Connecting to Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formerly ExactTarget) is a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services.

Data integration: Skyvia supports importing data to and from Salesforce Marketing Cloud, exporting Salesforce Marketing Cloud data to CSV files, replicating Salesforce Marketing Cloud data to relational databases and synchronizing Salesforce Marketing Cloud data with other cloud apps and relational databases.

Backup: Skyvia Backup supports Salesforce Marketing Cloud backup except for objects with composite primary keys.

Query: Skyvia Query supports Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud-Specific Features and Limitations

Skyvia has the following limitations for Salesforce Marketing Cloud:

  • Synchronization and Replication with Incremental Updates enabled are not supported for objects without CreatedDate and ModifiedDate fields. Both fields must be present for this functionality.
  • Restoring objects with composite primary key from backup is not supported.

  • Since Salesforce Marketing Cloud Data Extensions have neither autogenerated key fields, nor fields storing record creation or modification time, Data Extensions cannot be used in:

    • Synchronization packages
    • Replication packages with Incremental Updates selected
    • Import packages with the UPSERT operation as a target.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connections

When creating a Salesforce Marketing Cloud connection, first, you need to specify the name for your connection and then select the Authentication kind to use.

Skyvia supports three kinds of authentication for Salesforce Marketing Cloud: User Name & Password, Server-to-Server, and Legacy App Center Client. Note that Salesforce Marketing Cloud considers the Legacy App Center Client authentication deprecated, and it is supported for compatibility purposes.

User Name & Password Authentication

For User Name & Password authentication, you need to specify the URL to connect to and User Name and Password to log in with.

Connection Editor window

  • URL — url to connect to.
  • User — username to log in with.
  • Password — password to log in with.

Server-to-Server Authentication

For Server-to-Server authentication, you need to specify Subdomain, App Client Id and App Client Secret.

Connection Editor window 2

  • Subdomain — your subdomain (a 28-character string starting with the letters “mc”, for example, mc563885gzs27c5t9-63k636ttgm). You can find your subdomain in the url in your browser after logging in to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more information, сheck Marketing Cloud documentation.
  • App Client Id — application center client ID for server-to-server authentication.
  • App Client Secret — application center client secret for server-to-server authentication.

Legacy App Center Client Authentication

For Legacy App Center Client authentication, you need to specify the Client ID and Client Secret, which are parts of Salesforce Marketing Cloud API key, and select the environment to connect to: Production or Sandbox.

Note that Legacy App Center Client authentication is deprecated. It is supported only for legacy packages. Since August 1, 2019, Marketing Cloud has removed the ability to create legacy packages, so any new packages are enhanced packages, not legacy packages, and they cannot use the Legacy App Center Client authentication.

You can use this authentication only if you have a legacy package created before August 1, 2019.

Connection Editor window 3

For Legacy App Center Client authentication, you need to specify the following parameters:

  • App Client Id — application center client ID for App Center Client authentication.
  • App Client Secret — application center client secret for App Center Client authentication.
  • Environment — this parameter specifies which account (Production or Sandbox) to use for Legacy App Center Client authentication.

Additional Parameters for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connections

You also may set the following additional parameters for your Salesforce Marketing Cloud connections:

  • Partner IDs — a list of specific partner accounts or business units for retrieve requests.
  • Use Extension Objects — this parameter determines whether Salesforce Marketing Cloud Data Extensions objects are processed as user-defined Salesforce Marketing Cloud objects, allowing Skyvia to read and edit their data.

  • Metadata Cache — this parameter determines how often the cached metadata are updated. By default, Skyvia caches metadata of available objects in cloud sources. When creating a connection, you can configure how often cache is refreshed or, when the connection already exists, you can reset it manually on the connection details page by clicking the Clear Cache button. The following values are available for this setting:

    • Disabled — metadata cache is not created; metadata are queried automatically whenever the connection is opened.
    • One Hour — metadata cache expires one hour after the last refresh; it is refreshed when the connection is opened again.
    • One Day — metadata cache expires one day after the last refresh; it is refreshed when the connection is opened again.
    • One Week — metadata cache expires one week after the last refresh; it is refreshed when the connection is opened again.
    • One Month — metadata cache expires one month after the last refresh; it is refreshed when the connection is opened again.
    • Infinite — cache is never reset automatically. Default value.