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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

Map all the touchpoints you want to track (can any be grouped?).
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.
Apply an appropriate score for each touchpoint.
Establish a set marketing qualified lead (MQL) threshold to identify interested prospects.
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:

What is the minimum score a prospect should have? (Scoring threshold before conversion)
What grade should the prospect have?
Who shouldn’t be considered a lead? (Competitors, job seekers, suppliers, etc.)
How often should a prospect repeat the action? (Customer lifecycle – FMCG vs SMCG)
Who in your organization is going to handle the leads? (a queue or a specific user)
How is your Pardot org synced with Salesforce?
Is contact and lead creation enabled?
Or is task creation the only option? (Does a new lead need to be created or should a task be assigned)
Should the prospect’s score be reset?
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.

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:

How many leads are converting per category, and is this as high as expected?
What’s your opportunity ‘lost vs won’ rate? Are the leads of good quality?
Are certain categories performing better than others? Should the lead threshold be changed per category?
Do any touchpoints need to be reviewed or adjusted? Are some overinflated?
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…

How can we shorten the customer journey/ prospect lifecycle?
How can we increase the share of existing customers (cross-selling or upselling)?
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.

Email Metric 1: Complaint Rate

Unsubscribes tend to indicate when recipients find messages irrelevant, but when contacts mark content as spam it indicates major antagonism against your content. Measuring the complaint rate, or the percentage of times recipients mark your outbound emails as spam, ensures your team has a grasp on when content has become dangerously misaligned from consumer expectations.

Nearly half of all emails sent get classified as spam, so to hit the inbox marketers need to know how to differentiate between content subscribers will find valuable or irrelevant.

What Makes Spam Indications Unique?

Spam designations happen for many reasons, but some of the most common stem from a disconnect between the marketer and contact.

The recipient cannot easily find a way to unsubscribe (e.g., the link is in small font or a similar color to the background)
There is no option to unsubscribe (e.g., emails from sales reps marked as spam will affect the entire company domain)
Marketers do not respect unsubscribe requests and continue to send unwanted communications
Oversaturated contacts opt to skip an unsubscribe attempt and directly mark a message as spam

While some of these may not necessarily result from marketing decisions, the unique danger of spam designations rather than regular unsubscribes affect every team’s future campaigns. High spam rates discredit a brand and more importantly cause future emails to go straight to spam folders.

Overcoming Poor Email Deliverability

Marketers must keep the complaint rate low to maintain a good sender reputation and to avoid email providers marking content as spam. Email marketers generally accept a complaint rate of less than 0.1 percent, while a rate above 0.5 percent often indicates issues with email content or list quality.

To avoid this, marketers can take several steps to reduce complaint rates and boost deliverability. Here are some best practices to consider.

Permission-based email lists: Only source subscribers who have given explicit permission to receive emails through a confirmed opt-in process. Avoid buying email lists, as these often contain contacts who haven’t opted in to receive emails from your organization.
Segmented email lists: Personalizing email lists based on subscriber behavior, demographics, or interests provides recipients with relevant content they are more likely to engage with, reducing the likelihood of spam designations while boosting conversion rates.
Engaging subject lines and content: A/B test and experiment with email subject lines that accurately describe the content of the email while ensuring the content doesn’t mislead or come off as overly promotional. Engaging content typically includes useful tips, exclusive discounts/promotions, or relevant industry insights.
Professional designs and mobile-optimized emails: Seeing as how the majority of emails are now opened on mobile devices and younger consumers prefer mobile shopping and user experiences, brands need to give the right first impression with clean-looking emails optimized for mobile as well as desktop engagements.
Include an easy-to-find unsubscribe link: Sometimes it’s better to cut your losses rather than risk long-term damage. Make it easy for contacts to opt out with a noticeable unsubscribe link in the footer of emails, otherwise you incentivize spam designations. The good news – if you follow the above steps, the risk of unsubscribes is low.

Be sure to consistently monitor campaigns after the fact for further insights. When you do encounter feedback such as spam complaints, unsubscribes, and email replies, respond in a timely and professional manner to not only build trust with subscribers but also spot any developing issues.

Email Metric 2: Event Lag

In a utopia, subscribers receive communications and immediately convert. Unfortunately, that rarely does happen, so marketers need to investigate whenever a delay between send time, open, and click happens. Event lag, which measures the time between these milestones, provides marketers with insights into content effectiveness.

