Salesforce Starter: The Perfect Solution for Small Businesses

Are you a small business owner who is interested in using Salesforce for your business all the way up until you saw the pricing? If so, Salesforce Starter was created just for you!

I know what you’re thinking: Salesforce is a big, expensive CRM platform. But Salesforce Starter is different. It’s a low-cost, lightweight version of Salesforce that’s designed specifically for small businesses. Coming in at $25 USD per month/per user, it’s a downright smoking deal to be honest.

There’s even a 30-day free trial to test it out and see if it’s right for you and your team! 

Salesforce Starter Capabilities

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the stuff you can do with Salesforce Starter RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX!

  • Track your leads and customers
  • Manage your sales pipeline
  • Automate your marketing campaigns
  • Manage customer cases
  • Write knowledge articles for your support reps  

Ease of Use is key to Salesforce Starter

What do I mean by that? I mean, it literally guides you through accessing objects (types of records) based on a picklist (dropdown) menu right after you log in (via your homepage)! 

Also featured on the home page are premade dashboard components that display your leads, contacts, opportunities, tasks, and any recommended actions! You can also see any recent records.

If your team’s focus is centered around Sales (Revenue), Marketing (Hello, Sercante) or Service (Support), choose those in the Quick Look picklist and your options change. 

Salesforce Starter for Sales

First up is Sales, the lifeblood of your business. If Sales is your focus, then Salesforce is built for you! Choosing Sales as your focus brings up Contacts (people), Leads (prospects), Opportunities (deals), To Do list (Tasks) along with Tutorials and Setup. 

Salesforce Starter for Marketing

Selecting Marketing as your focus gives you the option to import your Contacts (people), create Campaigns (think email or direct mail campaigns), and has links directly to tutorials and setup. 

Salesforce Starter for Service

Choosing Service opens up access to Cases (customer support requests), Connecting Support Channels (think email or web forms), Knowledge (think help articles), Reports (probably the most important part of Salesforce!), along with links to tutorials and setup.  

Clicking on any of these will take you directly to a list of records of that type (List View) that you have in your organization, and allow you to view, edit, or delete them as you desire. 

Connect Salesforce Starter to email accounts for Einstein Activity Insights

Salesforce Starter even prompts you to connect your Microsoft or Google email accounts so you can sync your calendars and get Einstein Activity Insights (AI recommendations) on your incoming emails. 

The data science and machine learning from Einstein is built to analyze external new sources and your account data to help build a data model that provides relevant updates to help you win more deals. Sounds like a win-win!

Go for all three

One last thought here, you aren’t limited to one or the other, you have access to Sales, Service, AND Marketing!

OK Jason, that’s great. But what if we grow out of Salesforce Starter? 

Salesforce Starter is built on the same foundation as Salesforce Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited. So as your CRM needs grow, Salesforce can grow with you. All you have to do is contact your Account Executive (AE) to upgrade your edition and I’m pretty sure they just hit a magic button* and BOOM you’ve upgraded! 

(*This is unverified, but I imagine that they have a big red upgrade button they smack when a client wants to upgrade followed by a confetti explosion and 30-second dance party.)

Alright, I’m kind of convinced. Where do I start? 

Well any good SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) has a trial and that’s where you begin with the Salesforce Starter package. 

Sign up for 30-day Salesforce Starter trial

Click this link and you’ll head over to the Salesforce Starter site, where you can sign up for your own 30-day trial, check out a demo, or read some customer stories. 

Then, what’s next?

If you want to know more about how it works, I would recommend taking a look at the Salesforce Starter Quick Look Module on Trailhead. 

If you’re not familiar with Trailhead, it’s where all of us Salesforce nerds go to learn about our favorite CRM in a fun, gameified way! It’s free to sign up, and use and can lead to some awesome new skills. 

Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments below.

