VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

The Capitalization of Community

The final keynote presentation at this year's Dreamforce, by Larry Brilliant of Google.org  and Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, brought up two very important ideas for our community to consider.

Larry Brilliant shared his inspirational story of leading the first organization of doctors to rid the world of smallpox and explained how this eventually brought him into his current role managing Google's Global Philanthropic efforts. He termed the practice of weaving service into a corporate culture "Hybrid Philanthropy."  Salesforce calls it the 1:1:1 initiative - providing 1% of profit, 1% of employee resources, and 1% of product to non-profits and community projects.

I was fortunate enough to take part in the annual Salesforce Foundation event in San Francisco on the Saturday prior to this year's Dreamforce. In one day, SF.com assembled over 100 customers, partners, and employees from all over the world to repaint and landscape a single inner city school. Even though the weather was cold and rainy, I left inspired by what we were able to achieve together in a single day. I was energized by the idea of seeing the faces of the kids as they walked into their new library or cafeteria on Monday morning, a little brighter and warmer.

Malcolm Gladwell brought it down to a more personal level. He encouraged us to consider the limitless possibilities of individuals when we all put our entire hearts and minds into our work or into a single mission.

Whether it's Bill Gates programming at the age of 13 on a mainframe, or a a team of students tackling a tough math problem, it's through persistence and effort that we achieve great results. Leaving the session, I considered how many VerticalResponse non-profit customers come by our booth or meet us at events and thank us in person for our free service contribution (VR's version of 1:1:1). They are so grateful and so passionate about their cause and their story, it can't help but inspire VR employees in our efforts to provide better service and share in their success. Whether it's our non-profit customers or a tech start-up, it's the passion behind their intellect that catapults their success.

A point I think both the great speakers failed to mention is how contagious this kind of attitude can be.  Like a virus that can just as easily spread to destroy, the more we share and hear about efforts to affect the greater good, the more likely we are to push ourselves just a little bit harder to contribute as well and put our heart and mind behind our work. Then, collectively, we are one step closer to achieving the capitalization of our community!

Erin Jacobs - Director of Marketing

So Many Apps, So Little Time

I’m just getting out of one of the final sessions at Dreamforce 2008 (from the Nonprofit, Education and Public Sector track) and the first thing I have to say about it is –“Hey SFDC,  how about a bigger room for your Non-Profit peeps!”  Geesh – it seemed like people were sitting on each other in North 124.  But that, of course, was for good reason! The session, which was conducted by two Non-Profit SFDC customers, described how NPOs can leverage the AppExchange to apply additional applications to their core Salesforce.com offering.  Below is a quick overview of the apps that were discussed.

But before I jump into that overview, I want to mention something that I think is really interesting: the release of the next generation of the AppExchange. Because VerticalResponse (shameless plug alert!) has always been listed on the front page as a Top 10 install, it’s been very easy for new customers to find us.  But it has not been as easy for other partners, and Salesforce has plans for a redesign coming in early 2009.  What this means for NPOs particularly is that they’ll have a category or designation for all the companies who have donated or discounted their services to NPOs.

Judy Sohn –VP, Operations for the Colorectal Cancer Coalition

CRM Fusion:  CRM Fusion has a few products that they offer, but are probably most well known for ‘DemandTools’.  This tool allows you to de-dupe records that may exist in your Salesforce.com account.  According to Judy it also offers some “intelligent” de-duping such as understanding that the “Alexander Scalisi” record should be de-duped against the “Alex Scalisi” record if other rules or “scenarios” are followed (such as same email address).  CRM Fusion donates 100% of their services to NPOs.

Convio:  Convio also has NPO discounts, but you’ll have to contact them directly to learn more.  This tool was discussed as a database sync tool that allows you to populate your Salesforce.com account from other sources. 

