How to Optimize Account Engagement Lead Scoring Rules and Categories

A score in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) is a numerical figure that is assigned to prospects once they engage with a tracked marketing activity. This could be anything from an email open, link click, page view, form conversion or content download — providing you have the correct lead scoring rules or completion actions applied. 

Luckily, Account Engagement (Pardot) offers an out-the-box lead scoring system that is completely customizable. 

Customizing your Pardot scoring rules and categories is a great way to float your hottest prospects to the top of your priority list. You can get a better understanding of how likely your prospects are to buy from you. And that picture will be even clearer because you’ll differentiate your prospects from those who are simply fans of your company from those who are ready to make purchasing decisions.

An Introduction to Pardot Scoring and Grading

You can get a complete introduction to Pardot scoring and grading in this blog post, but here’s a review if you’re already familiar with the concept.

In a nutshell:

  • Account Engagement (Pardot) Scoring = prospect engagement
  • Account Engagement (Pardot) Grading = prospect profile

Pardot Scoring

The Pardot score itself shows implicit interest in a product, solution or service offered by your business. This is information used to assume or suggest a prospects’ level of interest — (the score does not show direct interest expressed by the prospect). Meaning the higher the prospects score, the more likely they are to be interested in purchasing from your business. 

Now depending on your account setup, a prospect’s score can increase and/or decrease throughout their lifecycle. For instance, to improve the quality of your leads you may wish to reduce the score of prospects who frequently visit career type pages on your website.

Pardot Grading

A grade is a letter that is assigned to a prospect based on their profile — and it matches your business’s ideal customer profile. The measurement itself is used to show explicit information provided by the prospect, usually captured through form submissions (don’t forget to use progressive profiling to capture more data). 

These could be data points such as:

  • Job title
  • Location
  • Company size
  • Industry 

Now, depending on how well the prospect profile matches the criteria you’ve set, these data points will determine the prospect’s grade. The closer the match, the higher the grade. The lower the match, the lower the grade will be.

Pardot grades run from F to A and increase and/ or decrease in increments of thirds (C, C+, -B, B, B+, etc.). By default, any new prospects are assigned with a grade of D

The score will then adjust to reflect their closeness with your ideal customer profile. The grade itself should be used to show the quality of the prospect — meaning how valuable they could be to your business. 

So, to summarize, when developing your lead strategy, you are looking to create a process that identifies highly interested prospects (prospect score) who are highly valuable to your business (prospect grade). These are then the type of prospects or potential leads you want to be pushing to sales for conversion.

Optimizing scoring rules and categories

Here’s how to optimize your scoring rules and categories for your specific business needs.

Pardot Scoring Rules

Pardot scoring rules are essentially touchpoints you want to track and score across your marketing funnel or customer journey. They are the marketing interactions mentioned at the start of the article (email click, open, content download, event registration). Scoring rules aggregate toward an overall score or scoring category — more on this later. 

To optimize scoring rules, you really need to conduct a scoring rule or touchpoint audit by asking yourself… what are we currently tracking, what aren’t we tracking, and what should we be tracking? 

Remember, quality over quantity. A few high-quality tracked touchpoints will provide far more value than hundreds of poor touchpoints.

The key is to identify touchpoints that are the most influential and generate the most engagement from your customers. In short, the marketing touchpoints that will affect the buyer’s decision-making process. The more influential the touchpoint the higher the score should be. For instance, a prospect downloading a technical white paper should receive a higher score than a prospect opening an email. 

How to organize lead scoring touchpoints

  1. Map all the touchpoints you want to track (can any be grouped?).
  2. Rank the touchpoints – based on influence and volume of engagement
    • Utilize audits, reports, and prospect activity data.
    • If you have activated Engagement history in Salesforce, you can view activity on the lead and contact level.
  3. Apply an appropriate score for each touchpoint.
  4. Establish a set marketing qualified lead (MQL) threshold to identify interested prospects.
  5. Optimize this based on your customer journey and decision-making process (high or low involvement).

Lead Scoring Categories

Now that you have mapped the touchpoints to track, you may wish to have them aggregate toward a specific product group via a scoring category. Scoring categories can provide your business with very powerful scoring segmentation, thus allowing you to direct scoring rules toward different categories depending on the product type that is being promoted.

This allows you to score prospects on more than one product, making it easier to identify and determine the level of interest per category or product group. This in turn opens opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. You’ll also have more granularity when analyzing prospect activity for lead qualification/ conversion, thus reducing the amount of time sales require to prepare customer briefs.

To start, look at your current business structure and product/ service portfolio. Let’s say you work for a footwear brand selling casual sneakers, boots and running shoes, etc. These would form your specific product groups, meaning you would have a separate scoring category for each type of footwear. 

Technical Setup: How to optimize your lead generation strategy via Automation rules or Engagement Studio Programs

Now that you have scoring rules, grading and categories implemented, you can start to think about developing an automated process that will look for ideal customers and push them to sales for qualification. 

The two most powerful tools in this instance are automation rules and Engagement Studio Programs

This article will focus on automation rules, but the same logic can be applied with an Engagement Studio Program, and a dynamic list to feed potential leads into the program.

Key considerations before setup:

  • Automation rules start in a paused state for the user to review before turning on.
  • Depending on what tier of Account Engagement you have purchased, you will have a limited number of automation rules (50-150).
  • It is advisable to have one automation rule per scoring category to reduce complexity (less to go wrong!)
  • You’ll need to specify if these actions are to repeat. And if so, how often?
  • Remember, actions are executed from top to bottom in automation rules — so structure them in the order you intend them to apply.
  • Finish previewing before starting!!

Lead scoring criteria

Before the automation rule can start, you will need to specify or select the kind of prospect who meets your lead scoring criteria. 

To do this ask yourself these following questions:

  1. What is the minimum score a prospect should have? (Scoring threshold before conversion)
  2. What grade should the prospect have?
  3. Who shouldn’t be considered a lead? (Competitors, job seekers, suppliers, etc.)
  4. How often should a prospect repeat the action? (Customer lifecycle – FMCG vs SMCG)
  5. Who in your organization is going to handle the leads? (a queue or a specific user)
  6. How is your Pardot org synced with Salesforce?
  7. Is contact and lead creation enabled?
  8. Or is task creation the only option? (Does a new lead need to be created or should a task be assigned)
  9. Should the prospect’s score be reset?
  10. Where should this information be stored after the action has been completed? (a list, campaign, or both)

Once you have answered these questions, you can create an automation rule that looks something like the below version. 

Remember this is only an example. Personalize your automation rule to suit your buyer’s journey and business needs.

lead journey for lead scoring

Reviewing and improving your lead scoring strategy

Once your lead strategy has been in circulation for some time, you can start to review it and look for improvements. 

Here are some areas to consider:

  1. How many leads are converting per category, and is this as high as expected?
  2. What’s your opportunity ‘lost vs won’ rate? Are the leads of good quality?
  3. Are certain categories performing better than others? Should the lead threshold be changed per category?
  4. Do any touchpoints need to be reviewed or adjusted? Are some overinflated?
  5. Is the repeat time sufficient? Should this be shortened or extended?

If all targets are being met but you wish to improve your lead process further still, you may want to ask yourself…

  1. How can we shorten the customer journey/ prospect lifecycle?
  2. How can we increase the share of existing customers (cross-selling or upselling)?
  3. How can we win new customers (improve data acquisition)?

MarDreamin’ 2022 Presentation Replay

This blog post is adapted from a 2022 MarDreamin’ session. Check out the recording below.

Further reading

You can use the following resources to dive deeper into Salesforce lead scoring and grading capabilities.

Original article: How to Optimize Account Engagement Lead Scoring Rules and Categories

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post How to Optimize Account Engagement Lead Scoring Rules and Categories appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-03-31T19:32:50+00:00March 31st, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Pardot, revive|

Playing with the AI-Powered Stensul Email Subject Line Tool

I saw an email pop in my inbox last week from our pals at Stensul. The subject line read “Simple and quick subject lines? The Stensul way it is.” Inside the email was a link to try out an AI-powered email subject line generator.

I had to check it out.

I spend lots of time in my role at Sercante writing and editing copy for marketing assets like emails, blog posts, landing pages, and social media posts. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten in an editing hole testing different variations of words for email subject lines until I find the perfect one.

That’s what got me so excited about the tool.

Email Subject Lines that Inspire Action and Curiosity

Each email you send through your marketing automation tool has such a small chance to get people to do the things you’re asking them to do. So, it’s especially important to write an impactful email subject line to get people curious about what your email has to offer. You also have to provide value by offering your reader clear expectations about what’s inside the email. 

I’m thinking the Stensul email subject line generator will be helpful for achieving those goals. I’m also thinking we can use it to create subject line variations for A/B testing.

Trying the Stensul Subject Line Generator on Sercante Emails

I guess the best way to see how this thing works is to dive in. First, I went to the subject line generator landing page and traded my info for access to the tool. A few seconds later, I got an email with my magic link to use it.

Here’s what it looks like:

You’re prompted to enter the text of your email along with details like your company type, industry, and tone of voice along with word limit for the subject line. 

The tone of voice options range from average to entertaining. Here are the options:

Tone of voice options
  • Enthusiastic
  • Funny
  • Informational
  • Casual
  • Professional
  • Pirate-Like
  • Yoda
  • Shakespearean

I tested it out using a few older Sercante emails to see what subject lines it produces.

Here are examples from my exploration:

Sercante 2022 Year in Review Email Example

Here’s what I got when copy-pasted the content from our 2022 year in review email and asked for 10-word subject lines.

Original subject line: ➡ Join Us In Celebrating Our Milestones ❇

The email:

Results with Enthusiastic Tone:

  1. 🎉 Celebrating a Year of Growth & Opportunity with Sercante! 🚀
  2. 2022 Highlights: Sercante’s Unforgettable Journey 🔥
  3. 🌟 Sercante’s 2022 Milestones: Thanks for the Support!
  4. ✨ Sercante’s Incredible Growth: Join our 2023 Adventure!
  5. 🚀 Cheers to Sercante’s Success: Let’s Make 2023 Even Better!

Results with Funny Tone:

  1. Hold Our 🍾: Sercante’s Wild & Wonderful 2022 Recap!🎉
  2. 🚀Blast Off! Sercante’s Stellar 2022 Highlights Inside😄
  3. Unleashing the Fury: Sercante’s 🐉-Filled 2022 Adventures
  4. 🎂Sercante Turns 5: Our Side-Splitting, Record-Breaking Year!😂
  5. Brace Yourself: Sercante’s 2022 Rollercoaster Ride Awaits!🎢

Note: I love that it’s intuitive enough to throw a dragon emoji in there.

Results with Yoda Tone:

  1. Growth & Opportunity, 2022 We Celebrate, Yoda Says
  2. Memorable Year, Sercante’s Journey, Learn You Will
  3. Gratitude and Success, 2022 Recap, Stronger Together
  4. Salesforce Support, Sercante Achievements, Future Yoda Sees
  5. Embark 2023, Marketers’ Galactic Adventures Await Us

The Spot & Jenna Molby Partnership Email Example

Here’s more email subject line generator exploration using an email we sent to announce Jenna Molby’s partnership with The Spot.

Original subject line: A shining Salesforce star is joining The Spot 🤩

The email: 

Results with Informational Tone:

  1. Discover Jenna Molby’s Salesforce Insights on The Spot
  2. Elevate Your Marketing with Jenna Molby & The Spot
  3. Master Pardot: Jenna Molby’s Tools & Tips Now Live
  4. Unleash Your Salesforce Potential: Jenna Molby & The Spot
  5. Jenna Molby’s Salesforce Expertise Joins The Spot Library

Results with Informational Tone:

  1. Jenna Molby Joins The Spot: Upgrade Your Salesforce Game
  2. The Spot + Jenna Molby: A Match Made in Salesforce Heaven
  3. Jenna Molby’s Salesforce Secrets Now on The Spot!
  4. Boost Your Salesforce Skills with Jenna Molby & The Spot
  5. Unleash Your Marketing Superpowers with Jenna Molby & The Spot

Results with Pirate-Like Tone:

  1. Ahoy Mateys! The Spot & Jenna Molby’s Treasure Trove Unveiled
  2. Sail into Salesforce Success with Jenna Molby’s Insights
  3. Chart Yer Course with Jenna Molby’s Ultimate Salesforce Guides
  4. Discover the Hidden Gems of Salesforce with Jenna Molby
  5. Jenna Molby’s Swashbuckling Salesforce Secrets Unleashed

Results with Shakespearean Tone:

  1. Behold! Thee Spot & Jenna Molby: A Veritable Pairing
  2. Pray, Joineth The Spot for Molby’s Salesforce Wisdom
  3. Salesforce Mastery: Jenna & The Spot Unite in Harmony
  4. Rejoice! Jenna Molby’s Tools Now Grace The Spot
  5. Hark! Jenna Molby’s Top Guides, Now on The Spot

My thoughts overall on the email subject line generator

This tool is super handy for coming up with subject line variations for emails. I especially see it being helpful when my brain is done and I simply can’t write another word — let alone something that grabs people’s attention.

And that’s the thing about email subject lines. Writing them is often the last thing we do in the email copywriting process. But we should be paying closer attention so we have greater chances of getting clicks from our email recipients.

The more copy the better

I did learn one caveat while using the subject line generator tool. It works better on emails that have a higher volume of copy. My first example was a true newsletter with 667 words of copy, while the second example had about 415 words of copy. 

The generator results were spot on in my opinion for the first email while I was underwhelmed by the results for the second email. That may be because the second example had significantly less copy and sections. It makes sense because the tool needs enough information to pull from so it can summarize into a short subject line. I’m also loving the emoji suggestions, but I didn’t get those with all of my results.

Where AI Tools Fit in Content Marketing

You’ve probably heard lots of talk lately about OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool and other AI-powered chatbots that we’re seeing in the content marketing world. The Stensul Email Subject Line generator belongs to the wave of tools that are powered by GPT4, which is the latest iteration of OpenAI’s chatbot. 

I’ve seen blog and social posts from people who aren’t seeing the potential in these tools. But I think these tools are giving more power to individual content creators.

I was recently discussing how AI tools affect content marketers with my fellow dragon, Marcos Duran. He brought up a great point that he heard in conversations with people at a martech networking event.

Someone said something to the effect of “ChatGPT turns a content creator into an editor.” And I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather fix a mediocre sentence than start from scratch. And that’s what these AI tools are all about. They create a starting point, and you still need highly skilled individuals to add the human touch. 

What are your thoughts on the impact of AI chatbot tools on content marketing? Be sure to let us know your thoughts on the AI debate in the comments section. Or reach out to team Sercante if you’re looking to add a human touch to your marketing campaigns.

Original article: Playing with the AI-Powered Stensul Email Subject Line Tool

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Playing with the AI-Powered Stensul Email Subject Line Tool appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-03-24T15:47:49+00:00March 24th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, Real Talk, revive|

Create a Lead Nurturing Strategy To Boost Sales Revenue

Lead nurturing is a crucial aspect of the marketing and sales process. That’s because not all leads are ready to convert into paying customers immediately. By building relationships with potential customers and guiding them through the buyer journey, organizations can significantly improve their conversion rates, shorten their sales cycle, and ultimately drive more revenue to the business. 

Converting Qualified Leads

You’ve probably seen it before. You’ve created a great marketing campaign with lots of potential leads. But for some reason, the leads aren’t converting.  

We know that not all leads who enter the sales funnel are ready to convert into paying customers. Even though they’re qualified leads, they may not be ready to buy immediately. 

These people have shown interest in your product or service by filling out a form, but they may still be in the early stages of the buyer’s journey — exploring the market or learning more about your company. Or maybe their department doesn’t have the budget right now.

Enter — Lead Nurturing

That’s why it’s crucial to establish and maintain relationships with these prospective buyers and gradually guide them toward making a purchase.

This can be achieved with lead nurturing. 

Lead nurturing involves building meaningful relationships with potential customers by providing them with appropriate and relevant content and resources at every stage of their buyer journey. 

Despite its name, lead nurturing involves the entire customer journey, from awareness to consideration, decision, purchase, and post-purchase.

Why else should I invest in lead nurturing?

There are so many benefits to building out your lead nurturing programs. 

Effective lead nurturing can significantly impact the growth of any organization. By successfully nurturing your leads, you’ll generate more sales-ready leads at a lower cost and drive more revenue. 

Lead nurturing through content marketing

This is the basic idea behind lead nurturing through content marketing. Customers today have access to lots of resources, do extensive research, and are pretty knowledgeable about the purchases they make. If a prospect is constantly reminded of your company, gets their questions answered, and feels that your organization can meet their needs, then they are more likely to turn into a customer. 

Here are more valuable benefits your organization can tap into with through lead nurturing programs:

  • Shorten sales cycles by nurturing leads through the sales funnel
  • Gain trust with your audience and building stronger relationships
  • Increase your company’s average order value (AOV)
  • Stay top of mind in your industry
  • Enable upselling or cross-selling for your products/services

Key Components of a Lead Nurturing Strategy

To implement an effective lead nurturing strategy, consider incorporating the following components:

  1. Invest in a marketing automation tool: This will enable you to streamline and automate your marketing efforts, ensuring each prospect receives the most relevant messages, at the most opportune times. 
  1. Conduct surveys: Surveys are a great way to understand what your audience needs and build a connection with them. By gathering personal insights about their pain points, interests, and preferred channel of content digestion, you can make a plan for guiding them toward the end of the buyer’s journey.
  1. Develop a content plan: Content marketing is a valuable strategy that involves creating various types of content, such as blog posts, e-books, whitepapers, webinars, videos, and more. Through content, you can show that you understand your prospects’ needs and help overcome their pain points instead of focusing solely on your own products and services. As you develop your content plan, you’ll need to consider and create content across the buyer’s journey.
  1. Leverage email marketing: Email marketing is a highly effective strategy that can drive the highest return on investment of all digital marketing strategies. By leveraging segmentation and personalization through data and user behavior research, you can increase engagement and conversion rates.
  1. Apply a multi-channel approach: Email has always been the popular method of communication with lead nurturing. But with customers digesting content across various channels, it’s important to understand where your customers are, and communicate with them on those channels. Other channels can include social media, website/landing pages, SMS, etc. 
  1. Align sales, marketing, and customer support teams: Nurturing leads is a team effort. Each team has unique insights on the customer that can be uncovered through collaboration. And by aligning across teams, you’ll be able to learn more about the customer and understand what attributes, triggers, and actions identify that a prospect is a sales-ready lead. 
  1. Use lead scoring: Prospect scoring lets you assign a numerical value to important actions such as email clicks, file downloads, page views, and form submissions. As prospects engage with your content, their scores increase, which helps you to determine their engagement levels. When those scores reach a threshold and convert to sales-ready leads, they can be passed over to sales for follow-up.

