5 Next-Level Tips for Your Lead Nurture Program

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

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

Tip 1: Put lead scoring and grading to work

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

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

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

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

Marketing Cloud Engagement (SFMC) Users

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

Third-party lead scoring and grading tools

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

SalesWings Sales Console

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

Demandbase dashboard

Tip 2: Use CASE function to simplify rankings

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

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

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

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

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

 Source: DeSelect

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

Tip 3: Focus on essential lead nurture journey functionality

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

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

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

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

The Entry Event

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

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

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

  1. Data Extension
  2. Salesforce Data Entry Event

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

Advantages

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

Disadvantages

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

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

Advantages

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

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

Tip 4: One-to-one content personalization

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

First method – Personalization of subscriber values

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

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

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

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

Second Method – Dynamic Content Blocks

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

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

The end user will see custom content in the email:

Dynamic Content Block Example

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

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

Third Method – Custom links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Select the Object Activity and select the task

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 3. Select the Subject field in the Task.

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

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

The syntax in the Notepad should look like the following:

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

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

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

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

Start Nurturing Leads Like a Salesforce Pro

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

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

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

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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

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

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|

Pardot Multivariate Testing Best Practices

Part of being a great marketer is to always evolve with your audience. Doing this intentionally is the key to an organization’s success. Luckily, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) offers its customers Multivariate Testing, which measures the landing page performance over a period of time to determine the best variation.

What is Multivariate Testing?

The answer to this question is in the name. Multivariate Testing looks at multiple variables applied to several variations of Pardot Landing Pages to determine which version performs best. Once you have created your variations, they are randomly assigned to visitors to assess and track performance. 

How does Multivariate Testing Work?

To begin, you will want to determine which variables are most important to you and the team to measure. We recommend no more than three variables change per landing page. For example, some of the more popular variables may include the page layout, headline, call to action, form fields, colors, and logos. 

Build Your Pages to Test

Once you determine the variations, you will want to build a minimum of two landing pages. Remember to name your Landing Pages in a way that will differ them from one another for reporting at a later date. 

You will want to make your landing pages using the differing variations prior to enabling the Multivariate Test. Once you have created your Landing Pages, take the steps below to complete the Multivariate Testing process.

  1. Navigate to Marketing > Landing Pages > Multivariate Testing
  2. Name your test, including the purpose or end goal
  3. Select your Salesforce Campaign
  4. Provide a unique vanity URL
  5. Select the Landing Pages you wish to use and their weight percent (50/50 for two, or 33/33/33 for three)
  6. Click “Create Multivariate Test”
  7. Use the link generated to direct users to the landing page

Check the Reporting

For reporting, you want to ensure that the multivariate test runs long enough to receive a measurable sample size. Once you have reached an optimal size, you can go to Reports > Landing Pages to see the multivariate statistics, including page views, conversions, conversion rate, and the winning page. 

Don’t be surprised if you go through multiple variations and manipulations of the landing pages or specific elements on those landing pages in order to pinpoint the most ideal version. 

Multivariate Testing is a highly effective tool at the disposal of all Pardot users, and should be used routinely to measure performance and improve your audience targeting. This will likely result in a higher conversion rate and will show that you can grow with your audience.

Original article: Pardot Multivariate Testing Best Practices

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Pardot Multivariate Testing Best Practices appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-13T20:22:20+00:00January 13th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Strategy|

Call-to-Action Checklist for B2B Marketers

I’ve seen more than a few great marketing campaigns fail due to the lack of a clear call-to-action (CTA). Some campaigns have multiple CTAs that confuse the prospect while others don’t have a CTA at all. In both cases the end result is the same, a lot of work for very few responses. 

In this post, we’ll provide a CTA checklist that will help ensure the success of your B2B marketing campaigns.

Set a Measurable Goal

I know this one seems super obvious, but this step is all too often ignored. Before executing any campaign, a measurable goal needs to be defined. What are you trying to accomplish with your CTA? You can’t measure the success of a campaign if it does not have a clear goal. Write down your goal as the first step — the clearer the better.

Goal Example: 

Get 50 registrations for next month’s webinar.

Use an Action-Oriented CTA

Avoid generic terms like “submit” or “click here,” and don’t be bossy.  Action-oriented words and phrases that describe the end result or value the prospect will receive are less demanding, convey greater value, and ultimately result in more responses.  