Original article: Salesforce Starter: The Perfect Solution for Small Businesses

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Starter: The Perfect Solution for Small Businesses appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-09-20T20:47:36+00:00September 20th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Industry News, revive, Setup & Admin|

Eliminate Form-Fill Burnout with Account Engagement Progressive Profiling

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Progressive Profiling is an out-of-the-box functionality and a powerful solution for B2B marketers who want to get detailed prospect data without overwhelming them with a large number of form fields to complete.

This advanced form feature allows marketers to gather additional information about prospects over time, without creating lengthy forms. On one hand, it helps the marketers gain higher conversion rates, while on the other it enhances the user experience and reduces form fill burnout.

How does Progressive Profiling work?

Through Progressive Profiling, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement replaces the form fields for which data is already collected with new fields.

So when a prospect visits your progressive profiling enabled form, it will only present the fields they haven’t

filled out before, unless the ‘Always display even if previously completed’ setting is enabled. By doing so, you gradually collect more information about your prospects over multiple interactions.

  • When a prospect first interacts with your marketing content, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement should display a short form with essential fields such as first name, last name, email address, and company name. The goal is to capture basic prospect data to initiate the engagement.
  • Upon subsequent engagement, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement flips previously completed fields with new ones. For instance, if the prospect has completed the Company Name field, the next time they interact with a form, it could be replaced with the Job title field.
  • Through every interaction, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement will ask the prospect to provide additional data beyond what is collected already.
  • Gradually you can build a comprehensive profile of your prospects, and it can be used to tailor your marketing campaigns to cater to their specific needs and preferences.

Key Benefits of Progressive Profiling

  • Progressive profiling ensures that quality prospect data is collected, as the risk of data entry errors is minimized due to this gradual approach of presenting fields.
  • Since the number of fields displayed at a time is limited, it makes the form submission exercise seamless, reduces burnout and increases the likelihood of getting more form submissions.
  • Segmentation and targeting of prospects also becomes a lot more easier and effective as more and more prospect data is collected.
  • Through better segmentation, marketers can send personalized content to the prospects and improve the chances of conversion.
  • Collecting additional information regarding the needs and preferences of the prospects can aid marketers in channelizing marketing efforts in the right areas.

How to set up progressive profiling in Account Engagement

  • Create Custom Fields:

Before setting up progressive profiling, you need to ensure the custom fields to collect the incremental prospect data are created.

  • Create your Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Form:

This feature requires you to first create the forms you intend to use for capturing prospect data. Create a form and either add new fields or use the existing ones such as First Name, Last Name, Email and Company.

  • Enable progressive profiling for your form:
    • In the form editor, click on the pencil icon adjacent to the form fields you seek to progressively profile.
      (The screenshots below show the example of progressive profiling on the ‘Department’ field, which will be displayed only when the ‘Job Title’ field is already completed.)
  • Then, in the form settings dialogue box, switch to the ‘Progressive’ tab and enable progressive profiling by checking the checkbox labeled as ‘Show this field only if the prospect already has data in the following field(s)
  • When adding multiple progressive profile fields, you can also manage the sequence in which they are displayed.
  • Remember to save the changes you made to the form settings, and click the ‘Confirm and save’ button before exiting the form editor.

Conclusion 

Overall, progressive profiling addresses the issue of form fill burnout by creating a dynamic, user-friendly and incremental approach to collect prospect data. It ensures quality data is collected and aids segmentation and targeting. 

This approach also ensures that marketers respect their prospect’s time and effort in the form completion process, while increasing engagement and prospect data quality. When using this approach remember to maintain a balance between asking information and honoring the prospect’s preferences.

Need help creating sophisticated prospect profiles and segmentation strategies? Reach out to the team at Sercante to get the conversation going.

Original article: Eliminate Form-Fill Burnout with Account Engagement Progressive Profiling

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Eliminate Form-Fill Burnout with Account Engagement Progressive Profiling appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-09-18T20:26:13+00:00September 18th, 2023|Categories: Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Migrating From Marketo to Account Engagement: Key Things to Know

Adobe’s Marketo and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (f.k.a. Pardot) are two of the most common marketing automation platforms I’ve worked with in my career as a marketer. When migrating from Marketo to Account Engagement, there is a lot to keep in mind to make sure you:

  1. Transform marketing processes to properly work in the new system.
  2. Are aware of how features differ between the systems.
  3. Keep the migration running smoothly.

Now, both Account Engagement and Marketo have their pros and cons. And this blog isn’t to convince you one is better than the other (I’d probably be a little too biased in the matter). This post is designed to guide those who are migrating from Marketo to Account Engagement to ensure your migration goes as smoothly as possible. 

Things to be mindful of when migrating from Marketo to Account Engagement

These are the main considerations to make during a Marketo to Account Engagement migration.

Difference in the Email field

One big difference between Marketo and Account Engagement is how each platform treats the “Email” field. 

In Marketo, the email field can be blank and it can also be an invalid value (i.e. “[email protected] – only send newsletters”). 

In Account Engagement, the email field is required, always, there are no workarounds that I have found. The email value also needs to have the correct format, so you can’t enter spaces or just text without an “@” and “.”. These restrictions help protect your deliverability rate and ensure only accurately formatted data is entered. 

Account Engagement also restricts role based emails from being imported or emailed to protect your account’s sending reputation. These are emails that may go to a distribution group rather than one person, so it makes opt-in consent murky (i.e. Sales@, Marketing@, info@ etc.). Account Engagement does allow you to lift this restriction, but you will need to open a support ticket to do so.

Firing when a Field Is Changed

Marketo automations have the ability to fire when a prospect’s field is changed. So, if a prospect’s job title is updated, you might run them through a process that sets the correct Job Role. Account Engagement only works with what the field value is at any current moment. 

You can see a field’s previous value in the Audit table, but you can’t fire an automation off of this activity. Within Account Engagement, you can work around this by having your automations repeat on a regular basis or by creating a date field and using a Salesforce flow to stamp the date everytime the field changes. 

Program Statuses versus Campaign Member Statuses

Marketo has ‘Programs’ for marketing initiatives such as events, nurtures, emails, etc. These programs have statues that designate where the prospect is within the program. This mirrors how Account Engagement uses campaigns and campaign member statuses

Campaign member statuses can be used in the same way as Marketo program statuses, you’ll just want to make sure your users understand this change in process.

Lead Qualification

Marketo focuses solely on scores in three different scoring categories:

  • Behavior Scoring is implicit, it’s based off of the person’s interactions with your marketing resources or your website.
  • Demographic Scoring is explicit, it’s based on other observable information such as Job Title/ Role, Company Size, and Industry.
  • Negative Scoring is also implicit, it’s based on what the person doesn’t do and reduces their score based on inactivity.
    • This can be replicated in Account Engagement with Score decay.

When migrating your Prospects from Marketo to Account Engagement, you may want them to start with their Marketo Behavior Score as their Account Engagement Score. If so, make sure you include the score in your import file for Account Engagement. 

Forms

Marketo has a variety of built in options to support advanced operations, such as inserting text in the middle of the form, in form calculations, or multiple redirects depending on form values. Account Engagement relies on Javascript for these advanced configurations. 

Custom JavaScript can be placed within your Account Engagement forms under the Look and Feel tab, in the Below Form section.

Our blog posts on Using JavaScript to Enhance Your Forms and Creating Multi-Language Forms, as well as Karin Tracy’s MarDreamin’ presentation on Customizing Pardot Form Behavior with JavaScript will help you get started. 

Marketo and Account Engagement Terminology Differences

Below is a quick guide to the terminology differences between the two systems. Make sure your users have this guide early to avoid confusion and frustration during your migration!

Marketo and Account Engagement Field Types

Account Engagement and Marketo field types are a bit different, but the below table will guide you when creating your new fields in Account Engagement.

