ecosystem is expected to generate around $1.6 trillion in revenue by 2026?

That’s a portion of the value created with the Salesforce and Marketo integration, or any other compatible app. Salesforce is a rock-solid way to manage your customer relations and experience. And the CRM is where most of your customer insight data lives.

As powerful as Salesforce is on its own, you get even more out of it by connecting it to complementary apps, tools, and systems. One option for this is Marketo.

Marketo is a more recent app, without as broad a reach as Salesforce. But It’s no slouch. it’s a true powerhouse. Adobe paid $4.75 billion for it in 2018. And since then, they’ve built up its infrastructure capabilities even further.

Marketo is one of the most powerful marketing automation platforms. It can automate the entire online customer journey. But it’s not a sales CRM and it doesn’t try to be. It focuses on content, digital experiences, analyzing touchpoints, channel engagement, and audience engagement insight.

Salesforce shines as a working platform for customer-facing teams. It keeps you connected with your customers. This is where you personally interact with them.

Salesforce’s insights are based on the activity generated on its platform. So, you can expect relationship-based insight, but not as much on how your customers act independently of you.

With the Salesforce and Marketo integration, you can sync these rockstar sales and marketing systems together. It gives you the best of both worlds and more.

Sharing your activity, generated customer data, analytics, and insights multiples the value of each tool.

Related: How Customer Data Analytics and Automation Can Boost Your Company’s Performance

7 Benefits of a Salesforce and Marketo Integration

1. Real-time data insight and intelligence: both systems house critical customer data. Your sales reps and marketers should have access to each.
2. Better lead nurturing: your sales and marketing work should go hand in hand. Linking Marketo to Salesforce will make this work seamless.
3. Cleaner data and streamlined work: you can prevent overlapping or redundant data entries by keeping everything cleanly synchronized.
4. Improved content strategy: the content you create in Marketo or other tools can be more targeted based on accurate Salesforce customer insights.
5. Cohesive behavioral insights: both systems gather different kinds of customer intel. Linking them will create a more comprehensive picture of who your customers are.
6. Smarter workflows: both platforms allow you to create automated or digital workflows. You can take these up a notch with an integration that links their activities.
7. Account-driven sales and marketing: you can combine the two platforms to enable effective account-based outreach.

The Salesforce and Marketo integration will minimize or eliminate any sales and marketing information silos.

How to Set Up a Salesforce and Marketo Integration

Ideally, you want your Salesforce and Marketo integration to be a two-way sync so that information is flowing bidirectionally. But as of now, only certain elements can sync both ways.

Salesforce lets you bidirectionally sync your leads, contacts, and Salesforce campaigns. And you can do one-way Salesforce to Marketo syncs for Salesforce’s leads, contacts, accounts, users, opportunities, Salesforce campaigns, custom objects, and activity elements.

There’s a native Salesforce to Marketo integration tool. It isn’t that advanced, but you can opt for this if you don’t mind putting in some extra technical work, like correctly syncing your fields, sorting through your data, and troubleshooting your Salesforce instance. 

Why the Native Salesforce to Marketo Integration Is Less Than Ideal

Here are a few things to know if you want to use the native Salesforce integration tool.

First, be aware that Marketo can only natively integrate with one CRM or Salesforce instance at a time. If you already have another CRM integration running or decide to switch from Salesforce later on, you’ll have to undo your configurations and start from the beginning.

And, if you’d like to bring more CRM integrations in, you’ll need to use a third-party middleware tool for this.

Alternatively, you have the option of using a more intelligent integration platform that not only integrates like middleware, but also helps you prove your team’s impact on revenue. (More on that below).

If you’re certain that a native integration is right for you, you’ll need to do some thorough planning.

1. What do you want to sync over?

As mentioned above, the integrator only works with a limited set of elements. But you don’t need to sync them all. You have to choose which fields to connect. You can block the ones you don’t want to sync which will help reduce your overall integration time.

A Salesforce and Marketo integration can take days to initially sync. So be careful not to include unnecessary fields. But don’t leave out your essentials. You need to set this up right because tweaking it after can cause your integration to break or fail.

2. Get User Credentials.

The native integration works by giving the Marketo app its own Salesforce user credentials. You have to create a new Salesforce profile and set the correct permissions, then make a new user account and get its security token.

Make sure the user account has a high enough access level.

3. Set up Your Fields, Sync, and Maintain It.

Salesforce used to have a Marketo app, but now you set this up manually. So, if you want to connect Salesforce to your Marketo lead scoring or acquisition programs, you’ll need to individually match those fields.

Sound tedious? It is. And it also requires a bit of ongoing management. Native Salesforce to Marketo integrations are known for breaking on occasion.

• There are issues around the five-minute sync time. The lack of control can cause you to hit Marketo’s app call limit.
• And this delay can be very noticeable if you’re trying to collaborate with co-workers in real-time.
• And you need to be careful with your user credentials and access level.

As you can see, this approach is quite restrictive. It isn’t scalable and won’t give you much control, data standardization, or visibility. A much easier path is using a dedicated integrator app.

Related: When Native Marketo/Salesforce Integrations Fail

The Preferred Method: Connecting Salesforce and Marketo with an Advanced Integrator App

Is tedious field matching not your thing? You can sync these apps with a user-friendly integration tool.

Here’s what you should look for:

• A drag and drop interface for simple field mapping and configuring.
• Multiple connections for Salesforce instances and other CRM tools if necessary.
• Built-in data hygiene for routine maintenance.
• Integrating unique objects to extend Salesforce’s native integration capabilities.
• Instant data synchronization options so you won’t have to endure lag times while working.
• Additional connectors to open your Salesforce/Marketo data to other systems.
• A workflow option to create automated Salesforce and Marketo sequences.

This method is clean, scalable, and far more approachable. You won’t need to worry about your initial setup configuration when you’re using a tool that cleans your data as you go. And these apps are much easier for everyone on a team to use, whether or not they have an IT background.

Vertify’s RevConnect integrates and aligns your sales and marketing systems. It enables fine-tuned data management with a no-code UI. And Vertify includes data intelligence to help you understand your systems and automations. It’s a Marketo Approved Partner that can get your Salesforce integration up and running with no effort to you. Ask for a demo to see how easy integrating Salesforce and Marketo can get.