Salesforce offers almost too many products. It’s part of what makes it so dominant in sales and marketing, but it’s also part of what makes it nearly impossible to figure out. What are the best tools for your business to take advantage of first? Where do you even start?
That’s why we asked seven experts for insights into how they use Salesforce’s products. They shared how they get the most out of Salesforce.
7 ways sales and marketing experts use Salesforce products
Here’s how to elevate your organization’s efficiency and results with Salesforce. Skip ahead to one that interests you, or read on for the full list of insights.
Marketing Cloud Intelligence for centralized data analytics
Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Intelligence platform (formerly known as Datorama) lets you collect and visualize all types of performance data.
Marketers would be nowhere without data—which Tomasz Borys, Senior VP of Marketing and Sales at California security camera company Deep Sentinel, knows very well. “Our team has transformed our marketing through [Salesforce’s] centralized data analytics platform. We now have a unified view of all our marketing channels in one dashboard. This centralization has revealed interesting patterns in our customer acquisition journey.”
The platform also uses AI to help you actually get something from all that information. Tomasz continues, “The AI-powered insights led us to enhance our data-driven decision-making through a sophisticated content strategy. We now create detailed technical whitepapers and video demonstrations of our AI technology. Our marketing data from various sources is unified, allowing us to track performance across all channels. This comprehensive view helped us optimize our campaign budget allocation effectively. The analytics showed that this approach attracted more qualified leads and shortened our sales cycle by approximately 45%.”
Beyond improved lead generation and sales processes, Deep Sentinel has also used Marketing Cloud Intelligence to measure ROI. Tomasz says, “The ROI measurement capabilities have delivered remarkable results. By leveraging cross-channel performance metrics, we’ve been able to identify the most effective marketing touchpoints. This has allowed us to reduce our cost per acquisition by 52% while increasing the average contract value by 22%. We can now accurately measure ROI across multiple marketing channels simultaneously.”
Process Builder for task automation
Salesforce’s Process Builder lets users build custom automated workflows, which can help streamline your sales team’s communications and onboarding process.
According to Will Yang, the Head of Growth and Marketing at California-based grant-management platform Instrumentl, they use Salesforce to integrate their sales processes with their SaaS platform. Will explains, “The Process Builder automates routine tasks that our sales reps would otherwise have to do manually. For instance, when a new nonprofit signs up for a trial, Process Builder triggers an automated sequence of follow-up actions, like personalized emails and task assignments to reps to reach out and offer assistance. This ensures consistent and timely engagement without the risk of human error or delay.”
If Salesforce doesn’t have the built-in automation you need, you can connect it to Zapier for more advanced and customizable workflows. These Zaps let you send personalized follow-ups, create tasks in popular task management apps, and send notifications for time-sensitive activity to keep your team in the loop. Here are some examples to get you started.
To get started with a Zap template—what we call our pre-made workflows—just click on the button. It only takes a few minutes to set up. You can read more about setting up Zaps here.
Journey Builder for enhancing engagement
Customer interest can be fleeting, which is why it’s important to guide them through the sales funnel smoothly and without any unnecessary delays. Salesforce’s Journey Builder can help automate that process.
Take it from Guy Sheetrit, founder of international digital marketing agency OTT Inc: “Using Journey Builder, we built an automated nurture campaign for leads in the evaluation phase of our sales funnel. We used its AI-driven insights to segment our audience based on behavior like email opens, website visits, and previous engagement. Afterward, they were assigned custom journeys for each segment.”
Guy explains, “Using this level of automation, we reduced manual follow-up tasks by 40%, while simultaneously increasing our lead-to-customer conversion rate by 28%, over a period of six months. In addition, the real time analytics in Journey Builder allowed us to tweak the campaigns based on drop-off points. We can now dial in at scale, building dynamic and personal customer journeys that increase engagement and conversions.”
Customer 360 for centralizing customer data
Salesforce’s Customer 360 is a CRM that consolidates and organizes customer data across the sales funnel. It can help your team not only stay organized but also get the whole picture for each customer and prospect.
