Poor-quality Salesforce data can quickly derail even the most well-planned marketing and sales strategies. When data fields are incomplete, inconsistent, or duplicated, accuracy suffers, and so does your ability to report on performance or prove ROI.
6 mins
Often, the root cause of bad Salesforce data lies in disconnected sources. When customer information is spread across multiple systems, from CRM to website analytics to email platforms, you end up with fragmented profiles and an incomplete view of your audience.
The result is misaligned targeting, inconsistent messaging, and missed opportunities for personalisation. Without a unified data foundation, it’s almost impossible to deliver seamless, high-performing customer journeys across channels.
Inaccurate segmentation is one of the most common and costly consequences of unreliable data. When customer records are incomplete or duplicated, segmentation tools can’t group contacts effectively by behaviour, intent, or preference.
The outcome is poorly targeted campaigns that miss the mark, waste budget, and gradually weaken audience trust. Over time, these inefficiencies build up, eroding revenue as genuine opportunities are lost to misaligned targeting and disconnected strategy.
Wasted marketing spend is the tip of the iceberg
Wasted marketing spend is often just the visible symptom of a deeper problem.
Poor-quality data doesn’t only hurt short-term performance, but it also undermines long-term relationships, operational efficiency, and compliance. It limits your ability to use AI effectively and slows growth, as teams struggle to make confident, data-led decisions.
The true cost of bad data is the missed opportunities that never reach your funnel in the first place.
Salesforce Data Cloud acts as a near-real-time customer data platform (CDP) that brings together information from multiple sources, including CRM, websites, marketing automation tools, and point-of-sale systems. It can also enrich profiles with second- and third-party data for added depth.
With prebuilt connectors, Data Cloud makes it simple to bring everything together. It standardises data from different systems into a single model, creating one clear customer view for every team.
Data Cloud uses identity resolution to match, merge, and enrich customer data in near real time. Rulesets automatically identify duplicates and combine information from multiple systems into unified profiles that capture behavioural and interaction data.
This includes both individual and account-level unification, ideal for B2B or household-level use cases. Because Data Cloud sits on the Einstein 1 platform, it also strengthens predictive and generative AI capabilities across Salesforce within a secure environment.
Built on a data lakehouse architecture, Data Cloud establishes a single source of truth (SSOT) through harmonisation and identity resolution. It integrates seamlessly with Salesforce’s Customer 360 data model, ensuring consistent access across departments.
A built-in trust layer safeguards security and privacy, while the familiar Salesforce interface makes the data accessible to non-technical users. The result is a complete, reliable view that powers better decisions, smarter AI, and greater operational efficiency.
Data Cloud enables advanced segmentation using unified profiles that group customers based on real behaviours and preferences. These segments can be activated across multiple channels, enabling truly personalised experiences such as tailored recommendations and relevant service interactions.
Because it integrates directly with tools like Marketing Cloud Personalisation, teams can deliver one-to-one messaging at scale, increasing engagement, improving customer satisfaction, and driving conversions.
With clean, connected data, sales teams gain a clearer understanding of who’s ready to buy. Data Cloud uses unified profiles and enriched insights to enhance lead scoring, helping teams focus on the highest-value prospects.
Predictive models and bidirectional integrations with Salesforce CRM and platforms like Amazon SageMaker mean sales prioritisation is always based on the latest, most accurate information.
When campaigns are powered by unified data, ad budgets work harder. Data Cloud allows marketers to activate segments directly to platforms like Google Ads and Meta Ads, ensuring targeting is precise and spend is efficient.
Insights from Data Cloud and CRM Analytics (via Segment Intelligence) provide a full picture of engagement trends and ROI, helping you identify what’s working and where to refine.
By the end of ‘Salesforce Data Cloud 101’ you’ll understand exactly what the software does and how it empowers business activities with real-time data about your customers.
Start by using Salesforce’s prebuilt connectors to bring data from CRM, Marketing Cloud, and external platforms such as Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. Map this data to the Customer 360 Data Model to standardise formats and create a consistent foundation for unification.
Set up matching and reconciliation rules to combine duplicate or fragmented data into unified profiles. Define which fields (like email or phone) should be used to identify duplicates, and schedule regular identity resolution jobs to keep data accurate in real time.
Connect unified profiles with your marketing and sales platforms, including Marketing Cloud, Salesforce CRM, and external data warehouses like Snowflake or BigQuery. This ensures your campaigns and customer engagements are powered by the most complete, up-to-date information.
When you’re tracking lead quality and conversion rates through Data Cloud’s dashboards, measuring ROI becomes far more straightforward. Unified profiles make it easier to qualify leads accurately, improve scoring, and monitor funnel progression with confidence.
Consumption tracking and performance insights help you identify trends and demonstrate clear improvements post-implementation, linking clean data directly to measurable business impact.
A single customer view delivers tangible proof of value by showing how unified data drives engagement, reduces churn, and improves campaign performance.
Tools like Segment Intelligence measure how segments perform across channels, giving visibility into the link between data quality and results. With this clarity, teams can refine campaigns based on real outcomes, not assumptions.
Clean, connected data underpins stronger, longer-term customer relationships. Unified profiles enable ongoing personalisation, allowing brands to respond to behaviour and preferences over time.
For industries like financial services or nonprofits, this means higher retention, increased donations, or stronger compliance, all contributing to greater customer lifetime value (CLV) and sustainable growth.
Implementing Salesforce Data Cloud is powerful, but getting it right takes expertise. From designing your data model and connectors to configuring identity resolution and activation, our team ensures everything runs smoothly.
At MarCloud, we help organisations build a reliable data strategy that unifies and activates customer data across Salesforce. We’ll make sure your Data Cloud setup works seamlessly with AI and automation tools to maintain a high-quality, high-performing data foundation.
Ready to clean up your data and strengthen your funnel?
Reach out to MarCloud to turn your Salesforce Data Cloud investment into measurable growth.
Supan has transitioned from a career in marketing to consulting. With extensive experience using Pardot, Supan now helps businesses use this marketing automation tool effectively, offering practical guidance to optimise their marketing efforts.
More by Supan ManiarBy the end of ‘Salesforce Data Cloud 101’ you’ll understand exactly what the software does and how it empowers business activities with real-time data about your customers. In 2023, Salesforce granted all Enterprise and Ultimate Sales Cloud users access to a free Data Cloud account. If your business is one of the lucky ones, the eBook will help you to feel more confident planning your implementation.
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