Types of Lead Nurturing Programs

There’s so many types of lead nurturing programs you can run, whether it’s onboarding new employees, welcoming new customers, or a renewal campaign. 

Here are some of the ways you can nurture your audience based on where they are in the sales funnel:

  1. New subscriber campaign: Welcome new subscribers with a simple introductory campaign that introduces your brand and lets them know what they can expect from your organization.
  1. Customer onboarding campaign: Use nurture campaigns to manage your customer onboarding. Welcome new customers, provide them with a path to success, answer commonly asked questions, and offer support options. 
  1. Re-engagement campaign: Win back the interest of inactive or unengaged leads who haven’t opened your emails, visited your website, or clicked links for a period of time. 
  1. Lead recycling campaign: Nurture leads that have been returned to the marketing team by the sales team due to various reasons such as disqualification, losing to a competitor, or becoming unresponsive.

Nurturing Leads Builds Relationships

Lead nurturing is key to any organization’s marketing strategy. By building relationships with potential customers over time, organizations can improve their chances of converting those leads into actual customers. 

If you’ve built out your lead nurturing programs and are looking to take them to the next level, check out this blog: 5 Next-Level Tips for Your Lead Nurture Program. Or, reach out to the team at Sercante for help connecting all the dots with your lead nurture program.

Original article: Create a Lead Nurturing Strategy To Boost Sales Revenue

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Create a Lead Nurturing Strategy To Boost Sales Revenue appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-03-11T19:54:53+00:00March 11th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, revive, Strategy|

The Right Way to Use Statistics in Your Marketing Content

You are 72% more likely to keep reading a blog post when the author uses a data point in the first sentence. That’s because sharing numbers makes it sound like you looked at studies related to your topic. And using those statistics in marketing content makes the information you share seem reliable so people find value in it.

But more often than not, marketing writers do a quick web search to find a statistic. Their quick web search takes them to a blog post where the author uses a statistic but doesn’t say where the stat came from. It seems legit enough, so they grab the stat to use in their blog post.

Our dear marketers have the best of intentions. But these wearers of many hats are usually short on time.

Who knows, they may just pull a number out of thin air and hope nobody looks into it. 

(seriously, don’t cite the 72% stat I just gave you)

Always Check the Numbers

As someone who’s been proofreading and editing marketing things other people write for almost 15 years, I can tell you that I always double check the statistics authors use. 

That’s because the statistics aren’t adding any real value to the piece unless the numbers are reliable and include context around them. Don’t get me started on ChatGPT content pieces.

How to Use Statistics in Marketing Content

I’m not knocking using statistics in marketing content at all. I think it’s super important to research what you’re writing about so you can focus on collective knowledge rather than just your own thoughts. And using numbers does catch the attention of your audience and give you an authoritative voice.

But, there’s a right way to do it. And the wrong way.

Statistics in marketing

The Right Way to Use Statistics in Marketing Content

Let’s get you on the right track so you can use statistics in your marketing content and sound like a boss. 

The best way to use statistics is to provide context around the numbers. Then, the reader can understand what the numbers mean to them and truly find value in your content.

Here’s an example of a GOOD use of a stat

“According to a 2022 survey conducted by Content Marketing Institute, 47% of content marketers said they will hire or contract with content producers (writers, designers, photographers, videographers) in 2023.”

Original source that tells you how they came up with the stat

The source we cited here is linked to the original. And the original source includes all the information we need to know to accurately interpret the statistics within the full study. We know it was a 2022 survey from CMI, and the author even provided the survey’s definition of content producers.

After clicking on the link, we find out that On24 sponsored the survey as part of the B2B Content Marketing Report. And the source includes demographic and methodological information on the last slide of the PDF.

Add Context for your Statistics

There aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for providing context about stats to your readers unless your company or organization has defined those rules. 

Your company may have well-defined writing style guidelines you can refer to, and I encourage you to follow them. But if your company doesn’t have that worked out already, then you can follow these simple guidelines and share with your teammates. (consistency is awesome!)

Elements that add context to statistics

  • A link to the original source, and check that the link is working
    • Tip: Use a website plugin to check for broken links if you have a lot of content with linked statistics and resources.
  • A date to indicate the age of the statistic
  • The name of the source

Who is Your Audience?

You know your audience better than we do. That should guide what information to include with your statistics. Give your audience the information they need to understand why that statistic is important to them. 

Things to consider when determining if a source is reliable

On the surface, a statistic may seem reliable when it actually isn’t. The main questions to ask yourself about the statistic are:

  • What organization collected the information? Look for studies that were conducted by impartial organizations like universities, industry associations like the CMO Council, and research consulting companies like McKinsey and Forrester
  • When did they collect it? The study may be old. This is an especially important factor to consider when using statistics related to technology and economics.
  • How did they collect it? Look for what methodology was used to collect the data. If it was a survey, look for the sample size or geographic area from which the data was collected. These factors can have a big impact on the reliability of the data points and how the data relates to your message.
  • And why did they collect it? The source may be a study funded by a special interest group that structured the study or presented the results in a misleading way.
Tip for our Salesforce ecosystem readers

There’s a searchable Salesforce Stat Library to make it easier to find statistics from Salesforce annual reports. It includes specific stats about industry trends for people working in sales, marketing, service, IT, manufacturing, human resources, financial services, and public and nonprofit sectors.

The Wrong Way to Use Stats in Marketing

For illustrative purposes, we’ll review the WRONG way to use data points in marketing content. 

Here’s a bad example:

“You are 35% more likely to close a deal if you follow up on a lead within 48 hours.”

So what’s wrong with that statement? 

The author did not cite their source for the 35% statistic. And because of that, the reader has no idea what that statistic is based on. The study may have been completed in an industry that isn’t relevant to the reader. Or maybe the study is 15 years old, and we all know that sales processes have changed in that time.

Here’s another example:

“When text in a call to action button is changed from second-person viewpoint to first-person viewpoint, clicks improve by 90%. (Campaign Monitor)”

The example includes a link to the source, but it’s not the original source. The linked source tells you the name of the original source without a link to it.

A Google search of the stat and the original source, Unbounce, takes us to a 2013 blog post. The blog post author wrote the post in reference to an A/B testing case study from a consulting client, but it doesn’t provide demographic info or sample details. 

The statistic becomes less powerful and when you add context to it:

“According to a 2013 Unbounce client case study, changing text in a call to action button from second-person viewpoint to first-person viewpoint improves clicks by 90%.”

The original example sounds like a generalizable statement. But in reality, the number came from a single test that happened a decade ago. That’s why using the statistic in this case isn’t adding value for the reader.

(Hi Unbounce and Campaign Monitor – we mean no disrespect and hope our links boost your SEO😊)

What Do You Do When You Can’t Find Reliable or Original Sources

Nobody is forcing you to use that stat. And if they are, then send them a link to this blog post so you can educate them.

The best way to approach the use of stats in your marketing is to lean into information you CAN rely on. And if you don’t have that information, figure out what processes you can put in place to gather reliable information you can use down the road. 

You could build a process to survey your clients before and after engaging with your company, and optimize your reporting dashboards to track the results of your efforts over time. Or, maybe your company could benefit from using a subscription service like Statista to get access to original sources.

Do you have cool stats about your audience that you can share? 

Maybe it’s time to start collecting data about your audience and community. Lucky for you, there’s lots of tools you can use for collecting data about your audience. 

Here’s are blog posts about a few of our favorites:

Stats Are Better When You Add Context

Hopefully this post shines a light on using statistics in marketing content. Despite the best efforts of  marketers everywhere, it’s one of those things that I see people get wrong more often than not. 

But, you can get it right every time when you provide context to your statistics. Give the reader details like where the information is coming from, how and why it was collected, and what the date was when it was originally gathered or published. 

What are your thoughts on using statistics in marketing content? Any fun horror stories to share? Tell us about it in the comments section.

