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 synchronization. Replication with incremental updates requires at least one of the fields.
  • 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

You can create a Marketing Cloud connection in Skyvia by clicking +NEW in the top menu and selecting Connection in the menu on the left.

Sign in window

The Select Connector page opens, which contains all the available connectors — their names and types. You need to find and select Salesforce Marketing Cloud from available connectors to open Connection Editor page. On this page, when creating a Salesforce Marketing Cloud connection, 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, Legacy App Center Client, and Server-to-Server. 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 as well as User Name and Password to log in with.

Username & Password authentication

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

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, and 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.

Legacy App Center Client Authentication

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

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

Server-to-Server Authentication

For Server-to-Server authentication, you need to specify the subdomain, Client ID and Client Secret.

Server-to-Server Authentication

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

  • Subdomain — your subdomain, which is a 28-character string starting with the letters “mc”, for example, mc563885gzs27c5t9-63k636ttgm. You can find your subdomain in the url of your browser after logging in to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more information, check the 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.

Additional Parameters

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 for how long the cached metadata for the connection are considered valid. By default, Skyvia caches metadata of available objects in cloud sources. Whenever necessary, you can reset metadata cache for a connection manually in the Connection Editor by clicking the Clear Cache button. Read Metadata Cache for more information. The following values are available for this parameter:

    • Disabled — metadata cache is not created; metadata are queried automatically whenever required.
    • One Hour — metadata cache expires one hour after the last refresh.
    • One Day — metadata cache expires one day after the last refresh.
    • One Week — metadata cache expires one week after the last refresh.
    • One Month — metadata cache expires one month after the last refresh.
    • Infinite — cache never expires/resets automatically. Default value.

Supported Actions and Actions Specifics

Salesforce Marketing Cloud connector supports the following actions: