Core Preference Centre

One system, many voices

A custom preference centre built for how Core actually works

The context

Core is a specialist land advisory, sales and marketing consultancy based in Victoria. As a certified B Corp, they see property as a human system, not just a commercial one. Connection matters. So does trust.

Behind the scenes, Core operates as an ecosystem of distinct brands and projects. Core Land, Core Projects and Core Property all sit within a single Salesforce environment, but each needs to run independently. Sales data, marketing activity and customer communication must stay cleanly separated by brand and by project.

Their CRM architecture was already doing the heavy lifting. The opportunity lay in bringing the customer experience up to the same standard.

The challenge

Core operates a sophisticated Salesforce CRM environment, with clear separation between brands and projects. Their data structure was intentionally designed to protect those boundaries.

Marketing is managed through Salesforce Account Engagement, which uses a standard global unsubscribe model by default.

In practice, this meant:

• Preference pages were centrally branded, even when a customer relationship was tied to a specific project.
• Unsubscribe behaviour was applied at a full system level rather than within an individual project context.
• A customer who was subscribed to multiple projects and chose to unsubscribe from one would be unsubscribed from all communications managed through Account Engagement.

The underlying platform was working as designed. The challenge was aligning that standard behaviour with the way Core structures and manages its customer relationships across its brands.

The approach

We started with a simple principle. The system should adapt to the customer, not the other way around.

Our role was to bridge Core’s sophisticated Salesforce architecture with a preference experience that felt clearly branded and safe to use. That meant designing for the reality that customers may be engaging across multiple brands or projects at the same time, without introducing artificial hierarchies or a single master view.

Each brand relationship needed to be treated independently. Each preference experience needed to reflect the specific context of that relationship, while still operating within one Salesforce environment.

Achieving this required moving beyond out of the box Account Engagement functionality and designing a purpose built solution. One that respected existing data boundaries, worked with the evolving CRM structure and could scale easily as new projects were introduced.

The solution

A bespoke, chameleon style preference centre

We designed and built a custom preference centre hosted on Salesforce that adapts to the brand and project behind each customer interaction.

When a customer clicks through to manage their preferences, the system checks their associated brand and project and loads the appropriate experience.

Dynamic brand switching

Each preference page automatically reflects the relevant brand and project. This includes:

• Brand specific logos and colour palettes
• Contextual links and references
• Language aligned to the project the customer is engaging with

To support this, we implemented a central configuration that allows each brand and project to maintain its own styling without requiring separate builds.

Smart filtering and project isolation

Customers never see internal lists or Salesforce logic. They only see what is relevant to them.

Behind the scenes, strict filtering ensures:

• Contacts only view preferences tied to the specific project they are associated with
• Preferences for other active projects are completely hidden
• Operational and purchaser communications are protected by default

For example, a customer opting out of a newsletter cannot accidentally unsubscribe from settlement or purchaser updates. The system simply does not allow it.

Secure, resilient access

We replaced static preference links with dynamically generated, secure URLs.

Each link:

• Is unique to the contact and the project
• Expires after a defined period
• Is validated in real time before loading

To protect the experience, we also built a smart fallback. If a customer clicks an old link from months ago, the system checks their current record and resolves to a valid link automatically. No dead ends. No broken journeys.

The outcome

Core now has a preference management experience that supports stronger customer relationships and is straightforward for the team to run day to day.

• Clear, relationship led experiences for customers
  Customers manage their preferences within the context of the specific brand and project they are engaging with. This reflects the real relationship they have with Core, particularly when they are involved across multiple projects at the same time.
• Preference changes that match customer intent
  Unsubscribe actions apply only to the relevant project and email, helping ensure customers remain connected to other active relationships unless they choose otherwise.
• Confidence around critical communications
  Purchaser and operational communications are not surfaced within the preference experience, reducing the likelihood of unintended changes to important messages.
• Simple and consistent for the team
  Preference management fits into existing Account Engagement workflows. The same merge field is used across all brands and projects, making it easy for team members to send communications without needing to manage different rules or processes.

Together, this creates a preference experience that respects how customers engage with the business, while remaining easy for the team to operate and extend as new projects are introduced.

Why it matters

Preference management is rarely seen as strategic. In reality, it is one of the clearest signals of respect you can show your customers.

For Core, this solution protects trust, preserves data quality and supports a genuinely human approach to property communication.

For us, it is a strong example of how thoughtful Salesforce design creates real world impact.

If your preference centre feels like a compromise between system rules and customer experience, it probably is. We’re happy to help you rethink it. Let’s talk.