Original article: The Right Way to Use Statistics in Your Marketing Content

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post The Right Way to Use Statistics in Your Marketing Content appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-24T20:36:43+00:00February 24th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Real Talk, revive, Strategy|

The Right Way to Use Statistics in Your Marketing Content

You are 72% more likely to keep reading a blog post when the author uses a data point in the first sentence. That’s because sharing numbers makes it sound like you looked at studies related to your topic. And using those statistics in marketing content makes the information you share seem reliable so people find value in it.

But more often than not, marketing writers do a quick web search to find a statistic. Their quick web search takes them to a blog post where the author uses a statistic but doesn’t say where the stat came from. It seems legit enough, so they grab the stat to use in their blog post.

Our dear marketers have the best of intentions. But these wearers of many hats are usually short on time.

Who knows, they may just pull a number out of thin air and hope nobody looks into it. 

(seriously, don’t cite the 72% stat I just gave you)

Always Check the Numbers

As someone who’s been proofreading and editing marketing things other people write for almost 15 years, I can tell you that I always double check the statistics authors use. 

That’s because the statistics aren’t adding any real value to the piece unless the numbers are reliable and include context around them. Don’t get me started on ChatGPT content pieces.

How to Use Statistics in Marketing Content

I’m not knocking using statistics in marketing content at all. I think it’s super important to research what you’re writing about so you can focus on collective knowledge rather than just your own thoughts. And using numbers does catch the attention of your audience and give you an authoritative voice.

But, there’s a right way to do it. And the wrong way.

Statistics in marketing

The Right Way to Use Statistics in Marketing Content

Let’s get you on the right track so you can use statistics in your marketing content and sound like a boss. 

The best way to use statistics is to provide context around the numbers. Then, the reader can understand what the numbers mean to them and truly find value in your content.

Here’s an example of a GOOD use of a stat

“According to a 2022 survey conducted by Content Marketing Institute, 47% of content marketers said they will hire or contract with content producers (writers, designers, photographers, videographers) in 2023.”

Original source that tells you how they came up with the stat

The source we cited here is linked to the original. And the original source includes all the information we need to know to accurately interpret the statistics within the full study. We know it was a 2022 survey from CMI, and the author even provided the survey’s definition of content producers.

After clicking on the link, we find out that On24 sponsored the survey as part of the B2B Content Marketing Report. And the source includes demographic and methodological information on the last slide of the PDF.

Add Context for your Statistics

There aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for providing context about stats to your readers unless your company or organization has defined those rules. 

Your company may have well-defined writing style guidelines you can refer to, and I encourage you to follow them. But if your company doesn’t have that worked out already, then you can follow these simple guidelines and share with your teammates. (consistency is awesome!)

Elements that add context to statistics

  • A link to the original source, and check that the link is working
    • Tip: Use a website plugin to check for broken links if you have a lot of content with linked statistics and resources.
  • A date to indicate the age of the statistic
  • The name of the source

Who is Your Audience?

You know your audience better than we do. That should guide what information to include with your statistics. Give your audience the information they need to understand why that statistic is important to them. 

Things to consider when determining if a source is reliable

On the surface, a statistic may seem reliable when it actually isn’t. The main questions to ask yourself about the statistic are:

  • What organization collected the information? Look for studies that were conducted by impartial organizations like universities, industry associations like the CMO Council, and research consulting companies like McKinsey and Forrester
  • When did they collect it? The study may be old. This is an especially important factor to consider when using statistics related to technology and economics.
  • How did they collect it? Look for what methodology was used to collect the data. If it was a survey, look for the sample size or geographic area from which the data was collected. These factors can have a big impact on the reliability of the data points and how the data relates to your message.
  • And why did they collect it? The source may be a study funded by a special interest group that structured the study or presented the results in a misleading way.
Tip for our Salesforce ecosystem readers

There’s a searchable Salesforce Stat Library to make it easier to find statistics from Salesforce annual reports. It includes specific stats about industry trends for people working in sales, marketing, service, IT, manufacturing, human resources, financial services, and public and nonprofit sectors.

The Wrong Way to Use Stats in Marketing

For illustrative purposes, we’ll review the WRONG way to use data points in marketing content. 

Here’s a bad example:

“You are 35% more likely to close a deal if you follow up on a lead within 48 hours.”

So what’s wrong with that statement? 

The author did not cite their source for the 35% statistic. And because of that, the reader has no idea what that statistic is based on. The study may have been completed in an industry that isn’t relevant to the reader. Or maybe the study is 15 years old, and we all know that sales processes have changed in that time.

Here’s another example:

“When text in a call to action button is changed from second-person viewpoint to first-person viewpoint, clicks improve by 90%. (Campaign Monitor)”

The example includes a link to the source, but it’s not the original source. The linked source tells you the name of the original source without a link to it.

A Google search of the stat and the original source, Unbounce, takes us to a 2013 blog post. The blog post author wrote the post in reference to an A/B testing case study from a consulting client, but it doesn’t provide demographic info or sample details. 

The statistic becomes less powerful and when you add context to it:

“According to a 2013 Unbounce client case study, changing text in a call to action button from second-person viewpoint to first-person viewpoint improves clicks by 90%.”

The original example sounds like a generalizable statement. But in reality, the number came from a single test that happened a decade ago. That’s why using the statistic in this case isn’t adding value for the reader.

(Hi Unbounce and Campaign Monitor – we mean no disrespect and hope our links boost your SEO😊)

What Do You Do When You Can’t Find Reliable or Original Sources

Nobody is forcing you to use that stat. And if they are, then send them a link to this blog post so you can educate them.

The best way to approach the use of stats in your marketing is to lean into information you CAN rely on. And if you don’t have that information, figure out what processes you can put in place to gather reliable information you can use down the road. 

You could build a process to survey your clients before and after engaging with your company, and optimize your reporting dashboards to track the results of your efforts over time. Or, maybe your company could benefit from using a subscription service like Statista to get access to original sources.

Do you have cool stats about your audience that you can share? 

Maybe it’s time to start collecting data about your audience and community. Lucky for you, there’s lots of tools you can use for collecting data about your audience. 

Here’s are blog posts about a few of our favorites:

Stats Are Better When You Add Context

Hopefully this post shines a light on using statistics in marketing content. Despite the best efforts of  marketers everywhere, it’s one of those things that I see people get wrong more often than not. 

But, you can get it right every time when you provide context to your statistics. Give the reader details like where the information is coming from, how and why it was collected, and what the date was when it was originally gathered or published. 

What are your thoughts on using statistics in marketing content? Any fun horror stories to share? Tell us about it in the comments section.

Original article: The Right Way to Use Statistics in Your Marketing Content

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post The Right Way to Use Statistics in Your Marketing Content appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-24T20:36:43+00:00February 24th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Real Talk, revive, Strategy|

The Essential Guide to B2BMA Dashboards (with Screenshots)

Looking for a way to view your Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) data within Salesforce? Not fully satisfied with data you’re able to view in the Account Engagement Reports? Well, you’re not alone. This is a comprehensive guide to B2B Marketing Analytics — what it is, what you’ll get out-of-the-box, and how you use the B2BMA dashboards.

What is B2B Marketing Analytics?

B2B Marketing Analytics (B2BMA) is a CRM Analytics App designed specially for B2B Marketers. It uses your Salesforce-Account Engagement connector to package up and display your Account Engagement data and enables several datasets to help you assess your sales and marketing performance. B2BMA comes out-of-the-box with default dashboards intended for various stakeholders on your team.

If you’re trying to view Account Engagement data within Salesforce, B2BMA should be your primary tool. It offers a wide range of data that can significantly improve your visibility into the ROI of your marketing campaigns, combining both marketing and sales pipeline data.

Key terminology within B2BMA

Dataset

Datasets are simply sets of source data (like an Excel table). These datasets are formatted and optimized for interactive exploration. 

Note: With B2BMA Plus (a feature available with an upgrade) you can actually control how frequently the data syncs between Account Engagement and Salesforce.

One example of a dataset may be your Account Engagement Prospects (see screenshot below).

Lens

A particular view into a dataset’s data (like a query). Use a lens to visualize your data and perform exploratory analysis. 

You’ll get these four lenses out-of-the-box:

  • Pipeline Deals
  • Campaigns (Pardot Campaigns)
  • Lead Sources
  • Lifecycle Snapshot

Navigation: CRM Analytics App  > All Items > Lenses

Example: Revenue by Campaign Type (see screenshot below)

Filter

Filters are used to narrow down results. Standard filters vary by dashboard. Keep in mind, you can add filters to a dashboard, but they may not filter all lenses within the dashboard. Some filters may also require customization.

Example: See all email engagement in a fiscal year

Dashboard

A Dashboard in B2BMA is a curated set of charts, metrics, and tables based on the filtered data from one or more lenses. These are typically designed to be used by a specific audience (e.g. Marketing & Sales Leadership). You’ll get these five dashboards out-of-the-box:

Navigation: CRM Analytics App  > All Items > Dashboards

Pipeline Dashboard

Offers you a view of your sales funnel from Visitor to Prospect to Opportunity (Won/Lost). You’ll see the following metrics:

  • Visitors
  • Prospects
  • Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
  • Opportunities (Open and Closed)
  • Velocity metrics

Engagement Dashboard

Offers a comprehensive view of your Account Engagement assets (think: forms, landing pages, emails, etc.) and how they’re performing and influencing your pipeline. You’ll see engagement metrics (opens, clicks, CTR, submissions, submission rate, etc.)