You can easily measure event lag: just subtract the time at which a contact took the desired action (e.g., link click, website purchase) from when the email was sent. For campaigns across time zones, adjust expectations to account for the difference. You can also swap conversion time for open time(s). With this data, you can understand whether content prompts immediate action or leaves an email wasting away in subscriber inboxes.

According to a Campaign Monitor study, the median click-to-open rate, which tracks how many subscribers who opened an email went on to click a link, across all industries clocks in at around 10.5 percent. Campaigns that perform below this benchmark should make good candidates for further speculation into event lag and supplemental analysis.

Creating More Actionable Emails

Improving subscriber response times is crucial to optimal engagement, conversions, and customer satisfaction. Here are some tips to improve response times in your marketing emails.

Scrutinize your offers: Event lag times vary depending on the type of desired action. For example, consumers often take longer purchasing high-ticket products compared to low-cost items or requests. Therefore, if lengthy event lag times hold back your campaigns, switch up your calls-to-action to encourage easier conversions. For example, a B2B SaaS company can lower the stakes of their email CTA by switching from a demo request to a product page that lets recipients make decisions at their own pace.
Adjust timing: Sometimes event lag stems from an easily determined source — timing. If you find most emails to certain geographies have extended lag times, then since the content clearly gets clicks, adjusting to more palatable local send times could be the necessary fix.
Automated emails: Implementing automated follow-up email campaigns to welcome new subscribers, encourage action on abandoned carts, or send personalized behavior-based recommendations take advantage of recent positive engagements to foster immediate action.
Segmented email lists and content: Again, sending personalized emails based on subscriber behavior (for example, see above) or preferences creates more relevant experiences, improving response time.

Ultimately, the most important factor is to track and analyze your event lag data regularly, using that information to optimize your email campaigns over time to improve engagement and conversions.

Now that we’ve established advanced metrics to determine who is most/least engaged, let’s take a look at how to apply insights to your most radical subscribers.

Email Metric 3: Most-Engaged Subscribers

Every brand loves their MVPs, but are you doing enough to truly maximize the value they bring to your organization?

The Pareto Principle notes roughly 80 percent of sales come from just 20 percent of customers. Knowing this, maximizing loyalty and upsell opportunities among your most-engaged subscribers becomes crucial for marketers.

How to Recognize

To determine which subscribers have the highest brand loyalty, aggregate the following metrics.

Open Rates: The subscribers who consistently open your emails clearly find value in the content you send. Look at how often contacts open emails (and when they don’t) at an individual level to gain future segmentation insights.
Click-Through Rates: Use a similar approach for click-through statistics. Subscribers who consistently follow calls-to-action trust your brand.
Conversion Rates: Identify the subscribers who consistently take the desired actions of your emails. You can further segment contacts based on what actions they take post-click (e.g., those who purchase a certain product).

Create a scoring system out of these metrics that ranks subscribers based on their level of engagement. To do so, assign a score to each metric, add up the scores for each subscriber, then rank subscribers based on their total score. Going forward, target the most-engaged subscribers with personalized content or special offers to encourage continued engagement.

Priming for Further Action

Once you’ve determined your most-engaged subscribers, foster further conversions and long-term brand loyalty with the following strategies.

Personalized content: Segment your most engaged subscribers and personalize your content to cater to their specific desires. Effective segmentations pull data from past purchase history, browsing behavior, and engagement to create more relevant content that drives repeat conversions.
Exclusive offers and promotions: Reward your most-engaged subscribers with exclusive offers and promotions, including early access to sales, discounts, or freebies. These can even become personalized, such as promos for birthdays or anniversaries.
Ask for feedback: Use your most-engaged subscribers as a focus group to gather feedback on new products or services, website updates, or other business initiatives. This feedback from your best revenue stream identifies pain points and areas to improve, and fixing these shortcomings minimize the risk of churning your other subscribers.
Encourage social sharing: Take advantage of strong brand loyalty to encourage word-of-mouth sharing through social media or conversations with friends and family. These campaigns expand your reach and help attract new subscribers who are likely to engage in a similar manner.

Engagement is a two-way street, so ensure you continue to engage your brand’s most loyal followers with creative and personalized communications. In the long run, these customers become your organization’s foundation.

Email Metric 4: Least-Engaged Subscribers

Finding ways to elicit just an open from your least-engaged subscribers, on the other hand, fills marketers with migraines. These contacts have high event lag (or no engagement at all) and are at high risk to increase your complaint rate.

Knowing this, marketers must discern when to retarget low-engaged subscribers and when to remove them from lists altogether. With email deliverability and brand reputation at stake, list quality trumps quantity.

Improving relationships with your least engaged subscribers is a tall task, but several strategies can reset the relationship.

Segmented email lists: Notice a theme? Build audience segmentations based on engagement levels, and use this info to create campaigns that target your least-engaged subscribers. Use data such as their past purchase history or browsing behavior to create personalized messages tailored to these groups’ interests that resonate and drive conversions.
Re-opt-in campaigns: A re-opt-in campaign involves sending an email asking if identified subscribers still want to receive your emails and allowing them to confirm their subscription. This measure helps clean up email database and ensures you only target subscribers interested in hearing from you.
Evaluate email frequency: If you’re sending too many emails to your least engaged subscribers, they may tune out or unsubscribe. If you see high unsubscribe or complaint rates, evaluate how to reduce email frequency, reprioritize campaigns, or change the timing of email sends to see if engagement levels improve.
Prioritize: Multiple teams sending multiple email campaigns to the same contacts in theory increase the likelihood of conversion, but in practice it leads to marketing fatigue and high unsubscribe rates. Develop a system for campaign prioritization to ensure subscribers do not disengage due to an overwhelming amount of messages.
Incentives and promos: For true holdouts, consider offering incentives such as personalized discounts or freebies to rekindle interest in your brand and increase the chances of future engagement.
Different types of content: Try experimenting with different types of content, such as videos, interactive quizzes, or infographics, to see what resonates with your least-engaged subscribers. This keeps your content fresh and encourages continual engagement.

Overall, re-engaging with your least engaged subscribers in email marketing can take time and effort, but by focusing on personalized content, segmentation, and incentives, you can increase the chances of them engaging more with your brand over time.

Final Thoughts

As with all things email marketing, knowing how each subscriber interacts with your messages informs how to best continue each relationship. To really understand who is at risk for dis-engagement, monitor in-depth trends like complaint rate and event lag, so you have an accurate and fresh view of which campaigns resonate and which ones alienate.

It all starts with audience segmentation. If you feel your emails lack the personalization that drives action and conversions, learn how DESelect Segment empowers marketers of all technical abilities to create complex, personalized audiences in half the time.

Original article: Email Metrics to Track Beyond Simple Opens and Unsubscribes

The post Email Metrics to Track Beyond Simple Opens and Unsubscribes appeared first on The Spot.

By Joe Morris|2023-03-30T18:49:02+00:00March 30th, 2023|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Emails & Forms, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

The surest way to get a reaction from any Salesforce Admin is to mention multi-select picklists. They are notoriously hard to report on and can be challenging at times. However, there are times when more than one value is needed.

Multi-select picklists can also cause quite a few issues for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Admins. In this guide, we’ll discuss the proper way to create, sync, and update multi-select picklists in Account Engagement.

Field Types and Compatibility

Field types between Salesforce and Account Engagement don’t always behave the same way. Before we address how to work with multi-select picklists, we first need to understand field types and compatibility.

Account Engagement

Checkbox – Allows a prospect to select multiple options from a list of values.
Dropdown – Prospects can select a single value from a picklist.
Multi-Select – Prospects can select multiple values from a picklist.
Radio Button – Allows a prospect to select a single option from a list of values.

For more information, see the complete list of Account Engagement Prospect Field Types.

Salesforce

Checkbox – A single select field that is used to indicate true or false.
Picklist – Allows users to select a single value from a defined list.
Picklist (Multi-select) – Allows users to select multiple values from a defined list.

For more information, see the complete list of Salesforce Custom Field Types.

The first thing to note is that checkboxes are multi-select in Account Engagement, but not Salesforce. This can lead to issues when syncing to a checkbox field in Salesforce. To avoid issues, set your field type to radio button in Account Engagement when syncing to a Salesforce checkbox (for more information see – Mapping Pardot checkbox fields to Salesforce checkbox fields).

The next thing that you’ll notice is that Account Engagement has two fields that allow users to select multiple values – checkbox and multi-select. So what’s the difference and how should each be used? I’m glad you asked.

Checkbox – Select this option if you are creating a form in Account Engagement and you would like all values to be shown as individual boxes where prospects can check one or many.
Multi-Select – Select this option if you are creating a form in Account Engagement and would like the values displayed in a picklist where the user can select one or many options.

Salesforce and Account Engagement Field Compatibility

Account Engagement Custom Fields

Now that we are all on the same page related to fields and compatibility, it’s now time to create our custom fields in Account Engagement to hold the data. You have options when creating custom fields, so it’s important to consider the data in Salesforce and how you would like the information displayed on your Account Engagement forms before creating your field.

