Grant Access Permissions to Salesforce Campaigns: The Marketing User Checkbox

The “Marketing User” checkbox is perhaps one of the quirkiest Salesforce settings. A field found on the user record, enabling this checkbox will give a user the ability to create, edit, and delete campaign records, plus other campaign management capabilities. 

So, next time a user says “I can’t create campaigns”, you know where to look first.

Salesforce Marketing User Checkbox Capabilities 

• Campaign records: Create, edit, and delete.
• Campaign member statuses: From the campaign member statuses related list on campaign records, add or edit statuses applicable to that campaign (including changing the default status).

• Import campaign members: From the campaign members related list, import leads or contacts as campaign members.
  • The user must also have Read permission on contacts or the Import permission on Leads, and Edit permission on campaigns.
  • If accounts as campaign members is enabled, users will also be able to import accounts. 
• Edit campaign history: From the campaign history related list on lead or contact records, add new campaign history, edit the related campaign, or delete entries for single or multiple leads/contacts.
  • Without the “Marketing User” checkbox enabled, they can only edit the campaign history for a single lead or contact.

Enable a Marketing User in Salesforce

1. Go to the user’s record. In Setup, search for “users” in the Quick Find box, then locate the user’s record in the list. 

2. Click the Edit button, then select the “Marketing User” checkbox. 

Checking Who’s a Marketing User

So, we have the user profile. We may have marketing-specific permission sets. As we’ve established, it can be easy to miss ticking the Marketing User checkbox. 

You can get a quick glance into your user base by pulling a report. 

• Go to the reports tab in Salesforce. Click the New button. 
• On the left-hand panel (category list), click All.
• In the search report types box, type users. Select Users, and click Start Report when it appears in the right-hand panel.

• Now in the report builder, you will see there are fields already added by default. Profile is already there; you will need to add Marketing User and User ID.

• Use the filters sub-tab (on the left-hand panel of the report builder) to filter down. One default filter that will appear should be set to active users. Depending on what you need at that moment in time, for example, you could decide to filter users who have a ‘Marketing’ (or similar) profile. From there, you can then see which users do/don’t have the Marketing User checkbox enabled.

The reason why I suggested adding the User ID field is in case you need to export the report, do a bulk update, then reimport back into Salesforce. 

Access to Campaigns – Not Profiles or Permission Sets

What’s ‘quirky’ about the “Marketing User” checkbox, is that it gives access to a set of permissions (no, not permission sets…let me explain).  

Permissions to do certain actions in Salesforce – for example, delete an opportunity record – are added to a user’s record using profiles and permission sets. This helps to keep permissions somewhat reusable, as the same grouping of permissions can be assigned to multiple users. 

Aside from profiles and permission sets, there are other checkboxes on the user record representing permissions to external applications. This is what makes the “Marketing User” checkbox unusual – it’s one of the only checkbox permissions that grants access to a specific part of your org.

Access to every other object in Salesforce is managed at the profile level in the profile’s ‘Object Settings’ (shown in the image below).

When setting up a user, you must select a profile. There is a standard Marketing User profile, which is limited to read-only for campaign records. Therefore, the Marketing User checkbox enhances the marketer’s capabilities immensely.

Note: Profiles work in conjunction with permission sets and permission set groups. Also, Salesforce will be moving away from profiles, in favor of permission sets. More information on the change can be found in the guide below:

There’s been an idea submitted on the IdeaExchange to suggest this is aligned to the usual permission set assignment. If you like the idea, upvote it! (Note that one commenter suggested a script that can run in the background to keep the appropriate user records aligned with the Marketing User checkbox – I personally haven’t tested this, but with many users, it could be worth testing it in a sandbox). 

Summary 

Whether you take care of user management (creating, updating, freezing) it’s beneficial to be aware of this permission that breaks the mold of typical profiles and permission sets. 

*Import leads and contacts also requires either import on leads or read on contacts.

If you liked this guide, you may find the other system quirks that marketing admins and marketers should know about: