3 Marketing Game Killers on Salesforce.com
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:
- Variable "From" line
- Dynamic content
- Template management
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
All things connected...
Can anyone think of a single application, computer system, network or entertainment system that is better by itself - standing alone in a vacuum? If you can think of something, let me know because I'm having a hard time thinking of anything that would not be better by being connected.
As an example, a friend of mine works for a software company that has created a solution for doctors to stay connected to their patients while they're out and about. They've developed a messaging system that tracks infectious agents in patients and sends alerts to the doctor whenever certain thresholds are exceeded. These messages are sent from monitors in patient hospital rooms, labs and other systems that track patient progress. As a result, the doctors are very aware of the their patients' progress or decline and can treat them nearly instantaneously if their condition significantly changes - even when they are not with the patient.
On a completely different note, the last few days I've been building out work flow processes on a CRM platform that will improve vehicle registration processes. It's a system that will completely bypass State Motor Vehicle departments. It maintains the pleasantries of face-to-face conversation and yet takes advantage of the Internet and the anywhere - anytime world that is enabled because of it.
I have the pleasure of designing the conversation stream that will help people remember to renew their vehicle tags and thank them for reliving congestion in the State run offices by taking their business elsewhere.
It's a win-win kind of solution - and watching it become a reality continues to reinforce my opinion that all things benefit when they are connected or talking to other things. Mother nature is very connected and eco-systems abound in every aspect of planet earth. Although we like to think we are smart and understand what is happening to our planet, in reality, our understanding has barely begun to scratch the service. The exciting part to me is that the technology and scientific communities are intentionally mimicking the designs and capabilities of mother nature. National Geographic calls this biomimetics. A very cumbersome way of saying "designed by nature." No matter how you say it - the benefits of innovation will continue to pay large dividends for many, many decades to come and one of the key building blocks of this innovation is messaging oriented architectures. Just ask Mother Nature.
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Messaging systems - are they more than just email?
However, we suggest that when thinking about messaging systems we need to talk about EDI (eletronic data interchange), ACH (automated clearning house), FTP (file transfer protocol) automation and social neworks like MySpace, Facemail, Bebo, Flickr and many others - oh, and let's not forget OnStar from General Motors.
The point is, message oriented architectures are a core enabling capability that we all should be thinking about and working to understand. Messaging systems will use many different technologies over the coming years, but it is clear that the core capability will be pervasive. Software subscription services depend on this capability. Music and video services that are "on-demand" will fail without them. Identify theft and banking systems depend on messaging routines to protect us and keep the economy running.
Messaging logic and systematic controls must be thoughtfully created and organized in order to meet the needs of society at large and your customers on an individual basis.
If you work for a large organization like IBM, CA, Accenture, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard or any other company we recommend that you look at messaging as much broader than just email and that if you care about your customers that you audit and organize all of your messaging systems. How you manage your messaging systems is at the core of having satisfied customer relationships.
www.iangilyeat.com
Selling through a recession... why automation is your best friend
Last week in conversation with an executive at a Fortune 100 company, he asked me, "so how do you feel about launching a new company in the midst of a recession?" My response, "I'm fine with it. There is always some sector that is down and another sector that is up. I'm not overly concerned. I recently saw a chemicals company that is raising prices by 25% because demand is so high."
This comment may come back to haunt me, but if your company is suffering the ill effects of a recession and you're laying off sales people, automation can be your best friend.
Let's consider a simple view on a company with 10,000 customers. We'll assume some are large, some are mid-sized companies and some are small. True to form in most companies, if sales are down and headcount is being cut, then upward migration in your customer base is happening. The sales force will be re-aligned to serve the largest and most profitable customers. The small customers, those on the bottom of the stack will be left behind, under served or simply ignored. If the bottom 20% are ignored, suddenly there are 2,000 customers that become ideal candidates for automated marketing solutions.
Automated marketing can keep in contact with these 2,000 customers via email, print, telephone and personalized web sites to name a few. Personally visiting or calling each of these customers may not be the most effective use of your sales team in tough times but their needs can be partially met through the use of business rules, relevant content and pragmatic uses of technology.
Having said that, the same can be true for caring for high-value customers. Your approach may be, that instead of cutting customers from your sales team, you're doubling the quantity of customers for each person by cutting head count. Again, automation can be your best friend. In this scenario you need to identify those repetitive tasks or communications that can be automated. Think of it in terms of enabling your sales person with tools that double their efficiency and productivity. One experience in my past where this worked exceptionally well was in the sales of personal computer products and the establishment of company extranets. Headcount was cut, customers were enabled with self-service procurement portals and revenue went up significantly.