Option #1 – Checkbox

If the multi-select picklist in Salesforce has a small number of values (less than 5) and you would like all options visible to prospects when they view your form, checkbox is the field type for you.

Example Form with Checkbox Field Type

Option #2 – Multi-Select

If the multi-select picklist in Salesforce has a large number of values and displaying all on a form would not be practical, multi-select is the way to go.

Example Form with Multi-Select Field Type

Additional Field Options & Considerations

Regardless of the field type selected, there are a few options that I would highly encourage you to consider.

Options that Should Always be Selected

Keep this field’s type and possible values (for dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes) in sync with the CRM.
Use pre-defined values (for checkboxes, radio buttons, drop downs, and multi-selects).

Record and Display Multiple Responses

The “Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues)” box is not as clear cut as the other options mentioned above. Its use is really tied to how you are using the field and what data should be retained.

Selected
- Initial selections will be recorded in Account Engagement upon initial form completion and synced to Salesforce.
- If form is completed again and new values are selected, they will be added to the prospect record in Account Engagement (and will sync to Salesforce).
- Values that were deselected during the second submission will still be included in the prospect record in Account Engagement and would also be visible in Salesforce. Essentially, the original selections from the initial form submission will be retained – even if they are not selected during the second form submission.
Not Selected
- Initial selections will be recorded in Pardot.
- If form is completed again and new values are selected, they will be added to the prospect record in Account Engagement (and will sync to Salesforce).
- Values that were deselected during the second submission will be REMOVED from the prospect record in Account Engagement and would NOT be visible in Salesforce after the records sync.

Account Engagement Forms

We’re getting there! Now that we have decided how we want the multi-select picklist options to display on our form and we’ve created the custom field in Account Engagement, it’s time to build our form. For this exercise, I’m going to assume that you are familiar with creating a form. If you need a quick refresher, check out the Create a Form article from Salesforce.

Forms with Checkboxes

The process of adding a checkbox field to a form is pretty straightforward. Simply click the +Add New Field button once you reach the “Fields” tab and configure the field. Be sure to set the type to Checkbox and make sure to click the Load Default Data button.

Check the “required” box if you would like the field to be required. You can also select the “Always display even if previously completed” option on the “Advanced” tab, if you would like the field to always display.

After configuring, your form preview will look like the example below. Finish the form wizard for completing the additional tabs (Look and Feel, Completion Actions, Confirm & Save) and your form will be ready for use.

form fields preview multi-select picklist

Form with Multi-Select Picklists

The process for creating a form using a multi-select field is very similar to the process for creating one for a checkbox. The only real difference is the “Type” of field that you’ll select.

Very quickly, you’ll notice that there is not a multi-select option in the “Type” list. This can be confusing, but is not an issue. When configuring the form, set the checkbox type.

The magic will happen when you click the Load Default Data button. This will pull in the data from the multi-select field that you previously created and update the type selection to Multi-Select.

Importing Multi-Select Picklist Values

When importing data into a multi-select field in Account Engagement, you must first decide on the desired action. Do you want to overwrite the current selections or do you want to add new selections to the existing data? This is a big one as it will determine if you should select the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) option when creating your field.

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

After completing both forms, my initial selections were recorded in Account Engagement and synced to Salesforce.

The data below was then imported into Pardot. The “overwrite existing data” option was selected for the MAP field, but not not the Mascot field upon import.

The result is that the MAP field was updated to Marketing Cloud Engagement, but no changes were made to the Mascot field. This makes sense as we opted to overwrite the data in the MAP field when we imported. Since we did not overwrite the Mascot data, the initial values were retained.

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses Selected

In this scenario, the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) IS selected for both of my custom fields in Account Engagement.

After completing both forms, my initial selections were recorded in Account Engagement and synced to Salesforce.

The data below was then imported into Pardot. The “overwrite existing data” option was selected for the MAP field, but not not the Mascot field upon import.

The result is that the MAP field was updated to Marketing Cloud Engagement and that the additional values of Flo and Brandy were added into the Mascot field. This is exactly what we would expect. We told Account Engagement to overwrite the data in the MAP field so it did. Since we did not select “overwrite” for the Mascot field and the field was configured to record and display multiple responses, the new values were appended to the existing.

salesforce mascots - multi-select picklist values

Updating Multi-Select Picklist Values

When using automation rules to change data in multi-select picklist fields, you must first decide on the desired action – just like you did for list imports. Checking (or not checking) the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) option when creating the field will impact the results in Account Engagement and Salesforce.

