How to use an SMS Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration

 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is probably one of your favorite platforms. Marketers can use it to engage and track leads with effective marketing tools, including email drip campaigns and landing pages—all from a single central hub. An SMS Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration can help you increase lead engagement and acquisition with the addition of a popular channel: business texting.

A Salesforce SMS integration allows Salesforce and your business texting platform to share data. Real-time data sharing helps marketers maintain accurate lead and customer data and use advanced content dissemination tools, like SMS drip campaigns.

Read on to learn how to use an SMS Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration to send an SMS from Marketing Cloud.

Access accurate data with platform syncing

As soon as you set it up, a Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS integration automatically syncs data between Salesforce and your business texting platform. Any contact data you add to one platform immediately updates in the other platform.

For example, when you publish your business SMS number, you’ll ask leads to text in with a keyword to join your SMS list. Then, your platform will auto-reply with an opt-in confirmation text. Once your lead has confirmed their opt-in, your business SMS platform can be set to sync the contact automatically with Marketing Cloud. Subsequent changes in one platform update in the other platform. For example, if a salesperson adds a custom field to the lead’s account in Salesforce, those custom fields will appear in your business texting platform as merge tokens that you can use when sending an SMS from Marketing Cloud.

Platform syncing ensures that the data you use in marketing campaigns is always accurate. When creating targeted, personalized content, accurate data can mean the difference between appealing messaging and messaging that’s way off the mark.

Increase open rates with mass texts

Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS integrations allow marketers to personalize mass texts. Team members simply create templates with space for Salesforce’s custom fields. Then, they can select a list of leads and press “send.” The business texting platform will automatically insert leads’ custom fields into messages you send from SMS Marketing Cloud.

Leads are more likely to read SMS marketing content than content sent through any other channel. In fact, 98% of text messages are read by recipients. Personalized mass texts with Marketing Cloud SMS help your marketers get their content into the hands of more leads, increasing engagement and, ultimately, conversions.

Engage more leads through Journey Builder

With a Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS integration, marketers can expand their workflow sequences through Journey Builder. Adding texts to other communications through Journey Builder is a great way to engage leads and get responses.

For example, emails are a popular tool for initial lead engagement. But emails only have an open rate of about 20%. Now, your teams can send follow-up texts when leads don’t open or respond to your emails. They’re far more likely to open these messages. They may even reply, given that the response rate can be as high as 80%.

Adding texting to Journey Builder is a great way to ensure your content is reaching leads—and that they’re reading it.

Boost conversions with two-way conversations

Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS also allows marketers to track (or respond to) customer texts directly within the Marketing Cloud interface. They don’t have to leave the platform to start a two-way SMS Marketing Cloud conversation.

If marketers are the point-people for product- or campaign-related questions, answering customer chats can be a great way to connect with their audience intimately. Leads and customers can get the most accurate answers from the source. Plus, they’ll know that the SMS content they receive is being sent by individuals. Even if your customer service or sales team members answer incoming texts, marketers can still benefit from reading lead responses and gauging their audience’s overall response.

Adding two-way SMS to Marketing Cloud enables one-on-one chats that are a great way to connect directly with your audience, giving them accurate, personalized answers that increase conversions. Getting a sense of the audience’s replies will empower your marketers to hone their strategies, attracting more engagement overall.

Save time with channels in one place

Marketers engage leads from a variety of channels. Leads and customers are more likely to remember your messaging if they see it in multiple formats. Cross-channel marketing is a great strategy, but managing content on multiple platforms can be time-consuming and error-prone.

An SMS Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration centralizes your SMS marketing tools alongside your other channels, like email. You can manage email campaigns one second and then move to SMS marketing campaigns the next.

With all your marketing channels in one place, your team can streamline content creation and management. Instead of spending time fiddling between platforms, you can focus on creating on-brand, quality content that boosts conversions.