How to Create Custom Salesforce Round Robin Processes

One of the most common assignment needs for Salesforce leads and cases is to circulate these via a round robin assignment process. But assignment in the marketing, sales or any other team for that matter does not necessarily stop at these objects. 

A common way to round-robin assign items is by using an auto number field and formula to create a round robin ID, which can be used in case or lead assignment rules or with other automation tools. 

But, this can sometimes be difficult to maintain when users leave the organization or change roles and responsibilities. It may also fall short when you have other process complexities, like handling holidays and PTO.

What if there was another way to manage the assignment of standard and custom Salesforce objects like leads, tasks, or opportunities? 

This blog will walk you through a custom opportunity Salesforce round-robin process. And what’s even better is that this solution can be used for lots of objects in Salesforce, which do not typically have assignment rules (or do!) 

Create Two New Salesforce Custom Objects
A custom assignment process can be created using multiple components and is intended to be more accessible to manage than other solutions with the help of two new custom objects.

To make the assignment of an object more manageable; we first need to create two custom objects; Assignment Group and Assignment Group Members.

Assignment Group

First create a new custom object called “Assignment Group.”

A record of this custom object signifies a group or team that you would like to round robin through to assign specific records (i.e. North America Sales Team). 

Assignment Group Member

Create a second custom object called “Assignment Group Member” and create a Master-Detail Relationship on this custom object so that this is the detail record in the master detail relationship with Assignment Group. 

Next, add a lookup field to the Assignment Group Member to the User object and the following fields:

  • “Last Assignment Date” : Data Type: Date
  • “Out of Office Start” : Data Type: Date
  • “Out of Office End” : Data Type: Date
  • “Active” : Data Type: Formula
    • AND(
      Out_of_Office_End__c <=TODAY(),

TODAY()<= Out_of_Office_Start__c )

Create Your Assignment Groups & Members

Now that you have your custom objects built, you can create your Assignment Group Records. You may have one Assignment Group or Multiple; depending on the objects or groups that you like to assign. For example; you may have an Onboarding Assignment Group to Round Robin Onboarding Tasks within the Onboarding team and a Regional Sales Team to distribute opportunities to your Sales Reps in a particular region. 

Once the groups have been created; you can add your Group Members. For a user to be part of the assignment queue, they must be part of the Assignment Group with their own Assignment Group Member record.  

Users must be related to the Assignment Group Member Record through the custom lookup field on the object. Additionally, the member will not be assigned records if the custom checkbox of “Active” is false. This checkbox is calculated based on the formula which assesses whether the current date/time is within the Out of Office Start and End dates.

The last assignment date can be manually edited but is filled in automatically within the Round Robin Assignment Flow.

Round Robin Assignment Flow

The final step to facilitate the assignment for a flow that is triggered when the record you are looking to assign is created (in most cases, although this could be triggered when a field is updated).

Create a record triggered flow

You can set this up by creating a record triggered flow, and selecting the object you would like this to be triggered on. Set your entry criteria for the flow, whether that is for a task with a certain subject or an opportunity at a certain stage.

The second element in the flow is a decision element, which you can select by clicking on the plus under the entry criteria. This decision element has been added to decide the team/group to round robin and branch into two paths based on the opportunity location. If you only have one Assignment Group for this object, you can move onto the next stage without adding the decision element.

Add a Get Records element

The next step in the flow is to add a Get Records element to find the relevant Opportunity group for the North America path. Add a filter to retrieve the Assignment Group record where the “Name” of the Assignment Group equals the relevant Group name which you would like to retrieve and store the first record only and store all fields.

Add second Get Records element

Next, add a second Get Records element after this to retrieve the Assignment Group Members in this assignment group. 

You can do this by selecting the object Assignment Group Member and entering the “Assignment Group” field, with the operator “equals” and the Assignment Group record Id from the previous Get records element. 

Add an additional filter to only return Assignment Group Members that are active (eliminating any Assignment Group Members on Annual Leave or Unavailable for Assignment).

This time, we will still retrieve the first record, but the sort order is key here to ensure that the round robin works as expected and the oldest recently assigned member is selected. You can do this by setting the sort order as “Ascending” and Sort by as “Last Assignment Date.”

Update the owner of the record

The final step in this path is to update the owner of the record to be the retrieved user from this Get element. 

Add an Update Records element to the flow, and select “Use the record that triggered the flow.” Select the relevant field to update — in this case Owner — and select the User from the Get Assignment Group Member User Id element.

See if your flow looks like this

Repeat the steps on the other decision paths as needed. The flow should look something like this, if you have multiple assignment groups to round robin in the flow. 

Additional Considerations

  • Consider creating a  custom Rollup Summary on the Assignment Group object to record the number of Assignment Group Members in the Assignment Group. You can also filter this to show only active Assignment Group Members.
  • If any changes are made to the name of the Assignment Group record or any additional Assignment Groups created; this must be updated in the Round Robin Assignment Flow.
  • Make sure to debug and test the flow before making this live to make sure that everything works as desired.
  • You can also add in a Send Email Action to the flow or a Custom Notification to notify the user of the assignment at the end of the flow.
  • Ensure that the necessary users have access to the tabs created of the custom object; you could delegate permissions to Team managers to manage the users available to round robin and annual leave.

Great Solution for Complex Salesforce Object Routing Needs

In summary, this solution can help all teams with complex object routing needs or for admins who would like a more manageable solution than other round robin configurations. 

The ability to assign records to users and consider availability in a front end facing way allows records to be actioned in an efficient manner; removing wasted time re-assigning records for users that are on holiday or have left the business. 
If you need further assistance with your business automation needs, feel free to reach out to the Sercante team where we can help you build scalable business solutions.

