Little by little I'm finding the practical limits of Salesforce.com(SFDC). For those of you that are considering or using a CRM package like SFDC and this includes Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SugarCRM, Oracle/Siebleand others, you need to consider the following limitations:
The variable "From" line is a killer if your company is trying to perform marketing services or other services "On Behalf" of another company. Let's suppose that you need to send reminder notices to customers on behalf of a group of magazine publishers (let's assume 5 publishers). You want the email to come "From" the Publisher of each magazine. This is important when embracing personalization and 1to1 marketing principles. Well, with SFDC, if you have a single seat Enterprise license, you have one "From" email address from which you can send. You can create and enable multiple email templates, each with the logo, copy and signature of each publisher - but one email address. You can also store the name of each publisher in a designated field within SFDC. However, every email will be sent "From" a single email address. Within the SFDC world, one way around this is to add a new seat for each publisher so that you create a user ID and an email for each one. This quickly becomes fairly cost prohibitive if you have a large group to serve.
Second game killer for marketers - dynamic content. Building on the previous example, assume that instead of 5 publishers you're providing services to 200 jewelry stores. Every holiday you want to send a special offer to the customers of each store. You need a logo, an offer, return address, personalized signature, etc for each store. The easy answer for store production is to create one template and pull content into the template during the send process - just like you would with your personalization attributes (name, address, etc.). Unfortunately SFDC does not support dynamic content assembly during the email send process. You can pull fields of text and numbers into the template, similar to a merge process, but you can't do this with logo's and other graphic files - at least not straight of out the box.
Finally - this leads us to the third killer for marketers -which is managing templates. SFDC makes it very easy to setup up a template and pull data from the leads, accounts or contact fields into these templates. They provide a nice Header and Footer where you can drop in your logo or other graphic file. It really is easy to use. However, that's where it ends. The Header and Footer are fixed and single. This is not a variable value that you can pull from a file. So instead of setting up one template and automatically pulling the logo or graphic from a file during the send process, like you can with text fields (Name, Address, Phone Numbers, etc.), if you want to support multiple Header styles (e.g. a different logo for each jewelry store) you must manually setup each template for each store - and keep in mind that you may still have only one "From" line from which to send your emails.
Each of the above limitations are killer barriers for marketers that are providing services to different groups or "stake holders" as some would say. This is pretty significant for marketing agencies, outsourcing providers and publishers of magazines and newsletters with multiple titles. It is also significant for internal marketing departments within larger companies where the marketing department supports multiple product lines, multiple brands or even separate segmentation strategies.
The good news is that each barrier can be overcome. Sometimes it is as simple as adding a new user license. In other cases it may simply mean manually maintaining a sizable library of templates within the SFDC document library. Ideally though, if you need a robust solution for marketing that really overcomes these limitations, you need to extend the capabilities of SFDC through a company like ExactTarget.
ExactTarget has fully integrated their email service capabilities into SFDC and they overcome all three of these killer marketing barriers. Dynamic content, variable "From" lines and strong functionality for marketing "on behalf of" other parties.
If you've already jumped into the CRM game, look for ways to extend your application with outside parties and you will be much happier with the core capabilities that you've already embraced.
www.iangilyeat.com
Where was I when the press release went out on March 21st from LinkedIn? Talk about a disruptive move into the corporate data business...
If you missed it like I did, go onto LinkedIn and look at the new company offering that recently rolled out. Click on any contact, then scroll down into their work experience and click on a company. Pick a large company like SAP, Microsoft or IBM. I picked SAP... it's called "Companies Beta"
I can see all of the SAP users on LinkedIn together... recent promotions, their new hires by name and title and where terminating employees go... as in who is hiring from Google?
As an example, Paul Applegate, this month was promoted from Senior Director to Vice President, EMEA Alliances. Now if Paul keeps his LinkedIn profile current, the information is current, otherwise I'm not sure when the promotion actually occurred, but it looks pretty recent...
Looking at this level of detail - why do I need Hoovers, InfoUSA or Dunn & Bradstreet?
These companies spend millions every year calling into businesses to interview them in order to compile their lists of contacts with title information, etc. Why should I pay for their data when this stuff is free!
I know, I know there are still many reasons to use the other guys, but this is impressive and useful...
Now, wouldn't you like to have this linked into your CRM system? I would...
If you missed the announcement from LinkedIn here's a snippet and link to the release:
"LinkedIn members who are interested in a company can also access data on the typical career paths of people entering and exiting the company, as well as view common job titles at the company. Members can see how their LinkedIn network connects them to current employees of the company. The data on company profiles is based on information from the over 20 million professional profiles on LinkedIn and as well as data from its partners, CapitalIQ and BusinessWeek." LinkedIn press release
www.iangilyeat.com
This morning I received a request from Amazon to review a book that I bought from them three weeks ago. I was in the midst of preparing for a capabilities presentation and needed current resource material on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. The book was a great help and now sits on my desk as a useful reference guide.
The part I find interesting is that there is no question this is an automated messaging system from Amazon. It's pretty clear to me that a person didn't send this request my way... and yet, it felt like a personal request. The request was very timely (less than 30 days had passed - they told my purchase date was March 13th); and it was relevant (I bought the book to make me smarter in my business) and the request appeals to personal ego (I mean, how many of us like to give our "expert opinion" when asked?).
Amazon has set up a systematic method to engage their customers and pull them back into a relationship with their company. Each one of us should be doing the same.
Automated messaging systems, like the one Amazon uses and continually evolves - take time to build, but they can be very effective in maintaining and strengthening relationships. They are also very efficient and improve profitability. If you're worried about performing well in a recession - spend some time on automating your sales and marketing processes now.