Mastering Omnichannel Success: A Comprehensive Guide to Salesforce Integration

When it comes to Customer Relationship Management or CRM platforms, Salesforce is easily the most recognizable name there is. It has captured the largest portion of the global CRM market, and one of the many reasons for its widespread success is its integrations. Salesforce integrations and connectors allow businesses to manage their customers more effectively, engaging them on several different fronts.

Basics of Salesforce Integrations

A Salesforce integration can be defined in a number of different ways:

• It can be the process of integrating Salesforce with another app or software.
• It can also be a classification of the software or app that can be integrated with Salesforce.
• A dedicated piece of software that allows Salesforce to integrate with something else can also be called a Salesforce integration.

A salesforce connector is a more specific term. It facilitates data exchange between Salesforce and another application, platform, or software while ensuring that the data is received in the right format at either end of the exchange. While it’s not the only thing they do, that’s their primary functionality.

Salesforce integrations can be divided into several types based on the integration intention, use case, etc. Some prominent examples are:

Salesforce data integration: Any integration that facilitates the flow of data between Salesforce and another source can be considered Salesforce data integration. The integration can range from simple to highly sophisticated, with rules guiding and defining things like the source of truth, synchronous/asynchronous data transfers, volume, transformation, etc.

Salesforce app integrations: Salesforce can integrate with a wide range of apps that businesses use for their various operational use cases, including customer management tools like Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign. With the right APIs and, in some cases, Salesforce connectors, the scope of Salesforce app integrations goes well beyond the 4,000 apps on Appexchange (at least) that Salesforce can seamlessly integrate with.

Salesforce third-party integrations: Salesforce third-party integrations allow companies to streamline their processes and operations and gain a better visibility of their customer engagement flow. This can include Salesforce process integration and system integrations.

Cloud-based integration with Salesforce: Salesforce launched a dedicated integration cloud back in 2018, making cloud-based integration with Salesforce easy and accessible to a wide range of businesses. These integrations can be used to automate Salesforce tasks or leverage its functionalities and data to make real-time data-driven decisions (among other things).

There are dedicated tools that help businesses integrate Salesforce with a wide range of apps, processes, and systems based on their business needs. Some of the best tools for salesforce integration include Mulesoft, Jitterbit, and TIBCO. Mulesoft has been acquired and integrated into the Salesforce Development ecosystem.

Leveraging Salesforce Integrations For Omnichannel Customer Engagement and Success

Omnichannel customer engagement can be defined in one of two ways. It can refer to the scope of a business’s customer engagements and connectivity with customers, spread across a wide range of marketing and communication channels, giving them access to the broadest possible customer pool. It can also refer to engaging with each customer on every channel seamlessly, ensuring that the level of customer service and engagement isn’t compromised as customers switch channels.

If you integrate Salesforce with all your customer communication and engagement channels, your business will be on track for omnichannel success. Salesforce still has a prominent integration dedicated to social media called Social Studio, but it is being phased out and will be fully retired by Nov 2024.

One of the first things you have to understand when leveraging Salesforce’s features and integrations for omnichannel marketing campaigns and strategies is that you cannot ignore the basics of good marketing, like understanding your customers and customer segmentation. A good Salesforce-based omnichannel marketing strategy will simply help you perform most of the important customer engagement functions more effectively and streamline the whole process. A few important considerations to take into account are:

• There are both direct and indirect (third-party) Salesforce connectors for customer engagement channels. Slack is a good example of direct Salesforce integration. If you are engaging with your customers on Slack, the data can be fed directly to Salesforce. However, if you want to manage your Facebook customer engagements, you may have to integrate Salesforce with the right third-party tools.
• You have to take into account not just the channels but the integrations as well. Orchestrating different Salesforce integrations spanning multiple social media and communication channels can add a significant burden for your sales teams, and if the Salesforce data integration is not seamless, you may not be able to leverage the full benefit of omnichannel marketing.
• Omnichannel marketing should be perceived (and planned for) as a customer journey. If more channels mean more hindrances for customers to jump over, they may lose interest in the engagement. For example, if a customer has to provide the same information on multiple channels, the redundancy may push them out of the sales funnel.
• Learn to leverage the full power of Salesforce integration for your omnichannel marketing. If you can automate salesforce tasks, create and run more personalized campaigns based on data you have gathered from multiple channels, and engage customers on multiple social media channels, your chances of converting them or increasing their lifetime value (LTV) may go up significantly.

Like most other CRM platforms, Salesforce is also leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence. In addition to connecting Salesforce to third-party apps, tools, and platforms that help you with data-driven decision-making regarding customer engagement, you can also connect it to AI tools for marketing and customer engagement. Chatbots are the simplest example of such a use case.

Final Words

Mastering omnichannel success is more than just about identifying the best tools for salesforce integration or expanding the breadth of your customer connection and engagement reach. It’s about applying the best marketing and customer engagement practices in conjunction with the customer relationship management functionalities and strengths Salesforce and Salesforce integrations offer.