Generic Action-Oriented
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Make your CTA Stand Out

How many times have you seen the word “here” linked in the text of an email? As often as you’ve seen it, I bet there are just as many times that you’ve read over it and not seen it. It’s also not great for email accessibility, as Cara Weese points out in this blog post about email accessibility.

When using hyperlinks in the body of text, avoid single words like “here,” “click,” and “more.” Make your CTA stand out by linking phrases that describe what the reader will receive. 

Bad Example: 

The Spot is a community resource for marketers whose tech stacks include Salesforce clouds and tools. Click here to view our latest tips, tricks, and solutions.

Good Example: 

The Spot is a community resource for marketers whose tech stacks include Salesforce clouds and tools. Click here to view our latest tips, tricks, and solutions.

Prioritize CTAs

The best advice that I can give you is to provide a single CTA when possible. The easier you can make it for prospects to understand what you are asking them to do, the better.

However, anybody who has spent any time in marketing has fallen victim to the manager who wants to add “just one more thing” to your well-thought-out email moments before it goes out. While this often has the intent of optimizing communications being sent, the reality is that it often detracts from the message, muddies the water, and reduces the overall number of responses.  

When this happens, make sure your primary CTA is the most visible action and is displayed in the most prominent location — above the fold.

Verify CTAs & Messaging

Before your campaign is released into the wild, be sure to double check your CTAs and related landing pages. The first step is to ensure that your CTA link is live and going to the correct destination. Equally important is the content on the destination page.

Make sure your destination page delivers on the promise made by the CTA. If you are linking to a landing page or form, make sure that it’s consistent and builds upon the story. 

Keep in mind that the content on the destination page should not be exactly the same as the message that was sent. Instead, it should be used to continue the conversation by providing additional details and information that supports and enhances the original message.

Test & Optimize

You’ve mulled over multiple ideas and CTAs in your head and finally came up with the option that you know will knock your goal out of the park. Now’s the time to deploy!

Wrong – Now is the time to test.

Before fully deploying your campaign, perform an A/B test to optimize your CTA. Test variables like CTA text, button color, page layout, and location. The results might surprise you!

Don’t Settle for a Lackluster CTA 

The CTA is one of the most important components of a successful campaign. Failing to put in the time and effort when developing your CTA can make the difference between achieving or falling short of your goals. Use the checklist from this post to ensure the success of your marketing campaigns.

Original article: Call-to-Action Checklist for B2B Marketers

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Call-to-Action Checklist for B2B Marketers appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-12-16T22:44:47+00:00December 16th, 2022|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, revive, Strategy|

Fight Email Marketing Fatigue: Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic Lists

With the holidays coming up, I can bet all of our inboxes are overflowing with marketing emails letting us know about can’t-miss deals, the best gifts, order before X date to get your gifts in time or you will disappoint your entire family (ok maybe not that aggressive, but you get it). 

I can also bet that you’ve received so many emails from one company in such a short time that you have just opted out or blocked them entirely. This is called marketing fatigue, and it is a great way to lose your subscribers. But with the help of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Recency and Frequency dynamic lists, we can target prospects that have reached their email maximum for a time period and suppress them from future sends. 

Building a Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic List

In Pardot:

  1. Navigate to Automations, then Segmentation Lists
  2. Select + Add List
  3. Name your list and select the Dynamic List checkbox
Note: You have to select the Dynamic List checkbox when your list is created. If you create a static list, you cannot later go back and make the list dynamic. 
  1. Select Set Rules
  2. Select Prospect has been emailed
  3. Next you can specify the number of times the prospect has been emailed (frequency) and the window of time (recency).

You can combine the “Prospect has been emailed” rule with “Prospect Time” to apply different rules to different prospects. For example, if I want to limit never active prospects to 2 emails in 10 days, and current active prospects to 4 emails in 10 days, I could use the rules below:

Once created, I can use this list as a Suppression List on any of my email sends in order to exclude prospects who have been emailed too much in one time frame. 

Can I use this in my Email Preference Center?

Yes! You can absolutely use this in your email preference center (EPC) to give Prospects the option to only receive, say, 1 email a week. First, you’ll want to create a new public list that prospects can opt into. 

Here are the steps to create a new public list:

  1. Navigate to Automations > Segmentation Lists
  2. Select + Add List
  3. Name your list (this name is internal facing only) and make sure you select the public checkbox
  4. When the public checkbox is selected, the Label and Description fields will appear. These fields are external facing and should describe what the prospect is opting into.
  1. Select Create List
    • Make sure you add this new public list to any EPCs where you want it to appear. It will be added to the default EPC as soon as it is created. 
Note: Since prospects who subscribe to this list can only receive one email per week, you’ll want to prioritize your email sends so these prospects only get the most important email in the 7 day window. To prevent these prospects from receiving less important emails, use the above list as a suppression list on those email sends. 

Next, you’ll need to create a dynamic list that looks for prospects on the list above who have already been emailed 1 time in the past 7 days. 

  1. Navigate to Automations > Segmentation Lists
  2. Select + Add List
  3. Name your list and select the dynamic list checkbox
  4. Select Set Rules
  5. Set up your first rule to look for prospects who have subscribed to the list we create above
  6. Use the recency and frequency option to set up your second rule and see who has already been emailed 1 time in the past 7 days
  1. Select Run Rules

Use this new dynamic list as a suppression list on all email sends going forward. You can also add it to your Primary Suppression List to make sure this list is not left out!

Which Email Sends Count?

The “Prospect has been emailed” dynamic list rule counts list emails and emails sent via Engagement Studio Programs. It does not count one-to-one emails, emails sent via Salesforce Engage, emails sent with an email plug-in, or emails sent by automation rules or completion actions (i.e. Autoresponders). 

What other ways are you planning on using recency and frequency dynamic lists in your org? Tell us in the comments!

Original article: Fight Email Marketing Fatigue: Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic Lists

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Fight Email Marketing Fatigue: Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic Lists appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-11-30T22:20:00+00:00November 30th, 2022|Categories: Emails & Forms, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

Why Salesforce and Marketing Admins Work Better Together

How often do your Salesforce and marketing platform admins talk to each other? 

  • Very little
  • Not at all
  • Only when things go wrong  

If you selected any of the above, you’re not alone. 

I’m here to tell you, no matter how awkward or challenging starting that conversation may be, it’s one that needs to happen (and continue) sooner rather than later. Having a solid bridge between Salesforce marketing and Sales Cloud admins will (I promise!) make both your lives so much easier. Here’s why…

Benefits of marketing and Salesforce admins working together 

#1 Keep your data clean in both places

Whether you’re using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) or the OG Marketing Cloud, the way data flows between your marketing automation platform and Salesforce was probably one of the reasons you purchased the tool. So, let’s keep it flowing. 

By working together you can avoid the following pitfalls:

  • Duplicate fields
  • Data being overwritten 
  • Sync errors (Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)): 
    • Fun fact – most common sync errors can be avoided by knowing the Salesforce set up. 
      • Field values = prevents invalid picklist errors
      • Expected data = Prevents validation  rule errors
      • Field types = Prevents invalid field format errors 

If both admins are communicating, you can ensure any updates that happen are accurately reflected in both systems.

#2 Prevent loss of access for users and systems 

When marketing and Salesforce admins stop working together, systems can stop working together. 

True story, I’ve worked with clients who have seen automations stop working and users unable to access the systems and data because of updates that the other admins were not aware of — permissions, profiles, field accessibility. When these changes are not communicated, frustrations can arise and time can be wasted looking into the cause. 

Additionally, If you’re using a sandbox environment, understanding the refresh schedule can help prevent loss of work when it’s unexpectedly refreshed. 

Include both admins in conversations around any updates in either system. The changes may not affect the opposing team but it’s good to know just in case.

#3 Experience Team and Business Benefits

The above are all technical reasons why marketing and Salesforce admins should be best friends. But, we haven’t even touched on the business and team building benefits, which are huge.

Here are a few reasons why:

  • Improve productivity. Stop looking for the cause of a problem but rather plan for the update as a team.
  • You can help advocate for each other with other decision-makers. We are both on the same team and we should both want the same thing. But when one team of admins is working on something and leaves the other out, they can be left to play catch up and try and figure out what’s going on… increasing the frustration and silo.
  • Ultimately, it comes down to $$$ –  Two sets of admins working independently = Mo $ Mo time
  • Teach each other. The great thing about being an admin is that every day is a school day, we are always learning about the latest tools, security updates and new ways of doing things. Let’s share that knowledge. Get to know what the other team does and find out how you can help each other and make each other’s lives easier.

How to build relationships between Salesforce admins

So what can you do to improve or build a relationship between marketing and Salesforce admins?

