Salesforce Marketing Cloud Implementation: 10 Common Mistakes to Avoid

As a CMO in a Salesforce partner consultancy, I was a part of the team that successfully implemented a new instance of Marketing Cloud Personalization for a multinational company based in Europe. This step has cemented our reputation as a successful Salesforce partner and helped to develop our business by landing more clients and projects.   

However, many organizations make common mistakes during the implementation process. That can lead to delays, increased costs, and unsuccessful outcomes. The following are ten failures I often come across that even the best organizations are not always immune to. 

1. Skipping the Discovery Phase

The discovery phase is a way to start a successful Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation. Discovery means you need to gather all necessary information about your (or your client’s) business requirements, goals, and challenges. This includes understanding your audience, identifying your key metrics, and defining your personalization strategy.

Pro Tips:

• Create a checklist. This will help you get ready for your first implementation discussion, ensuring that all bases are covered and that you have a solid foundation to build upon.
• Make sure all stakeholders are included from the early stages. We’ll cover stakeholders further down.

2. Failing to Document Business Requirements

Before diving into any implementation, make sure to prepare clear documentation of your business requirements. This is essential to help you design an implementation that will fulfill the requirements and identify any unclear areas. Understand them fully and ensure you have everything “on paper” and shared among the stakeholders.

You don’t need complicated or expensive tools for this. For example, Google Docs will be sufficient for storing and sharing all critical data.

Here, communication is essential. This means that you have to collaborate within your organization and beyond to ensure that all critical information is easily accessible in a shared file. You want to eliminate confusion among stakeholders and unnecessary time loss. 

Pro Tips:

• Document your business requirements thoroughly, based on input from stakeholders.
  • Double-check, triple-check, and ensure that your list includes all stakeholders. Did you consider marketing, sales, IT, and customer service? Are the executive leaders on the same page?
• Use the most relevant and effective tools.
  • Document Management Tools: This is where you’ll keep all of the information gathered from stakeholders. Google Docs and Microsoft Word are excellent starting points because your organization likely already uses them. Confluence is another tool for creating documents and managing requirements. It provides pre-built templates for a variety of documents, including meeting notes, project plans, and status reports. It also works with other Atlassian products, including Jira and Trello.
  • Requirements Management Tools: Jira is a popular agile project management application for tracking requirements and managing implementation. Trello and Asana are popular task-management apps that can keep track of corporate requirements just as well.

All of these tools offer collaborative and storage capabilities and are very easy to use.

• Don’t forget that a picture can be worth a thousand words.
  • Miro is a collaborative whiteboard tool that allows you to build visual representations of requirements like mind maps and process diagrams. Lucidchart is a diagramming tool that allows you to build flowcharts, UML diagrams, and other visual representations of requirements.
• Use this documentation to guide your implementation.
  • Once you’re convinced that all business requirements have been recorded, don’t just leave it at that. Review your documentation at each stage of your implementation. Encourage stakeholders to base their efforts on it. Keep communication channels open. 

3. Failing to Identify the Right Implementation Partner

Choosing the right implementation partner is crucial for the success of your Salesforce Marketing Cloud project. Surely by now you know many consultants, architects and implementation partners there are. But how do you know which of them is right for your organization? 

A good partner will offer ongoing support and thorough solution documentation, ensuring that you have the resources needed to maintain and optimize your system post-implementation. 

Pro Tips:

• Do your networking. Use LinkedIn, AppExchange and Partner Communitiy (when applicable). Connect with the community and try to identify consultancies and professionals that are most promising. 
• Look for a partner with a proven track record, certified team members, and strong project management practices.
• Ensure they really understand and appreciate your business needs.

4. Not Identifying Stakeholders and Processes Early in the Implementation

Identifying key stakeholders early in the implementation process ensures everyone who needs to be involved is on the same page from the start.

This includes executives, developers, business users, and anyone responsible for website operations or data integrations within your organization. 

As well as your key stakeholders, you should also identify and map your business processes. 

Business process mapping visually outlines business processes, roles, and responsibilities, ensuring that they align with organizational goals. 

There are process mapping software platforms that are either free to use or have limited free editions. Some of these are most likely already in use within your organization. 

Pro Tips:

• Organize knowledge transfer sessions (online or offline) to ensure that all team members understand the solution and can contribute effectively. Include all developers and business users in knowledge transfer sessions. Review solution documentation thoroughly and address all questions before project completion.
• There are several process mapping software platforms available for free or with limited free editions. Google Drawings is a feature of Google Workspace used by many, and is a simple process mapping tool. It integrates with Google Drive. Lucidchart is one of the most popular diagram tools. It allows you to design flowcharts, process maps, org charts, and other diagrams. Canva is another popular tool. It provides templates and functionality for developing process maps. It allows for easy customization, real-time collaboration, and integration with other technologies.