Marketo and Account Engagement User Roles

User Roles also differ between the two systems. Account Engagement’s Premium and Advanced editions provide the ability to use default user roles or create Custom User Roles so you can create a role with the exact permission needed.

Additional Tips

Marketo has restrictions on exports, typically 500MB per day. So plan accordingly, and keep in mind that you may not be able to export all your Marketo prospects in one day!

Account Engagement Automation Rule and Dynamic List criteria is limited to about 250 characters per rule (factoring in separator and spaces), while Marketo is limited to 5,000 characters. Creuz Your Data can help you split up your rule criteria into 250 character chunks, or Prospect Updater can help you circumvent this limitation entirely. 

Time to dig into your migration

Now you’re ready to tackle your Marketo to Account Engagement migration with confidence! For even more tips for your migration, check out our Getting Real About Marketing Automation Platform Migration Projects blog post. And reach out to the team at Sercante to start a conversation about your platform migration and how it fits into your overall marketing strategy.

Original article: Migrating From Marketo to Account Engagement: Key Things to Know

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Migrating From Marketo to Account Engagement: Key Things to Know appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-07-18T11:44:35+00:00July 18th, 2023|Categories: Pro Tips, revive, Setup & Admin, Strategy|

Coding Basics: A Marketer’s Friendly Guide to HTML

Marketers often overlook code literacy, outsourcing anything code related to website or email developers. But understanding some coding basics, such as HTML, benefits the everyday marketer more than they realize.

By learning the fundamentals of HTML, you can:

  • Better communicate your vision to the web developers
  • Understand how web pages are designed and where pieces of code need to go
  • Create richer, more engaging email and website content
  • Improve their search engine rankings

“But I don’t need to know how to code. It’s scary.”

That’s where we come in!

HTML coding basics for marketers

Hypertext markup language, aka HTML, is the code that tells your web browser what it should show when you go to a website. When you go to a webpage, your browser reads through the HTML tags and then presents it visually. This blog page even uses HTML to display its design and content to you in a way that is easy to read and understand.

With even the most basic knowledge of HTML code, you can better break up your page’s content in a way that will better engage your audience.

Code formatting

Each HTML tag you add must have a matching set of open and close tags. Without a close tag, any code you write will cause errors in how the info is displayed.

If we were to use the standard paragraph code, <b>, we would need to add </b> after we’re done.

<b>This tag makes text bold!</b> becomes This tag makes text bold!

HTML page structure

These tags will be utilized on every webpage. While you may not need to write them yourself, they are important to know and understand.

<head>

Any additional code for a page will go inside of the tag. This covers everything from general page design, additional styling, or Javascript code. Most tracking codes will go here as well.

<body>

This will be the main content for your website page.

<link>

If your page needs to link to a Cascading Stylesheet Sheet (CSS), it will do so inside of a tag.

<title>

Each page needs a title. What you place in the title tag will appear in search engine results as well as the name of the browser tab.

<div>

This is a structural element that goes inside the tag. Web pages and emails can be broken down into a series of nested tables. Div tags act as a single cell inside of this high level structure.

Building richer, more readable content

A main way marketers effectively use HTML is breaking up walls of text into something that is easier for a reader to sift through.

Content is meant to be read — not just for search engines to crawl. The more readable your landing page or email, the better your customers will understand the message you’re trying to convey. 

With HTML, you add rich text formatting to make key points stand out or build a list of reasons why your product is awesome.

Here are some important tags to spice up your copy!

