In short
- Give users the Marketing User checkbox, and agree on campaign types and naming before anyone builds one.
- Set member statuses per campaign, and mark which ones count as responded.
- Turn on accounts as campaign members to run account-based campaigns.
- Tie campaigns to opportunities with Primary Campaign Source or Campaign Influence, and report on revenue.
How Salesforce campaign management works
A campaign is a record for one marketing effort: an event, a webinar, an email send, an ad campaign. Campaign members are the people, or accounts, it touched. Each member has a status, like Sent or Responded.
Opportunities link back to campaigns. That link is what lets you report revenue by campaign.
1. Set up campaigns before the first one
- Check the Marketing User box on the users who will create and manage campaigns.
- Set the campaign Type picklist to your real channels: Event, Webinar, Email, Paid Search, Paid Social, Referral.
- Agree on a naming rule, like year, channel and name, so campaigns sort and search cleanly.
- Add the fields you report on: budgeted cost, actual cost, expected revenue, and any of your own.
2. Set campaign member statuses
Each campaign has its own member statuses. The defaults are Sent and Responded. Set statuses that match the campaign.
- An event: Invited, Registered, Attended, No Show.
- A webinar: Registered, Attended, Watched Recording.
- Mark which statuses count as Responded. Campaign response totals use that flag.
3. Implement Salesforce campaigns for accounts
Leads and contacts can be campaign members by default. For account-based marketing, you want the account itself on the campaign.
Turn it on
In Setup, open Campaign settings and enable accounts as campaign members. It works in Lightning Experience.
Add the related list
Add the campaign members related list to the account layout, and the account members list to the campaign layout.
Add accounts
Add accounts from the campaign, or from a list view of accounts, and give each a status.
Report on it
Use the campaign reports with accounts, next to contact members from the same accounts.
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4. Use a campaign hierarchy
Put related campaigns under a parent, like each ad group under one paid search campaign for the year. The parent shows totals for everything below it: members, responses, opportunities and won revenue.
5. Tie campaigns to opportunities
- Primary Campaign Source: one campaign gets the credit for an opportunity. It can fill from the lead campaign at conversion.
- Campaign Influence: credit more than one campaign that touched the contacts on the opportunity.
- Pick one model to start, and tell sales how it works, so they do not change it by hand.
6. Get campaign data onto every lead
Campaigns are only as good as the data that puts people on them. We add five hidden fields to every form, chat and call: first and last click landing page URL, first and last click referring domain, and the converting page URL.
- Parse UTM parameters from the landing page URL into their own fields, and use them to add the lead to the right campaign.
- Bring call tracking data into Salesforce, including the campaign phone number the lead called. CallRail and CallTrackingMetrics have native Salesforce integrations.
- Use the native Google Ads integration to send results back to your ad campaigns.
7. Report on campaigns
- Campaign members by status, to see responses.
- Opportunities and won revenue by campaign, and by parent campaign.
- Cost per lead and cost per won deal, from the cost fields.
- A campaign dashboard, so marketing and sales see the same numbers.
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