How do you automatically assign an Salesforce Campaign to a Salesforce send within SFMC?

Question

The send must originate from the SFMC UI and not send to the campaign record. Is there anyway to assign a Campaign to an email send based on a rule?

For example, we are using Marketing Cloud data extensions, created from our Account and Contact data via Marketing Cloud Connect. If we use those DEs as Salesforce Data Extensions, the Email Send will push over into Sales Cloud, but it is not related to a campaign record.

The only options I see are (1) manually relate this Email Send to the Campaign record (in Sales Cloud) after the email is deployed from Marketing Cloud or (2) add Campaign Members to the appropriate Campaign record and then "send to the Campaign" when deploying from Marketing Cloud (rather than using the Data Extensions created in Marketing Cloud).

Is there any way to associate the Email deploy in Marketing Cloud with the Sales Cloud campaign either automatically or when creating or deploying the email from Marketing Cloud?

Answer 1

As far as I know this isn't a feature of Marketing Cloud, meaning there isn't a simple out-of-box solution for this as sending to Campaigns is done through the CampaignMember object, which itself is related to PersonAccount / Contact / Lead records.

If you are using complex SQL when creating your target groups in Marketing Cloud, you can export the Data Extension as CSV file and use that file to upload members to your Sales Cloud Campaign.

The two options you listed are indeed the only no-code ways to do this and on this scenario, also the advised methods.