VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Dreamforce Offer -- $100 Off Your Registration Fees

Are you heading to city by the Bay this year for Dreamforce?  Did you catch the Journey reference in the previous sentence?  We're getting close to that time of year when all things saleforce.com converge upon SOMA, including that classic Bay City band - Journey!

If you haven't been to Dreamforce yet, or are on the fence, I highly recommend checking this show out.  This is THE networking event of the year, with like-minded people looking to grow their businesses with an eye toward corporate philanthropy.  It is great example of what makes San Francisco an amazing city and center of innovation.  Plus, have you been to San Francisco in September?  It is easily the best time to visit our great city.

If you plan on joining us, use the below code to buy your passes and you'll receive $100 off the fees courtesy of VerticalResponse.  Details are below, see you there!

As one of our valuable customers, we invite you to come by our booth #129, see our latest solutions, and meet with us one on one. Please come to Dreamforce as our guest at a $100 discount on your Dreamforce registration!

To redeem, please enter promo code VSDGPHV. Register now!

We look forward to seeing you!

--Alex

Nuthin' but an App Thang...

"VR for AppEx is coming back for more..." - Furious ALF

The people have spoken and we've listened, take a look at the latest video from Furious ALF and newcomer 2Fein:

This is the second video we put out around our AppExchange product.  The question was raised:  "How do we get the attention of a couple hundred sales reps at salesforce.com?".  The first video, which can be found here, was such a success we had to come back for more. 

Let us know what you think!

-Alex

SFDC Reports as Email Lists

During the course of an evaluation of VerticalResponse, we always ask the question:  "how do you currently generate your lists?"  This is important to know because when using the solution our customers must understand that while we are an integration partner of SFDC, we are also an independent software vendor.  That said, the query tool that we've built for SFDC users to access their data for email lists is always going to be limited to some users because of this relationship.  Part of the survey we launched out recently asked the question:  "How do you generate your lists, using the VR query tool or running SFDC reports?" Here's the low-down utilizing SFDC reports.

If you find that you are not able to get as granular using the VR query tool as you'd like, and you have the SFDC campaigns module, you can simply run an SFDC report to generate your lists.  Below are the steps to create this:

1.  Create a new SFDC campaign ("september newsletter"); set it as "active"
2.  Under your reports tab, create a report using SFDC query fields
3.  After you run the report, select the "add to campaign" button at the top of the page
4.  Find the "september newsletter" campaign you initially created and and add members
5.  Under the VR Email tab, select:  'New Email List' and select the third option titled: "send emails to members associated with an existing salesforce.com Campaign"

You will now see a drop-down window with all of your active campaigns.  The "September newsletter" will be present with the members of the report that you previously ran.  When you click "next step", you will be prompted to our data mapping page as you would when using our query tool.

While the VR query tool is a powerful, easy to use tool to build your lists, we understand that there are advanced queries that SFDC reports are better suited for to build your lists.  The above will let you send campaigns to anyone in your SFDC database with an email address.

If you have questions regarding the above, our VIP customer service group for SFDC users are waiting to help.  You can reach them here:

866-683-7842
VIP@verticalresponse.com

-- Alex
 

In the Mood to Lend a Hand? Join us to Help a Local Community

Last year, VerticalResponse was privileged to work along side the Salesforce Foundation to build a playground for a local YMCA. Check out the pix here and here. This year we've been invited along with Hands On Bay Area to help residents of St. Joseph's Family Center and Westside Community Services with improvement projects.

As a San Francisco native, I truly appreciate how local companies such as Salesforce and VerticalResponse help to build a better community for us all. So, if you're in town for Dreamforce '07, arrive a couple of days early and join us on Saturday, September 15, 2007 from 8:30am - 2:30pm.

For more information and how to register, please visit Salesforce Community.

-- Chris Carpio, Associate Product Manager

Don't be boring, create an HTML email!

Need to create a nice email to send to your peeps? We got the right tools for you. The VR app allows you to create an email in 5 different ways.

Be the Picasso of HTML emails and VR's HTML editor "Canvas" can be your paint brush. It's as easy as using a Word processor.

Show off what your techie designer created in HTML, do it with the "Freeform" option.

Alright, I said don't be boring but if you really need to, you can send out a "text only" email.

Salesforce Template - Got some cool templates stored in Salesforce, use 'em.

However you want to build you nifty email, VR gives you the tools to do it! If you need help along the way, contact Support and they'll be more than happy to help.

Still have an excuse on getting started or maybe you're just too busy. Check out VR Does It For You. We can help build and launch your next email campaign!

-- Chris Carpio, Associate Product Manager

Installation is a Snap...

One Friday afternoon, we decided to hit Janine's office for our weekly Happy Hour (Happy Hour is a VR tradition where we all hangout and wrap up the week with beer and wine on hand. Cool company, huh?!). As I walked in, Alex was recalling how one of our clients wanted us to physically come down to their office in the South Bay and implement VerticalResponse in to their org. And yes, they're willing to pay big bucks for us to install! Alex ended up explaining to the client how easy it is to install the VR app and within minutes you can start mailing.

It's as simple as visiting the VR for AppExchange listing and clicking on the big red Get It Now button.

For those of you who are interested in sitting in on a live online demo, there's one every Wednesday at 1PM Pacific. Simply send us an email and we'll send you the details.

Now, if you still want to pay big bucks to have one of us install the app for you, let's talk. However, we would rather have you spend your money on email credits. :)

-- Chris Carpio, Associate Product Manager

Marketing & Sales Working Together!

Is it possible that marketing and sales can finally work together cohesively towards the ultimate goal of increasing revenues?  Luckily enough these teams at VerticalResponse already do work great together, but we all know of either current or past experiences where this isn't the case.  With the VerticalResponse for AppExchange solution, our best customers have both marketing and sales using the tool together and here are a few reasons why:

1.)  The limitation on the amount of emails that you can send from Salesforce.com effects not only marketing, but also the sales team.  Do you have aggressive sales folks getting in at dawn to ensure they can get emails off to their leads and contacts?  Are they hitting the limit that Salesforce imposes before the West Coast team even has a chance to get in the office?

With the VerticalResponse for AppExchange solution, both your marketing and sales teams can benefit from unlimited email availability with their own accounts.

2.)  Because our pricing model is based on pay-as-you-go (Purchasing of "email credits"), customers are taking advantage of "linking" their accounts to share from a larger pool of email credits.  As you know, the price per email credit goes down the more volume you buy.  If you can purchase on behalf of multiple accounts, this will allow you to pay a lower rate per email!

While not directly increasing revenues, you can certainly help out the bottom line with both your marketing and sales teams using the VerticalResponse for AppExchange solution by linking the accounts to share email credits and therefore generating those lower fees.

Interested in linking accounts?  Shoot us an email to learn more!

-- Alex, Director of Sales

August 15th - Live Chat!

As many of you know, we sent out a survey about the VerticalResponse for AppExchange product a few weeks ago.  Well, the response was amazing!  Personally, this was my first go-around with surveying customers and taking a look at the responses really confirmed why we do what we do here (as cheesy as that sounds).  Don't get me wrong, people took their share of shots at us, but to be honest it wasn't anything we didn't expect.  The fact that people commented and commented in detail, as opposed to just selecting an option in the survey really made it worthwhile. 

The common theme that weaved its way through the survey was that we need to communicate better with our VR for AppExchange customers.  We currently do this in a number of ways, including our newsletter, trade shows and live webinars, but we figured a more interactive forum for discussing all things VerticalResponse for AppExchange would be well received.  There were many questions that were put forth on the survey response and we feel that we can get to to these and many more in a live chat.  With that, -- it's scheduled!  Put it in your salesforce calendar:

When:  Wednesday, August 15th
Time:   11:00 am Pacific
How:    Simply click the "Community" link in the navigation bar of the VR Email tab

Once you are in the VR Lounge click on the "chat rooms link" on the left hand navigation and join the conversation!

Thank you all for participating in the survey, your comments were well received and this will definitely not be the last!  We hope the live chat on the 15th will address some of the lingering questions about the current functionality and where we are going with this great tool!

See you in the chat!
-Alex