Tag Write It Show It
<a> <a href=”(URL”)>Click me!</a> Click me!
<img> <img src=”(image URL)” />
<p> <p>A separate paragraph</p> A separate paragraph
<ul> <ul>
<li>A bullet point list!</li>
<li>No numbers!</li>
</ul>
A bullet point list!
No numbers!
<ol> <ol><li>A numbered list!</li>
<li>No bullet points</li>
</ol>
A numbered list
No bullet points
<b> <b>Bold</b> Bold
<i> <i>Italicized</i> Italicized
<u> <u>Underlined</u> Underlined
<h1> <h1>Fancy Title</h1> Fancy Title
<h2> <h2>Secondary Title</h2> Secondary Title
<br /> A line break<br />for readability A line break
for readability

Coding basics for stronger search engine optimization

SEO is the name of the online content game. Marketers are always on the lookout for ways to improve their search engine rankings. But HTML provides some simple ways to gain a boost – no hard thinking required.

The importance of alt tags

Google can do a lot of things except look at images. So how does it know what photos to show as relevant when I search for something online?

Alt text! Alt tags, also known as alt descriptions or alt text, describe the images you post to the search engine. They also allow customers who require certain accessibility tools to enjoy your more visual content. 

And if an image is taking a while to load (or doesn’t load at all), the alt text will display.

To add an alt tag to an image in HTML, you would use the following format:

<img src=”(Image URL)” alt=”A meme with the text Hello… is it alt-tags you’re looking for? over a photo Lionel Richie’s face”>

Use HTML header hierarchies

Search engines like it when pages lay out what is most important. When you utilize H1, H2, etc. tags on your page, you are laying out a table of contents of what content is connected and how important each piece is.

By placing a keyword in an H1 tag, compared to an H4 tag, you tell Google that the keyword in the H1 tag is one of the most important pieces of context about what is on your landing page.

All header tags can be stylized to make the most important ones stand out visually, which assist with readability.

Let’s get meta with meta tags

Meta tags may not directly impact your SEO rankings, but by adding in appropriate meta descriptions, this tells search engines like Google know what to display on their search results page. The more accurate and correct the meta description on the results page, the higher the chance someone will click on your website’s link because your result looks more relevant to the searcher.

If you don’t set a meta description yourself, Google then gets to guess what content to put here based on what exists on your page. Also another reason why header hierarchy is vital.

These type of tags usually fall under the main <head> tag for a page and look like the following:

<head>

<title>Let’s Get Meta</title>

<meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, Meta Tags, Meta Description, Metadata” />

<meta name =”description” content=”Answering all of your questions about meta tags!” />

</head>

Basic coding is not so scary, right?

Simple coding doesn’t have to be scary. Knowing the basics of HTML makes a difference when it comes to having stand out landing pages and email copy. And understanding how code works will help you communicate with your web developers.

If you want to learn more about code that helps marketers, check out Code School for Marketers, a 6-week interactive online course to give you the tools to improve your code literacy!

Original article: Coding Basics: A Marketer’s Friendly Guide to HTML

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Coding Basics: A Marketer’s Friendly Guide to HTML appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-07-03T18:50:47+00:00July 3rd, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin|

Getting Real About Marketing Automation Platform Migration Projects

Migrating from one marketing automation platform (MAP) to another can be nerve wracking. You are bound to be overwhelmed and not know where to start. But I once had a high school coach say “nervousness equals readiness.” And while that didn’t always ease the nerves before a big race, it has stuck with me all these years. So embrace the change as you prepare for your marketing automation platform migration!

I have been on both sides of a marketing automation platform migration project — both as a person who owns the platform and as a consultant. I want to share some of the learnings from those experiences to make the process a little less painful for anyone who’s just getting started. 

Remember the reasons you are changing MAPs

Since we work through so many marketing automation migration projects where we help our clients switch to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), we’ll use those migrations as an example for the purposes of this blog post. 

Marketing teams are usually migrating to Account Engagement for one of a few reasons:

  • It works better with Salesforce 
  • Their current MAP is not easy to understand
  • They are looking for better support
  • Budget

Migrating to Account Engagement means you get one unified platform for sales and marketing, which for marketers means one less system to have to log into! 

With Engagement History on leads, contacts, and accounts, your sales team has insight into engagement with marketing activities right on their record. And a lot of marketing technology (martech) integrates with Salesforce. 