Original article: How to Create Custom Salesforce Round Robin Processes

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post How to Create Custom Salesforce Round Robin Processes appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-16T21:26:18+00:00February 16th, 2023|Categories: Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

5 Next-Level Tips for Your Lead Nurture Program

Lead nurturing programs play a critical role in the sales process. That’s because nurtured leads have a shorter sales cycle and generate more sales-ready leads at a significantly lower cost. Luckily for you, the Marketing Cloud platform has extensive capabilities to create a sophisticated, multi-channel, automated lead nurturing program.

Here are five tips to take your lead nurture program to the next level utilizing the best of breed marketing automation capabilities in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Tip 1: Put lead scoring and grading to work

With Marketing Cloud, you have lots of options for lead scoring. 

This is especially true with the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) platform. The lead scoring and grading that comes out of the box has endless capability and flexibility.

Check out this blog post for a deeper dive into lead scoring and grading in Pardot.

But we’re going to focus on lead scoring and grading in Marketing Cloud Engagement here.

Marketing Cloud Engagement (SFMC) Users

If your Marketing Cloud setup doesn’t use the Account Engagement platform, there are other third-party resources that can provide both lead and account ranking scoring.

Third-party lead scoring and grading tools

SalesWings provides an easy to install, cost effective solution to deliver real-time lead scoring based on web activity and other factors. Once installed you can visually see a predictive score of Hot, Warm or Cold based on a wide variety of criteria right in the platform.

SalesWings Sales Console

And don’t forget to consider account-based ranking as well. Utilizing platforms like Demandbase you can take the lead ranking to the next level by understanding how that account or company converts. For example, Demandbase can provide key stats like number of engaged people, sales touches all bubbling up to a tier ranking to help add additional color to your ranking system.

Demandbase dashboard

Tip 2: Use CASE function to simplify rankings

This one is for Marketing Cloud Engagement (SFMC) users. If you have multiple scoring variables like a lead and account ranking, utilize the CASE SQL function in your automation to consolidate rankings into one simple rank.

The multiple scoring variables could be generated from third-party platforms like Saleswings/Demandbase or internally through a custom lead/account scoring process.

Take this example below on how you could approach taking the two rankings and determining one combined ranking of Hot, Warm and Cold.

To execute this in Marketing Cloud Engagement Automation Studio, use the CASE function to do the IF/THEN (or in this case WHEN/THEN) to populate the “Lead_Ranking_Simple” field in the Journey data extension with the combined ranking.

If you are not comfortable with SQL check out the DESelect application where you can quickly and easily create this custom relationship without having any SQL knowledge.

 Source: DeSelect

Note: For more information on how to use the CASE statement in a variety of ways, check out Mateusz Dabrowski’s site, which goes into great detail on this function.

Tip 3: Focus on essential lead nurture journey functionality

There are three essential activities or areas of functionality in Journey Builder: 

  1. The entry event
  2. The decision split
  3. Object activity

Focusing on these areas will have the greatest impact on the overall performance and scalability of your automation solutions. 

Note: Read this blog post from Kirsten Schlau for more info about using Journey Builder.

The Entry Event

Here’s a typical lead nurture journey in Marketing Cloud Engagement where you can see these activities in action. Let’s take a closer look at the most important of these three activities, the Entry Event.

The Entry Event functionality determines the list of contacts  who will enter the Journey. It’s the start of any journey and determines the capability of all functions that follow. A poorly set up entry event will limit functionality and cause problems down the road so spend your time to ensure a proper set up.

Let’s take a look at the two most populated entry event types: 

  1. Data Extension
  2. Salesforce Data Entry Event

Data Extension Entry Event is the most commonly used version. In this variation typically a SQL query based automation is running behind the scenes pulling in leads from synchronized data extensions based on a variety of filter criteria across multiple objects.

Advantages

The advantage to using a Data Extension Entry Event is the flexibility and complete customization of the subscriber segments to be pulled into the journey.

Disadvantages

The disadvantage is you are limited by the minimum 15-minute sync timeframe of records from the Salesforce CRM environment. So the fastest you’ll be able to enter in a subscriber based on Salesforce data is once every 15 minutes. Another small disadvantage is this entry event requires your team to be comfortable with SQL and it creates a separate marketing automation asset to support.

Another popular option is the Salesforce Data Entry Event which pulls in any object that has a contact, lead or user to be used as a subscriber for sending.

Advantages

Advantages of this entry event is that it’s pretty close to real time (1-2 minutes). As soon as a lead is created or updated based on the criteria designated, the subscriber will enter the journey. This option is also easier to support as it eliminates the need for the automation solution working in the background.

Disadvantages to this event is that you are limited by the filter settings in this entry event setup. If your filtering criteria involves multiple fields across multiple objects a SQL based automation fed entry event might be the better path.

Tip 4: One-to-one content personalization

Here are three ways to deliver a 1-to-1 customization of your journey content utilizing Content Builder functionality and simple ampscript and HTML coding.

First method – Personalization of subscriber values

In each email send you can populate an unlimited number of data about your subscriber in data extensions. To leverage those data points in the content simply add %% before and after the data point. 

For example to render the first name in the subject line:

Enter in %%FirstName%% right in the subject line block:

Or if you’re not sure what the exact data point is called or the exact format you can use click on the Personalization Icon in your editor toolbar.

Second Method – Dynamic Content Blocks

Utilize out-of-the-box functionality in Content Builder to vary entire sections of content in an email using Dynamic Content Blocks.

In this example, the focus of the email content changes based on the product selected by each lead indicated on the lead record. 

The end user will see custom content in the email:

Dynamic Content Block Example

In Content Builder, first create separate content blocks for each product featuring a photo and copy points. Then drag over a dynamic content block onto your email canvas.

And follow the steps to (1) select a default content to appear and (2) content variations based on the data coming from the lead object. In this case, if the “Product__c” field contains “401K” or “Credit Card Processing,” then the content will change.

Third Method – Custom links

Utilize ampscript and HTML to create custom links that add value to the recipient.

