Two questions come up repeatedly once a Salesforce integration is live, usually from operations teams rather than reps: what happens when several Salesforce accounts share a domain, and can we sync only some accounts rather than all of them.
Both are worth understanding before a large rollout, because both are easier to set up correctly than to correct afterwards.
If you have not connected Salesforce yet, start with Salesforce integration setup.
How matching works
Salesmotion matches on company domain. When a signal is generated for an account, the integration looks for the Salesforce account record associated with that domain and writes the signal there.
This is reliable when each company maps to one Salesforce account. It needs attention when it does not.
When several Salesforce accounts share a domain
This is common in larger organizations, and it happens for legitimate reasons:
- Regional records for one global company, such as separate EMEA and North America accounts
- Divisional records for different business units
- Duplicate records created over time by different teams
- Parent and subsidiary records where the subsidiary uses the parent's domain
Because the match is on domain, several Salesforce records can be candidates for the same signal. The outcome depends on your Salesforce configuration, your matching rules, and how those records are structured, which varies enough between organizations that we do not publish a single rule here.
If you have duplicate domains in Salesforce, confirm the behavior for your instance before rolling out widely. Contact support@salesmotion.io with an example, and we will confirm exactly where signals land in your configuration and, if needed, adjust the mapping.
Diagnosing it yourself: pick one company where you know several Salesforce records share the domain, wait for a signal, and check which record received it. That answers the question definitively for your setup in one observation.
Reducing the problem
Whatever the matching behavior, fewer duplicates is better:
- Deduplicate where you can. Records that exist only because two teams created the same account should be merged. This improves reporting well beyond Salesmotion.
- Use distinct domains where they exist. Subsidiaries with their own domain should carry it, which lets each match independently.
- Decide on a primary record for genuinely distinct regional or divisional records that must share a domain, and tell us which it is.
Scoping which accounts sync
Teams frequently want to sync a subset rather than everything: only tier 1 accounts, only accounts owned by a particular team, only a named target list.
This is not on by default. The default behavior syncs the accounts tracked in Salesmotion, and the control point is which accounts you track rather than a filter applied at the sync layer.
Two approaches work:
Control at the Salesmotion end. Track only the accounts you want synced. If your Salesmotion account list is already your target list, this is usually sufficient and requires no configuration. See Managing accounts.
Ask us to scope the sync. If you need to track accounts in Salesmotion that should not write to Salesforce, or need scoping by owner, tier, or record type, contact support@salesmotion.io. Tell us the rule in the terms your Salesforce uses, for example "only accounts where Tier equals 1 and Owner is in this team," and we will confirm what is achievable in your configuration.
Worth deciding early. Retrofitting a filter after signals have written to hundreds of records means cleaning up records that should not have received them.
Before a large rollout
A short checklist that prevents the common problems:
- Check for duplicate domains in your Salesforce account records, and note whether they are genuine distinct entities or true duplicates
- Decide the scope of which accounts should receive signals
- Test with a small set of accounts and confirm signals land on the records you expect
- Confirm field mapping so signals appear where your reps look, rather than on a tab nobody opens
That last point matters more than it sounds. A correctly working integration that writes to a field nobody has on their page layout is indistinguishable from a broken one.
Frequently asked questions
Does the sync write back to Salesmotion?
The integration pushes intelligence into Salesforce. If you need account attributes such as tier or owner to inform how you work accounts in Salesmotion, contact support to discuss what your setup supports.
Will syncing overwrite fields our reps maintain?
Salesmotion writes to its own fields rather than overwriting standard Salesforce fields your team maintains. Confirm the exact field mapping during setup so everyone knows which fields are managed by the integration.
Can we sync to HubSpot instead?
Yes. See the HubSpot integration guide. The Salesforce integration is the more mature of the two.
An account is not receiving signals in Salesforce
Check in order: the account is tracked in Salesmotion, it has generated signals in the platform, the domain matches the Salesforce record, and the fields are on the page layout. Most reports of this resolve at step two (no signals generated yet, usually a keyword configuration issue) or step four (signals present but not visible).