Marketing Manager

This is a combination of the previous two dashboards (Pipeline + Engagement) allowing you to see the overall performance and influence of your campaigns. You’ll see the following metrics:

  • Marketing Asset Engagement
  • Pipeline Deals
  • Revenue per Campaign

Account-Based Marketing

You’ve likely heard of ABM before — but did you know there was a B2BMA dashboard built specifically for that purpose? 

This dashboard monitors your ABM campaign performance and helps you take a deeper look at how Contacts and Opportunities from a specific Account are engaging with your marketing assets. You’ll see the following metrics:

  • Account details
  • Pipeline by Account
  • Revenue win percentage
  • Stage value by Account

Multi-Touch Attribution Dashboard

This dashboard shows you how influential each of your marketing campaigns are during each stage of the sales lifecycle. It offers you three different attribution models to choose from: First Touch, Last Touch, and Even Distribution.

Within this dashboard, you’ll see these metrics:

  • Revenue
  • Total Value
  • Cost
  • ROI
  • Top Campaigns
  • Revenue by Channel

Example: Multi-Touch Attribution Dashboard with Even Distribution (see screenshot below)

App

A CRM Analytics (B2BMA) App contains dashboards, lenses, and datasets in any combination that makes sense for sharing your data analysis with colleagues. Apps are like folders — they let you organize your data projects and control sharing across your team.

The included apps depend on your specific licenses. 

Navigation: CRM Analytics App > All Items > Apps

Template

A Template is a framework for analytics apps that comes preset with KPIs and data visualizations. 

Navigation: CRM Analytics > “Create” > “App”

Functional terminology

Faceting

When Faceting within a dashboard, you can select part of a graphic, and the rest of the metrics on the dashboard filter by that selection.

Example: In “Revenue Share by Campaign Type”, click on “Web Marketing”

The dashboard will update to show to “Web Marketing” Salesforce Campaigns

Data Flow

A Data Flow is a process that combines and summarizes several objects into datasets.

Examples: 

  • Connecting your Opportunities to your Accounts
  • Modifying or creating datasets requires customization

Navigation: CRM Analytics > Data Manager > Data Flows & Recipes > Data Flows

Metric

A Metric is a quantitative value, such as revenue or exchange rate. You can “do math” on measures.

Example: Calculating total revenue

Dimension

A Dimension is a qualitative value that’s useful for grouping and filtering your data.

Example: Region, product name, model number, or Opportunity Status

Group

A Group is a collection of data based on a specific dimension.

Example: Product name or account.

Access and navigation within B2BMA

How do I get a license?

Access to B2B Marketing Analytics is dictated by the number of licenses you have. To check your licenses, go to Setup > “Company Information” via the Quick Find box > Scroll down to “Permission Set Licenses” and look for “B2B Marketing Analytics”.

Where do I find it?

Access the Analytics Studio App by clicking the App Launcher and typing in “Analytics Studio.” Select “All Items” in the sidebar under “Browse,” then click “B2BMA Analytics” under “Apps.” Open the default dashboards and start exploring them

How to navigate B2BMA

Considerations for default B2BMA dashboards

The default dashboards are designed for a general audience, so they may need to be customized to suit your organization 

We don’t recommend editing or saving over the default dashboards. Instead, make a copy of the dashboard by clicking the “Clone in New Tab” option. Salesforce makes regular updates to the default dashboards, which will overwrite any changes you have made (only when you choose to “reconfigure” the app).

Reach out to Sercante with any questions regarding B2BMA customization capabilities.

Exploring and sharing B2BMA dashboards and datasets

Within B2BMA, you can dive deep into the data using “Explore” functionality, viewing different lenses and reviewing the datasets, fields and filters. You can also share dashboards, giving access to critical team members, post the dashboards to feeds, export them or download them.

Exploring

Want to know more about the data behind the chart? Click “Explore” to open a copy of the lens and review the datasets, fields, and filters. You can switch the visualization to a table view

Note: Not all filters will be shown here – click the “query mode” button to see all details

Sharing

Clicking the “Share” button at the dashboard level gives you:

  • Give access – Showing who has access to the dashboard
  • Post to a Chatter feed
  • Export to quip
  • Get URL – only users with access to the dashboard can view the link
  • Download – download an image of the full dashboard

Clicking the “Share” button at the lens level gives you:

  • Post to a Chatter feed
  • Export to quip
  • Download – download an image of the full dashboard or a CSV/Excel file

Adding to Lightning Pages:

  • You can embed your B2BMA dashboards in Lightning Record Pages in SFDC
    • Use the “Tableau CRM Dashboard” component
  • Only users with the B2B Marketing Analytics permission set assigned will be able to view the embedded dashboard

Ok – I understand everything else. Now how do I make updates to B2BMA?

B2BMA updates become available on the regular SFDC release schedule.

How do I know if there’s an update?

  • If an update is available, you’ll see the “Reconfigure app” option when you open the B2B Marketing Analytics app
    • Click “Reconfigure app” and go through the steps to update
  • The updates aren’t required – you don’t have to do them if you don’t want to
    • Click the info icon to see what new features are available so you can determine if it’s worth upgrading

Engagement History Dashboards

Engagement History Dashboards looks at your various marketing assets (forms, landing pages, emails, etc.) and how they are performing. They also look at how they contribute to your opportunity and sales pipeline.  

Engagement History Dashboards are powered by CRM Analytics. 

They allow you to:

  • Visualize engagement data on a variety of records
  • Show slightly different data based on the object (e.g. Opportunities, etc.)
  • Filter to show data relevant to the specific record that’s being viewed

What does this look like on the Account object?

On a given Account, click the “Engagement” tab to see the most active Contacts and the Campaigns they’re engaging with. Use the filters to apply a date range, choose an asset type, etc.

Engagement History Dashboards on Page Layouts

At this point, you’ve probably added Engagement History Dashboards to these Page Layouts:

  • Campaigns
  • Accounts
  • Contacts
  • Opportunities

Only users that have been assigned the “Analytics View Only Embedded App” permission set can see these dashboards. Your Account Engagement edition determines how many licenses are available.

Considerations for Engagement History Dashboards

Here are a few things you should keep in mind about these dashboards:

  • The “Analytics View Only Embedded App” gives users access to Engagement History Dashboards, but not Analytics Studio/B2B Marketing Analytics
    • We recommend assigning this permission set to your Sales & Marketing leads
  • Engagement History Dashboards aren’t supported in Internet Explorer 11
  • Dashboards embedded on Leads, Contacts, or Person Accounts can only show data for one Business Unit at a time (delete if your client doesn’t have multiple MCAE BUs)
  • The Opportunity dashboard relies on Opportunity Contact Roles and dates
    • If data is missing from the Opportunity dashboard, it’s usually because no Opportunity Contact Roles are assigned
  • For emails sent through Engagement Studio, the Account Engagement Engagement History dataset includes send data only for programs that were created after December 14, 2018

Learn more about B2B Marketing Analytics

B2BMA is an incredibly valuable CRM analytics tool to help improve your visibility into your marketing and sales data, including many out-of-the-box dashboards built for a variety of stakeholders in your business.

Here at Sercante, we’re a huge fan of the Salesforce Trailblazer community. We highly recommend bookmarking the B2B Marketing Analytics Implementation Guide – a comprehensive resource that includes dataset information, field definitions, etc.

You should also check out these blog posts to learn more about B2BMA and what it can do for you:

Have any B2BMA roadblocks you’re looking to solve? Reach out to the team at Sercante or tell us about it in the comments.

Original article: The Essential Guide to B2BMA Dashboards (with Screenshots)

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post The Essential Guide to B2BMA Dashboards (with Screenshots) appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-21T14:00:36+00:00February 21st, 2023|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly

Like the title says — if you’re a Salesforce user, then you should be deleting your marketing contacts on a regular basis.

Okay, hear me out.

Of course I don’t mean all your contacts. And I don’t even necessarily mean delete delete (in some cases). Let me explain.

As marketers, we hoard and protect our contacts like dragons guarding our treasure. Our instinct is to grow — and keep — our contacts database as large as possible. After all, more contacts mean more people for the ever-demanding funnel.

But I’m here to tell you: stop it.

Why? Because as with many things in life, quality over quantity is what should matter here, even within the gaping maw that is the top of the funnel. 

And for more reasons than you think. Here are the three main ones.

Reason #1: Salesforce Puts a Cap on Contacts

Let’s start with the purely technical and perhaps thoroughly obvious: Salesforce gives you a finite number of contacts to keep. The number you can have varies depending on the plan you’re on and the optional number contact block add-ons you purchase.

No matter how adequate that number may seem at the time, it will start being not enough very shortly if you don’t have any safeguards in place.