Conga Merge:  A great tool for non-profits, Conga is a mail merge tool for your direct mail pieces.  While I favor email marketing (duh), many NPOs still need the ‘snail mail’ process and CongaMerge allows you to quickly and efficiently merge the data from each individual contact record in SFDC to your mailing.  And if you have a Mac, there is not need to worry about compatibility –it works just fine AND you get the activity record on each participant for follow up email campaigns with VerticalResponse!  You may also be able to do labels too, but don’t quote me on that.  Oh, and they have NPO discounts as well.  Give them a call.

Vinod Ponnusamy –Communications Coordinator for Unitus - InnovativeSolutions to Global Poverty

 ActevaRSVP:  This is an event and registration application.  If you’re hosting events or functions, this is a great way to allow leads and contacts to sign-up for the event and have it tracked back into Salesforce.com for further reporting and/or updated marketing.  For example, if you’re using VR to send your invites, you can include the link to the registration form that you created in ActevaRSVP and segment based on whether a recipient has already registered.  Another cool aspect of this app is that if a lead or contact modifies any contact information (like updating their email address) it will be tracked back into SFDC.  Oh, and yes they also have NPO discounting, contact them directly for more information.

Clicktools:  This is a survey and feedback tool that allows customers and NPOs to track how effective they’ve been in working with their donors and contacts.  A great tool with many different conditional aspects to the feedback questions.  For example, if you’ve already asked a donor their date of birth, the system will recognize this and move on to the next question.  The questions that are answered are also updated into your Salesforce.com account to complete any incomplete records - something I thought was really cool.

Jobscience:  This app lets your HR department be completely self-service.  Vinood was mentioning how he helps with his company website and was previously getting inundated with requests to constantly post or remove different job opportunities to their site.  With this application, not only will your HR department be empowered to do this on their own, but a contact who completes a job posting will automatically have a record created in SFDC with their resume attached.  This completely eliminates the manual data entry back into SFDC.

VerticalResponse:  This is some kind of email tool if I remember correctly :).  Yes, there were some great things being said about our application.  The ease of use was clearly the #1 benefit of our tool.  To allow small organizations to create professional looking emails and make themselves look bigger than they actually are was very well received.  Plus we provide 10,000 free email credits per month to non-profit customers.

Overall the theme of this session was to keep it simple as you get started with the various Apps on the AppExchange.  Tools like VerticalResponse, which are installed in minutes and are either free for NPOs or come with a gracious discount are probably the best way to go if you’re just starting out.  There’s no reason to be afraid of trying these different applications as some will really make your experience using Salesforce.com all the better.  For more information about this session or other resources for NPOs using Salesforce.com, please check out the foundation site here:

http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/

Secrets to Email Campaign Success

The Marketing Panel for Secrets to Email Campaign Success was a great session. The speakers included Rasmus Menke, Sr. Product Manager from Salesforce.com, Jason Stewart, Sr. Manager from DemandBase, and Charlie McKinney, the Director of Sales Support at McKesson. They covered Email Best Practices and two of the panelists (Jason and Charlie) shared how they use Email Marketing in their business and gave their recommendations on how to create and send email campaigns.

All the speakers agreed that email marketing is an integral, effective and low cost method of marketing.  They also agreed on several basic fundamentals of email marketing:

1. Know your audience so you can target your message effectively and get it to the right people
2. Mail on a frequent and regular basis for the sake of familiarity, and provide relevant, useful content
3. Subject lines are important.  Keep them short and to the point. 
4. Reporting is essential - use a tool that provides excellent delivery and reports on opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes.  
5. Follow-up is crucial for campaigns - if someone clicks a link then they're likely interested in something you offer. Don't miss an opportunity to follow-up with that person.

