VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

VerticalResponse Goes Live on AppExchange 2

We're reporting live from Salesforce's "Cloudforce2" event in New York City.  Just this morning, CEO Marc Benioff rolled out a big announcement.  "We are opening doors today," he said. And with that, they opened the door to the AppExchange 2.

In addition to the new ChatterExchange category, AppExchange 2 has also added Aloha Apps, the new unlimited App category from salesforce.com. Aloha Apps don’t count against your system limits for Apps, tabs, and objects—no matter which salesforce.com edition you’re using--including Group Edition!

VerticalResponse is happy and proud to be chosen as an Aloha App for this debut. This means the power of VerticalResponse is now available to more people. And, if you've ever been constrained by your system limits, you can now install and use our App in conjunction with any number of Aloha Apps.  With more than 500 to choose from, you’re in for an “all-you-can-app” experience. More apps plus more access equals more success.

If you haven't installed VerticalResponse for AppExchange, try it today.  Send 500 free messages when you sign up for a free trial.

• VerticalResponse for AppExchange - for Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited edition users

• VerticalResponse for Group Edition - for Group Edition users

Sneak Peek at Our New Features!

For those that missed out on Dreamforce, I wanted to briefly talk about some of the upgrades we're planning to release in the upcoming weeks.

To give you some background on our product development process, we log all incoming features requests that are sent into our Support and Sales channels.  We actually use salesforce.com to handle these requests and they are logged based on category and tracked based on popularity.   If you've submitted requests in the past - thanks and keep 'em coming!  If you've not yet done so, just remember we can't build it if we don't know it's important to you so let's hear your feedback.   

So in addition to the valuable data captured from the feature tracker, we also gave users the ability to rank proposed product enhancements through a survey we sent out a few months back. Based on feedback we received from the survey, we came up with the following product upgrades:

"Account" fields as filters when querying for Contacts - By far the most requested feature and as such we've put this on the top of our list. We'll support both standard and custom Account fields (in addition to the 3 that exists now) as query parameters for Contacts as well as providing more choices for query operators (i.e. does not contain, etc).

Why is this important? Now you can create targeted lists based on the attributes of the Accounts within your org. For example, "go big" and easily grab all the Contacts in one fell swoop based on the Account Rating. Or "go small" to target only the Contacts for Accounts in CA whose Industry is equal to Software/Hardware.

Saved query functionality - Many of you build your lists using the same (or similar) search parameters and the goal here is to offer a way for you to save your most frequently run queries for easy access. In just a few clicks you can create your new list without having to re-enter the parameters or map the fields from scratch.

User interface & workflow improvements - This is actually my favorite part of the upcoming release project. Our objective is to make our app more intuitive for Salesforce users and have it feel less foreign within your SF account. We’re adopting some of Salesforce’s style conventions to make the presentation and navigation much more current an simple to follow.

Here's a sneak peek of the new VR Email tab with the "Quickstart" area.  This new section is designed to give you easy access to the most commonly used features of our app: creating a new mailing list or creating a new email. 

In addition, you'll also see a snapshot of your most recently sent emails and have the option to update stats back into your salesforce account, for multiple campaigns, all at the same time (a huge time-saver!)

Tell me what you think and if you have any suggestions, please send it over my way!

VerticalResponse for AppExchange 3.0

Many of you already know that we have one of the most popular partner applications on Salesforce.com's AppExchange. But we can always be better right? Well for over 6 months our team has been hard at work on some pretty cool features (special kudos to Josh, our VP of Product and Wes our Superb Salesforce Developer). Today we're announcing the release of our new app and with a simple upgrade you get all the new goodies at NO extra cost!  Check them out.

Helpful Guides

Installation & Upgrade Guide - Walks you through how to install or upgrade VerticalResponse for Appexchange.

Product Matrix - Shows the difference between what we have offered in the past and what the additional features are.

User Guide - Download this step-by-step tutorial to get the most from the new features.

"VR Email History" Custom Reporting Object and "Campaign Preview"

Imagine if you will, a Marketing person in your company sends an email campaign touting a new product, service or event. Before your sales team follows up with a call, they'll now be able to see if the recipient opened the email, clicked on any links, unsubscribed, bounced or performed – right from the Lead or Contact detail page.

In addition, a copy of the exact email the client received is also included so that a salesperson can see the content of the message prior to hopping on a call.

Custom Email History Reports & Dashboards

As your VR Email History data flows in you'll now be able to run custom reports and view custom dashboards. Track your response data (opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes by specific email campaigns or specific date ranges, etc). This allows you to quickly initiate follow up campaigns that will potentially: (a) capitalize on a newly exposed business opportunity or (b) address a newly exposed flaw in your business process.

Access Your Salesforce.com Email Templates

Many of you have complex folders housing all the saved Salesforce.com email templates used for sales and marketing campaigns. Now you can seamlessly transfer this existing email content into VR without recreating it a second time. No more limits or restrictions, just grab your content, attach your lists and send!

Create Mailing Lists Using "Account" and "Owner" Fields

Many of you marketing executives out there need to send emails to groups of Contacts associated with Accounts. This message has to appear as if it’s being sent by a specific sales rep and the desired outcome is for each Contact to receive a personalized email from their established Account Manager rather than an impersonal "bulk email."

Now you can query your salesforce.com data to build a list from specific Accounts in order to extract all the Contacts associated with each organization. In addition, since the mass email can be personalized by fields such as "Account Name" and "Owner Name", you can include these fields on your compiled mailing list.

We're pretty excited about these new additions to our integrated product. We hope you are too!

For a quick breakdown on how the new release is truly an upgrade, please see our product matrix. Our upgrade instructions will walk you through the installation and customization of our new app (no worries, none of your previously updated information will be lost). More information about VerticalResponse for AppExchange can be found on our site.