In this example, we’re creating a hot lead notification that will be sent to the owner of the lead. We’re populating this email with all the relevant data points in the data extension using the %% functionality mentioned above. We also have custom links so that when the lead owner clicks on the link it will take them right into the Salesforce CRM environment.

To execute this type of functionality utilize ampscript inside of the email content in the following approach:

  1. Set your Lead ID variable based on the field value in the send data extension.
  2. Use the CONCAT function to pull in the remaining part of the standard Salesforce lead record url.
  3. The first part of the Lead url.
  4. The variable set above.
  5. The last part of the Lead url.

And then to make the link clickable utilize a standard A Tag in HTML combined with the RedirectTo ampscript function.

Tip 5: Notify sales of hot leads in multiple ways ways

Marketing Cloud Engagement has a variety of options to creatively notify sales right in the Salesforce CRM platform through tasks and or sending highly personalized “Hot Lead” emails as mentioned above. 

Let’s walk through utilizing the Object Activity in Journey Builder to either create or update records in the Salesforce CRM environment, in this example creating custom tasks.

Select the Object Activity and select the task

(1) Select “Task” in the search and (2) select Task. You’ll want to “Create New” task.

Then (1) Fill in all required fields and utilize the data binding functionality to personalized fields where necessary.

For a higher complexity of field personalization (2) utilize what is called “data binding” in the Journey Builder UI to personalize each task and pull in the lead rank score.

To grab these “data bindings” for any variable to personalize follow these steps:

Step 1. Create your subject line defining the variables that will be brought in to personalize: “Attention!, you have a HOT Rank lead for Company: XYZ”

Step 2. In a separate document like in Notepad, create a template for the subject line identifying each of the variables needed to populate in your variable code.

Step 3. Select the Subject field in the Task.

Step 4. To create the handle bar “data binding” code for the lead score variable (1) Select the Journey Data dropdown, (2) Select the variable and (3) the handle bar code will appear in the subject.

Step 5. Copy the code and paste it into your notepad. Repeat the process for the Company and any other variable to be personalized. 

The syntax in the Notepad should look like the following:

Step 6. Copy this line of code and paste it into the Subject Line space and Save.

When you generate a task it should look something like this:

Step 7. Paste this syntax into the Subject field to populate a custom 1-to-1 subject that will help the Sales team cut through the clutter in all their tasks. 

Here’s an example of documentation on “data bindings” in this blog article from Rafal Wolsztyniak titled SFMC Tips and Tricks Challenge. You’ll need to scroll through the article as it covers a variety of tips. 

Start Nurturing Leads Like a Salesforce Pro

Hopefully this article has given you a few tips on how to take your lead nurture programs to the next level in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement platform.

There are limitless possibilities in this platform, and we’re all eager to learn and improve our programs. Please share any discoveries you find as you explore ways to build successful automation solutions for nurturing sales leads.

Original article: 5 Next-Level Tips for Your Lead Nurture Program

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 5 Next-Level Tips for Your Lead Nurture Program appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-10T21:01:10+00:00February 10th, 2023|Categories: Marketing Automations, Marketing Cloud, Pro Tips, revive, Scoring & Grading, Strategy|

6 Creative Ways to Use Pardot Automation Rules

Pardot automation rules are a great way to set repeatable processes in motion and save yourself from repetitive admin tasks. Most Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) users employ automation rules to assign prospects when they are sales ready, send prospects to relevant Salesforce campaigns, assign grading profiles, etc. But there are endless ways to get creative with Pardot automation rules and really take your marketing efforts to the next level. 

Creative Uses for Pardot Automation Rules

Below are some of my favorite creative uses for automation rules, as well as some amazing use cases from the Pardot community!

Tip 1. Take action if a prospect performs a specific combination of activities

Completion actions are a great way to automate based on an activity a prospect does take, but what about automating when a prospect fills out a form but doesn’t request a demo? Or, a favorite for non-profits, visits the donate page but doesn’t make a donation? This is a great opportunity to use an automation rule to find those prospects and send them to an Engagement Studio Program so you can nurture them towards the next step in their journey!

Tip 2. Ensure only invited prospects can register for an event

Courtesy of Martin Farrell, Pardot Administrator

“We use automation rules to ensure only invited prospects are able to register for an event. In this case, if someone completes the registration landing page but is not on our invitee list, they are dropped into an uninvited list, which alerts our Events Coordinator to reach out. Since the landing page completion action added them to the registration list, the automation rule also removes these prospects from said list.”

Tip 3. Split lists for A/B testing

Courtesy of Bill Fetter, Principal and Founder of UnFettered Marketing

“I use 2 automation rules to assign random numbers to prospects based on the first letter of their last name. This gives me an approximate 50/50 split of US last names based on A-K and L-Z. This is especially useful for throttling sends and/or A/B testing.” 

Read more about how Bill accomplishes this in his blog post.

Tip 4. Use tags to customize prospect activity digests

Courtesy of Rebecca Sweetman, Snr Manager, Global Systems & Sales Operations

“We use automation to tag a prospect’s country and then use those tags to be excluded from prospect activity digests (as you can only exclude not include) so teams only have to see their own region’s activity.”

To expand on this great idea a bit, if you are not using prospect activity digests you can customize these for each of your Pardot users. Just navigate to one of your Pardot users and select Edit Preferences

Select the “Send daily prospect activity emails (for my prospects)” checkbox and then exclude prospects based on tag, as shown here:

Tip 5. Review active, “CRM Deleted” prospects

Courtesy of Bill Fetter, Principal and Founder of UnFettered Marketing

“Use an automation rule to find prospects who have taken an action within the last 1 day and are marked as “CRM deleted,” then notify someone to review the prospect for possible restoration. 

