Campaigns help you track different types of marketing initiatives and their performance. However, how marketing campaigns are defined will differ from organization to organization. The tools marketers use can dictate how they think about campaigns. So, understanding how campaigns work in different tools will help you establish a definition for your organization that can guide your marketing strategy. Here’s the difference between HubSpot and Salesforce campaigns.
HubSpot Campaigns
Key Benefits of HubSpot Campaigns:
- Designed for inbound marketing strategies
- Automatic asset association and tracking
- Comprehensive reporting and analytics on a single dashboard
- Seamless integration with the HubSpot ecosystem
- Streamlined campaign creation and management
HubSpot campaigns allow you to group related assets, so you can better report on them. Each of these campaigns should be centered around an activity you want prospects to do, such as downloading a premium content offer or booking a meeting, and the individual assets will be the content that guides prospects toward taking that action.
Inbound Marketing Focus
HubSpot's campaigns are specifically designed to support inbound marketing efforts. With features like automatic asset association and content type performance analytics, these campaigns enable marketers to effectively track and analyze the success of their inbound marketing strategies, such as content marketing, social media promotion, and email marketing.
Reporting and Analytics
One of the key strengths of HubSpot campaigns is the in-depth reporting and analytics available on a single campaign dashboard. Anyone who interacts with any assets linked to a campaign will then be automatically associated with that campaign in HubSpot, and you can manually associate contacts too if the engagement occurred offline. This association enables you to report on the impact of that campaign.
For example, you can see how many total contacts the campaign influenced, how many new contacts it converted, how many closed-won deals it influenced, and how much revenue can be attributed to it.
You can also see performance analytics broken down by content type within a campaign, so you can see the engagement linked social media posts have gotten or how many first-touches related blogs had in comparison to landing pages. That information is all available on a single campaign dashboard.
Asset Grouping and Engagement Tracking
HubSpot's asset grouping feature helps you organize and manage all the components of a campaign, ensuring that you can easily track engagement and measure results across various channels.
For example, if you have a campaign for an e-book, associated assets could include related blog posts, social media promotional posts, promotional emails, CTAs for that e-book and its landing page. The goal of that campaign would be to get leads to fill out a form in exchange for the e-book, and all of those assets would guide users toward the landing page and form.
By grouping these assets within a single campaign, you can get a comprehensive view of how well your campaign is performing and identify areas for improvement.
Integration with HubSpot's Ecosystem
A major benefit of HubSpot campaigns is their seamless integration with the entire HubSpot ecosystem, including CRM, email marketing, and marketing automation tools. This integration allows marketers to create, manage, and analyze their campaigns within a single platform, streamlining the entire marketing process.
The ability to connect and track all your marketing efforts in one place enables you to optimize your campaigns more effectively, gain a deeper understanding of your audience, and make data-driven decisions to enhance your overall revenue-driven strategy.
Plus, HubSpot is one of the most integration-friendly CRMs in the market, with its open API enabling various third-party tools to work seamlessly alongside the system.
Salesforce Campaigns
Key Benefits of Salesforce Campaigns:
- Ideal for outbound marketing tactics
- Flexible and customizable campaign structure
- In-depth reporting on revenue, opportunities, and deals
- Hierarchical campaign organization for better analysis
- Ability to calculate ROI based on budgets and generated revenue
Salesforce's campaigns are an object that you can associate leads and contacts with for reporting purposes. You can associate contacts manually by updating a property on individual contact records or by uploading a list. You could also automate aspects of that process using process automation in Salesforce.
Outbound Marketing Focus
Because the process of associating contacts with campaigns isn’t automatic, Salesforce campaigns typically work best for outbound campaigns, such as events, calling campaigns, or direct mail. The manual association of contacts with campaigns and the ability to set start and end dates, as well as budgets, makes Salesforce campaigns ideal for tracking and reporting on the performance of outbound initiatives.
Inbound Strategies in Salesforce
While it is possible to use Salesforce campaigns for inbound strategies too, doing so can require a lot of manual work that can be very tedious. You’d need to have unique UTM parameters for every asset and promotional channel. For example, one webpage might need five unique links to indicate if the contact arrived through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, an email or a CTA. On top of that, you’d need workflows within your marketing automation platform to associate contacts with campaigns.
Reporting and ROI
Salesforce campaigns allow you to report on the revenue, opportunities, and deals generated from the contacts and leads associated with them. Additionally, you can set start and end dates and budgets. Because you can track both the budget and the revenue generated for Salesforce campaigns, you can easily calculate ROI.
Hierarchical Structure
Salesforce also allows you to create hierarchies, so you can have a parent campaign and child campaigns. For example, if there’s an annual event you participate in each year, the event itself could be an overarching campaign, and within that, you could have smaller campaigns for each year’s event. This enables you to analyze those campaigns at an aggregate level and individually.
HubSpot and Salesforce Campaign Integration
By integrating HubSpot and Salesforce, you can streamline your marketing efforts, synchronize data between platforms, and gain deeper insights into campaign performance. This collaboration between the two platforms enables you to make better decisions, optimize your marketing strategy, and ultimately drive growth and success for your organization.
Streamlining Data Management and Synchronization
Integrating both campaigns can provide a more comprehensive view of your marketing efforts and help you make more informed decisions. By leveraging the strengths of each platform, you can optimize your campaigns and enhance your overall marketing strategy.
To enhance your HubSpot campaigns with Salesforce data, you can set up a bidirectional integration between the two platforms. This integration allows you to synchronize data, such as contact information, deals, and campaign associations, providing a more accurate and complete picture of your marketing efforts.
Gaining Deeper Insights into Campaign Performance
You can also use HubSpot workflows to automatically associate contacts with Salesforce campaigns. This ensures that contacts who interact with your inbound marketing efforts, such as registering for an event through a HubSpot landing page, are also associated with the corresponding Salesforce campaign.
Integrating both campaigns allows you to leverage the unique features and strengths of each platform, leading to more effective and efficient marketing campaigns. By combining the data and insights from both platforms, you can make better decisions and further optimize your marketing strategy to drive growth and success.
The Takeaway
HubSpot's campaigns are much better for tracking inbound efforts, and Salesforce campaigns have features that make them the better option for outbound tactics. If you use both tools, you can also use both types of campaigns.
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