How can an AI marketing agent use Salesforce for marketing?
An AI marketing agent uses Salesforce in two directions. It writes the people it finds into Salesforce as records your sales team can work, and it reads Salesforce to learn which of those people became pipeline and revenue.
Salesforce is a CRM, the system where a sales team keeps track of everyone it sells to. New prospects arrive as leads. Once a company is a real relationship, its people live as contacts attached to an account, and the deals your team is working sit as opportunities. Campaigns tie all of it together by recording which leads and contacts came from which webinar, list, or email.
Kite is one example of an agent that does this work. Through your connected Salesforce account, it adds and updates leads, contacts, and accounts with its research attached, builds campaign lists, logs follow-up, and reads your opportunities and reports to tell you what your marketing produced.
Marketing jobs Kite can do with Salesforce
The jobs below follow a prospect from the day Kite finds them to the day they show up in a pipeline report. Each one works with Salesforce's own records, so your reps keep working in the views, fields, and reports they already use.
Add new prospects as leads, or as contacts on accounts you already have
Kite turns a finished prospect list into Salesforce records your reps can act on the same day. Say Kite has just built a list of 40 revenue operations leaders at mid-sized logistics software companies. Before it writes anything, it searches your leads and contacts by email address, and it searches your accounts by company name and website. Someone who already exists as a lead gets that lead updated. Someone who's already a contact stays with their account, and Kite tells you it left them out.
Everyone else becomes a new record, and Kite decides which kind. A person at a company you don't track yet becomes a lead. A person at a company that's already an account becomes a contact attached to that account, so the account owner sees them next to everyone else there. If your team prefers to route every new person through leads, Kite follows the convention it sees in your records.
A new lead arrives with the details sales needs:
- first and last name, title, and work email
- company, website, industry, number of employees, and annual revenue
- city, state, and country
- Lead Source and Lead Status, set to the values your team already uses
- a fit score from one to five and the reason for it
Kite reads the fields on your Lead object before it writes, including your custom fields and the allowed values for picklists such as Lead Status. If your org has no field for the fit score, Kite can create one. It then attaches a note to each record with the sources behind its research and any recent event worth mentioning, such as a funding round or a new head of sales.
Each lead also needs an owner. Kite assigns the rep you named, or it runs your org's lead assignment rules so the new leads route the way your other leads do. When a list runs into the thousands, Kite can load it in one batch rather than record by record.
Keep leads, contacts, and accounts current
Research has a short half-life, so Kite writes new details into Salesforce while the account is still worth chasing. Kite can check the news about your target accounts on a schedule. When one of them announces a funding round or hires a new marketing leader, Kite adds a note to the account with what changed and why it matters for the deal.
The same goes for the people. When a contact gets promoted, Kite updates their title. When a lead turns out to work at a company that's already an account, Kite attaches the contact to the right account. Kite can also read the records that changed recently, so it knows what your reps have touched before it adds anything of its own.
Log follow-up so sales can see what happened
Kite records its outreach and the next step on each Salesforce record, so a rep opening the lead sees the whole story. After Kite sends an outreach email from your team's Kite address, it can log that email on the lead's activity timeline. When someone replies with interest, Kite creates a task for the lead's owner with a due date and a short summary of the reply. It can also log a call, mark a task complete, and add notes as a conversation moves.
Kite can send email from Salesforce itself, too. It can send a one-off email to a lead or contact, use one of your Salesforce email templates with its merge fields, or send the same message to a short list of people, with each email logged on the recipient's timeline. Before it emails anyone, Kite checks the email consent preferences on their record. By default, Kite shows you the email and the recipients in Slack and sends once you approve.
Build campaigns and the audiences behind them
Kite uses Salesforce campaigns to keep track of who came from which piece of marketing. For a webinar, Kite can create the campaign with its type, status, start and end dates, budgeted cost, and expected revenue. Then it adds each registrant to it as a campaign member, whether they're a lead or a contact. After the event, it updates the campaign with what it actually cost, so the numbers are ready when someone asks whether the webinar paid off.
Kite also pulls audiences out of the records you already have. It can query your leads and contacts by any field, read one of your team's saved list views, or search by name, title, company, status, or Lead Source. That's how Kite finds the leads that went quiet after a demo last spring, or every contact at your top 50 accounts, and turns them into the list for the next campaign.
Read your pipeline and reports to see what marketing produced
Kite reads Salesforce to answer the question every marketer gets asked: what did that campaign actually produce? It can read your opportunities by stage, amount, close date, account, and campaign, and query across leads, contacts, and opportunities to follow a person from first touch to closed deal. It can also run the reports your team has already built in Salesforce and see the dashboards you keep there.
Before your monthly marketing review, for example, Kite can read every opportunity created this quarter along with its primary campaign and the Lead Source of the person behind it. From there it tells you which programs produced pipeline, which produced only signups, and where it would put next month's effort. When your team asks, Kite can also create an opportunity or update its stage, amount, and close date.
What Kite reads and changes in Salesforce
Information Kite can read
- Leads, contacts, and accountsKite searches and reads these records by name, email, phone, company, title, status, or Lead Source, so it knows who's already in your org before it writes.
- Object fields and picklist valuesKite reads every standard and custom field on an object, along with the allowed picklist values, so its research lands in the right field with a value Salesforce accepts.