Normally, what happens here is a lead was deleted in Salesforce and was sent to the Pardot recycle bin. A form fill restores the prospect, but the prior delete action does not allow the prospect to be re-created in Salesforce. This action is normally paired with a second automation rule that uses the “allow deleted lead or contact to re-create in salesforce” action when a tag is added to a record such as “allow CRM recreate.”  

You can of course use the “allow deleted lead or contact to re-create in salesforce” action in a single automation rule, but this action will automatically create a new lead. And sometimes the reason the lead was deleted in the first place is it’s a habitual form spammer that you don’t want continuously re-creating in your org. So the 2-part action with a manual check is more conservative.”

Tip 6. Lower prospect score based on inactivity

A great use of repeating automation rules is to gradually lower the score of prospects who have been inactive for a period of time. This will keep your prospects from looking “sales ready” when they really aren’t engaging with your marketing and sales activities (or may have since left their company). I like to max out this rule at 10x in order to keep any prospects from going into the negatives. 

How do you use Pardot automation rules?

What other creative uses for automation rules do you employ in your org? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: 6 Creative Ways to Use Pardot Automation Rules

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 6 Creative Ways to Use Pardot Automation Rules appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-12-15T16:31:52+00:00December 15th, 2022|Categories: Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive|

Help! I Have Errors in My Automation Studio

We’ve all been there. You’ve set up an awesome automation in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Automation Studio. But what do you do when you see errors? 

It’s time to put on your detective hat. Follow these 4 steps to get to the cause and resolve the error. Then you can get back to what you do best… marketing! 

Step 1: Understand the error

First, you need to understand the error that’s being thrown out.

Tip: Bookmark this Salesforce article. It will be your go-to resource when it comes to understanding errors.

You can find the error you’re working with by hovering over the red step icon that will appear in your automation. 

This will detail what errored and the reason. Head over to the linked Salesforce article, and search for the error. This will give you your starting point. 

Automation Studio Error Example

Error: Invalid column name ‘{{column name}}’.

Meaning: Either the Source or the Destination has a field that was renamed or deleted.

Suggested Action: Confirm that columns and fields haven’t been changed or deleted.

The big clues in this error are:

  • The what – Column name
  • The where – Source or destination
  • The why – A field has been deleted

This approach will be the same for any error you get. Use it to find the what, where, and why.

Use a table like this to take notes as you investigate your Automation Studio error.

The What The Where The Why Marketing Cloud Salesforce Connector
a field name automation source deleted field X
example

Step 2: Check out the what, where and why in Marketing Cloud

In the above example, our “what” was a particular field. The “where” was either the source (the thing that kicks off our automation) or the destination (where our automation goes to). And our “why” was that the field had been either deleted or renamed. 

Go to both the source and destination (the where) and see if there have been any changes to the what.

If there has been a change, you’ll need to either update the automation to reflect that change or reverse the change.

If the “what” is no longer there and you cannot re-add it in the source or destination Data Extension, go to Step 3

Some other common errors that could be solved directly in Marketing Cloud are:

  • The source or destination Data Extension name or external key has been changed
  • The source or destination Data Extension has been deleted
  • Field types and/or lengths do not match in the source and destination Data Extension 
  • File upload naming patterns do not match the configuration 

Step 3: Head over to Salesforce

If your Marketing Cloud instance is connected to Salesforce, and you don’t see anything wrong with your setup in Marketing Cloud or nothing has disappeared (such as a field), then it’s time to check out your Salesforce instance. 

You may need a Salesforce admin for this part of the investigation. Check out Celine Newsome’s blog post Why Should Marketing Admins Have Salesforce Access? for help making the case in case you don’t have access.

Using your knowledge of how the automation studio has been set up, find “the what” this could mean going to the Salesforce object and finding the field, has anything changed? Other things you may need to check in Salesforce, depending on your error

  • Has a field been deleted or renamed?
  • Have permissions changed? Remember your Marketing Cloud Connect user in Salesforce will need to be able to see everything you want to see in Marketing Cloud
  • Has field or object visibility changed?

At this point, if you find something not quite right in Salesforce, you are no longer in Marketing territory. You’ll need to work with your Salesforce admin to

  1. Understand why the change was made 
  2. Find out if it can be reversed
  3. Inform them of the impact on marketing if it can’t be reversed and put a plan in place in Marketing Cloud

We don’t want to go in and start changing things back, as there could be good reasons for the change in Salesforce. 

If you find the reason for your automation errors in Marketing Cloud is because of changes made in Salesforce, then it’s probably a good time to open up this blog post in another tab and read it after this one “Why Salesforce and Marketing Admins Work Better Together

Step 4: Check your connector 

If you’re at step 4, I’m going to assume you’ve found nothing in Marketing Cloud and nothing in Salesforce. Here I’d suggest reviewing your Salesforce connector in Marketing Cloud to make sure that’s the case.

  • You still have a Salesforce System User listed. You can find this by going to set up in Marketing Cloud > Apps > Salesforce Integration 
  • Check that the user listed above is still integrated with Salesforce. You can do this by going to users in Marketing Cloud and checking the Salesforce.com Status.
  • Make sure your connector user is still active in Salesforce and has all the permissions needed to work with Marketing Cloud.

Work together with Salesforce admins to prevent Automation Studio errors

While there are lots of different errors that can appear in your Automation Studio, a simple process of elimination can often surface why the error occurred and help you fix it. Finally, knowing your Marketing Cloud set up and working with your Salesforce admin is a great step to take to help avoid errors.

What are the common errors you see in Marketing Cloud Automation Studio? Let us know in the comments.

Original article: The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post <strong>Help! I Have Errors in My Automation Studio</strong> appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-12-07T20:06:11+00:00December 7th, 2022|Categories: Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive|

Don’t Let Good Leads Go Bad in Salesforce Queues

Many organizations assign Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) prospects who are not yet sales ready to a “Cold” leads queue in Salesforce so data syncs and is available for reporting. The problem is that Pardot can’t reassign these leads once they “score up” and many get stuck in the cold leads queue in perpetuity.

In this post, we’ll discuss how leads can be automatically reassigned from the cold leads queue with the help of Salesforce Flow and some Apex code. This solution allows marketing teams to have full-funnel lead reporting in Salesforce without burdening sales with unqualified leads.

To Sync or Not to Sync?

The question of when to sync prospects from Pardot to Salesforce is one that comes up quite often when speaking to my clients. The answers from marketing and sales often differ. And both sides are passionate about it with compelling arguments.

The Marketing Perspective 

I need to show the full impact of my marketing activities and the leads my team is generating. If leads are only synced to Salesforce when they are sales ready, my numbers are going to be understated. That means my budget is going to be questioned — and probably slashed.

The Sales Perspective 

My time is valuable and I’m working on a commission. I don’t want to be distracted by a bunch of junk leads. I need to focus my time and energy on leads who have an interest in what we have to offer. I have a quota to hit!

I’m often pulled into these conversations and asked for my recommendation. Without hesitation, my answer is always the same — it depends. Some organizations need all prospects in Salesforce for reporting purposes and some only want sales ready leads added into Salesforce. Both approaches have merit and are correct based on the needs of the organization.

However, you can have your cake and eat it too! Enter — the cold leads queue.

The Salesforce Cold Leads Queue

My favorite solution to satisfy the needs of my friends in marketing and sales is the introduction of a cold leads queue.

The cold leads queue is the best of both worlds solution. It allows all the Pardot prospects to sync immediately to Salesforce — which allows for accurate lead reporting for marketing while not burdening sales with leads that are not yet ready. The cold leads queue is also a great place for sales teams to find additional leads to call in the event they are running low on MQLs to call.


So What’s the Catch?

Like all good things, there is a catch to using a cold leads queue. By design (and for good reason), Pardot can only assign prospects if they are currently unassigned. Once the prospect is assigned and synced to Salesforce, Pardot can’t change the assignment.

I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. In our case, we would assign a lead that does not meet our MQL criteria to the colds leads queue (in Pardot), so it will sync to Salesforce. This is perfect as the lead is in Salesforce for reporting purposes and is not cluttering the lists views of our sales teams.

But what happens when that prospect interacts with our marketing campaign and “scores up” to meet our MQL criteria? Houston, we have a problem!


Reassigning MQLs from the Salesforce Cold Leads Queue

I’ve seen this many times. Leads get stuck in the cold leads queue and are not reassigned once they hit the MQL threshold.

Why does this happen? Well, there are a few reasons.

  1. People forget that Pardot can’t reassign previously assigned leads and assume that their automation rule is doing the trick!
  2. Since reassignment has to be done in Salesforce, the marketing team does not have the proper permissions to do the job.
  3. Manual reassignment of leads is not a fun or glamorous job that Salesforce Admins look forward to doing.
  4. People just plain forget about leads once they hit the cold leads queue.

So what’s the solution to this issue? I’m glad you asked.

The solution is to use a Salesforce flow and Apex combined to automate it.

Let’s Start With Some Definitions

Apex 

Apex is a strongly typed, object-oriented programming language that allows developers to execute flow and transaction control statements on Salesforce servers in conjunction with calls to the API. Using syntax that looks like Java and acts like database stored procedures, Apex enables developers to add business logic to most system events, including button clicks, related record updates, and Visualforce pages. Apex code can be initiated by Web service requests and from triggers on objects.

Flow 

A flow is an application that can execute logic, interact with the Salesforce database, call Apex classes, and collect data from users. You can build flows by using Flow Builder.

*Definitiations from the Salesforce Glossary

The Big Reveal

I know I talked about having your cake and eating too at the beginning of this post. Well, it’s time for cake! The trick to using cold lead queues effectively is automating the process of “promoting” leads from the queue and into the hands of your sales team — and here’s how you do it.

  • Step 1 – Determine the criteria that should trigger the reassignment of leads that are in the cold leads queue. This could be a Pardot score crossing a threshold or the change in a custom field value.
  • Step 2 – Review your Lead Assignment Rules (Salesforce) for accuracy and make and needed updates.
  • Step 3 – Create an Apex class to call your lead assignment rules from Salesforce — in sandbox. This is an invocable process and can be called by flow. Below is an example of how this code could look.

  • Step 4 – Create a test class to ensure code coverage. You’ll need to have 75% code coverage in sandbox before your code can be pushed to production.
  • Step 5 – Create a record triggered-flow based on your MQL criteria. As an example, your flow could be triggered when a lead us updated and their Pardot score exceeds 150 points.

When creating your flow, it’s important that you include an asynchronous path. This will ensure that the flow runs after the changes to the lead record (that triggered the flow) are complete.

The rest of the flow is pretty basic and will look something like this.

  • Step 6 – Test and validate. Test your flow first using Debug to make sure it’s being triggered when your lead score is changed to exceed the target score. Once verified, activate the flow in sandbox and test on some actual leads.
  • Step 7 – After validating your flow in sandbox, create your outbound changeset. In production, validate your inbound change set (since this change set does include Apex code,  be sure to run all local tests). Deploy once validated.
  • Step 8 – Activate your flow and relax — knowing that no good leads are going to go bad in your cold lead queue!

Get Those Lead to Sales!

This post provided a high-level overview of how to automate the reassignment of leads from your cold leads queue. This is a common problem and addressing it is a great way to get some great leads into the hands of your sales team immediately.

If you need a hand setting up the actual process, contact us with your questions.

Original article: Don’t Let Good Leads Go Bad in Salesforce Queues

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Don’t Let Good Leads Go Bad in Salesforce Queues appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-11-01T17:49:38+00:00October 25th, 2022|Categories: Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

Pardot Scoring & Grading Lab

As inbound marketing efforts continue to grow across industries, marketers are having to come up with new ways to qualify the best of these new leads. Once they’ve been qualified by marketing, the next challenge is making sure the sales team gets the lead at the right time in their journey to capitalize on their interest. 

With Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) you can use prospect scoring and grading together to surface the most relevant leads. Combined with the automation tools built into the platform, you can save time by automatically qualifying leads and routing them to the appropriate sales person or team. 

In this blog, we’ll discuss how these two systems work together and the best ways to automate your approach.

Pardot Prospect Grading

Prospect grading takes place once you have set up your company’s ideal customer profile (ICP) and have a set of factors to evaluate a new prospect on. The best ICP’s are made up of quantifiable data, like number of employees, industry, job title and location. 

Once you have determined your criteria, you can provide the information to Pardot, and the system will automatically apply a letter grade (A-F) to prospects as new data is collected. 

To learn more about setting this up, check out Pardot Grading 101

For now, let’s take a look at some of the common criteria that marketers use to grade their prospects:

 

  • Location – If your organization uses geography to prioritize leads, you can adjust a prospect grade based on what location they provide.
  • Industry – Market and sell only to the industries that your business is targeting.
  • Job Title – Be sure you’re reaching the influencers and decision makers at an organization.
  • Company Size – Be Goldilocks and only reach out to the companies that are just right for you.

     

Try it out for yourself!

Not sure how prospect grading works in the real world? Here’s a chance for you to see how this functionality might work in your own organization.

Tell Us About Your Ideal Lead:

What sized companies do you target?



What industry do you typically target?



What department do you sell to?



Who are you typically targeting?





Joe is new inbound lead

D+

Pardot Prospect Scoring

You can use the Pardot prospect score in conjunction with the prospect grade to make sure only the best leads are being passed on to the sales team as qualified. Lead scores are a numerical value that can help you determine how interested a prospect is in working with your company. 

With prospect scoring, you assign points to the actions you decide are the most important. These points are totaled up and displayed as the prospect score and helps you determine how engaged a prospect has been with your marketing materials.

Let’s take a look at some of the actions you could use to influence a prospect score:

  • Page Views – Increase a prospect score with every page visit on your website.
  • Form Submission/Landing Page Success – Add points if a prospect fills out an important form on your website or landing page.
  • File Access – Adjust a score based on a prospect downloading an important file. 
  • Email Clicks – Good interaction with your email content may be an important indicator of how interested a prospect is in your offerings.

Let’s see it in action

I mentioned earlier that using prospect scoring and grading together can help to only qualify the best leads and send them to the sales team. Using these two tools can give you a better understanding of the prospects you’re working with and how to market to them appropriately. 

Check out each of the leads below to learn more about how their score and grade impact marketing efforts.

Roy

Roy is a great fit for your product or service, but either hasn’t had time to do any research, or doesn’t know that your product exists yet. This lack of activity is why he has a high grade, but a low score.

Recommended Action: Call him or place him on a nurturing campaign.

Ryan

Ryan is a student interested in an internship with your company. All of his activity on your site (like browsing your careers page) has given him a great score, but since he is not going to purchase, he receives a low grade.

Recommended Action: Do not assign Ryan to a sales rep.

Katie

Katie is enthusiastic about your company, but may not be the best fit for your product. This gives her a decent score, but moderate grade.

Recommended Action: Nurture Katie with a drip campaign to conserve resources.

Renee

Renee is a great lead who has been working with your sales team for a while. She has done her research, has a lot of interest in your product, and fits your ideal profile. This gives her a great grade and terrific score.

Recommended Action: Send Renee pricing and bottom-of-funnel resources.

Better Together: Pardot Prospect Scoring and Grading

Prospect scoring and grading can work fine separately, but I think they work best when used together as seen in the example above. 

With automation rules, you’re able to tell Pardot to send prospects to the appropriate sales representative and add them to lists or engagement studio programs when they reach the right combination of score and grade. This helps to ensure only the best leads are being sent to the sales team, and that you’re sending the right information to the right prospects at their stage of the buying cycle.

Don’t be afraid to subtract points or letter grades for bad matches, either! You can use page actions to subtract points from a prospects score if they (for example) visit your careers page. You’re also able to set up grading to lower a prospects letter grade if they’re the exact opposite of your ideal customer profile. 

Let me know in the comments if you’ve got more questions about these two tools, or reach out to us for help with your own prospect scoring and grading strategy.

Original article: Pardot Scoring & Grading Lab

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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By |2022-09-29T14:30:58+00:00September 29th, 2022|Categories: Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

Automation Facelift: Migrate Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Salesforce Flow

With Salesforce moving to Flow as its go to low-code automation tool, and Workflow Rules and Process Builder planned for retirement, it’s a good idea to migrate your existing automations to Flow. Here are best practices to get started on this process BEFORE you begin migrating.

Reviewing Your Current Automation Stack

Depending on how old your org is, it may have a lot of legacy configurations from old or obsolete business processes that don’t mean anything for your organization today. Do you really need to bring all of that technical debt along in your migration process? Or would you rather have an opportunity for a fresh start with your automations?

Before jumping in and migrating all of your current automations, this is a good opportunity to develop a migration strategy so that the changes being made now will meet the current and future needs of your organization. 

Develop a Salesforce Flow Migration Strategy

STEP 1: Audit your current workflow rules and process builders

First, inventory your list of workflow rules and process builders and perform an analysis. Here is a template you can use for your audit (click File > Make a copy).

When looking at your current automation, consider the following questions:

  • Which automations are active?
  • What automations are still relevant?
  • How many automations are there per object?
  • How complex is each automation?
  • Can any automations be combined?
  • Which automations make updates to the same record that triggered it?

STEP 2: Decide Which Automations to Migrate

After completing the audit, you will have a better idea of the automations in your org, which are still relevant and need to be migrated, and which can be decommissioned. 

This is also a great time to decide on which you will consolidate. Candidates for consolidation are:

  • Automations on the same object with the same trigger criteria. For example if you have 3 workflow rules that trigger from a Lead Status change, these may be a good candidate for combining into a single flow.
  • Automations that include field updates on the triggering record.
  • Automations that have similar components that could be combined into a subflow that’s called from each flow.

STEP 3: Prioritize Your Migration Plan

As you assess the automations in your org, you will become aware of those that are critical vs nice to have, and which can be combined into a single well performing flow. Use this understanding to prioritize the workflow rules and process builders you want to tackle first.

STEP 4: Get Familiar with Salesforce Flow

If you’re not familiar with Flow, and the types of flows available, this should be your next step before jumping in, to help make informed decisions about your flow strategy.

There are many resources available to help you get started.

You can check out my recent blog post for more information and links to a few great resources. Or this one from Mike Morris that outlines a process to manage Salesforce campaign activation with Flow.

STEP 5: Decide on a Flow Strategy

Ok so you know what workflow rules and processes need to be migrated and which to tackle first. So how are you going to actually migrate them? 

Salesforce Migrate to Flow Tool
  • Salesforce provides a Migrate to Flow Tool to help with the process of migrating current Workflow Rules and Process Builder to flow.
    • Support for migrating Workflow Rules is generally available as of Summer ’22.
    • Support for migrating Process Builder is coming and estimated early 2023.
  • The tool is very easy to use and does pretty much all of the lift in the migration process, creating the flow with start criteria and each action, and even makes it easy for you to deactivate the old and active the new.
  • One consideration is that the current version of the tool will migrate each workflow rule into its own flow. So if you have 20 workflow rules and use the tool to migrate you will end up with 20 flows. Will this work for your org?
Third-Party Migration Tools
  • The UnofficialSF site has a tool called ConvertToFlow v2 that can be used to convert Workflow Rules and Process Builder. I personally have not used it but it has been recommended in the community.
Building Flows Manually

If you have identified automations that can be combined, or are migrating process builders, you will no doubt build some flows. Before clicking that New Flow button, decide on:

  • Will this be a ‘Before Save’ vs ‘After Save’ record-triggered Flow?
    • Will the flow make an update on the same record that triggered the flow? If yes then a Before Save flow may be the best fit for better performance.
    • Will this flow be invoking an action or creating/updating related records? Then you will want to create an After Save flow.
  • Is there an existing flow with the same entry conditions? Can it be updated to include the logic you are currently migrating?
  • Is there an existing flow that has the same components involved? Can those components be converted into a subflow to be used in each of the flows?

Step 5: Build your Flow(s)!

Now that you have completed all of this awesome prep work, you are ready to roll up your sleeves and get building!

Questions about using Salesforce Flow? 

Let us know how you’re using Salesforce Flow in the comments section, or reach out to us with any questions.

We’re here to help!

Original article: Automation Facelift: Migrate Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Salesforce Flow

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Automation Facelift: Migrate Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Salesforce Flow appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-08-06T00:16:00+00:00August 6th, 2022|Categories: Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

Three Interaction Studio Features Marketers Should Look Out For

This blog delves into the value that Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio provides to marketers (B2B and B2C). We’ll discuss Interaction Studio and its key capabilities with a focus on identity stitching and machine-learning-based recommendations.  

In addition, we’ll talk about the integration capabilities with Salesforce products including the three Marketing Cloud tools that could benefit marketers, which are Open-time email, Journey Builder, and Automation Studio.

Interaction Studio Use Case Example

An example of a use case with Interaction Studio is when customers view a product in-store, browse through the web, download a mobile app to use a voucher, make a purchase, and talk to a sales representative after a few days, multiple touchpoints and delivering a consistent experience is needed. 

That’s where Interaction Studio comes in, unifying the customer experience with its features.

Web

Based on the user’s interaction with the website (e.g. what content they read, or what products view, how much time they are on a particular page), a personalized banner based on on-site behavior and backend preference is enabled. 

Instead of a static banner on the homepage, Interaction Studio activates a dynamic banner in conjunction with the user’s behavior and data.

Email

A personalized email is uniquely catered based not only on aspects such as name, or city but with micro nuances such as user behavior. 

Omni-channel

Interaction with a user happens on a specific channel, but reaching out happens on another channel. What we’re looking at here is adding a user on a journey or a nurture campaign when they sign up from a form on the website.

Common Thread between Interaction Studio use cases

Each of the three use cases is unique in its own features but a common thread to all of them is personalization

Interaction Studio puts web tracking cookies on your website to listen for all the data that comes.

Top 3 Features of Interaction Studio

Today, in this world where we have interactions happening across multiple channels, it’s really important that all your sales, service, and marketing departments talk in the same language. That can be a huge challenge at times. 

Interaction Studio is related back to contextual data such as a product catalog or a content catalog. It can bridge the two resulting in a unified view of a customer. From the data of the customer, you can make a centralized decision leading to an orchestrated delivery across all touchpoints. 

Open-Time Email

Delivers personalized content and product recommendations at the time an email is opened by the recipient, which is rendered in true real-time, utilizing the most current information of every user in your subscriber list. 

The solution is designed to work with any email or marketing provider. 

Journey Builder

Based on API. Interaction Studio listens through web, mobile, API, and data feeds, constantly gathering data about visitors, then updates existing segments in real-time. Use these segments to add customers to Journey Builder within moments of data changing.

Automation Studio

Import or export segments between IS and SFMC. Export segments from IS to SFMC/Pardot using IS SFTP — one time or nightly. 

Use Automation Studio to import data into SFMC DE. Import data into IS — Marketing Cloud data extensions are extracted using Interaction Studio SFTP as a destination in Automation Studio.

Ultimate goal

As we learned, Interaction Studio unifies multiple touchpoints of user behavior from viewing a product through a website all the way to talking to a sales representative after a purchase. From these features, it all comes down to a better understanding of the customer’s needs, making it the best experience for them as possible. 

