CRM integration eventually involves connecting data and database fields between your CRM system, marketing automation tools, and marketing process. Before all that can happen, you first need to take a look at the big picture so that your connections make sense and so that you can guide the technical details toward your business goals. Here’s how you should be thinking about your overall plan. (This will explain later on all the details of each of the following bullets throughout this section.)
Focus on planning and setting up the standard fields of your marketing automation tool using modules and existing data sources to assist you. Focus on creating custom fields in your marketing automation solution that map over to your CRM system. These are fields that you were using before marketing automation as well as fields you think of during integration. Focus on uploading data and testing your integration. Without testing, you won’t know whether your connection can run your marketing programs. Default fields are generally standard fields common to all CRM systems and marketing automation tools.
Default fields usually represent the bare minimum of information needed to identify a record. It’s highly likely that your marketing automation tool needs a set of default fields to function properly, so you need to connect those fields to the same fields in your CRM system, or create them if your CRM system doesn’t already have them.