5. Neglecting Your Audience and Your Personalization Strategy

Only with a clear strategy will your personalization efforts be effective. You need to understand your audience, properly segment them into separate groups, and provide customized content that resonates with them.

Pro Tips:

• Make sure to include the segmentation, content strategy, A/B testing, and continuous optimization in your daily efforts.
• Divide your audience into smaller, more targeted segments based on their demographics, characteristics, and behaviors. 
• Create content that will appeal to specific needs and interests, such as product recommendations and customized landing pages.
• Test different subject lines, call-to-actions, or content formats.
• Monitor the performance of your personalization efforts and make adjustments as needed.

6. Overlooking Data Access and Security Requirements

Understanding your company’s data access and security requirements and implementing them correctly is essential for avoiding data breaches and ensuring compliance with regulations.

Pro Tips:

• Use datasets. By segmenting your data into different datasets, you can manage who has access to specific information.
  • Datasets are all about User Permissions. You may control user access by segmenting data into various datasets and using a combination of profiles, permission settings, and sharing rules.
  • Each user on your project will have their own Salesforce Profile. There, the user’s baseline level of access to objects and data is established. You can control what users can do in Salesforce using Object-level access (which objects a user may view, create, edit, or delete), Field-level access (which fields inside an object a user can view or edit), and Tab settings  (which tabs a user can see). 
  • If you need to set permissions for a group of users, you’ll need Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups. This allows you to give users additional access without modifying their profiles. Permission sets can control Object and Field permissions (in more detail than in profiles), and App and system permissions (access to specific apps or system functionalities).
  • Sharing rules are used to provide sharing permissions to users in public groups, roles, or territories. They let you specify which records should be shared and with whom. Sharing rules can be divided into two types: Owner-based sharing (sharing records owned by specific individuals with others) and Criteria-based sharing (sharing records that meet certain criteria with others).
  • Role Hierarchies ensure that managers and subordinates have access to the same data, but not vice versa. A clear hierarchy ensures that higher-level positions have access to the data of their team members.
• Separate datasets for different regions or brands. This ensures data is not inadvertently shared across regions or brands. 
• Work together with your IT and legal teams to understand your company’s data access and security requirements and implement them correctly. 
• Salesforce users’ access and actions are determined by their profiles, roles, and permission sets. In this post, Lucy explains the distinction between Salesforce Roles and Profiles. 
• Salesforce list views allow you to manage your data segmentation more efficiently and, more crucially, control which records your users can see. Christine explains how best to manage user access.
• Click here to learn how to effectively clean your Salesforce data using readily available GenAI platforms. 

7. Ignoring the Importance of Business Units

You need to set up business units to avoid data mishandling. Also, enforce the account separation. It allows for enhanced security measures and better management of marketing activities across different segments of your organization.

Pro Tips:

• Correctly set up business units with sets of permissions and access controls. This minimizes the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access.
• Ensure each business unit can function autonomously, managing its marketing campaigns, data, and assets.

8. Underestimating the Complexity of Data Integrations

Ensure that your IT team is prepared and you have a clear plan for how many datasets you need and how they’ll be managed. 

Pro Tip:

Plan how many datasets you need. Separate datasets can help manage data access and security early in the process, preventing possible issues in the future.

9. Overlooking Change Management

Implementing a new system like Salesforce Marketing Cloud often requires significant changes in how people work. Communicate early and often with your team about the upcoming changes, the benefits, and how they’ll impact your daily work.

Pro Tip: 

Organise training sessions and ongoing support to help your team get comfortable with the new system.

Overlooking the Implementation Steps

Ensure that you follow a clear implementation path. Answering requirement questions early and ensuring that all team members understand the implementation steps can prevent delays and ensure a more efficient rollout.

Your implementation path will be similar to the layout of this article. There, you’ll define the stakeholders, goals, timeline, and requirements. You’ll also plan the testing and go-live stages.  

Andrew went into much detail in this article. It provides guidance throughout the Salesforce implementation process. 

Pro Tips:

• Keep the communication flowing. Continue reviewing steps and formulate answers to requirement questions. This is all about your business operations and whether your organization is functioning effectively. 
• Appoint a project owner who’ll ensure that these steps are implemented, whether it’s an account manager or a CXO in your organization. The project owner must revisit the business requirements documentation daily and thoroughly. Again, it’s all about communication, agility, and processes. 
• Use one of the project management tools explained above, such as Jira, Trello, or Asana, to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page.
• Create Sprints, say once every two weeks, during which you’ll review every step and plan for the immediate future.
• For daily communication, choose an advanced business chat platform like Slack, or Microsoft Teams. You may create teams and set reminders to help you manage your everyday duties more effectively. 

Summary

Implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a complex process that requires careful planning and execution. By avoiding these common mistakes, you can increase the likelihood of success. Remember to plan carefully, choose the right partners, and involve your team throughout the process.