Individual Email Results in Salesforce (For Marketing Cloud)

In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, there are several first-party data sources which are easily accessible, but can be overlooked.

Email marketing collects a mass of email analytics data. Sent emails are tracked on each side – both in Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud. This is where Individual Email Results (IERs) come in, to store Marketing Cloud email analytics in Salesforce. 

This is possible through using Marketing Cloud Connect, which brings Marketing Cloud and the Salesforce CRM together. This means:

• Salesforce CRM users, such as sales reps, can use Sales Cloud to send emails which have been built in Marketing Cloud.  
• Marketers can use Salesforce data (and the insight the sales team has captured) to send effective emails from Marketing Cloud. 

In the second scenario above, marketers can send emails from SFMC, and the email analytics are captured in Individual Email Results (IERs). Let’s explore more about IERs, including how to view them, their storage and deletion, plus common issues you may come across.

What Are Individual Email Results?

Individual Email Results (IERs) are related to the Salesforce Contact or a Lead record. They help CRM users understand your prospect/customer engagement by providing detailed information about each email send – including email name, open time, clicks, etc. 

When viewing a Salesforce Contact or a Lead record, you will see Individual Email Results (IERs) displayed in related lists. These results are synced from Marketing Cloud Connect (see how to set this up here).

Individual Email Results are stored in Salesforce as an object that are deployed during the Marketing Cloud Connect activation. Then, IERs are created in the following ways:

• When sending emails from Marketing Cloud, e.g. from Email Studio, Journey Builder, triggered sends, Marketing Cloud users should select the checkbox “Send Tracking Results to Sales Cloud” to automatically create IERs in Salesforce.
• When sending emails from Salesforce, by using the Email Send tab for a Campaign or report. 

Note: The 18-digit Salesforce Contact Id should be used as the Marketing Cloud Subscriber Key. Tracking data from Marketing Cloud syncs to Salesforce CRM hourly (configured during Marketing Cloud Connect set up).

Individual Link Level Details

IERs have a relationship with the Individual Link Level Details object. These records hold the details related to the individual email links, including Link Name, Unique Link ID, Link URL, Click etc.

How to View Individual Email Results

Find Individual Email Results viewed in Salesforce by following these steps:

• Go to the relevant contact or Lead record.
• Select the Related list → Select Individual Email Results in it.
• Select the relevant Email Name in the Individual Email Results.
• View the IERs for that specific email name (image below).

Individual Email Results Storage and Deletion

Each IERs record stored in Salesforce takes up around 2KB/record. The number of IERs you have is known to increase pretty quickly, resulting in customers having to spend time or money to optimize the storage of IER data. 

You can check how much storage IERs are consuming from Salesforce Setup → Company Information → click on Used Data Space.

One way to mitigate this situation is to delete unwanted IER tracking data from Salesforce either manually or by using a custom solution (explained later). Manually delete the tracking data from Salesforce by following these steps:

• Go to Marketing Cloud Tab in Salesforce → click on Configure Marketing Cloud Connector.
• Click Tracking Data Cleanup and then choose the tracking data to delete. (Note: There is an option to delete all the tracking data in Salesforce.)
• Choose the IERs for deletion.

Common Issues With Individual Email Results (+ How to Solve Them)

You may face challenges when working with IERs – three of the common ones are:

1. Tracking data sync delays: As per the Marketing Cloud Connect configuration, tracking data should sync hourly from Marketing to Salesforce. However, if you have large volumes of data all attempting to sync at once, you should expect the process to take much longer. One workaround is to click on the “Request Tracking Immediately” button on the Email Send record, which retrieves the tracking data faster. Alternatively, raise a support case with Salesforce if sync is a recurring issue. 
2. Tracking data not populating in Salesforce: There might be a few reasons behind tracking data not appearing in IERs in Salesforce. Firstly we need to check that 18 digit Salesforce Contact Id is used as the Subscriber Key in Marketing Cloud. Secondly, check that when sending emails from Marketing Cloud, users selected the checkbox “Send Tracking Results to Sales Cloud”. Thirdly, the audiences selected for sending the email from SFMC should be from Salesforce Data extensions and not other data extensions. 
3. IERs tracking data storage issues: To minimize the storage issue in Salesforce, firstly (as mentioned above), we can delete the tracking data from Salesforce. Secondly, only check the “Send Tracking Results” to Sales Cloud checkbox for essential emails you want tracked as IER data. Thirdly, we can transfer the tracking data from customer IER objects to big objects or external systems to avoid extra storage costs. This requires a custom solution to be built and maintained. 

Summary

IERs are a great asset for analyzing email analytics for Contacts and Leads. In this article, we understood the fundamentals of IERs in the context of Marketing Cloud, as well as the storage implications of the IERs. This should help you uncover any recurring IER issues in, and mitigate accordingly.