That means you can, more often than not, pull that information into Account Engagement to use in your audience segmentation.

Account Engagement is not ‘Insert Marketing Automation Platform Name Here’

Regardless of the reason you are migrating to Account Engagement, you need to remember that Account Engagement might not be able to do everything the same way as your existing MAP — but that isn’t a bad thing! There is most likely a solution for it using native functionality or customizing code. 

I have seen clients say they want everything in Account Engagement to be how it is in their current MAP. This approach will most likely cause some headaches down the road. Take a step back and get an understanding of what the end goal of your process is today so it can be translated into Account Engagement, and then look at how it can be done within Account Engagement. 

Make sure you spend time on Trailhead to get an understanding of the basics of how Account Engagement works before you dive into migrating systems. 

Documentation will be critical for success — marketing ops rejoice!

The first step before starting to move over assets is to make sure that you have your processes documented. Not only will this help during migration but it will allow you to take a good look at how things are done today and try to improve where possible. 

Here are a few to make sure you document:

  • User management – Who needs access? What type of access do they need? 
  • Lead routing – When does a lead go to sales? What information is required before it goes to sales? Who is it assigned to? What happens if the lead is not ready? 
  • Reporting – What are your KPIs? What system does reporting need to happen in? How do you need reporting – by campaign, by channel, by quarter, by month? 
  • Lead and customer journeys – How and when do you engage with a lead? What about a customer? 
  • Legal requirements – Is there specific language on forms, emails, and landing pages that we need to have?
  • Overall martech stack – What tools are in your tech stack? How do they all work together? Do you have any new tech you are adding soon? 

Channel your inner Marie Kondo throughout your MAP migration

Regardless of how clean you think your current MAP is there will always be old assets and outdated processes. Channel your inner Marie Kondo and make sure you only migrate over what brings you joy — well, migrate what is still necessary for the future. Don’t worry you can always export reporting on old assets so you are losing that data.

This is not only about cleaning up your assets, now is the time to take a good look at what isn’t working well today and make improvements. This applies not only to processes but nurture programs and email and landing page experiences. 

Bonus: Account Engagement Cleanliness Resources

Marketing automation migrations take time

While yes, technically, you can do a migration in 30 days, I suggest taking as much time as you can. This is  especially true if you have lots of nurture programs, email templates, and complex processes to migrate to the new system. 

This is not always possible. There are so many factors that go into this — especially budget and resources. 

So, have an honest conversation with your team about the timeline. Don’t forget to factor in overlap with your current MAP (at least a month), and try to give yourself a little padding for the unexpected and time off. 

Something will not go as planned

No matter how much you plan and prepare for a migration, something will not go as expected. AND THAT IS OKAY!!! 

You might find some custom code on a form you weren’t aware of. Or you could experience sync errors with Salesforce due to a validation rule you didn’t know existed. 

Just take a deep breath and know that it can be fixed. 

You don’t have to go through a MAP migration alone

Again, migration projects are scary. But you can work with consulting companies that go through these MAP migrations every day. Not only do they know all the processes and logistics for migrating to the new platform, but they’ve worked with companies that weren’t fully utilizing their MAP investment and found ways to improve user experience and adoption.

Working with a partner, like Sercante, can help make it less scary and make sure you get the maximum value out of your tools. 

Reach out to the team at Sercante as you get ready for your marketing automation platform migration. We’ve seen it all, so bring us your juiciest challenges!

Original article: Getting Real About Marketing Automation Platform Migration Projects

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Getting Real About Marketing Automation Platform Migration Projects appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-06-27T17:41:21+00:00June 27th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Real Talk, revive, Setup & Admin|

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): Implementation Methods

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: 

  1. 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. 
  2. 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. 
  3. 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:

  1. 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?
  2. 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? 
  3. 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)?
  4. 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. 
  5. 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

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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

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

The Essential Guide to B2BMA Dashboards (with Screenshots)

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

What is B2B Marketing Analytics?