  • Documentation, documentation and yes, more documentation. Having a record of changes that have been made and how that change relates to the other system will be a huge help in marketing and Salesforce admins working together. 
Tip: Using Pardot? Create a shared spreadsheet with all the Salesforce fields and note if they are synced with a Pardot field. What’s that field for? What’s the sync behavior? What are the values? Admins can then refer to this document when field changes need to be made and ensure the other admin knows if it’s going to affect them 
  • Schedule a regular sync up and use this time as a feedback loop, planning session. This can be monthly or quarterly, depending on how often changes are made. Here are some questions you can ask during these meetings:
    • What plans do each admin have for the month ahead?
    • How will this impact the other team?
    • Consideration you hadn’t thought about
    • What does each team need to do to prepare? How long will it take to get things in order? 
    • What’s not working at the moment and what can be done? 
  • Create a joint Slack, Teams, Google Hangouts channel. Whatever your choice of instant messaging channel, use it to inform admins on both sides of any upcoming changes. Use it to post reminders, questions, updates. This will become your go to place to find answers and work with your admins. 
  • Consider an overview training session of your respective platform. Does your Salesforce admin understand the impact on Marketing cloud when field visibility is changed in Salesforce? Probably not. Work with them to help them understand the implications of such changes. They simply may not know what affects the connection between Salesforce and Marketing Cloud.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to just give Marketing admins Salesforce admin access? 

Yes and no… If you’ve read our blog on Why Should Marketing Admins Have Salesforce Access?, you would have noticed a lot of very good reasons as to why marketing admins should have salesforce access. This is great if you can hand out this access but what happens when you can’t? Should each admin go their separate ways, never to speak again? Absolutely not! 

Even if you can get Salesforce access you should still be opening up communication between yourself and other Salesforce admins.

Strengthen those relationships between marketing and Salesforce admins

Creating a harmonious relationship between both marketing and Salesforce admins starts with the basics… communication and understanding for each other’s roles. When this is followed the benefits can be huge, both personally and technically. 

What tips do you have for improving the relationship between both admins? Let us know in the comments.

Original article: Why Salesforce and Marketing Admins Work Better Together

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Why Salesforce and Marketing Admins Work Better Together appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-11-19T00:54:00+00:00November 19th, 2022|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Data Management, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

Podcast Preview: NextThingNow with Guest Andrea Tarrell

We all know constant changes are inevitable in the realm of marketing technology. So, having a pulse on what’s coming and what we know to be true is essential. 

ICYMI – Sercante Founder and CEO Andrea Tarrell recently joined the UpperRight team on the NextThingNow podcast to share her thoughts on the future of MarTech and the next big things coming to the Salesforce marketing community.

Here’s a quick preview of the podcast episode and links to listen so you can be in the know.

What is the NextThingNow podcast?

The MarTech landscape is complicated. NextThingNow podcast aims to demystify the craziness by talking to experts from across the ecosystem. 

Hosts and co-founders of UpperRight Adam Levelle and Alan Schulman ask questions that go beyond stock answers to real solutions to benefit listeners who work in the marketing technology space. 

Adam Lavelle
Alan Schulman

Words of Wisdom from Special Guest Andrea Tarrell

We all know constant changes are inevitable in the realm of marketing technology. So, having a pulse on what’s coming and what we know to be true is essential. 

In this episode of the NextThingNow podcast, you’ll learn what the future looks like for marketers on the Salesforce platform from Andrea’s perspective.

With the pandemic in the rearview mirror and big Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform changes on the horizon, Andrea covers the major themes she’s following to stay ahead of the curve. She also talks about her career progression, how Sercante came to be, and what’s in store for Sercante clients and friends in the coming months.

And of course, Andrea’s inherent real-talk cheekiness makes an appearance.

Listen to Andrea on the NextThingNow podcast

You have so many options to listen to the NextThingNow podcast. So, get on that!

Here’s how to listen.

Go give it a listen while you churn out your marketing magic. And then tell us about your greatest takeaway from the podcast episode in the comments section below.

Enjoy!

Original article: Podcast Preview: NextThingNow with Guest Andrea Tarrell

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Podcast Preview: NextThingNow with Guest Andrea Tarrell appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-11-03T22:29:00+00:00November 3rd, 2022|Categories: Community, Real Talk, Strategy|

Rethink Your Lead Lifecycle for the Age of RevOps

New technology and shifting buyer expectations are pushing B2B companies to rethink their acquisition and retention strategies. Leaders across sales, marketing, and customer success are investing in centralizing their operation teams to drive efficiency and accelerate revenue. Revenue operations, or RevOps, is an emerging function in B2B companies that leverages cutting-edge technology to achieve better team alignment and meet changing buyer expectations. 

