Top 10 Questions: Integrating Adobe Campaign with CRM

Integrating and automating functionalities between your Adobe Campaign instance and choice Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) will yield great ROI in the form of an accelerated lead management process that allows your marketing team to push more qualified leads to your sales team with reduced manual workflow and more complex, personalized, multi-channel campaigns. Undeniably, most organizations desire these key efficiencies but there are still questions and concerns related to the cost and effort it will take to integrate the systems along with verification that systems will be seamlessly integrated, in a scalable way, that won’t present costly issues in the future.

Based on our work on more than 145 implementations, integrations and customizations, myself, along with Celerity’s team of highly experienced consultants and integration specialists have compiled a list of the most commonly asked questions when clients integrate Adobe Campaign to CRM Integration:

1. Does this require a custom API integration and code development?

Adobe Campaign has many out-of-the-box connections from various technologies like email routing for ESPs, SFTP accounts and multiple cloud-based marketing accounts. Hooking up to CRM is easy, all you need is an account, username, password and a security token. Within the system clients can leverage the configuration tool to connect to a variety of external accounts without needing any custom API builds.

2. Will this affect our CRM API limitations?

A lot of clients fear that connecting their Adobe Campaign system to their CRM will affect their maximum limit for API configurations on their CRM instance. Depending on the license you have with your CRM provider may determine the amount of daily API calls. To be sure, speak to your CRM provider.

 3. If we sync the systems are we exposing all of our CRM data schema to Adobe Campaign?

When the systems are being configured via the configuration wizard the Adobe Campaign admin will be able to see all the available tables for syncing but will only elect the tables that are the most relevant to marketing. This data mapping plan is an output from a strategic workshop conducted with the consultant and the key client stakeholders. At a basis it’s best to sync accounts, leads, and contacts but for other fields like campaign members, cases or activities may apply.

4. Does the configuration wizard handle all of the data syncing?

No, in this stage the data doesn’t actually sync, it simply tells Adobe Campaign what the data schema look like. This process will be enabled by a technical workflow that will be implemented as part of the consultant’s configuration process and will run on a pre-determined schedule ensuring that the data automatically flows between systems in a timely fashion.

5. Can I connect Adobe Campaign up to multiple CRM systems?

Yes, when your consultant is building the technical workflows they will utilize a tool called the ‘connector’ which will enable them to map your fields to multiple CRMs. There might be some work involved to deduplicate the specific workflows per CRM instance but Adobe Campaign can definitely support multiple instances. This is also a key differentiator for Adobe Campaign in terms of it’s ability to handle complex business models and data partitioning.

6. If the CRM administrator changes a field name in the CRM does it automatically update in Adobe Campaign?

No, if a field changes in CRM you must revisit the configuration wizard to make sure that the schema is updated. Otherwise you may receive error messages on your campaigns. This is why it is essential to implement a change management process between your CRM and Adobe Campaign stakeholders to ensure that all the bases are covered and your campaigns run as planned.

7. How do you create a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) in the system?

As part of the initial workshops your consultant will not only help your organization map your CRM and Adobe Campaign schema, they will also help you evaluate and determine your MQL process and evaluation criteria, align this with the types of campaigns you will execute and what the lead management process will be. The MQL process will then be automated via a ‘response query’ that is built into the workflow and triggers activity based on the customer taking a predetermined action on your campaign.

8. How does the MQL get to the CRM system?

Your consultant will help determine the lead management process and will create another technical workflow that triggers the manages the whole MQL process (ie., the updating of leads, contacts and campaign member statuses)

9. How do we automate qualifying if an MQL is an SQL?

This is a discussion that needs to take place with the CRM administrators. Where your MAP system consultant can help is in the initial planning stages when the sales, marketing and technical teams agree on a process that helps achieve the unique business goals. The MQL and lead management process in Adobe Campaign can be programmed and automated around what the SQL criteria and process is, to help illuminate and prioritize the best leads when they reach the CRM system. Your consultant can also help discuss the best options for pushing information to the CRM whether that is updating a field or creating a report for activity.

10. How does the tracking and reporting work between Adobe Campaign and CRM?

During this integration process the marketing campaigns become synced between systems as well as the campaign members, leads, and contacts. This means we have a already built the data syncs for attributing an opportunity or closed/won sales back to a specific campaign. Some clients automate sending this information to another third party business Intelligence tools.

Celerity are the global experts in Adobe Campaign implementation and integration. Applying more than a decade of experience, the team will assess your organization’s unique business needs and identify every opportunity to automate marketing, lead management and reporting functionalities. For more information on the advantages of connecting and automating your MAP system to CRM, read our whitepaper or request a demo.