Furthermore, the criteria for what counts towards this limit differs between Marketing Cloud Engagement (or MCE, formerly Marketing Cloud) and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE, formerly Pardot… I know one day we’ll get used to the rebrand).

In Marketing Cloud Engagement:

MCE Edition Pro Corporate Enterprise
Base Contact Count 15k 45k 500k

Any Contact record (aka, any record on a sendable data extension with a unique ContactKey) on the All Contacts list counts towards MCE’s Contact Count limit. This includes:

  • Mobile contacts
  • Email subscribers
  • Any contacts from synchronized data sources (e.g., Salesforce objects). 

This is also why it is best practice to use a single ContactKey across Mobile, Email, and Synced Data Sources to prevent duplicates from unnecessarily eating up your Contact Count. 

You can monitor your Contact Count using the All Contacts list in Contact Builder.

Fun gotcha moment: If you’re syncing Salesforce Leads and Contacts and a Lead converts into a Contact, MCE will still count that synced Lead record and the new synced Contact record as two Contacts because they will still have two separate ContactKeys.
Fun gotcha moment #2: Even if you reduce the number of records on your synced sendable data extension, your All Contacts list count may not change. 

You will need to do some additional manual work here to enable contacts deletion from MCE if you haven’t done so already. Go to Contact Builder > Contacts Configuration and then choose the contacts you want to delete. 

If you want to mass delete a large number of contacts, you will either need to:
a) import a list of contacts back into MCE (counter-intuitive, I know) and then configure MCE to delete your contacts based off of that list 
– or –
b) create a REST API call to mass delete your contacts.

In Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot):

MCAE Edition Growth Plus Advanced Premium
Contact Blocks 10k (additional 10k blocks are $100/month 10k (additional 10k blocks are $150/month) 10k (additional 10k blocks are $300/month) 75k (additional 10k blocks are $400/month)

Fortunately, this is more straightforward. Any prospect record with a mailable status counts towards your mailable database limit. 

That’s it. You can keep an eye on your mailable database limit from the Pardot Settings tab.

Reason #2: Privacy Features Aren’t Going Away

In September 2021 as part of the iOS 15 updates, Apple rolled out Mail Privacy functionality that allowed its users to easily create throwaway email addresses for form fills (a common practice that many were already doing, Apple just automated it). 

Eight years prior to that, Google had broken up its Gmail inbox into tabbed categories in a better effort to keep “less important” emails — like marketing emails — from clogging up your immediate inbox. This year, Google will officially sunset its use of third-party cookies for tracking.

Suffice to say: more privacy features are coming into play and more consumers are concerned with how their data is being collected, stored, and used.

This is all great for consumer privacy, but less so for our marketing efforts.

Without intervention, we could face the possibility of having a database where a sizable portion of our contacts are, at best, completely unengaged, or, at worst, aren’t actually legitimate contacts in the first place.

Reason #3: You’re Skewing Your Metrics

Now take the nightmare scenario in Reason #2 and think about what this does to our precious email metrics. If we consistently send to a database of unengaged or non-legitimate contacts, leading to artificially low open rates and potentially high bounce rates, we’re skewing our own engagement rates from the start.

And if we’re relying on our engagement rates to determine campaign KPIs and attribution, we’ll have already introduced flawed data into our analysis.

How to Keep Your Marketing Contact Database as Clean as Possible

Okay, you’ve made some good points, I hopefully assume you’re thinking. So what can I do?

Well I’m glad you asked, because I have some tips for both Marketing Cloud Engagement and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement users.

Implement a Cold Leads Strategy

This is where I’m asking you to look deep inside yourself and fight against the marketer’s urge to hold onto all your contacts (or leads or prospects or whatever terminology you want to use here) for as long as possible under the hope that they’ll re-engage if you happen to send the right message at the right time.

Sure, you can always purchase additional space for more contacts, but why keep throwing more money after bad? Showing a little less mercy now will improve your marketing efforts later. As an additional consideration for MCE users, you also have to contend with a cap on how many communications you can send per subscription term. So why waste them?

Use Automations to Keep Your Database Clean

To start with, you can automate this process through features like: Automation Rules and Engagement Studio Programs (for MCAE) or Automation Studio and Journey Builder journeys (for MCE)

But the rough idea is to do the following:

Step 1: Put a quantifiable limit on how long you’ll consider someone who hasn’t engaged with any of your communications as “active.” This can be an actual time limit or after a certain number of consecutively unopened emails.

Step 2: Move these cold contacts somewhere else. Take them out of your regular communications, whether it’s through tags, a separate list segment, or a separate data extension. It’s time to put these contacts on a separate slower, low-frequency campaign.

Step 3: Send them an email again in a few weeks, maybe even months. Maybe send them another one later if you’re still full of hope. Give them a few more last chances to show engagement. The goal here is to check for a pulse, not necessarily to market anything at this point. This may also be the place where you can A/B test a few subject lines with pretty low stakes.

Step 4: If they re-engage: great! You can return them to the fold (or better still, use this opportunity to find out what their content preferences are by pointing them to an email preference center and letting them self-select their interests). If they don’t engage, get rid of them. 

  • Put them in the recycle bin if you’re a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement user (bonus: if you keep these prospects in the recycle bin, MCAE will automatically restore the prospect if they show signs of activity later on). 
  • Or, delete their record and unsync them in Marketing Cloud Engagement (we’ll talk about how to do this in a moment). 
  • You may even want to consider deleting the corresponding Salesforce record, because Salesforce has a data storage limit too.

If the idea of permanent deletion is too daunting, you can always export them to a spreadsheet and archive them elsewhere. You’ll still have the contact information, but it won’t be taking up space within your database.

Clean Out Your Hard Bounces

Make it routine to regularly clean out (or update) your contacts who have a hard bounce status. 

  • In addition to viewing your engagement metrics for each email send, MCAE also offers a helpful overall Email Bounce report on your prospects (you can find this under Pardot Reports > Marketing Assets > Emails > Email Bounces). 
  • With MCE, you can automate a query of the Bounce Data view and Subscriber statuses in Automation Studio.

Yes, both MCE and MCAE will (eventually) stop emailing any address with a hard bounce status. Yes, MCAE will automatically render a prospect with a hard bounce status as unmailable, meaning that the prospect won’t count towards your contact limit.

But in MCE, even if you can’t send emails to a Contact with a Bounced status, the contact will still count towards your Contact Count. And whether you’re using MCE or MCAE, if the contact has a corresponding Salesforce record, that record will also contribute to Salesforce’s overall data storage limit.

Furthermore, discrepancies between your segmentation lists or data extension numbers and what your email deliverability numbers actually are could cause some initial confusion among any users who aren’t aware of the automated mechanisms MCAE and MCE use to keep you from sending to unmailable addresses.

Be Selective about Salesforce Syncing

Being selective about who in your Salesforce database gets synced to MCE or MCAE will not only ensure that you aren’t sending marketing emails to contacts who shouldn’t be getting them (e.g. contacts who have not explicitly opted in, partners, vendors, and other operational contacts), but will also help you manage your contacts cap. 

In both cases, you will need to have automations in place that will determine the criteria for your sync trigger.

Now with MCE, let’s talk about the vexing problem of Leads and Contacts and the potential for duplicates. As mentioned earlier, even if your synced Salesforce Lead converts into a now synced Contact, your now defunct Lead record will still count towards your Contact Count. 

How to manage this? Build criteria into the automation that updates your MCE boolean syncing field to unsync the Lead when it converts. 

The Leads object has a number of different Lead Conversion-related fields you can use for your criteria — I like using the IsConverted boolean field, for example.

Use a Double Opt-in Signup Process

Using a double opt-in signup process for when a new contact is created is good practice to comply with various global data privacy laws and confirm a contact’s genuine interest in receiving your marketing emails. It also has the helpful benefit of verifying whether or not the email address on record is real. 

While this isn’t a 100% foolproof guarantee that a contact still isn’t using a throwaway email address, it will cut down on the number of outright junk emails entering your database.

Pay Attention to Auto-Replies

The deluge of autoresponders and out-of-office replies that result when you send an email to a large list can be a painful constant in a marketer’s life depending on a) whether you’re using MCE or MCAE (MCE has pretty robust Reply Mail Management functionality) and b) what processes you or your organization have set up to manage auto-replies. 

But there’s a silver lining to all this: what is being said in these auto-replies can be telling, especially in cases where the auto-reply lets you know that the contact is no longer going to be using the email address you have on record for them (usually in cases where the contact used an educational or organizational email address).

Creating a filter for key phrases often found in auto-replies where a contact is moving on from their organization (“moving on,” “leaving,” “no longer affiliated,” etc.) can give you a heads-up on removing that contact from your own database instead of waiting for the pending hard bounce when that email account is deactivated (which can range from very soon to months to never, depending on the organization’s offboarding process, or lack thereof). 

Save yourself from another auto-reply in your inbox, the contact taking up space in your database, and sending who-knows-how-many emails to an abandoned address.