Automation Rule – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

In this scenario, the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) is not selected for either of my custom fields in Account Engagement. The values have also been reset to the values below as the starting point. We will now create automation rules to update the values.

Salesforce mascots multi-select picklist

For this exercise, I’m going to assume that you are familiar with creating automation rules. If you need a quick refresher, check out the Create an Automation Rule article from Salesforce. The automation rule below contains actions to update the MAP field to “Marketing Cloud Engagement” and the Mascot field to “Astro” and “Flo”. Let’s run and record our results.

The result is that both fields were updated based on the actions included in the automation rule. This is the expected behavior based on the field configuration. The automation rule told Account Engagement to change the field values and that’s exactly what it did.

Automation Rule – Record and Display Multiple Responses Selected

The values have also been reset to the default values below.

We’re now going to recreate the exact same automation rule as we did earlier. As a reminder, the rule contains actions to update the MAP field to “Marketing Cloud Engagement” and the Mascot field to “Astro” and “Flo”. What do you think will happen this time?

If you said that both MAP fields would be selected and that the Mascot field would contain all four of our fiends (Astro, Codey, Flo, and Max), you would be correct. Since our fields are now configured to record multiple responses, the new values were added and the original values were retained.

Parting Words

In this guide, we tested a lot of situations that can result when working with multi-select picklists in Account Engagement to help add clarity to how these fields work. The decisions that you make related to how data should display on forms and the data that you would like to retain are two critical questions that must be addressed at the beginning of your project. These decisions will determine how your fields are created in Account Engagement and the data that will ultimately end up in Salesforce.

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:

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:

Celebrating a Year of Growth & Opportunity with Sercante!
2022 Highlights: Sercante’s Unforgettable Journey
Sercante’s 2022 Milestones: Thanks for the Support!
Sercante’s Incredible Growth: Join our 2023 Adventure!
Cheers to Sercante’s Success: Let’s Make 2023 Even Better!

Results with Funny Tone:

Hold Our : Sercante’s Wild & Wonderful 2022 Recap!
Blast Off! Sercante’s Stellar 2022 Highlights Inside
Unleashing the Fury: Sercante’s -Filled 2022 Adventures
Sercante Turns 5: Our Side-Splitting, Record-Breaking Year!
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:

Growth & Opportunity, 2022 We Celebrate, Yoda Says
Memorable Year, Sercante’s Journey, Learn You Will
Gratitude and Success, 2022 Recap, Stronger Together
Salesforce Support, Sercante Achievements, Future Yoda Sees
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:

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

Results with Informational Tone:

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

Results with Pirate-Like Tone:

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

Results with Shakespearean Tone:

Behold! Thee Spot & Jenna Molby: A Veritable Pairing
Pray, Joineth The Spot for Molby’s Salesforce Wisdom
Salesforce Mastery: Jenna & The Spot Unite in Harmony
Rejoice! Jenna Molby’s Tools Now Grace The Spot
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

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

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

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio) is a fantastic platform to add to your marketing toolset. But starting a Marketing Cloud implementation can be daunting, especially when it is as complex as Personalization.

The following sections of this article will detail the implementation approaches available, provide indicative timelines and outline example use cases. However, if you’re wanting to understand a little more about what the tool can offer, you can check out my last article – Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide.

SFMC Personalization Implementation Methods

With any platform like SFMC Personalization, which promises Real-Time Personalization and AI Recommendations, it’s easy to get carried away with what it can offer. However, the key takeaway from this article is that you should focus on what you and your company can achieve, which is particularly important given the tricky interdependencies you’ll face when implementing Personalization.

In a nutshell, the approaches vary from minimal viable product (MVP), where the goal is to implement a baseline as quickly as possible and then build upon it in future iterations, all the way to future-state implementation (FSI), where you depend on use cases to drive large-scale transformation. There is also a halfway house approach of implementing an As-Is, for those who may sit between the two methods above.

Marketing Cloud Personalization Discovery Questions

Thankfully, understanding which method may suit your needs can be easily identified by answering a few simple discovery questions — as laid out by Salesforce in their Implementation of Marketing Cloud Personalization Trailhead.

These helpful questions allow you to ascertain which method will best suit your needs, including:

How often does your company change its website?
Do you have easy access to developer resources?
Are you migrating from an existing tool?
Do other platforms need to be integrated?

