22 Jul Building a Scalable Franchise Model in Salesforce: A Blueprint for Long-Term Success
Franchising is all about replication, consistency, and growth. Whether you’re opening your second location or expanding well beyond that, the systems behind your franchise must be as scalable as your business ambitions. That’s where the Salesforce ecosystem, when implemented strategically, becomes a cornerstone of franchise success. In this blog, we’ll discuss the importance of building a scalable franchise model and how it can significantly cut down on the configuration process and streamline your email marketing efforts like it did for our children’s soccer program partners, who have over 180 franchises to date.
Designing a scalable franchise model in Salesforce is a necessity. This trickles down to other Salesforce products like Marketing Cloud Engagement. The goal of setting up a franchise data model is to create a scalable, consistent, and flexible system that supports the unique structure and growth of a franchise business.
Here’s a breakdown of the key objectives to consider when future-proofing franchise implementations:
Represent Franchise Hierarchy Accurately: To reflect the real-world relationships between the franchisor and franchisee / locations. Example: Parent accounts (Franchisor) and child accounts (Franchisee / locations).
Enable Scalable Growth: To design a structure that can easily accommodate the onboarding of new franchisees / locations without major rework or custom development. Benefit: Add new franchises with minimal setup time and configuration.
Ensure Data Visibility & Segmentation: To control what data franchisees can access. Example: Franchise owners only see data of their own locations; corporate sees data across all locations.
Support Operational Consistency: To enforce standardized sales, service, and marketing processes across all franchises, ensuring a consistent customer experience and internal operations. Benefit: Streamlines content, campaigns, training, support, and quality control.
Centralize Reporting and Analytics: To collect and analyze data across all franchises for performance tracking, forecasting, and strategic decision-making. Benefit: Identify top performers and spot trends to better optimize the overall business.
Automate Repetitive Processes: To reduce manual work and human error in tasks like franchise onboarding, content creation, data segmentation, and automated campaigns. Example: Create and share emails, audiences, and campaigns across all Franchisees to set them up for quick success.
By following these key objectives, you will be able to future-proof your Salesforce environment, which avoids costly rework down the line.
Success Story:
How We Built a Scalable Franchise Model to Streamline Implementation and Simplify Onboarding for a Rapidly Growing Children’s Soccer Program
A fast-growing children’s soccer program approached us with a unique challenge: they needed to scale their franchise operations while transitioning from their legacy CRM and email marketing tools to the Salesforce ecosystem. With over 180 franchises and expanding rapidly each year, they required a solution that simplified onboarding for non-technical franchisees and streamlined implementation processes across their network.
To support their growth, we implemented a scalable franchise model using Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement, and Mulesoft (a Salesforce integration platform). Our approach focused on reducing setup complexity, improving operational efficiency, and enabling personalized marketing at the franchise level.
Salesforce CRM & Mulesoft Implementation:
We began by implementing Salesforce CRM, designing a custom data model using Person Accounts and multiple custom objects tailored to their business needs. Once the CRM structure was finalized, we leveraged Mulesoft to integrate data from their external database into Salesforce. This involved extensive custom development to ensure data was accurately and efficiently mapped to the new Salesforce objects and fields. Corporate retained responsibility for maintaining both the Salesforce CRM and Mulesoft integrations.
Marketing Cloud Engagement Integration:
Next, we focused on integrating Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement, establishing a clear hierarchy between Corporate and Franchisees. We created a parent Business Unit (Corporate) that syncs data from Salesforce CRM. This data is then selectively shared with individual Franchisee Business Units.
To enable franchisees to build targeted audiences, we developed a single Modeled Data Extension at the parent level using SQL. This extension is shared with each franchisee, giving them access to a comprehensive data table that supports Marketing Cloud’s drag-and-drop segmentation tools.
Shared Tools and Campaign Automation for Franchisees:
To further support franchisee success, we built and distributed the following resources across all Business Units:
-Prebuilt Email Templates and Content: Ensuring brand consistency while giving franchisees ready-to-use, customizable assets through drag-and-drop or WYSIWYG tools.
-Automated Campaigns: Streamlined communication workflows to engage participants at every stage, including:
-Welcome Series: Post-class sign-up
-Welcome Series: Post-league registration
-Season Summary: Upcoming season expectations and schedules
-Thank You Series: After class completion
-Thank You Series: After league completion
This solution has empowered the organization to scale efficiently, reducing onboarding friction for non-technical users and giving each franchise the tools they need to deliver consistent, high-quality engagement—paving the way for continued year-over-year growth.