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

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

Key terminology within B2BMA

Dataset

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

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

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

Lens

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

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

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

Navigation: CRM Analytics App  > All Items > Lenses

Example: Revenue by Campaign Type (see screenshot below)

Filter

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

Example: See all email engagement in a fiscal year

Dashboard

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

Navigation: CRM Analytics App  > All Items > Dashboards

Pipeline Dashboard

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

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

Engagement Dashboard

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

Marketing Manager

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

  • Marketing Asset Engagement
  • Pipeline Deals
  • Revenue per Campaign

Account-Based Marketing

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

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

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

Multi-Touch Attribution Dashboard

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

Within this dashboard, you’ll see these metrics:

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

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

App

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

The included apps depend on your specific licenses. 

Navigation: CRM Analytics App > All Items > Apps

Template

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

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

Functional terminology

Faceting

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

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

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

Data Flow

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

Examples: 

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

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

Metric

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

Example: Calculating total revenue

Dimension

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

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

Group

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

Example: Product name or account.

Access and navigation within B2BMA

How do I get a license?

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

Where do I find it?

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

How to navigate B2BMA

Considerations for default B2BMA dashboards

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

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

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

Exploring and sharing B2BMA dashboards and datasets

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

Exploring

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

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

Sharing

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

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

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

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

Adding to Lightning Pages:

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

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

B2BMA updates become available on the regular SFDC release schedule.

How do I know if there’s an update?

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

Engagement History Dashboards

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

Engagement History Dashboards are powered by CRM Analytics. 

They allow you to:

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

What does this look like on the Account object?

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

Engagement History Dashboards on Page Layouts

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

  • Campaigns
  • Accounts
  • Contacts
  • Opportunities

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

Considerations for Engagement History Dashboards

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

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

Learn more about B2B Marketing Analytics

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

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

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

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

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

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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

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

Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly

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

Okay, hear me out.

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

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

But I’m here to tell you: stop it.

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

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

Reason #1: Salesforce Puts a Cap on Contacts

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

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

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

In Marketing Cloud Engagement:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot):

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

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

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

Reason #2: Privacy Features Aren’t Going Away

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

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

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

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

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

Reason #3: You’re Skewing Your Metrics

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

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

How to Keep Your Marketing Contact Database as Clean as Possible

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

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

Implement a Cold Leads Strategy

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

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

Use Automations to Keep Your Database Clean

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

But the rough idea is to do the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clean Out Your Hard Bounces

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

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

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

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

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

Be Selective about Salesforce Syncing

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

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

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

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

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

Use a Double Opt-in Signup Process

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

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

Pay Attention to Auto-Replies

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

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

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

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

Keeping Your Database Clean is an Ongoing Thing

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

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

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

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

Original article: Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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

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

6 Resources to Keep Your Salesforce Admins Moving Forward

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

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

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

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

Those Poor Sisyphus Admins

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

What can be done to help with the Salesforce boulder?

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

Resource #1: The Trailblazer Community

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

Resource #2: Salesforce Slack Communities

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

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

Resource #3: Salesforce YouTube Channels

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

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

Resource #4: Salesforce Influencers on LinkedIn

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

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

Resource #5: Local Trailblazer User Groups

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

Resource #6: Bring on a Managed Services partner

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

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

Salesforce Community Resources are Your Admins’ Best Friends

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

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

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

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

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

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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

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

5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions

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

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

Five Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions and Decrease Form Abandonment

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

  1. Use Dependent Fields

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

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

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

  1. Set Up Progressive Profiling

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

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

  1. Have Clear Calls to Action

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

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

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

Form submission thank you page example
  1. Use Autoresponders

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

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

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

  1. Enable Completion Actions

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

Actions could include:

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

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

Create Better Pardot Forms to Get More Conversions

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

Original article: 5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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

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