In both cases mentioned above, automation really was a "best friend" solution. In tough economic times, you need to think through the business logic and your customer needs to find those situations that are best suited to automation. It can be done - it just requires patience, an ability to pay attention to the details and pragmatic use of technology.
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Should you make one workflow object or many?
So for the next few minutes let's pretend that our email series consists of 12 unique messages over the course of 12 months. The series is triggered based on the value of the customer. Let's further assume that we have segmented our customer base into three divisions based on value: low value, medium value and high value. Each segment receives a string of 12 email communications... and once the email is sent, a task is scheduled for the assigned sales person that owns the customer relationship and this task is placed on their "to do list" in the CRM system. Sounds pretty good so fare, doesn't it?
Well, if we add this up, we have 3 segments, times 12 messages equals 36 emails to be scheduled and an equal number of tasks to be assigned to the sales team. Total number of workflow items is 72.
Okay, now let's assume that we have 1,000 customers in each customer segment. Add it all up and voila! - 72,000 workflow items. Now remember this is not a single marketing campaign, but instead is a series of communications that is personalized with the customers name, account executive information and segmented according to the value of the customer and will be sent over the course of 12 months.
The question that I posed at the top of this email is whether you should create one workflow object or many? If we create one workflow object for each of the three customer segments and place the 12 email messages and each related set of tasks within each object then in reality we only have 3 objects to manage. That's pretty reasonable if you ask me... but wait...
Salesforce.com (I don't know about Microsoft yet) provides you with a monitoring "que" in order to see and manage your automated workflow objects and rules. Very cool! Unfortunately it has a visual limit of 250 items. It's not that the other items go away, you just can't see them. So in our example, we have three objects and 72,000 workflow items... Also, it appears that the entire workflow stream is qued at the beginning and loaded whenever the first rule condition is met. In essence all 12 email messages are loaded up and emailed out according to the time based intervals that are defined (e.g. 7 days, 21 days, etc.)... but wait...
What happens if I want to deactivate the series so I can modify my content, etc.? Well, you can deactivate but the entire que remains loaded and intact and will be sent unless you delete each item. Deactivating the workflow objects does not cancel those workflow items that have already been qued up. Remember the 250 visual limit? This is also the maximum number of items that you can select "at once" and delete en masse (e.g. in salesforce.com).
So back to my question - should you create one workflow item or many? In our opinion, you create one if you can modify the content as necessary along the communications stream, knowing that you have visibility to the que and can delete emails scheduled for tomorrow by editing the que. Otherwise, take the time and effort to setup each and every workflow object separately (e.g. 12 separate workflow objects times 3 customers segments equals 36 workflow objects.) In essence, by separating your workflow objects with greater granularity you obtain a more management que, but the trade off is, your workflow objects become a little more cumbersome. This approach doesn't automatically improve manageability of your que... although there are options for doing so.
Net/net think through carefully how you want to manage workflow objects, workflow items and the workflow que.
www.iangilyeat.com
On the cutting edge? Or just another painful experience...?
Fortunately, a third party company, AppExtremes! has written an application called Conga Courier that does provide this capability. I'm grateful that they have because I come out of an old IT experience consisting of the IBM 360, the VAX and Unix where scheduled jobs is just taken for granted.
Why do I care? Well, you see, salesforce.com only lets you export data up to one time per week, although not on a scheduled basis. I can manually go into the app and export data - but only one time. Mind you, I have an Enterprise license. The purpose of course is to provide me with a secure backup option. Now everyone with an IT background knows that backups also tend to be highly automated and scheduled and have been for decades.
Now, in fairness to salesforce.com, it does appear that they are creating a platform for development more so than an application that meets all needs, but scheduled jobs seems like a fairly basic requirement if you want my opinion.
Anyway, AppExtremes! provides a reasonable solution that automates the running of reports, which in this instance will allow me to automate a portion of the marketing process we are redefining. Once the csv file format becomes available in Conga Courier, it will be much, much easier and we'll have a fully automated communications stream that flows from the marketing department through salesforce.com, onto a digital press and into the mail stream for weekly demand generation.
Now that will be sweet! And highly efficient...
www.iangilyeat.com
WOW! This is an eye popper! If you use business data you gotta see this!
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
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One reason Amazon is so good at building online relationships...
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.
