Salesforce CMS (Content Management System) is a powerful platform that allows you to easily create, manage, and distribute content across multiple channels. Using Salesforce CMS gives you access to a centralized and integrated system to unify your content production and delivery requirements.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explain everything you need to know about Salesforce CMS broken down into simpler concepts and terms. We aim to cover what is Salesforce CMS, what are the benefits of implementing it, how to implement it, content modeling and integration, and other important aspects. Let’s dive right into it –
What is Salesforce CMS?
Salesforce CMS is a content management system built on top of the Salesforce platform. It provides tools to create, approve, publish, and modify content. Salesforce believes in the integrated platform ideology and allows multiple users to access the content stored inside Salesforce CMS irrespective of their cloud architecture or platform.
Key features of Salesforce CMS include:
Here are some of the key features Salesforce CMS provides that make it a worthy CMS consideration for enterprises –
- Content workflow tools
- In-line editing and WYSIWYG formatting
- Dynamic image resizing and cropping
- Multisite and multilingual support
- Content targeting and personalization
- Content analytics and reporting
- Intuitive drag-and-drop content editor
- Version control and rollback
- Content scheduling and calendars
- Content APIs for integration
- Robust image and file management
- SEO-friendly content architecture
- Integrated digital asset management
Salesforce CMS enables you to manage content in the context of your customers and business processes. It is mobile-optimized and integrates natively with Salesforce CRM and communities.
With Salesforce CMS, you get the flexibility to create and deliver content across multiple channels – web, mobile, social, print, etc. It provides content reuse, reduces duplication, and ensures brand consistency across channels.
Benefits of Salesforce CMS
Salesforce CMS provides an extensive list of benefits to its users. If you are planning to leverage these Salesforce services to their full extent, you should hire Salesforce developers with credible experience and expertise in deploying, setting up, and maintaining your CMS platform
Here are some of the key benefits of using Salesforce CMS:
Powerful Content Authoring
Salesforce CMS provides an intuitive drag-and-drop page builder and WYSIWYG editor. Content authors can easily create pages, and add rich text, images, videos, dynamic components, and more. Inline editing allows for quick text updates on the page.
Agile Content Workflow
Flexible workflow tools like content staging, approvals, versioning, and content scheduling streamline collaboration. Authors, editors, reviewers, publishers, and translators can work efficiently.
Omnichannel Content Delivery
Salesforce CMS enables you to create content once and publish it across multiple channels – website, mobile, social, etc. Content sharing and reuse are simplified.
Deep CRM Integration
With its native CRM integration, Salesforce CMS makes your content smarter. You can personalize content for different personas and leverage CRM data for targeted content.
Content APIs
Content APIs allow you to connect CMS content with other systems. You can build custom apps, integrate with portals, push content to digital displays, and more.
Multisite Management
CMS can power multiple branded sites and microsites from a single platform. Manage multilingual sites and localize content for specific markets.
Cloud-Based Infrastructure
As a cloud-based SaaS platform, Salesforce CMS provides high availability, reliability, security, and scalability without IT overhead. Automated upgrades keep you up-to-date.
Mobile Optimization
Responsive templates and device detection features make your CMS content look great on any mobile device. No need for separate mobile sites.
SEO and Metadata
CMS makes it easy to add page titles, meta descriptions, tags, alternate text, and more to enhance SEO. It has SEO-friendly URLs out of the box.
Who is Salesforce CMS Best Suited for?
Although Salesforce CMS can be leveraged by most businesses that need a centralized management solution, it can still provide better results and efficiency for certain specific groups of users or purposes. Here is a list of ideal Salesforce CMS use cases you should know –
Salesforce CMS is ideal for organizations that want to:
- Consolidate multiple CMS systems into a single platform
- Break down content silos and better manage multichannel content
- Deepen engagement with CRM-powered content personalization
- Deliver consistent omnichannel experiences
- Manage multiple brands, sites, and locales from one CMS
- Leverage an extensible CMS platform for innovation
- Get to market faster with agile content workflows
- Eliminate IT overhead with a secure cloud CMS
It is well-suited for companies across industries like retail, healthcare, financial services, high-tech, manufacturing, nonprofits, education, media, and more.