Jason Stewart takes a particularly good approach to unsubscribes, bounces and non-responders.  Most people see these as negative and do nothing with this info, but Jason (who uses our VR for AppExchange product) suggests running reports of bounces and giving them to sales so they can review and attempt to update the addresses for each record.  He also made the point that you should not take unsubscribes personally, as people who opt-out may just not like email marketing.  Try direct mail or alternative marketing methods with these folks.  As for non-responders, be sure to follow-up with an email, as there are any number of reasons why they didn't open your email - their inbox was crowded, they were too busy at that time, etc...no reason not to send them the email again, but just make sure your message is a strong one.

Charlie uses ExactTarget to send email newsletters, educational offerings, and hot topics out to clients and prospects. He stressed the importance of separating clients from prospects in your email lists and messaging. He finds that the days in which one mass email with one message working for your entire are definitely over.

There were a number of questions after the session.  These seemed to be the most popular:

When/What day is best for sending out email campaigns?

A:  It depends on your audience and your business, industry reports say Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days in general.

What's the best 'From' name for your email?

A:  A recognizable name is key, maybe a sales rep's name or someone in marketing who your customers or prospects will be familiar with (or your company name), so they'll be more likely to open the email.

Is Text or HTML better for an email format?

A:  HTML is best, because you can track open rates. However, don't take that to mean you need lots of images. You can have an email that looks like just text that is in HTML  format and still track the open rate.

Sarah Benner - Senior Marketing Manager

Dreamforce Day 1: Top 10 Tips and the Best Lead Gen offers!

Ok, so technically we are a few days into Dreamforce. Starting Sunday evening with a busy welcome reception, the VR team spent a few hours greeting customers and attendees from all over the world (as the small sample below photo can attest).

I personally spent my first full conference day on Monday at Dreamforce with the beginner marketing crowd. It was no surprise here that while the keynote demonstrations were inspiring (and I want to learn how to build one of the cool event registration sites for VerticalResponse's Spring User Conference) most of the start-ups and smaller companies are here to learn from one another and share fresh ideas for a challenging economy! Today's emerging companies want to know what they can do with very limited budgets and challenged resources.

Tricia Reilly's Marketing for Small Business session was just what this crowd of hot start-ups and first time Dreamforce attendees needed. She brought it right down to her Top 10 list, and here are 3 ideas that I think are important to recap:

1) Before you even plan your first campaign, get a web to lead form online. It doesn't have to be complicated and it should be linked from EVERY page of your website, not buried under "about us". Why? Fresh inbound leads in the hands of hungry sales reps and a growing list of opt-in members will make you a marketing hero. 

2) What's the best source for creating content to use in lead gen campaigns? Your customers! Tricia says for company's of all sizes, surveying your install base on hot topics and turning their responses into a report on industry trends is a guaranteed lead generation winner. Prospects just can't help wanting to know what their peers are thinking and doing.

3) Email Newsletter's of course! I know it seems self-serving, but the majority of the Q&A discussion came from people wanting more specifics on open rates, email delivery, and how to nurture old prospects back to life.

Thanks to Trish for mentioning VerticalResponse as a great email service provider and for the lead-in about the upcoming release of our Survey product! We continued this discussion at the Birds of Feather Marketing lunch. My table consisted of a few non-profits, a VR customer that offers sales training programs, and a growing educational firm. We talked about using case studies and customer references, and how to leverage your content into effective marketing programs. We also discussed how to use a web to lead form or a survey to capture the stories online and turn their positive feedback into email newsletter content, website content, offers, and blog posts.  I pointed out how effective Salesforce is at turning their customers into heroes here at Dreamforce. I shared how we implemented our own VR Superstar program and received amazing customer success stories complete with metrics and background information.

Off to learn more about lead generation 101....more to come!

Erin Jacobs - Director of Marketing

Coming to You Live from Dreamforce 2008

Dreamforce is in full force here in San Francisco, and we are blogging about it! 

We'll be covering several of the breakout sessions and throwing in a few customer testimonials.  This is as close as you can get to being at the show without actually being there.

Although, if you happen to be at Dreamforce be sure to come by and see us.  We're in booth #212.

Look for many more posts over the next three days!