Keeping Your Database Clean is an Ongoing Thing

Contact caps in your marketing database can feel like imaginary numbers to contacts-hungry marketers until their Salesforce Account Executive sends that dreaded over-limits notification. While it’s tempting to simply pay more to keep expanding your database cap, the cost does add up and it doesn’t address the root issues that could be impacting your database.

Without a little routine maintenance and ruthlessness to weed out your unengaged contacts and outright bad email addresses, your database can very easily become a hot mess, and any cleanup efforts thereafter will only become more challenging the longer it is allowed to go on. 

But a smart strategy (with help from a little automation) to filter and clean up your marketing database will not only be more cost-effective, but will maintain the integrity of your data.

Have any hot tips to share for keeping your contact list clean? Tell us in the comments.

Original article: Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-08T15:54:25+00:00February 8th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Real Talk, revive, Setup & Admin, Strategy|

6 Resources to Keep Your Salesforce Admins Moving Forward

In the Myth of Sisyphus, an essay by French philosopher Albert Camus, Sisyphus is sentenced to a punishment where for eternity, he must roll a boulder up a mountain. When he reaches the top, the boulder rolls back down the mountain and he must go back and start over.

Sound familiar? Some days our Salesforce platform administrators feel like they take one step forward and five steps back. 

Salesforce admins might get a bunch of requests that are handled swiftly, which just leads to more questions and requests. And then what about the latest Salesforce release that just went live? When will they have time to review much less implement all of the new sales efficiency features that the company is paying for? Oh, and they heard about some new Pardot features that could help the marketing team streamline their efforts, but…when will they be able to test, implement, and train them? 

Even the best admins really can feel like they are rolling the boulder of Salesforce up the hill to the top only to have it roll back down to the bottom. But your admins ​​don’t have to feel like Sisyphus!

Those Poor Sisyphus Admins

Luckily, we’re in the best ecosystem in the world. Not only are there many other admins in the Ohana to commiserate with, but there are more resources for support than you can shake a stick at. 

What can be done to help with the Salesforce boulder?

There are lots of options out there. So, I’m starting with the top 6 types of Salesforce resources that your admins can call on when the boulder has them feeling defeated.

Resource #1: The Trailblazer Community

There are thousands of people all over the world online at any hour of the day who are ready and willing to answer questions. This is great for difficult puzzles and you don’t know where to turn. It is also a place to research solutions and maybe even answer some questions. The Trailblazer community questions and answers are invaluable for Salesforce and Pardot administrators. I am also a huge fan of groups that push out information regularly which will be helpful for learning too! I recommend setting up your email preferences to get a weekly digest to stay on top of updates.
Top picks:

Resource #2: Salesforce Slack Communities

There are quite a few slack communities that have sprung up over the years that offer a way to have conversations with other people that can help you work through issues or puzzles in real-time. These are great not only for getting questions answered but they’re also great for community building. 

  • Ohana Slack – A Slack workspace for all the Salesforce clouds and products. This space could be a lifeline for puzzled admins.
  • Pardashian – very active Slack workspace that is all about Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka Pardot). All the major stars in the Pardot world are there – Lara Black, Jenna Molby, Jen Kazin to name just a few. If your tech stack touches Pardot, you will find great resources here.
  • How to SFMC – a Slack dedicated to Salesforce Marketing Cloud community of users. Expect lively conversations! If your tech stack touches Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you will find great resources here.

Resource #3: Salesforce YouTube Channels

Sometimes text and reading can only go so far in helping me. I often go to YouTube to find more members of the community and Salesforce themselves posting short-form videos that give insight into the actual clicks needed to do the thing you need to do.

  • Salesforce Support – Salesforce Support produces many short form “:how to videos” that can be just what you need to learn how to solve a problem.
  • Salesforce Admins – Salesforce Admins is another channel from Salesforce. They product videos targeted specifically towards admins – there could be interviews.
  • Salesforce Ben – This long running blog also has a top-notch channel with great explainer videos.

Resource #4: Salesforce Influencers on LinkedIn

There are some great people in the community on LinkedIn posting articles and newsletters about Salesforce, Pardot, and Marketing Cloud. What’s great about this is you can ask questions directly to the author and get answers. Because LinkedIn is such an important part of people’s digital footprint and tied so closely to their career, I’m seeing a lot of experts sharing great insights there. 

  • Apex Hours – This Community led LinkedIn newsletter leans to the technical but anyone interested in gaining skills with declarative development (i.e Flow), will find a hime
  • Jordan Nelson – self-taught Salesforce wizard who shares actionable tips every single day!
  • Pei Mun Lim – writes about Salesforce through a project management and business analysis lens. Plus great cartoons!
  • Jodi Hrbek – A functional Salesforce expert who shares great content focussed on empowering admins

Resource #5: Local Trailblazer User Groups

Getting out there and meeting Salesforce users is super helpful for experienced and new administrators alike. At these free meet-ups, there are sessions about new tools, creative solutions and of course socializing with other Salesforce professionals. There are hundreds of groups around the world that are organized around roles (i.e. Developers, Admins), or interests (i.e. Women in Tech, Non Profits).

Resource #6: Bring on a Managed Services partner

What is great about this Is you get the benefit of an embedded resource without the cost associated with adding additional headcount to your team. With Salesforce Partners, like Sercante, when you sign on to the Managed Services Program you’ll not only have a dedicated engagement manager, but you’ll also have the whole Sercante team of experts behind that person providing input, guidance, and ideas. 

It’s really the best of both worlds. The right managed services partner has your back when it comes to new features and what to look out for in upcoming releases. They’ll work with you to build a roadmap based on your priorities and a backlog of items that may be under your radar.

Salesforce Community Resources are Your Admins’ Best Friends

It is true that your Salesforce platform administrators may often feel overwhelmed and like they are constantly struggling to keep up with the demands of their job. 

They may feel like they are taking one step forward and five steps back, and like they are unable to keep up with the constant stream of requests and new features. This can lead to feelings of frustration and exhaustion. 

Burnout among Salesforce admins is real. But it does not have to be that way.

With these resources, administrator support can be self-served. Or, you can reach out to Sercante today to talk about our managed services offerings!

Original article: 6 Resources to Keep Your Salesforce Admins Moving Forward

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 6 Resources to Keep Your Salesforce Admins Moving Forward appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-03T20:22:27+00:00February 3rd, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin, Strategy|

5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions

A form on a landing page or your website is often the final step in a nurturing process and represents the crucial point of conversion. According to Manifest, 81% of people will abandon a form after beginning to fill it out. And of that 81%, more than half (67%) will not return to complete the form. 

So how do we, as marketers, improve our game and increase conversions while decreasing form abandonment? By using five native tools at your disposal within the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) forms tool.

Five Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions and Decrease Form Abandonment

When marketers first start using forms within Pardot, they’re probably inclined to keep things simple and have a primary focus on collecting information they see as required or important to their sales process. However, you can leverage a few things within Pardot to decrease form abandonment and up your marketing game. 

  1. Use Dependent Fields

Keep the form simple and limit the number of fields using dependent fields. When you are seeking relatable information based on specific field values, dependent fields are the best way to capture that additional insight.

For example, if you are a global company, you can ask for the user’s country. And if they respond with the United States, then you can ask for their state. Or if they respond with Canada, you can ask which province they are from. Whereas, if they respond with the United Kingdom, no additional information is required. 

Dependent fields eliminate unnecessary questions, shorten the form, and personalize the experience for each Prospect.

  1. Set Up Progressive Profiling

Another great way to help shorten your forms, but still collect the required information is through progressive profiling. This tool enables you to ask new questions based on each return to a form, eliminating previously completed questions from prior form fills. 

For example, if you already know their company, the next time they return to the form, you can now ask for a job title to dig in further. This is one of the best tools at your disposal as a marketer because it ensures a positive user experience for the Prospect and helps keep the sales team happy by collecting details for lead assignment, segmentation, and increased nurturing via targeted Engagement Studio Programs.

  1. Have Clear Calls to Action

Calls to action are the short persuasive text used on the form button to close the deal. You want to be straightforward while keeping it short and simple. I would recommend starting with a verb and following up with an adverb or subject thereafter. 

For example, a clear call to action could say:  “Download Your e-book Now” or “Subscribe Today.”

Ultimately, use language that promises them the delivery of something your reader wants. 

Form submission thank you page example
  1. Use Autoresponders

Creating an experience for Prospects is crucial in seeing them return to want more. This can be accomplished by ensuring that you follow through on your delivery when a form is completed through autoresponders and/or thank you pages. 

Take advantage of the redirect and follow-up by creating a personalized experience by offering them a thank you message, a downloaded asset, and/or highlighting similar content they may be interested in. 

By directing them to additional content, you can use your Progressive Profiling and they can gain additional insight into your organization and how you can help solve their issues.

  1. Enable Completion Actions

Completion Actions are similar to your Autoresponders, as they are unseen heroes of the form experience but play a critical role in delivering what was promised. A Completion Action is an action that Pardot will automatically make on your behalf as soon as the form is completed. 