What are revenue operations?

Revenue Operations, or RevOps, is the alignment of sales, marketing, and customer success operations across the entire customer lifecycle to drive growth through operational efficiency and keep all teams accountable to revenue. Operational efficiency is especially important given the current economic climate and teams are doubling down on their RevOps investments to fuel growth.

But perhaps the most important reason that RevOps has become such a focal point for B2B companies is that it’s become necessary for meeting customer expectations. Put simply, your prospects have grown frustrated with traditional sales cycles.

Avoid leaky lead funnels for smoother customer experiences

Shifts in B2B buyer expectations have your prospects craving a frictionless, B2C-like experience with every SaaS evaluation. If it takes longer than five minutes for someone to reach out to them after their initial inquiry, they’re significantly less likely to convert. 

Five minutes. For many businesses, that sounds like a pipedream. But when studies show that 78% of customers buy from the company that responds to them first, it may be time to rethink how you currently manage your lead lifecycle processing pipeline. 

And there’s a lot to rethink. Just take a look at all the steps in the lead lifecycle today.

With so many processes occurring across different applications, it’s easy to see how leads can fall through the cracks. Leaky lead funnels account for a 30% loss of potential revenue, leading many B2B organizations to invest in RevOps and rethink how their leads are processed. But before fixing your funnel, you must first identify the gaps.

What’s causing your leaky funnel?

The most common issues affecting your lead funnel are outdated technology, scarce dev resources, and the limited integration capabilities of your current tools.

  1. Lead data is siloed across legacy and new platforms. Teams across sales and marketing must spend an inordinate amount of time on manual processes such as uploading, cleaning, and routing leads.

    Not only does siloed data lead to slower follow-up times, but it also results in a bunch of lead management headaches such as duplicate lead lists that incorrectly inflate lead counts, routing leads at the wrong stage to the wrong destination, or accidentally continuing to contact leads that have opted out.

  2. Point-to-point solutions require resources you don’t have. Cobbling together point-to-point solutions using custom code requires dev resources, which are usually not available or very limited. On top of that, as APIs inevitably change, your team remains on the hook for updating and maintaining the integrations. Put simply, it’s not a scalable solution.
  3. Out-of-the-box integrations don’t fit your business needs. Many sales and marketing platforms offer limited connectivity to a handful of tools. It’s likely that your most important apps aren’t seamlessly integrated to the customized use cases you need for your business.

    In other words, the most important lead data stays locked up within each application. Without robust integrations, none of your individual apps can deliver important insights on the full picture of where, how, and why your leads engaged with you, or the best way to follow up with them.

Rethink your lead lifecycle with a cloud-first low-code approach to automation

RevOps is a relatively new function in organizations today. As such, RevOps professionals must leverage the most modern tools available today to help them achieve their day-to-day business tasks. 

Using a low-code, cloud-first approach to automation with a platform like Tray.io, RevOps professionals can integrate their sales, marketing, and customer support applications and completely automate the entire lead lifecycle. 

Eliminating the manual processes involved in lead capturing, cleansing, recording, monitoring, and engagement results in highly-accurate lead data rapidly flowing through your funnel. Then, you see higher conversions and increasing revenue. 

To learn how low-code automation can repair your leaky funnel, check out this Mardreamin’ session on The Age of RevOps: Reinventing Lead Lifecycle Management.

Original article: Rethink Your Lead Lifecycle for the Age of RevOps

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Rethink Your Lead Lifecycle for the Age of RevOps appeared first on The Spot.

By |2022-10-26T20:26:11+00:00October 26th, 2022|Categories: Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

Don’t Let Good Leads Go Bad in Salesforce Queues

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

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

To Sync or Not to Sync?

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

The Marketing Perspective 

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

The Sales Perspective 

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

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

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

The Salesforce Cold Leads Queue

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

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


So What’s the Catch?

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

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

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


Reassigning MQLs from the Salesforce Cold Leads Queue

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s Start With Some Definitions

Apex 

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

Flow 

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

*Definitiations from the Salesforce Glossary

The Big Reveal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Those Lead to Sales!

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

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

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

©2022 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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

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