What you’ll find is:

MVP is great for companies making constant changes to their website, have easy access to developers, and are not migrating from an existing personalization platform. In other words, it’s a viable method for those who are perhaps new to real-time personalization.
As-Is is great for companies that don’t have immediate access to developers, are looking to migrate from one tool to another and have a few live personalization campaigns ready to migrate.
FSI is the preferred option for companies that less frequently change their website, have limited access to developers, are looking to integrate Personalization with multiple clouds (Marketing, Sales or Service), and have external data sources that need to be integrated.

Marketing Cloud Personalization Implementation Roadmap

Obviously, the implementation roadmap will vary depending on the scope of your project and the implementation approach you’ve decided to use. However, there are some key milestones that will occur in all implementations, as shown in the diagram below, which is based on a typical net-new Personalization implementation with 2-3 use cases.

Roadmap Diagram

From the diagram above, the two key milestones I’d pay the most attention to are the Use Case Discovery and the Blueprint Development.

Regardless of the implementation method, defining a handful of clear and precise use cases before beginning the build is key to ensuring success. As mentioned, it’s easy to get caught up with the wide range of functionality Personalization offers. That’s why understanding the desired outcome is the most effective way of running a successful implementation and ensuring your company gets the most out of the platform. I’ll go on to share a few examples of good use cases later on.

The blueprint document goes hand-in-hand with the sitemap — which is debatably the most crucial part of Personalization. The blueprint helps define which page categories exist, which triggers exist on those pages, what data can be scraped and where it can be scraped from (i.e. DOM vs Data-Layer) for each visit.

Thankfully, to aid with your implementation, the Salesforce Partner Portal can provide a useful template that helps capture all of the information necessary to create your sitemap, and for implementing Personalization. The template covers everything from page types and content zones to events and attributes, and most importantly, where they can be found on your website to make it easier for the developers building the sitemap.

Use Cases

Without sounding like a broken record, use cases can make or break a Personalization implementation. During my first implementation of Personalization, the goal I was given was to deliver Real-Time Web Personalization aka Personalization.

There were no clear KPIs, the website was static and there was nothing to encourage returning visitors, and it made any experiences based on previous visits practically void. The end result was that our very expensive personalization engine sat on the shelf until we revisited the drawing board.

Defining Your Use Cases

In order to avoid making my mistake, don’t be afraid to get granular with your use cases. Once established, it’s easier to build on top of existing use cases with future iterations. So really think about the following aspects when defining your use cases:

Objective – What is it you’re trying to achieve with your personalization? Is it to increase the value per order? Or perhaps to encourage more users to download your app?
KPIs – How are you going to measure the success of your personalization? Is it based on the number of successful completions? What percentage increase in order value would be considered successful?
Approach – Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you then need to consider the approach. Is it based on visitors from a particular source (Rule-Based) or is it based on trending products (Recipe-based)?
Measurement Approach – There’s no point in creating a personalized experience if there is no control to measure success. Consider what an adequate sample might look like and how long the campaign might last.
Channels – Is this going to be a web- or mobile-led campaign?

There’s no right or wrong answer for use cases and it completely depends on your company’s objectives. But for a typical net-new implementation, 2-3 concise use cases similar to the ones below is a good starting point.

Use Case Definition Example

Use Case	Approach	Channels	KPI	Measurement Approach
Encourage users to complete the onboarding application	Rules Based	Web, Email	No. clicks on CTA, no. applications started, no. applications completed	50% personalized, 50% control
Encourage mobile app downloads	Rules Based	Web, Mobile App, Email	No. clicks on CTA, no. app downloads	50% personalized, 50% control

Once you’ve defined your use cases, keep referring back to them throughout the implementation and when developing your blueprint. The use cases will help keep your implementation focused on the end goal, and help your developers build a sitemap that will be fit for purpose.

Planning is Key to a Successful SFMC Personalization Implementation

As you’ve probably gathered by now, successfully implementing Personalization is closely linked with planning. Defining clear and concise use cases as well as developing an accurate and detailed blueprint, both of which are milestones during the Discovery Phase, are imperative for a smooth implementation. This is true regardless of your chosen implementation method.

As final food for thought, don’t forget to consider your implementation team. Being the tool that it is, Personalization implementations often begin in the marketing department as it’s the marketers who want real-time personalization capabilities. However, even large marketing teams with wide-ranging skill sets will not be able to deliver Personalization alone.

The Personalization Sitemap will require JavaScript developers. Building ETLs will require support from data architects. CRM integration will require CRM administrators. And creating experiences, although there are ready-made templates, may also require HTML and CSS experts. So, consider including wider teams early on in the implementation.

Not only will this help to ensure that those resources are available to support and understand the ask, but it may also help to define use cases that are more relevant and that are also technically viable.

Need help filling the gaps on your team through your Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization implementation? Reach out to team Sercante to get their experts on the case.

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): Implementation Methods

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): Implementation Methods appeared first on The Spot.

By Ralph Green|2023-03-24T15:24:22+00:00March 24th, 2023|Categories: Automations, Marketing Cloud, Pro Tips, revive, Setup & Admin|

In today’s international and digital business landscape, modern marketers often coordinate messaging and strategy across multiple countries or regions. Luckily, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) is an ideal tool to support those types of global marketing strategies. That’s because it enables marketers to find a balance between global coordination and initiatives that reflect the challenges and regulations of local markets.

Here are functions and customizations in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement that support an international marketing strategy.

Crossing Language Barriers

One of the most important considerations for an international marketing strategy is delivering high-quality, localized content that doesn’t provide any barriers to engagement through the local language.

Enable international users in a single Marketing Cloud Account Engagement instance

Administrators and individual users within Account Engagement can control the time zone, language and data formats in which the user interface (UI) is displayed.

Languages and locales currently support:

English
Japanese
German
Spanish
French

This can be configured by an Account Engagement admin upon creating a user record. Go to Account Engagement Setting > User Management Users.

Individual users can control their language and locale settings under Account Engagement Settings > Account Engagement > My Profile.

Marketing Asset Creation

While the user interface is limited to languages supported by Salesforce, all marketing assets in Account Engagement can be developed and customized in any language. For the most part, this just involves typing/inserting content in the language desired, but the following points detail areas where advanced customization is necessary to change the display language.

Form error message

The native form error message for lacking required fields in Account Engagement displays in English by default “Please correct the errors below.” This cannot be customized within the form creation wizard, but instead must be customized within the layout template.

To update, navigate to the layout template used by the form (Content > Layout Templates). Navigate to the form tab and replace the message after %%form-if-error%% with the desired text.

The structure may not exactly match the included screenshot if you are using a layout template that significantly differs from the default. Use this reference for Layout Template Form Code to determine what components may need to be updated.

Encoding special characters

You may encounter situations in which characters display incorrectly when importing data to Account Engagement. To ensure all characters display correctly, you have to use UTF-8 encoding.

Always confirm any exported data is edited and saved using UTF-8 encoding to ensure data is not improperly overwritten. To edit data with UTF-8 encoding in Excel, for example:

Export CSV data from Account Engagement
Navigate to Data > From Text (Get External Data) in Excel
Select the CSV export, and chose “Delimited” and File Origin > “Unicode (UTF-8),” then “Comma” to open the data with correct forming in Excel

Any custom layout templates developed for Account Engagement landing pages should also be sure to use UTF-8 encoding. Set the below meta tag in the <head> section of the layout template so any special characters render correctly.

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8”>

Unsubscribe and Email Preference Center Pages

Account Engagement only allows for one global unsubscribe page, which can limit the feasibility of supporting multiple languages or unique messaging on the page. However, the suggested way to allow recipients to manage communication preferences is the email preference center (EPC) feature, which enables recipients to choose specific segments they would like to be included or excluded from, in addition to universally unsubscribing.

Multiple EPCs can be set up under Account Engagement Email > Preferences Page, so customization to language and included distribution lists can be made per language.

To ensure the correct email preference center is included in different language emails, insert a link, choose “Email Preference Page,” and choose from the list of available pages.

Learn about other customizations that can be made to Pardot unsubscribe and email preference pages.

“Not you?”/Form Reset Link

In the form creation wizard, under 3. Look and Feel > Advanced, is a handy setting to enable a link that allows viewers to reset Account Engagement pre-population and dynamic form functions, in case it is pre-populated with the wrong information (which may be the case due to shared devices, etc.) However, similar to the form required field error message discussed above, this only renders in English by default, in the format “Not Name? Click here.”

To resolve, creating another form layout template update is required. Insert the following script between the opening and closing <head> tag in the “layout” tab of the desired layout template.

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery/jquery.min. js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">

//Replace the Not... string

$(document).ready(function(){ var span = $('span.description');

span.html(span.html().replace("Not","Desired Replacement for Not")); span.html(span.html().replace("Click Here","Desired Replacement for Click Here"));

});

</script>

International Privacy and Data Management

With growing international business, also comes managing compliance with the various data protection and privacy laws in place across your target markets. It’s important to consult with your company’s legal counsel to ensure understanding of the regulations across various jurisdictions. Fortunately, Account Engagement includes a variety of features to enable and enforce compliant data collection and protection.

