VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Use Word of Mouth to Grow Your List

List building is essential for marketing success, but just having a customer list is not necessarily enough. Your marketing success depends on the responsiveness and size of your list. So how can you grow your list with people who are likely to trust you and be responsive? A good place to start is with your current customers.

Aside from maybe your parents, there isn’t any group more ready and willing to refer others to your company than current customers.  And, aside maybe from their parents, there isn’t any group potential customers are more likely to listen to when making purchasing decisions than their friends.  I say this based on personal experience - VerticalResponse asks new customers how they heard about us during the sign-up process, and the most popular response to this question is, by far, “a friend.”

What are some ways you can tap into this referral potential by encouraging - and making it easier for - happy customers to tell their friends about you?

Forward to a Friend

One way is to include a Forward to a Friend link in your outgoing email messages.  Including such a link in email you send through VerticalResponse will remind recipients to forward your email on and provide, to the recipients of such a forwarded message, the opportunity to join your mailing list.  These potential customers are more likely to sign-up to hear from you after someone they trust has forwarded your message over to them. This option is a free, simple and effective way to get new prospects and customers.

If you’re not sure how to add Forward to a Friend links to emails you send through VerticalResponse, then watch this short video.  It shows exactly how to add such links to an email created with our Canvas editor:

If a “forwarded” recipient chooses to opt-in to your mailing list, they will become part of a new list in your account called “F2AF_Name_of_the_Email_They_Received.”  This list will not be connected directly to your SF lead records.  To add these sign-ups as leads, you would:

1.  Go to the VR Email Tab and select View All Lists
2.  Click the Actions link to the right of the F2AF list and choose to download that list.
3.  Save the list to your computer.
4.  Go to your Leads tab and use the Lead Import Wizard to upload the F2AF list as Leads.
5.  You’re done!

Start a Facebook Group

It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s a great way to communicate with your Facebook using customers (and allow those customers to communicate with each other).  This not only adds a layer of personalization to your communications, it also makes it very simple for a customer’s friend to connect with you. They can easily see that their friend is a member of your group or a fan of your business or product. 

VerticalResponse has a Facebook group - go here to see it (and join it).

Include Customer Testimonials on Your Site

If you put testimonials up on your site, then some of your customers will likely ask to participate.  More often than not, these same customers will tell their friends to check out the testimonial, which drives traffic to your site.  Customers who provide testimonials are your “influencers.”  I can’t tell you how many more eyeballs we get on our marketing by including customers in our ad campaigns.

Help your testimonials stand out by including a photo of the customer and, if you’re a B2B company, the address of the customer’s website.  This will legitimize the testimonial and provide a free advertising bonus for the customer.

Start a Blog

I doubt that blogs need much of an introduction (considering you’re reading one now), but starting one can be a great way to put a more personal face on your company.  And it’s also another resource that people can refer their friends and associates to.

We have two blogs at VerticalResponse:  this VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog and our CEO’s Marketing Blog.  Our CEO previously wrote a great post about why businesses should be blogging, and you can read it here:

http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/2007/12/what-is-a-blog.html

Ask for Referrals

Taking the simple act of asking a customer for referrals is a great way to get referrals.  And if you can sweeten the pot a bit by providing some kind of discount or bonus to the referrer or the referred (or both) then all the better!

Any other ideas out there for making it easier for customers to refer your business to their friends?  Let’s hear about them in the comments!

How to Create a Cross Object Report

As advanced as Cross Object Reporting might sound, it’s actually a fairly simple concept.  All that’s involved is setting up a custom report type - which I’ll describe how to do later in this post - that can pull data from multiple Salesforce objects (Campaigns, Opportunities, VR Email History, etc.).  By default, Salesforce reporting only pulls data from a single object, so expanding a report’s search across multiple objects can be a great way to dig deeper into your data.

To understand  how custom reporting can be used to take a closer look at your email success, you need to create a Cross Object Report that connects your VR Email History to your Contacts and Opportunities.  This allows you to measure the impact any emails sent out through VerticalResponse has on your opportunities’ purchasing decisions.

Here’s how a Salesforce Administrator can setup this type of Cross Object Report:

1.  Start by going to Setup > App Setup > Create > Report Types.  You may or may not see a “What is a Custom Report Type” page here.  If you do see this page, give it a read and continue on past.

2.  Click New Custom Report Type.

3.  Now you’ll choose your Primary Object.  What is the Primary Object?  Salesforce has written a fairly good description in their help area, so I’ll let them explain:

The primary object you choose determines the views available to users creating or running reports from your custom report type. For example, if you select Accounts as the primary object for your custom report type, then users can view their report results by All Accounts or My Accounts from the View drop-down list on the Select Criteria page of the report wizard or on the Report Options of the report.

Select "Opportunities" as your Primary Object if you want to create the example report I referenced above.

4.  Enter a name and description for this report type.

5.  Choose the category where you’d like to store this cross object report.  The category you choose will determine where this report will appear in the “Select the type of data you wish to report on” drop-down menu in the Salesforce report wizard.  “Other Reports” or “Opportunities” would be a good choice here.

6.  Select whether you want this Custom Report type to be “In Development” or “Deployed.”  If you select the Deployed option, then this custom report type will be immediately available for your users to access from within the report wizard.

7.  Click Next.

8.  Now you’re going to create a relationship between the primary object (Opportunities) and the VR Email History Object.  In option B, use the drop down menu to select “Contact Roles.”  Then, in Option C, select the VR Email History Contact.  You’ll also want to ensure you’ve selected the options requiring “Each A record to have at least one related B record” and “Each B record to have at least one related C record” - this ensures any custom report built from this Cross Object Report will bring back only results that are directly relevant to emails influencing your opportunities.

After you click the Save button, you and users will be able to access this new Report Type through Reports > Create New Custom report. 

Anyone have great success with Cross Object Reports? Share your experiences in the comments.