Actions could include:

  • Delivering gated content
  • Adding to subscription lists
  • Notifying users
  • Adding prospects to nurture programs
  • Creating a task to follow up with the prospect

It’s the final touch to the entire experience and will keep your prospects returning for more.

Create Better Pardot Forms to Get More Conversions

With these out-of-the-box Pardot tools at your disposal, you can easily decrease form abandonment and increase Prospect engagement, growing your pipeline and improving your nurture game. 
Interested in learning more about how to get started or how to expand your Pardot form game? Contact us today!

Original article: 5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-23T21:06:51+00:00January 23rd, 2023|Categories: Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide

I’m sure by now you’ve heard of Interaction Studio — or Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (SFMCP) as it is now called. But if you’re similar to me, none of the buzzwords that are thrown around help to paint the picture of what SFMCP actually does.  

In this blog, I’ll be demystifying this intriguing product and detailing the features and functionality, and where possible I’ll be calling out any “gotchas” that have personally caught me out, so you can avoid them. 

What is SFMC Personalization (Interaction Studio)? 

So, let me start with the easy part… What is it? Simply put, SFMCP is a real-time personalization engine. By integrating it with your website(s) and mobile app(s), you can track visitors as they interact with your digital content. 

Every page, article and product they view, click on, rate or add to cart is providing SFMCP with the data it requires to build a unique customer profile for every visitor — whether they are known or unknown. 

In other words, it allows you to dig deeper and truly understand what keeps bringing each visitor back, and when coupled with data provided by a CRM or data warehouse it is capable of delivering a hyper-personalized experience at scale and in real-time.

What does SFMCP do? 

Although accessed via Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), that’s where the similarities between SFMC and SFMCP come to an end. Having been procured rather than built by Salesforce, it has a very different look and feel. 

SFMCP is broken down into the following:

  • Reports
  • Channels & Campaigns
  • Audiences
  • Catalog
  • Machine Learning
  • Gears
  • Settings

Reports

By default, all users land on the Dashboard (as shown below) which provides a high-level view of revenue, visits, orders, average order value per visit and conversion rate. It also provides details on how your campaigns are performing through metrics such as impressions, new vs. returning visitors and item actions (purchased, viewed, added to cart, etc.), all of which are filterable by date ranges. 

However, to dig a little deeper, SFMCP also provides a range of Activity, Results and Visit reports that can help understand how your personalization efforts drive success.

Activity Reports

  • Recent Visits: Stream view of all the visits occurring over the defined period
  • Event Stream: Stream view of all the events occurring over the defined period
  • Cohorts: Groupings of users by predefined criteria such as first time visiting, first time performing an action or specific statuses 
  • Actions: Linear graph showing key Sitemap actions specified that can be filtered by segments or keywords 
  • Modules: Volume of visitor actions, views/clicks that have been grouped together as Modules 
  • Paths: A page-by-page view of the paths visitors take when interacting with your site  
  • Funnels: Using Modules, create an optimal funnel for your visitors and monitor the completion of the desired sequential actions
  • Day / Time: View visits, visit length, revenue, revenue per visit and bounces by day of the week and time of day 

Results Reports

  • Revenue: User, order and revenue statistics in a grid matrix and filterable by platform, engagement, visit status, and more
  • Purchase Funnel: Using segments, compare how your audiences perform against all visitors when viewing products, adding to a cart and purchasing
  • Goal Completions: Side-by-side comparison of your configured goals and filterable by device type, browser type, user state and more
  • Goal Comparisons: A view of the goal completions and completion rate over time for created goals  

Visitor Reports

  • Behavior: Shows visits, engagement, logins and purchases over a given time frame
  • Technology: Includes information such as browser, device, and operating system commonly used by visitors
  • Referring Sources: Useful report to show how visitors access your site as well as the referring sources driving the most revenue

Channels & Campaigns

In short, it’s the marketer’s space to build campaigns and whilst it is often the most talked about, web is not the only channel SFMCP can support, it also offers mobile and email, as well as triggered and JS server-side campaigns. 

Using web campaigns, SFMCP users can create real-time personalization experiences aimed at targeting visitors who meet certain criteria. Server-side campaigns give users the ability to get more creative but will require a greater skill set. 

Triggered campaigns and email campaigns tie into the wider SFMC platform if you’re lucky enough to have it, by triggering Journeys or by providing Open-Time Content to include in your SFMC sends. 

Through mobile campaigns, SFMCP can incorporate mobile as an additional channel by including a personalised experience on both Android and iOS. 

And finally, a Third-Party section allows SFMCP to bring in data from systems such as Marketo, Act-On, LinkedIn Ads, etc. and even create custom products when and where required. 

Audiences

As it sounds, Audiences are where users create visitor segments. Segments are a large part of SFMCP and go beyond simple segmentation. In SFMCP, segments can be used to display AI recommendations to a selection of visitors based on your pre-defined criteria.  But they can also be used to create goals by setting the actions you wish visitors to perform (i.e., order a minimum of $xxx). 

The number of visitors who meet the criteria directly relates to your goal’s success. Furthermore, any segment created can also be added as a filter to ensure certain visitors are excluded from recommendations and personalised content (i.e., exclude visitors from the US for UK-specific campaigns). 

The audience section is also where you can see all users in your SFMCP account, whether imported via feeds or tracked through the SFMCP Sitemap. However, it is important to note, that visitors captured via the sitemap will be anonymous (created using a randomly generated profile ID) until they perform an action (i.e., create account, checkout, etc.) that provides SFMCP with a chosen identifier such as an email address or username. 

Catalog 

The Catalog section is where you begin to add business context and it will require plenty of planning. SFMCP offers standard catalog objects such as Products, Categories, Blogs and Articles but also provides the opportunity to create custom objects to support your particular business needs. The objects can then, where required, be related to each other with varying cardinalities that will provide SFMCP with the information needed to understand visitor interactions.  

For example, when a visitor clicks on a specific pair of trainers it will increase that visitor’s affinity towards that particular product, but it will also create an affinity to the categories of running and shoes. In turn, products in the same categories can then be suggested through recommendations and promotions.

Note: An important callout here is to distinguish which method will be used for consuming data: ETL or Sitemap. Passing the same attributes, such as stock, through both methods can cause issues in SFMCP. I’d recommend leveraging the ETLs where possible and using SFMCP’s Sitemap for passing IDs and activity types to avoid data discrepancy issues. 

Machine Learning

If you’re like me, this is where the fun begins. The machine learning section is all about recipes and decisions. The Machine Learning piece can be broken down into two main capabilities, Recipes and Decisions,

Recipes 

As the name suggests, by mixing ingredients SFMCP can create unique content or product recommendations for each customer. 

Ingredients make up the basis of Einstein’s machine learning-powered algorithms. Elements such as co-browse, trending or smart bundle (to name a few)  will show recommendations based on what other visitors have browsed, what’s currently trending or what products other visitors have bought together respectively. It’s important to note that these recipes can even include offline activity that is imported via ETL feeds. 

Decisions

Rather than manually creating and testing the recipes yourself, why not let AI do the hard work for you? This is where decisions come into play. Decisions use visitor data to predict and display the right promotion based on the chance of completion and the highest business value. 

Einstein automates the process of deciding who should see what content by evaluating each promotion viewed, whether or not the session is a returning visitor, device type and much more.

Gears and Feeds

Gears are extensions for the platform that can be added based on your specific needs, although most will be enabled by default. The most important gear, in my opinion, is the Flicker Defender which, when implemented correctly, stops SFMCP sitemap from flickering on page load. 

Feeds, on the other hand, are SFMCP’s Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). SFMCP has a specific feed and format for each standard object, custom object and related catalog object which you can use to ingest data to support your catalog setup. Sharing data with SFMCP provides the information it needs to turn anonymous clicks into insightful data that can be used to make informed decisions that ultimately impact the bottom line and revenue. 

Further Considerations Before Jumping Into SFMC Personalization

Before jumping straight in and procuring SFMCP, it’s worth evaluating the following considerations: 

  1. Tech Gap & Skillset – Make no mistake, this is a complex tool and deserves respect. Whilst a lot of features can be handled via point and click, to get the most out of the tool it can require the support of Web Developers and Data Scientists. It’s also worth pointing out that the Sitemap, which is a large proportion of the tool, is all JavaScript and may require ongoing support. 
  1. Personalization Requirements – As its name suggests, SFMCP is well suited to real-time personalization. But if your requirements are undemanding and single channel, it might be worth considering alternatives such as SFMC Web and Email Recommendations. However, if your requirements are omnichannel in nature and supported by a complex catalogue of data, SFMCP might be the right tool for you. 

Once you’ve made the decision to procure SFMCP, the final consideration you should take into account is the implementation approach itself — you should begin reviewing your short-term gains vs long-term strategic objectives. 

Keep it Going

If you’d like to learn more about Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio), check out this blog post. Or reach out to the team at Sercante if you need help.

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-19T21:20:45+00:00January 19th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Marketing Cloud, revive, Setup & Admin|