Tracking Cookies

Account Engagement uses a combination of third and first party cookies to track visitor web behavior and build a profile of data on prospects in your database. To customize how cookies behave and allow visitors to opt-out of tracking, you can:

Enable first-party cookies and disable third-party cookies under Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
Honor “Do Not Track (DNT)” headers under by enabling under Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
Customize Account Engagement cookie duration via Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
Display a banner requesting tracking opt-in in some or all countries via Account Engagement Settings > Domain Management > Edit Tracking Opt-in Preferences
Utilize the Tracking and Consent API to integrate with other systems and create custom solutions

Communication Preferences

Many regulations require that explicit and informed consent be collected before a recipient can be emailed marketing materials, as well allow recipients to revoke that consent at any time. Some industries also require detailed records of communications sent. Account Engagement enables this via:

A strict, platform-wide Permission-Based Marketing Policy that requires permission collected before email communications are sent
Enable BCC function on all outbound emails for regulatory archival purposes
Customizable, dynamic forms that allow addition of opt-in and privacy policy acknowledgement fields
Automation to enable confirmed/double opt-in processes.

Additional permission-based marketing resources:

Data Security

Data stored in Account Engagement is kept securely to meet international data processing regulations, along with strict user login requirements.

Here is documentation from Salesforce on these practices:

Other Resources from The Spot on Managing Global Compliance

What’s Next

Need help finding the right mix of Account Engagement solutions to meet your localization and compliance requirements? Reach out to the team at Sercante to get help customizing features and content in your org and enable your global team. And leave us a comment below to let us know any tips or tricks you’ve picked up for managing international teams with Account Engagement!

Original article: Using Account Engagement (Pardot) in a Global Market

The post Using Account Engagement (Pardot) in a Global Market appeared first on The Spot.

By Julian Janssen|2023-03-22T17:02:18+00:00March 22nd, 2023|Categories: Emails & Forms, Privacy & Compliance, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

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%.”

(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.

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

12 Next

An Introduction to Pardot Scoring and Grading

In a nutshell:

Pardot Scoring

Pardot Grading

Optimizing scoring rules and categories

Pardot Scoring Rules

How to organize lead scoring touchpoints

Lead Scoring Categories

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

Key considerations before setup:

Lead scoring criteria

Reviewing and improving your lead scoring strategy

MarDreamin’ 2022 Presentation Replay

Further reading

Email Metric 1: Complaint Rate

What Makes Spam Indications Unique?

Overcoming Poor Email Deliverability

Email Metric 2: Event Lag

Creating More Actionable Emails

Email Metric 3: Most-Engaged Subscribers

How to Recognize

Priming for Further Action

Email Metric 4: Least-Engaged Subscribers

Final Thoughts

Field Types and Compatibility

Account Engagement Custom Fields

Option #1 – Checkbox

Example Form with Checkbox Field Type

Option #2 – Multi-Select

Example Form with Multi-Select Field Type

Additional Field Options & Considerations

Options that Should Always be Selected

Record and Display Multiple Responses

Account Engagement Forms

Forms with Checkboxes

Form with Multi-Select Picklists

Importing Multi-Select Picklist Values

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses Selected

Updating Multi-Select Picklist Values

Automation Rule – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

Parting Words

Further Reading

Email Subject Lines that Inspire Action and Curiosity

Trying the Stensul Subject Line Generator on Sercante Emails

Sercante 2022 Year in Review Email Example

The Spot & Jenna Molby Partnership Email Example

My thoughts overall on the email subject line generator

The more copy the better

Where AI Tools Fit in Content Marketing

SFMC Personalization Implementation Methods

Marketing Cloud Personalization Discovery Questions

Marketing Cloud Personalization Implementation Roadmap

Roadmap Diagram

Use Cases

Defining Your Use Cases

Use Case Definition Example

Planning is Key to a Successful SFMC Personalization Implementation

Crossing Language Barriers

Enable international users in a single Marketing Cloud Account Engagement instance

Marketing Asset Creation

Form error message

Encoding special characters

Unsubscribe and Email Preference Center Pages

“Not you?”/Form Reset Link

International Privacy and Data Management

Tracking Cookies

Communication Preferences

Data Security

Other Resources from The Spot on Managing Global Compliance

What’s Next

Converting Qualified Leads

Enter — Lead Nurturing

Why else should I invest in lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing through content marketing

Key Components of a Lead Nurturing Strategy

Types of Lead Nurturing Programs

Nurturing Leads Builds Relationships

Always Check the Numbers

How to Use Statistics in Marketing Content