Salesforce Labs Record Create for Salesforce Account Engagement

By Tectonic Marketing Consultant, Shannan Hearne

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Enhance Your Account Engagement: Explore the “Record Create” App for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

If you’re familiar with Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), you know that the connector between Salesforce and MCAE facilitates record creation and updates between the two platforms, allowing only read access for certain records. While addressing typical marketing needs, some organizations seek to expand their marketing data model, often leading to costly custom development, specialist maintenance, and increased technical debt.

Salesforce Labs Record Create for Salesforce Account Engagement

Enter Salesforce Labs, an initiative within Salesforce that empowers employees to develop and share apps on the AppExchange – all for free.

A recent addition to this program is the “Record Create” app, a valuable tool for extending connector capabilities while retaining control in your setup.

Key Insights into Salesforce AppExchange:

Understanding how Salesforce and Account Engagement (Pardot) collaborate is crucial. The Salesforce Connector for Account Engagement, a pre-built integration by Salesforce, facilitates data synchronization between the two platforms. The out-of-the-box data model categorizes syncing object behavior into one-directional or bi-directional sync, create/update, or read-only.

Challenges in Custom Object Syncing:

Despite the potential to customize objects in Account Engagement, limitations may arise, particularly with custom objects syncing to Account Engagement. These custom objects, originating from Salesforce, can either be custom or standard objects not covered by the out-of-the-box connector sync. It’s important to note that records syncing to Account Engagement are intended to be read-only, serving the purpose of data incorporation for segmentation and automation.

Salesforce Records Creatable from Account Engagement:

The standard connector allows the creation of various records, such as Prospects to Leads, Prospects to Contacts (if Reverse Syncing is enabled), Prospects to Campaign Members, and Tasks. However, beyond these scenarios, the connector predominantly works with other objects for reading or updating, not creating.

Introducing the “Record Create” App:

Addressing the limitations of record creation from Account Engagement, the “Record Create” app utilizes Salesforce Flow automation, coupled with an external action in Engagement Studio. This app, available for free, empowers users to trigger flows at the right time for individual prospects in their journey. External actions, configured within a Marketing App Extension, are included with the app.

Use Cases Covered by the App:

Various use cases, including the automatic launch of opportunities for prospects filling out a demo request form, creation of cases from Account Engagement forms, and handling diverse objects in industry clouds like higher education or nonprofits are just the beginning. Notably, the app also addresses the creation of opportunity contact roles, simplifying a task often deemed challenging for salespeople.

The “Record Create” app, a product of Salesforce Labs, is a solution to identify gaps in experience. Offering a means to extend connector capabilities, this tool empowers organizations to broaden their setup without incurring additional costs. Supported by the Salesforce team, the app facilitates customization while maintaining control over the setup.

For information on adding record create, contact Tectonic today.