For regulated industries like Financial Services and Life Sciences, Salesforce provides a validated CMS platform that is GDPR-compliant and HIPAA-ready.
Salesforce CMS Implementation
CMS is designed for rapid implementation. It follows a rather straightforward and easy implementation process that can be implanted by an efficient dedicated development team with enough skills and experience in Salesforce implementation. Here is an overview of the implementation process:
1. Planning & Design
- Gather content requirements
- Audit existing content structure
- Define content models and taxonomy
- Plan content migration
- Map out user roles and permissions
2. Configuration & Set Up
- Configure brands, sites, channels, locales
- Build content models
- Set up metadata framework
- Configure workflows
- Develop page layouts
3. Content Migration
- Import existing content
- Reorganize and consolidate content
- Retag assets with new taxonomy
4. Integration & Testing
- Integrate CMS with other systems
- Test omnichannel publishing
- Refine templates and layouts
- Perform content author training
5. Launch & Iterate
- Cutover website to Salesforce CMS
- Train content producers and consumers
- Gather feedback and optimize
- Develop an ongoing governance model
Salesforce provides Quick Start packages to accelerate implementation. Their team of experts can guide you through the process to ensure a smooth and successful launch.
Salesforce CMS Integration
A key advantage of CMS is its seamless integration with the broader Salesforce ecosystem. The Salesforce ecosystem is one of the most preferred environments to set up your managed IT infrastructure. Here are some of the top Salesforce integrations that you can leverage –
Salesforce CRM Integration
With its CRM integration, Salesforce CMS draws user data to deliver personalized and targeted content experiences. For example, content visibility can be based on a user’s account, profile, or attributes.
CRM data like accounts, leads, and contacts can also be leveraged to create dynamic lists and smart content.
Integration with Communities and Portals
CMS powers content delivery across Community sites, Customer Portals, and Partner Portals. You can leverage the same CMS repository to engage audiences across these digital properties.
Integration with Marketing Cloud
Manage personalized SMS, email, mobile push, and social campaigns powered by CMS content. Content authors have visibility into how assets are performing across channels.
Custom App Development
Salesforce CMS APIs allow you to build custom apps and experiences powered by your content repository. You can extract CMS data into any website, app, or digital channel.
Digital Asset Management
For rich media management, Salesforce CMS seamlessly integrates with Salesforce DAM – their Digital Asset Management solution. This unifies rich content along with text, images, and videos in a single platform.
Experience Cloud Integrations
Leverage CMS content across the entire Salesforce Experience Cloud including Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Service Cloud. Create integrated customer journeys spanning advertising, sales, service, and more.
Salesforce CMS Security
As an enterprise CMS platform, Salesforce CMS provides robust security capabilities out of the box.
- Role-based user access control
- Object and field-level permissions
- Password policies with expiration, complexity requirements
- OAuth 2.0 authentication protocol
- TLS encryption for data in transit
- Backups with data archiving
- Platform shields to prevent DDoS attacks
Being built on the Salesforce platform also means you benefit from Salesforce’s proven security certifications. This includes:
- ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 – International standards for information security management
- SOC 1, 2, and 3 – Service organization controls for financial reporting
- PCI DSS – Payment card data security standard compliance
- CSA STAR – Cloud security assurance from the Cloud Security Alliance
For highly regulated sectors like government, healthcare, and finance, Salesforce enables HIPAA compliance, FedRAMP authorization, and other industry-specific controls.
Final Words!
In summary, Salesforce CMS provides a robust enterprise-level CMS tightly integrated with Salesforce CRM. It enables companies to efficiently create, manage, and distribute content across channels.
With its centralized content hub, omnichannel publishing, workflow automation, and CRM-powered targeting, CMS is a solid choice for Salesforce-centric organizations.
While not the most flexible or inexpensive option, for companies committed to the Salesforce platform, Salesforce CMS can deliver significant productivity and efficiency gains. It eliminates the need to manage separate CRM and CMS systems.
We hope this guide provided you with a helpful introduction to Salesforce CMS! Let us know if you have any other questions.