If you're a manufacturer - automate the use of your point of sale (POS) data.
Our suggestion is that you take the POS data file, enhance it with appropriate data from Dunn & Bradstreet or InfoUSA, import that enriched data into your CRM platform and use it as the basis to create a multi-year, automated contact strategy where you consistently contact and sell the value of your products to your customers.
This may sound a little unrealistic but in reality it is quite pragmatic. POS data typically tells you which companies are using your product. You can use this information to identify key decision makers by matching it to the D&B file and send them a simple message through old fashion mail and invite them visit a personalized microsite that has been developed around your product that they use in their company. If you're wondering why it needs to be old-fashioned mail, it's because POS data typically does not include contact details like name, address, phone or email information. The microsite is built to gather one or two of these key pieces of contact information so you can continue to sell the value of your company to your customer. It can also link out to other appropriate web sites - like the reseller that gave you the record in the first place.
Every so often (you decide the frequency) for the next several years, you invite them back to visit their microsite and to reengage with you, the manufacturer, on how your product is performing for them and to engage in a conversation whereby you can consistently understand their evolving needs and how they use your product and sell them an upgraded version when the time is right.
Now, I know is a simplified view and most companies have many systems or assets available to them that would make the above scenario much better - but my point is, automating the marketing process doesn't have to be complicated as illustrated through use of POS data. However, automation should always enhance and strengthen your customer relationships.
Rather than doing nothing with the POS data that you're already receiving, or simply analyzing it and then putting together programs that are disconnected from your customer - why not act on the customer information that your business partners already give you and layout an automated process and communications stream that will run for the next few years. Your customers will thank you...by the way, it's a lot easier to keep good customers than to go find new ones.
www.iangilyeat.com
Six uses that define your corporate email systems...
For the purposes of this note, I'm going to ignore the many social networks for the moment and focus on corporate email systems. I'm doing this for the benefit of simplicity, although we'll want to come back to social networking at another time.
One of the areas that we think about in terms of messaging is how many email systems should a company maintain and should there be distinct roles or purposes for each? We would argue that there are valid reasons for a company to maintain multiple systems and that trying to reduce the email systems to one is not very pragmatic. In addition, we would argue that these multiple email systems should be implemented to take advantage of their unique strengths and designed in a coordinated fashion to enhance the customer experience instead of allowing them to exist haphazardly without any acknowledgment of the others existence.
Consider the following functions and think of them in terms of their core purpose or best use.
Desktop email (Example: Microsoft Outlook & Lotus Notes | Purpose: personal communication)
Email marketing (Example: ExactTarget & Responsys | Purpose: mass marketing)
CRM email (Example: salesforce.com & Siebel-Oracle | Purpose: sales contact management)
Transaction management/ecommerce systems (Example: ATG & IBM WebSphere| Purpose: order confirmation)
Financial management (Example: Oracle & MS Great Plains | Purpose: invoicing & collections notices)
When looking at these systems you can almost assign department labels to each: HR, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance. It's funny how each function needs messaging capabilities, but the unique needs of that area of the company has created email requirements that make them difficult to replace with one of the other solutions.
Think about Outlook. Easy to use. Great for back and forth communication... and yet, who wants to use Outlook for marketing? Not many companies that I know. Or think about that simple order confirmation that is sent to your customer when their package ships? Is there really a valid reason to move that into Outlook and send it from the desktop? Probably not - at least we would say it's usually ill advised.
Some CRM systems are great for managing contacts, improve customer management, include marketing automation and campaign management - yet grossly neglect the simple ability for a customer email response to come back into the CRM system and allow the sales person to reply. This simple email function, taken for granted in Outlook, Notes and other desktop systems simply does not exist in widely used CRM systems.
In addition to the five prevalent purposes noted above we would add human resources and employee communication as another area with strong messaging needs. Information that flows to your employees for benefits, personnel issues and compensation in many cases need the characteristics of email marketing (how many employees opened and read the last announcement?). Unfortunately, few HR departments that we know use email marketing capabilities to communicate with their employee population.
Email messaging systems are a critical part of today's corporate culture. They provide valuable tools and useful information. They allow us to communicate frequently and in a timely manner. We strongly encourage you to take inventory of all messaging systems and deliberately decide how and when messaging capabilities will be used. This should include not only the six core purposes already identified but should also address instant messaging, text messaging and social networking platforms.
Once a messaging inventory has been concluded you will have built the basis for knowing where and how automated marketing processes can be successfully implemented.
www.iangilyeat.com