How to Use Salesforce CMS for Integrated Marketing

As a marketer, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the term ‘CMS’ and perhaps associate it with your website. However, a CMS isn’t isolated to publishing only website content. As the name implies, a ‘content management system’ (CMS) is a platform used to manage any digital content across different touchpoints.

This is exactly what the Salesforce CMS does.

For example, from a single place you can create, edit, and publish to your:

• Commerce site

• Marketing emails

• Customer community

• Partner portal

• Any digital experience

Basically, any channel built on Salesforce, such as Experience Cloud or Commerce Cloud site, Heroku site, or Lightning app You can even connect to third-party sites using headless APIs.

In its ninth edition ‘State of Marketing Report’, Salesforce uncovered that marketers are struggling to create consistent, personalised experiences across customer journeys. On the other hand, unified, consistent customer experiences are vital to delivering a strong message and building trust.

By centralising the creation of content in the Salesforce CMS, you have transparency over the messaging, text, images, etc. that are being pushed out to a variety of your Salesforce platforms. In short, you can create an integrated, multi-channel experience.

Not only this, from an internal management perspective, it’s a no-brainer. No switching CMS to build the same content in multiple places. You work from a single location, and so does your team. This saves time and potentially costs associated with third-party CMS platforms.

Then there’s the fact that Salesforce CMS integrates with Sales Cloud, meaning data can be used directly within content creation for greater personalisation (and conversions!).

You can access the Salesforce CMS from the Digital Experiences app. It’s available in Lightning Experience for those with Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions.

Note: You may need to turn on tab visibility to view all CMS features. Please contact the MarCloud team if you need help with this.

Before you delve into the CMS and start publishing content, here are the three main features to know about:

1. Workspace

CMS Workspaces are the first-touch point for all CMS activities, providing organisation and security for the CMS app. 

To use the CMS app, we will need to create a Workspace. These can be organised easily by projects, regions, teams etc. depending on company preference. 

Within a Workspace, content, and roles are unique and can only be accessed by users with access permitted by the admin assigned.

Please note that Workspaces can not be deleted once created, however, name and description can be edited.

The CMS Workspace is important as it provides visibility into which users are creating what content and where it is being shared. 

2. Channels

CMS channels can be linked to multiple Workspaces and function as an access point, where you will share and publish the content with other “contributors” associated with that channel. 

The channels share the content from the Workspace with endpoints e.g. Lightning Experience apps and any third-party apps.

To create a channel, simply head to the tab ‘CMS Channel’ and select ‘Create Channel’. Alternatively, go to the Workspace you would like to connect to the channel and select ‘Add Channel’.

When creating a channel, be mindful of the different Connection Type to choose from, this will determine who will be able to see the content.

3. Contributors

Salesforce CMS allows teams to collaborate easily through adding and accessing content. When users are added they become ‘contributors’, meaning they can create and manage access to content. 

There are three different permissions to choose from:

• Salesforce Admin -  This is usually only given to one user and allows full access to Salesforce Setup, the Salesforce CMS app, and the Workspaces settings.

• Content Admin - This role is given to the users that will be accessing the CMS the most as they will have full access to content in the CMS Workspace, ability to manage contributors, and organise content sharing. This role enables the user to add additional items such as contributors, channels, and language to the Workspace without aid from the Salesforce Admin.

• Content Manager - Full access to the CMS Workspace and will overlook different tasks e.g. writing new material, which can then be published.

By knowing the permissions per role, you can accurately assign users before creating content in the CMS app.

4. Languages

As part of the Salesforce CMS implementation, you're able to choose from a variety of ‘Translation Languages’ which will display as the languages offered for localised content.

Note: You are required to select a default language. This language will display initially.

To be able to use Salesforce CMS with Account Engagement, you will need to link a CMS channel within ‘Marketing Setup’. The selected channel should include the content that you want to use within Account Engagement, such as images for building email templates.

Note: You can change the channel at any time, however, the content available in the drag-and-drop editor is only linked to one channel at a time. If we choose to change the channel images in sent or scheduled emails, previous sends will not be affected but future content will be linked to the new channel selected.

Once that has been selected, just like Account Engagement storage, you will use Salesforce CMS to upload, store, and distribute content for future use. One of the multiple ways we can utilise CMS is through the Account Engagement Drag-and-drop email builder. 

This allows emails to be created, tested, and sent via the Lightning App, using the CMS to import images into email templates. It makes adding content a seamless experience and delivers content to customers in minimal time.

When you start creating content in Salesforce CMS, you’ll see that there are three out-of-the-box content types that you can use immediately. Think of content types as the different categories of content you’ll be creating (blogs, email, case studies, social media posts, etc.). Each content type has nodes associated, which act like Salesforce fields in the CMS. 

The three default content types are:

• News: Generally for your long-form written content. Use it for blogs or news articles. It comes with a rich text node so you can style your text accordingly.

• Image: Upload images using this content type. You can also link to an external URL for an image.

• Document: Upload any file type or link to it using an external URL.

However, the real power in Salesforce CMS comes with creating custom content types. By downloading the CMS Content Type Manager provided by Salesforce Labs, you can create up to 100 content types with 15 nodes on each.

Once you’ve created these extra content types, you might be wondering where you can use them. Well, if you have any Experience Cloud/Community sites, Salesforce provides standard components for you to slot in your content, and control the styling using CSS. 

Custom components can also be created and you can get very creative if you have good web development and Apex knowledge. You can also use the content on a third-party site, using the Salesforce Connect REST API.

Top tip: Structure your content

Within Salesforce CMS, you can keep all of your content organised with a sound folder structure. 

Are you targeting different regions? Then why not organise your content in the relevant target region? 

For example:

EMEA

• Email Template Images

• Landing Page Images

• PDFs

North America

• Email Template Images

• Landing Page Images

• PDFs

Or, have different folders per campaign type, or specific campaign. The sky is the limit. The key is to keep all relevant content easily accessible for your team so your account is as unruly and easy to manage as possible. 

New to Salesforce CMS? The easiest place to begin is with Trailhead basics. In 25 minutes you’ll have a grasp of how to create, organise, and publish.

If you have trouble setting up your Salesforce CMS, or using any of its functionalities, we’re here to help. Feel free to send us a message about Salesforce support. We have in-house developers who can help with headless API integration too.