- Campaigns and campaign membersKite reads your campaigns and who belongs to each one when a job depends on an existing audience.
- OpportunitiesKite reads stage, amount, close date, account, and campaign to connect marketing to pipeline.
- Reports, dashboards, and list viewsKite runs your saved reports, reads the dashboards your team has built, and pulls records from the list views your reps already use.
- Notes, tasks, and recent changesKite reads the activity already on a record and the records that changed recently, so it adds to the history instead of repeating it.
- Email consent preferencesKite checks whether a lead or contact can be emailed before it sends anything.
Information Kite can create or change
- Leads, contacts, and accountsKite creates new records, updates existing ones, and attaches contacts to the right account.
- Lead ownersKite assigns the owner you name or runs your lead assignment rules.
- Custom fieldsKite can add a field to hold something your org doesn't track yet, such as a fit score or the reason a lead was added.
- Notes, tasks, and logged activityKite writes research notes, creates and completes follow-up tasks, and logs calls and emails on the record.
- Campaigns and campaign membersKite creates and updates campaigns and adds or removes leads and contacts as members.
- OpportunitiesKite creates opportunities and updates their stage, amount, and close date.
- Emails sent from SalesforceKite sends individual or template emails from your Salesforce org, logged on each recipient's timeline.
How Kite connects to Salesforce
Connect your Salesforce account through OAuth. Kite then works with the records and permissions available to that connected account. If your org limits which objects or fields a user can see, Kite sees what that user sees, so connect an account with access to the leads, contacts, accounts, campaigns, and opportunities you want Kite to work with. The account also needs API access, which your Salesforce admin can confirm.
From there, you can start with a plain request, such as "Add this week's qualified accounts to Salesforce and assign them to Priya." Kite already knows your ideal customer profile and your current customers from its research on your business, so it can judge which records to create and which to update without a long brief.
How-to guides using Salesforce
- How to add qualified leads to Salesforce Coming soon Kite takes a finished, qualified list, checks it against your existing leads, contacts, and accounts, and writes each person as the right kind of record with the research and fit score attached.
- How to add Apollo prospects to Salesforce Coming soon Kite finds the right companies and people with its built-in Apollo access, confirms each person's current role, and adds the ones who fit to Salesforce with their work email and the reason they made the list.
- How to add Clay prospects to Salesforce Kite reads the Clay table you export and share in Slack, fills in what the table is missing, drops anyone who no longer fits, and writes the rest into Salesforce without duplicating anyone already there.
Where Salesforce fits in Kite's marketing work
Salesforce is where a finished lead list goes to work. Kite finds and scores the companies and people with its built-in research sources, then writes them into Salesforce as leads or contacts, assigned to an owner and carrying the reason each one made the cut.
When someone fills out a form on your site, Kite researches the person and their company, compares them with your ideal customer profile, and drafts a reply. Salesforce is where Kite records the result: a new lead, or an update to the contact and account your team already has, with the fit and the next step attached.
Salesforce holds the leads that went quiet, which makes it the starting point for winning them back. Kite queries your leads and contacts for the people worth another try, writes and sends the re-engagement campaign, and logs the outreach and any replies back on each record.
Salesforce campaigns are how an event's cost and its results end up in one place. Kite creates the campaign with its budget, adds the attendees as members, and later reads the opportunities tied to that campaign to show what the event produced.
Salesforce is the source of truth for pipeline, so it's where Kite reads the answer. Kite follows leads and contacts from the campaigns that touched them to the opportunities they became, and reports which programs earned their place.
Review and approval
Adding leads and updating records in Salesforce is routine work, so Kite does it and then posts a summary in the Slack thread: what it created, what it updated, and what it skipped and why. If you'd like to see a list before anything reaches Salesforce, say so in your request. Email works differently. By default, Kite shows you the message and the recipients first, and sends once you approve it with a reply in the thread or the Approve button. Teams that want Kite to send on its own can turn that on.
Limits and product-specific details
- This page covers Salesforce's core CRM. Kite works with the leads, contacts, accounts, campaigns, opportunities, activity, and reports in your Salesforce org. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Account Engagement are separate products, and this integration doesn't connect to them.
- Email from Salesforce suits short lists. Salesforce sends each email individually and counts it against your org's daily email allowance. For a larger campaign, Kite sends from your team's Kite address or a connected email product and logs the activity back in Salesforce.
- Your org's rules still apply. Validation rules, required custom fields, and duplicate rules your admin set up apply to Kite's writes just as they do to your reps', and Kite fills the fields your org requires.
Common questions
Do I need Agentforce or another Salesforce add-on to use Kite?
No. Kite brings its own research, writing, and judgment, and it works with your standard Salesforce records through the account you connect. What it needs is a Salesforce user with API access to the records you want it to work with.
Can Kite work with custom objects?
Yes. Beyond custom fields on leads, contacts, and accounts, Kite can read your org's list of objects, including custom ones, and create, read, and update records on them. If your team tracks event attendance or product usage in a custom object, Kite can read it and write to it like any other record.
What is the difference between a lead and a contact in Salesforce?
A lead is a person you haven't qualified yet, and it carries its own company name and details. A contact is a person attached to an account, which is a company you already have a relationship with. When a rep qualifies a lead, Salesforce converts it into a contact and an account, and optionally an opportunity. Kite uses that distinction to decide whether each new person should arrive as a lead or as a contact on an existing account.