VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Linking Accounts to Share Credits

True story:  I actually was a VerticalResponse customer before I was an employee.  And, I sometimes found myself wishing that I could share my email credits with other folks in my company.

Did you know that with VerticalResponse for AppExchange you can?

All users of your Salesforce org can share one common pool of credits.  That means that  any Salesforce user can purchase the credits, and all of your VerticalResponse accounts will be linked together to use them.

This is even better news for those of you who work in a company where several different people or departments are sending out VerticalResponse emails, as you can take advantage of bulk pricing, and save some of that precious budget - I'm sure you can find somewhere to use all of that money you'll be saving!

Do you want to link accounts so that you, too, can share VerticalResponse credits?  Simply email vip@verticalresponse.com with the user names / email addresses for the acounts that you want linked together, and we'll make the magic happen.

VR Hosted the Salesforce User Group at VR HQ!

We unveiled our new training room and hosted about 40 attendees for a breakfast meeting. If you weren't able to join us or you'd like ideas to bring to your local user group.

Here's a quick review of the event.

It wouldn't be a User Group without lots of great networking, and of course a little shameless plugging from the sponsor...in our case the power of email marketing was theme for a day!

It's always great to see participation across a broad range of industries, edition levels and email vs non-email experience and Jason Stewart of Demandbase does a great job leading this independent group. The content provided is valuable and clear to the local audience. Not surprisingly that's why he chose Tricia Reilly, Bluebird Marketing LLC, to speak about web-to-lead and auto-responding emails.

Topic 1 - Web-to-lead Forms and Workflows

What often seems really basic as a free option across every Salesforce.com edition, web-to-lead is the perfect pairing to a working landing page that supports quality email marketing. The audience received a thorough demonstration on bringing these two basic marketing practices together, presented by Trish.

Topic 2 - Images Affecting Email Deliverability

I get asked this question all the time. "If I use graphics and images in my email will they got stopped by SPAM filters?" The answer is, yes....and no! It's all in your execution. The true part- If Salesforce.com users are creating email in SF templates and not properly resizing images (say you upload your company logo that your marketing department provides) than quite possibly that logo they sent you is print quality high res and too big a file to be sending over images. If you aren't graphic savvy then you could be getting stuck in the SPAM filters.

The final consensus of the day, and the recommendation of VR Marketing team, a healthy mix of images and text that clearly convey your message is the way to go. Put a professional looking email together that supports your message for a winning combination. We heard the audience loud and clear on the questions relating to email deliverability, so look forward to a VR for AppExchange Webinar on the latest feature upgrades in our 2008 Release and Deliverability that Drives Results webinar!

--Erin Jacobs, Director of Marketing

Integrating Web-to-Case into a Newsletter - Issues with Outlook 2007

Recently one of our users asked a question in the Salesforce Community Forums that prompted an exchange worth sharing. By the way it's a great place to post questions, we monitor the topics all the time. Here is the recent question that drives today's topic:

__________________________________

POST:
Greetings.  I'd like to incorporate the web-to-case functionality into an email newsletter I'm sending out via VerticalResponse.  Most everything works well  -- just generated the HTML in SFDC, then added it into the free form email template.  Except for one thing:

 

When you click on the Submit Query button from within the email (which succeeds at creating a case in SFDC), it then launches your browser, opening to the following url:

 

Link:   (which is within the header, presumably to guide the whole web to case functionality).

 

My intention is for it to follow this code (but it does not):

 

<input type=hidden name="orgid" value="00D30000000144Y">

<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.mysite.com/thanks.html">

 

Any insights?

 

Many thanks!

________________________________

VR REPLY:

My name is Chris Carpio and I'm from VerticalResponse. I would be glad to help.

To start I'd like to state that generally HTML email best practices do not recommend the use of forms within an email itself. The reason for this is that a few email clients do not support it (specially web based clients such as Hotmail). Instead what we recommend is hosting the form on a website or landing page and providing a link within your email to that site.

However, this doesn't sound like the problem you're experiencing. If it's creating a case for you (it is submitting correctly), it's probably not a problem with the email client but something within the HTML. My guess it's something along the line of the return url (check that the path is absolute).

<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.mysite.com/thanks.html">

Shoot me an email at chris@verticalresponse.com with your VR username (which is your email address) and the name of the email campaign you're working. Also, include what type of email client you're using to test this on. I'll take a look and hopefully figure out a solution.

_________________________________

POST REPLY:

Thanks for your response.  I did a little more investigation and found that hotmail may not be the only problem (not as big of deal for business users).  Turns out that Outlook 2007 seems to no longer support some advanced functions, in the name of "security."  So, my checkboxes and submit button disappear and are replaced with non-interactive text or brackets.  This is more likely to be a problem with my mailing list over time, so I've nixed the form-within-an-email idea.

Thanks for your help.