Learn more from the original content of Deboleena Bhattacharyya here. Or, check out more MarDreamin videos here

Original article: Three Interaction Studio Features Marketers Should Look Out For

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Three Interaction Studio Features Marketers Should Look Out For appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-07-24T01:40:00+00:00July 24th, 2022|Categories: Emails & Forms, Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive|

Hands On: How to Build a Pardot Email Engagement Dashboard in Salesforce

Do you have connected campaigns with Pardot and would like to see email engagement data in one place? In this blog, we are able to see how easy it is to build a Pardot Email Engagement in Salesforce

Reasons for a marketing email dashboard in Salesforce:

  • Your team does not have access to B2BMA or Analytics Studio.
  • You need more transparency and shareability cross-departmentally
  • You’re looking for an easy solution.

Prerequisites:

Building the Report in Salesforce

  • Click: Campaigns > Campaigns with List Emails
    • The report will pull up both list and automated (Engagement Studio) emails
    • If you don’t see the data, you may check with your Salesforce admin on the settings

Filters Settings on the Report

  • Show me > All Campaigns
  • Create Date > All Time
  • Subject > does not contain proof
  • Total sent > greater than 0

Outline Setting on the Report

  • Group Rows by Scheduled Date and Type
  • Select the Columns of your choice
  • For the Rates and Ratio – Select Average

Building a dashboard

  • Use the “Campaigns with List Email Report” as the basis the dashboard components
  • You may use metric chart for the headers
  • Set colors to express performance satisfaction
  • Use Line Chart for Open and CTR%
  • Stacked Vertical Bar Chart for Email Record Count
  • Vertical Bar Chart for Custom Campaigns field metric

Original content from Karla Vince. Watch more sessions like hers at this year’s MarDreamin’, a conference for marketers on Salesforce.

Original article: Hands On: How to Build a Pardot Email Engagement Dashboard in Salesforce

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Hands On: How to Build a Pardot Email Engagement Dashboard in Salesforce appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-07-05T16:43:31+00:00July 5th, 2022|Categories: Getting Started, Marketing Automations, revive|

Personalization with Pardot & Interaction Studio

We usually find common asks for customers to further personalize Pardot emails, specific account-based messaging on their website, and where sales reps can take the next step to drive the conversation. 

Interaction Studio helps answer all the queries with its account-based website experience, Next Best Action and Content Recommendations, and personalization of marketing content.

Common customer concerns and asks

Customers often come to us with these concerns

  • We want to personalize Pardot emails further 
  • We want specific account-based messaging on our website
  • Our content is out of date on occasion by the time the email is opened
  • How can we align the experience of those who are still unknown to us?
  • Our sales reps often don’t know where to drive the conversation next

And statics say that today’s buyers expect account-centric personalization

  • 87% of marketers that measure ROI say that ABM outperforms every other marketing investment
  • 37% of marketers claim creating content and personalized is their biggest ABM challenge

How Interaction Studio help solve the problem

  1. Account-Based Website Experience – Automatically tailor website for top accounts and buyers based on in-depth behavioral insights and accounts profiles
  2. Provide Next Best Action & Content Recommendations – Surface the optimal next step to engage prospects and guide them through the conversion funnel
  3. Personalize Marketing Content – Present dynamic emails, forms and landing pages

Account-Based Website Experience

With interaction studio, you can engage and convert qualified prospects with more relevant experiences. By starting reverse IP lookup, you’ll be able to understand customers from specific target accounts even if they’re unknown to you. From this, it can be used to create dynamic content for targeted offers on your website that can be available anywhere using a responsive design. The account intent data is tied directly to the account record which means all your account-based marketing tools can be plugged in. In addition, it’s also connected with the leading contact record inside salescloud and servicecloud.

Account-Based Website Experience

With interaction studio, you can engage and convert qualified prospects with more relevant experiences. By starting reverse IP lookup, you’ll be able to understand customers from specific target accounts even if they’re unknown to you. From this, it can be used to create dynamic content for targeted offers on your website that can be available anywhere using a responsive design. The account intent data is tied directly to the account record which means all your account-based marketing tools can be plugged in. In addition, it’s also connected with the leading contact record inside Salescloud and Servicecloud.

Next Best Action & Content Recommendations 

Interaction Studio can provide specific calls to action with a heavy focus on the buying persona and the stage of the buyer’s journey. This approach leads us more to drive higher conversion. Furthermore, the sales reps are going to be able to leverage these content recommendations and enable them to execute them.

Personalize Marketing Content

Using Interaction Studio enables the creation of dynamic emails for multiple audiences. The automation enables a decision at a time when users email open or when a website is pulled up to be able to choose what content to display. The unique content for each segment makes use of increasing engagement leading to conversions.

What content to choose and display within emails?

Whether your questions would be – what to offer? Or what content? Or Are they saturated? What should I  do? All of these queries are answered by Einstein inside Interaction Studio with its customer priority, eligibility, and saturation.

How the engagement studio differs?

Interaction Studio Engagement Studio
Customer centric Brand centric
Reactive and real-time personalization Proactively drive customers to engage
Seemless transition of Next Best Offers to Sales Reps Deep Sales Visibility
Decision engine for orchestration Deploy a single journey
Behavioral reporting Revenue Based Campaign Reporting
Uknown and known consumers Known prospects and customers

Conclusion

As we learned, Interactive Studio has strong capabilities of driving account-based website experiences tailored to the unique segment. It can also provide the Next Best Action and content recommendations with a heavy focus on the buying persona, and the personalization of marketing content is integrated seamlessly.

Content originally from Grace Izard and Michael Roberts

Original article: Personalization with Pardot & Interaction Studio

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Personalization with Pardot & Interaction Studio appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-06-08T20:17:14+00:00June 8th, 2022|Categories: Engagement Studio, Getting Started, Marketing Automations, revive|