“One of the biggest challenges in marketing is dealing with scattered or incomplete customer data,” explains Karan Rawal, Digital Solutions Architect at California-based digital marketing agency AQe Digital. “Customer 360 addresses this by providing a central platform where we can access all customer interactions, preferences, and histories. With this reliable source, our team can create personalized campaigns based on real-time insights, making sure we reach the right audience at the right time.”
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) for better lead nurturing
Sometimes it can be hard to coordinate sales and marketing teams—but without effective communication, you miss out on potential revenue. Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE)—which some folks still refer to by its old name, Pardot—lets you drive seamless collaboration between your sales and marketing teams.
Manas Wats, Sales Head for BigOhTech, says the tool has been instrumental in their company’s success. “A notable example is how we utilized Salesforce MCAE to enhance lead nurturing and prioritization. By integrating MCAE with our CRM, the marketing team was able to effectively segment and nurture leads based on engagement, while the sales team gained real-time insights into lead behavior, such as email interactions and website activity.”
This integration significantly improved their efficiency. Manas explains, “Our sales team could focus on high-priority leads, reducing response times by 40%. Additionally, Einstein AI insights provided predictive analytics, enabling us to identify and target leads with the highest conversion potential. As a result, we saw a 25% boost in conversion rates and a more streamlined, effective sales process.”
Einstein Analytics for better insights
Salesforce’s Einstein Analytics feature lets you build custom dashboards and reports that not only help you visualize your sales data but also save time in the process. Just set up your parameters, and the automated dashboards populate reports with a click.
Janelle Warner, co-director of Australian creative marketing agency Born Social, says Einstein Analytics is crucial to her team’s workflow: “By building custom dashboards and reports in Einstein Analytics, we were able to surface key trends and insights around our sales pipeline, customer retention, and lead conversion rates. We could see at a glance where opportunities existed to improve results. The data visualization capabilities also allowed us to easily share insights with everyone to align on priority accounts and strategy.”
And the results? “Within a few months of rolling out Einstein Analytics, we saw a 12% increase in closed deals,” Janelle says. “We had greater visibility into factors influencing the sales cycle and could adjust our outreach accordingly. The sales operations team also gained efficiency by replacing manual report creation with automated Einstein Analytics dashboards. “
Lead Management for custom lead scoring
Because Salesforce’s Lead Management tool has custom lead scoring, you can use it to set up lead analysis based on your business’s unique processes and priorities.
The team at Cloudways, a managed cloud hosting platform, uses the feature to stay organized and focused on high-potential leads. Digital Marketing Manager Umair Hussain shares, “One specific example was during a product launch. We created custom lead scoring rules in Salesforce to prioritize leads based on their interactions—like opening emails or downloading resources.”
Umair continues, “This helped the sales team focus their energy on the most engaged prospects. As a result, we saw a 25% increase in conversion rates because we were reaching out to the right people at the right time. My takeaway? Customize Salesforce to match your process and let the data guide your efforts. It saves time and delivers better results.”
How will you get the most out of Salesforce products?
Salesforce offers a massive suite of powerful tools and features—which, while impressive, can make it easy to get overwhelmed for beginners. The key to using Salesforce products effectively for your own team is to start small. What features are most important to you? If you need simplified and centralized data analytics, start by setting up Marketing Cloud or Einstein Analytics. If automated processes are more important to you, experiment with tools like Process Builder and Journey Builder.
To get the most out of your Salesforce apps, it’s also a good idea to connect Salesforce to the rest of your tech stack. Use Zapier’s Salesforce integration to do things like importing new leads from multiple sources, getting notifications for warm leads, and nurturing contacts automatically. That way, your sales and marketing software is doing the heavy lifting for you, so you have more time to actually build relationships with new customers. Learn more about how to automate Salesforce, or use one of these popular templates to get started.
Zapier is the leader in workflow automation—integrating with thousands of apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Use interfaces, data tables, and logic to build secure, automated systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization’s technology stack. Learn more.
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