‍Why small businesses struggle with marketing automation:

• Small businesses often struggle with marketing automation due to limited resources, lack of expertise, and the complexity of implementation and management. 

• Many face challenges in generating leads, producing enough content, measuring ROI, and keeping up with digital marketing trends. 

• Additionally, they may struggle with integrating different tools, maintaining a personal touch, and avoiding email fatigue.

Why Salesforce is a good option for marketing automation even without Pardot/MC:

• Even without Pardot or Marketing Cloud, Salesforce offers valuable marketing automation capabilities through its core platform features and the potential for custom app development. 

• These features allow for centralized data, lead management, reporting and analytics, custom application development, email marketing, and basic workflow automation, which can be effectively used for marketing purposes.

Real Time Difficulties: 

• A client with only 200 leads each month wanted to run a 3-step email nurture without investing in Pardot or Marketing Cloud due to their budget.  

• Their goal was to welcome new leads, share product details, and follow up with an offer, but they didn’t want to invest in Pardot or Marketing Cloud because of the low email volume. 

Proposed Solution Process:

How this solution benefits the client: 

• Cost effective
• Quick Implementation
• Centralized Customer Data
• Personalization
• No integration

Solution: 

• We proposed a solution that leverages the standard Salesforce Campaign object to trigger emails directly to customers.

• These email sequences can be managed in two flexible ways:

• Predefined Steps - A structured sequence of emails designed by the team for repeatable campaigns. 

• Customized Steps - A tailored sequence created on the fly to meet specific campaign needs.

• Customer interactions, such as email opens or clicks, can automatically trigger follow-up tasks or additional emails, ensuring timely engagement without manual effort.

• All responses are tracked in real time through Salesforce reports and dashboards, giving the team clear insights into campaign performance and customer behavior.

• With this approach, small businesses can achieve effective marketing automation without the need to purchase additional tools like Pardot or Marketing Cloud - making Salesforce a cost-efficient and scalable option for low-volume email campaigns.

Value Summary:

• This solution enables businesses to stay connected with their customers, nurture leads consistently, and gain actionable insights - all while minimizing costs. 

• It empowers small teams to run professional marketing campaigns inside Salesforce, improve engagement, and maximize ROI, even with limited budgets and resources.

Solution Detail: 

• To implement this solution, we used the Salesforce Campaign object as the central hub for managing customer communications. Leads and contacts are added as Campaign Members, making it easy to segment and organize the target audience.

• A custom “Email Sequence” Lightning Web Component (LWC) was introduced to simplify the process. From this screen, users can: 

• View Campaign Members - See all the leads and contacts associated with a campaign. 

• Select Recipients - Choose which members should receive the initial email.

• Define the Sequence - Decide whether to use predefined steps or build a custom sequence.

• Once the steps are confirmed, the email sequence is activated and runs automatically. Salesforce then tracks the entire process - from email delivery to customer responses - and presents this information in reports (HTML Email Status report type) and dashboards. 

• This provides visibility into key engagement metrics, such as who opened the emails, who clicked, and which follow-ups were completed.  

• By combining Campaigns, automation, and a user-friendly LWC, this solution delivers a simple yet powerful way for businesses to run personalized, automated email campaigns directly within Salesforce.