Salesforce campaigns are a powerful tool which you can use to facilitate the organization and reporting of your marketing (or other) initiatives. They can be used to record strategies, like events, with default fields allowing you to track dates, budget, and more.
Campaigns are linked out-of-the-box to campaign members, which are a way of linking your leads and contacts to the initiatives and add more detail on the way they engaged through statuses. In this post we’ll cover the basics – what child campaigns are, when you should use them, and some key considerations.
Parent vs. Child Campaigns in Salesforce
Campaigns include a field called ‘Parent Campaign’, which allows users to link to other campaign records and then makes a child campaign.
This forms a campaign hierarchy – essentially a nested set of campaigns which are grouped, allowing you to report on them together and organize them in a way which is meaningful for you.
Defining a campaign hierarchy will be different across organizations and it can be hard to know what’s best when you are starting out. Taking the time to think this through is important when implementing and using Account Engagement (Pardot), as this will have an impact on the way you report or automate processes.
Most assets (emails, forms, custom redirects, etc.) require a link to a campaign, this is so that the reporting on engagement can be linked via connected campaigns. By connecting your Salesforce campaigns to Account Engagement (Pardot), as well as being able to automate processes related to campaigns and campaign Members, you’ll unlock some pretty powerful reporting functionality.
When Should You Use Child Campaigns?
Now that you know what a child campaign is, it’s time to unpick when you should use them.
As a general rule, think about using child campaigns when you want to call out different information across similar campaign records – for example, you are running two webinars with the same content, but at different times. This could be structured as:
- Parent campaign: ‘Planting a Rooftop Garden Webinars 2023’
- Two child campaigns: ‘Planting a Rooftop Garden Webinar 13 May 23’, ‘Planting a Rooftop Garden Webinar 20 May 23’.
Splitting out the child campaigns has the benefit of adjusting the ‘start’ and ‘end’ times to be reflective of running two campaigns, but you can still report on metrics across ‘Planting a Rooftop Garden Webinars 2023’ performance as a whole.
In Salesforce you can use things like naming conventions and fields to report on this, but the campaign hierarchy becomes particularly important when Account Engagement (Pardot) engagement metrics are also considered.
Other examples of when you’d want to track different information across similar records could include tracking:
- Initiatives across different social channels.
- Events in different locations.
- Campaigns which have the same audience but different content.
If there’s a clear grouping which you would like to be able to report on, then child campaigns can help.
When Should You Not Use Child Campaigns?
Examples of when child campaigns aren’t the solution include:
- Having a child campaign to reflect different responses (Signed up, Attended, Clicked etc). This is better served by campaign member statuses, which can be customized or even automatically created to record responses.
- A different campaign for each member of staff. In some cases, there are good reasons for this (recording different data or security). However, if it is more for organization or allocating tasks, then consider using ‘Record Ownership’ of the campaign member records and build this into your design.
- Using a child campaign to reflect something that can be captured in a field. For example, it’s not necessary to create something like ‘Webinars’ as you could build a report based on either a naming convention or the ‘type’ field. Getting to know the basics of Salesforce reporting will be useful to make informed decisions.
Top 3 Considerations for Using Child Campaigns
To make the most of your campaign hierarchy, we’ll discuss some key considerations, which you can use to guide you in making informed decisions about your setup.
1. Gather Reporting Requirements
One of my very first questions to all clients when we are starting on an Account Engagement (Pardot) implementation is “what are your reporting requirements?”. Asking what your team/organization needs to report on will play a big part in how you structure things.
This is relevant to a lot of Salesforce configuration and especially so if you are looking to leverage campaign influence or use the out-of-the-box engagement metrics components.
Write up and discuss the things you need or want to report on in relation to your campaigns and let that inform decisions about how to set them up. Where you are unsure of how to report on this, being clear on your requirements will make it easier to ask for help from your Salesforce Admin, the Trailblazer Community, or a trusted advisor.
Some examples could be:
| If you want to report on… | Then consider… |
|---|---|
| Campaign duration | Making ‘start’ and ‘end’ date mandatory fields. |
| Social media performance | Using the ‘type’ field and a child campaign for each channel. |
| Quarterly engagement | Whether parent “Quarter” campaigns would be useful. For example, Q1 2023. |
| Volunteers per event | Having a ‘Volunteer’ campaign member status (and perhaps a custom field on the campaign). |
| Which locations get the most attendees | Child campaigns per location. |
2. Create a Data Quality Report
Validation rules and mandatory fields can go a long way in maintaining data quality, but you also need to identify areas where there could be gaps and utilize reporting to flag these. Either add these to a wider ‘Data Quality’ dashboard or include them in dashboards for your Account Engagement users – depending on whose responsibility it will be to make required updates.
Some examples could be:
- ‘Closed Won’ opportunities where the ‘Primary Source’ campaign is a top-level campaign:
- Opportunity Stage = Closed Won, Parent Campaign (of the related Primary Source campaign) = ISBLANK
- Campaigns without a parent campaign:
- ALL CAMPAIGNS, ALL TIME, Parent Campaign = ISBLANK
- Campaigns without ‘start’/’end’ date:
- ALL CAMPAIGNS, ALL TIME, (Start Date = IS BLANK OR End Date = ISBLANK)
3. Link Opportunities to Child Campaigns Wherever Possible
When you have a hierarchy in place, typically the top-level will be a grouping to collectively roll up reporting from more specific campaigns. Therefore, to get the most accurate reporting, encourage users to link opportunities to the child campaigns.
This will provide more detailed insights into exactly where an opportunity has come from and the general insight will still be available at the top-level.
This could be managed through training or a data quality report to check, but a validation rule with the following criteria can ensure that top-level campaigns aren’t used:
Final Thoughts
As with most ‘best practices’, these should always be tailored to your organization – what works for you may be different to what others are doing.
The key to this is to document it well, including the reasons why decisions have been made wherever possible. This makes it clear to the wider organizations and people who join later, also providing you with a clear framework within which to review how effective it is.
My advice when reporting is to review it regularly. With careful planning and clear requirements, you can set yourself up for success, but things can change as you learn and grow. Check if you are getting what you need and be prepared and equipped to experiment, giving new ideas enough time to be established before reviewing their results.
