Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) connector

The Optimizely Digital Experience Platform contains many features to support you in your daily work. Depending on how your solution is set up, some features described in this documentation may not be available to you. Contact your system administrator to find out more. See Optimizely World for technical information.

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) connector add-on automatically exports form data from your website to your Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) account database by mapping Optimizely form fields to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) database fields. For information about other database connector add-ons, see Marketing Automation.

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) connector add-on Plug-in or module, developed by Optimizely or its partners, to extend the capabilities of Optimizely. Add-ons are installed by Optimizely developers. supports Data Extensions. However, Data Extensions do not support Optimizely auto-fill, personalization, visitor groups, and dynamic content features. (These features are supported for the Subscriber database.)

Setting up Optimizely forms with Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget)

The Forms Marketing Automation Integration (MAI Stands for "Marketing Automation Integration") connector lets you connect Optimizely form fields to a Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) database. See also: Marketing Automation.

A developer must install the Forms Marketing Automation connector and the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) connector. See Optimizely World for more information.

  1. In the Optimizely CMS admin view, select  Config > Tool Settings > ExactTarget. The ExactTarget configuration settings screen appears.

    Image: Configuring the ExactTarget connector

    You can have multiple instances of the same connector. For example, if you have marketing teams in separate regions, you can have more than one Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) connector, such as ExactTarget - Europe, ExactTarget - US, and ExactTarget - APAC.Click Add Connector to add another instance.

  2. Enter the username, password, and instance associated with your Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) account and click Save.
    • Instance. Enter s1, s4, s6, s7, s10, or a legacy endpoint URL. For example, if your instance is s6, enter s6 or https://webservice.s6.exacttarget.com/Service.asmx. See WSDL and Endpoint Links for the SOAP API to format legacy endpoints.

      If your instance is not one listed above, enter the following endpoint: https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/etframework.asmx

  3. After you save the credentials, a Data Extensions Folder field appears when you can select the folder from which to fetch data extensions.
  4. Create a form on a page.
  5. Click All Properties on the form.
  6. Open the Mappings tab.
  7. Select the database to which you map the form fields from the MA System Database drop-down field. You can choose Subscriber or a DataExtension (DE).

    Options below Subscriber are ExactTarget data extensions. See also:Creating a New Data Extension. When you create new Data Extension in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) Portal, you must specify an External Key for use with Optimizely, even though the field is optional for Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) . The External Key is used by the API to identify a Data Extension.

    Image: Specifying the External Key when you create a new data extension

    When a form is mapped to a list, upon submission, the subscriber is added to the specified list and also to the all subscribers list.

    Image: Subscriber database

    Data extensions do not support Optimizely auto-fill. (ExactTarget Subscriber does.)

    Image: DataExtension database

  8. Click Publish.
  9. On the form, select Edit from a form field's context menu.
  10. Open the Extra field mappings tab. The database option that you selected earlier appears.
  11. Enable the database option and open the drop-down list next to a database to see the fields it has available.

    For example, if your form has a Text field that was configured to capture an email address:

    1. Edit the email text field.
    2. Select the Extra field mappings tab.
    3. Select email from the drop-down list to map the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) database field to the Email field on the form.

    Image: Mapping an ExactTarget DataExtension database field to a form field

  12. Repeat steps 8 through 10 for as many fields that you want to map.
  13. Click Publish.

To test the mapping, go to your form on a published page, fill in and submit the form, then go to your Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) provider to verify that the user is added to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) database.

Retrieving contact data

When a visitor submits the form, the data is sent to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) . To see who submitted the form, go to ExactTarget > Email > Email to open the subscribers screen, and choose Subscribers > All Subscribers.

Personalizing the form using a block

You can personalize a form to show only to a selected group of people. For more information about creating a visitor group and displaying information based on a visitor group, see Managing visitor groups.

Data extensions do not support Optimizely personalizing features. (Subscribers do.)

  1. From the context menu on the form on the page, select Personalize. The Large content area dialog box appears.

    Images: Personalize ExactTarget form

  2. Click Everyone and select a visitor group from the list. The following image shows personalizing the form to show only for people in the VIP visitor group.

    Images: Personalize ExactTarget form

To create a visitor group for a Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) form, see Create a visitor group for an MAI connector form.