Before we dive into the specifics of customer properties management, we have to cover briefly how a transactional Salesforce campaign works:
When a Salesforce event is triggered, the contact is automatically imported to your Retently account along with a set of properties that you have selected (which we will cover in this article). Once the contact has been imported to Retently, in a couple of seconds, the transactional email survey is triggered (except if you have a delay configured in the transactional campaign's schedule).
A Salesforce event (that will eventually trigger the transactional survey) consists of two elements:
a Workflow Rule, which defines the actual event or rule that will trigger the survey later on.
an Outbound Message, which is attached as an action to the Salesforce's workflow rule. The outbound message is the actual trigger action: when a workflow rule is executed, the outbound message sends the contact data to Retently via a webhook link (which you will get in the transactional campaign's "Setup" section in Retently).
So, as you may have already guessed, the customer properties management is handled by the Outbound Message action in Salesforce.
When configuring the Outbound Message, you have to choose what properties you would like to import from Salesforce to Retently along with the contact that is about to be surveyed.
IMPORTANT: Depending on your workflow rule, the Outbound Message may list a different set of fields. This happens because you are creating workflow rules for a particular Salesforce object (e.g., contact, case, account, etc.), and each object has a slightly different set of fields. The Outbound Message will, by default, inherit the object type of the workflow rule, and will display only the set of fields that are compatible with the object type. This is why, in some cases, you may not find a particular property such as contact email in some objects.
Supported default properties
When configuring the Outbound Message and choosing the properties you will be exporting, there is a set of default properties that you can choose right away, and no other adjustments will be required on your end in Retently. Here they are:
Email
First name
Last name
The integration with Salesforce was designed to automatically map these fields with Retently's default email and name fields.
IMPORTANT: The default fields mapping works best with the fields related to the "Contact" object in Salesforce. If you've created the Outbound Message for another Salesforce object (maybe a custom object), then the first name and last name fields will not be sent to Retently, as our system can't know what is the exact name of the properties that you're sending over. However, the email field will be mapped properly, as Retently will check the fields that you're sending from Salesforce, and if a field has the "email" keyword in its name, then it will be automatically mapped as the customer's email address in Retently.
Importing the account name from Salesforce
In some cases, you may not find the Account name property in the list with fields, only the Account ID. No worries, we got you covered here.
Make sure to select the Account ID property, and Retently will replace it with the Account name automatically.
The only extra step that you will have to take, is to connect our native Salesforce integration on the Integrations page in Retently.
When a new contact will be imported from Salesforce to Retently, our system will get the Account ID, will send it back to Salesforce, and will request the Account name. Once the Account name is received, Retently will assign it to your contacts' company name in your account.
Importing data as customer tags in Retently
Aside from customer properties, which we will cover in the next chapter, Retently also has customer tags. If you want to assign any values as customer tags, then you will need to create a custom contact field: "Tags_c".
Any text data that you will include in the custom Tags field will be exported to Retently and will be attached as customer tags.
Managing customer properties via Salesforce
Finally, you can also import and update customer properties in Retently via Salesforce.
For instance, when a Salesforce event is triggered, you can import the contact with a specific set of Salesforce fields, that will be assigned as customer props in Retently.
Follow the tutorial below to learn how to manage customer properties:
In your Outbound Message, select the Salesforce field (or fields) that you want to import to Retently.
Next, you will have to create these fields as customer properties in your Retently account. Go to the Props and Tags page in Retently, make sure you're in the "Customer props" section, and click the "Create property" button.
When creating the property, make sure to choose a "type" that is corresponding to the field type in Salesforce (e.g., text, number, date, etc.). As the property name, insert the name of the Salesforce field and create the new property.
That's it, the next time when a Salesforce workflow rule will be triggered, the Outbound Message will send to Retently the selected field, and Retently will store that field's data in the matching customer property.
Every time a customer will trigger the Salesforce event, the value in this property will be updated to match the value in the Salesforce field. This way you will always have the updated data in Retently.