A brief overview of Salesforce
Salesforce is the worlds most popular customer relationship management platform (CRM). The platform is utilised by businesses of all sizes, serving over 150,000 companies throughout the globe.
Essentially, Salesforce is one integrated CRM platform that gives departments a shared view of customer and prospect data. Helping to improve customer relationships and drive sales.
Why should you use a CRM like Salesforce?
A CRM solution such as Salesforce is an effective way for companies to create a 360-degree view of their customers and their business. But how does this benefit a business?
Improved customer service.
Salesforce allows you to gather all your customer information in one place. With access to unique customer information teams can craft more personal messages and content. By delivering a more personal experience to customers you are more likely to satisfy their needs.
Improved customer retention.
It’s important to understand what keeps your customers coming back. By utilising Salesforce, you can identify the reasons why customers are returning and double down on these aspects turning more customers into brand advocates.
Increased sales.
With more accessible customer data you can establish patterns and trends which enables you to target prospects more effectively, increasing your ROI.
What’s more is your sales team have greater customer visibility. Helping them seek out more upselling opportunities.
Why would you integrate your website with Salesforce?
The reasons can differ based on your business requirements but, often businesses integrate their salesforce system with their websites for the following reasons:
Remove Manual Tasks
When using a variety of business platforms teams often perform a lot of manual data entries. By integrating Salesforce with other systems, you remove the need to copy and paste data. In return giving teams more time to focus on other tasks.
Enrich data.
By syncing key data such as orders and customers from your website into Salesforce, teams not only have more data to analyse but, the data they access is in real-time. Helping improve strategy and decision making.
Improve data accuracy.
This is a further benefit provided by removing manual tasks. By automating manual data entry, human errors are completely removed. Allowing businesses to reduce costly errors and maintain complete data accuracy.
Remove data silos.
By integrating Salesforce, you immediately remove data silos. Integrating salesforce gives teams access to key information at their fingertips. Helping improve internal communication.
So, now that we know why you should integrate your websites with Salesforce, let’s discuss the how.
How can you integrate your website with Salesforce?
Web-to-lead form
Whilst it may not transfer all the data you need. A simple way to connect your website to Salesforce is using the Web-to-Lead forms function.
A web-to-lead form allows you to send web form submissions straight into Salesforce. Allowing you to capture contact details, business addresses, and much more.
The salesforce website offers a comprehensive list of the lead fields that you can choose from.
The Web-to-Lead form function built into Salesforce generates an HTML contact form based on your preferences. This form can then be copied into the HTML code of your website.
Once set-up, whenever a user on your website fills in a form, a lead record will be created in Salesforce with the lead source ‘web’.
The advantage of this is that the coding is generated for you so, anyone with access to the website can set this up without coding knowledge.
If this is as far as you want to take your Salesforce and Website connectivity then look no further. However, there are other integration solutions which offer much more than a lead import.
Coded Integration
A more comprehensive way to connect salesforce with your websites would be a code-based integration. Writing a custom integration allows your applications to communicate in a way that exactly fits your business needs.
The code-based method allows you to connect almost anything with Salesforce. However, it must be said that a coded integration requires a lot of time and effort. Not to mention an experienced Salesforce developer.
For a large organisation with an internal development team or the budget to hire one, a coded connection would work best to handle any complex integration needs. However, businesses without the resource or time will benefit more from an iPaaS solution.
iPaaS / Application integration
An integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is a cloud platform that allows businesses to build integrations between their applications. Whether they are cloud-based or on premise.
Generally speaking, an iPaaS will be an online app offering pre-built workflows and integration mappings. As well as the tools to create custom integrations.
Choosing an iPaaS to integrate Salesforce with your websites has many benefits.
One being their ease of use. With iPaaS applications offering pre-built integration mappings you can connect Salesforce to your website without the need for any coding. Most solutions offer drag and drop features and walkthrough guides to get your integrations running smoothly. Without requiring any advanced IT knowledge.
What’s more is iPaaS solutions are often great value. Without the need for coding, you remove the heavy cost of development, implementation or even training. As iPaaS solutions are cloud hosted there’s also no need to pay for any updates or hardware. The actual pricing of iPaaS solutions is significantly lower than that of a bespoke build and offer the ability to make any adjustments without incurring costs, making them the most cost-effective way to integrate your salesforce CRM system.
Overall, iPaaS makes it easier to automate processes, develop and deploy data flows between all your business applications.
Check out our other article, What is iPaaS? for a more detailed insight.
The bottom line
Whether it’s a service site or ecommerce store, syncing your website with Salesforce will help improve the customer experience, increase sales, and boost productivity.
By leveraging the capabilities of the Salesforce (CRM) platform, you can access relevant insights into customer behaviours and preferences. Enabling your team to deliver personalised and targeted marketing campaigns and improve customer interaction.
The integration needs of ever business vary. But those businesses looking for a faster, flexible and simple solution to connect their various business applications need to consider an iPaaS.
With a wide range of features and capabilities, iPaaS platforms can help businesses unlock the full potential of their data and applications. Ultimately driving innovation and growth.
Learn more about the considerations to make when choosing an iPaaS solution in our blog or check out our list of Salesforce and web integrations.
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