Webinar Recap: VerticalResponse for AppExchange: Past, Present and Future

We just did a webinar for Salesforce users as part of our continuing series of VerticalResponse University live webinars. We talked a bit about what we've got coming out with the new release that they're doing. Great webinar, slides can be found here.

Here are a few questions we didn't get to, answered by Josh Feinberg, our VP of Product Management.

Question: My company currently uses salesforce.com and VerticalResponse and the problem we are having is that we can't view one another's saved templates in VR. Is this something that is available or will be?
Answer: In terms of shared viewing of VR-created templates, this is something we'll be working on for a release down the road but for the upcoming release you can achieve the visibility you're looking for by creating a saved mail template in your salesforce.com org.  Now when individual users create email campaigns in VR, they can access the saved mail templates from SF and everyone sees the same content.  We'll keep you posted on the VR template sharing.

Question: Can you use VR to telemarketing purposes?
Answer: Although we don't have specific telemarketing tools built into our app, if you are able to gain new opt-in subscribers through your telemarketing efforts then VR can surely assist in follow up email and direct mail communications.

Question: What's the difference between All Contacts, and All Contacts and Leads?
Answer: VR offers the ability to build combination queries against Leads and Contacts at the same time.  This way, you don't have to create two separate mailing lists and get your email campaign launched right away.

Question: I love the idea of having the VR Email Related list so that my users can see what links were clicked, etc. I assume this is if the emails are not sent through campaigns. Currently, we plan to send all emails via the campaign module. Will there be any way for the users to get this same info if the emails are sent via campaigns?
Answer: With the upcoming "VR Email History" we will be leveling the playing field in terms of Campaigns and Non-Campaigns users.  Since all the data is tracked by VR, we're simply updating the new custom object so no matter what edition of salesforce.com you're running, you'll see full email tracking for all Leads and Contacts.

Question: To take advantage of the new features (ie. dashboards), do I need to do a re-install of VR?
Answer: Existing users will need to install our new application and we'll be holding a training session to make this a quick and hassle-free process.  The important thing to note is that all the data is safely stored in both VR and salesforce.com so you'll simply be plugging in a new, more powerful email app.

Question: Will the new reports and dashboards be able to seen by other users within the organization?
Answer: Yes, the Custom VR Reports will be accessible from the Reports tab in salesforce.com.

Question: Will we be able to build an email list based on salesforce.com "Account" fields/parameters, as opposed to Lead & Contact parameters?
Answer: Yes, with the new app you'll be able to build mailing lists using the "Account Name" field to get access to Contacts tied to specific Accounts.

Question: Will the cost per email go up with the new version?
Answer: Nope, great new app at the same low price!

Question: Will the new reporting and integration features apply to campaigns sent before the new rollout, or only those sent afterwards?
Answer: The new reporting features will work for newly created campaigns and previously sent campaigns.  As soon as you install the app you can begin updating your stats for all campaigns.

Thanks for all who attended. If you've got any further questions, comment on this post.

Comments

[Joshua Feinberg]

Hi Stacy,

Thank you for touching on one of my most favorite topics! With salesforce.com's upcoming release they've allowed partner's to customize and integrate into standard objects in ways that were never previously available. They've really done a great job but the one area that was left out (in my opinion) was additional customization options with the Reports tab. Ideally we'd like to place a custom link/button into that area that would enable a user to generate a Report (of any size) and quickly import the results into VR. Their new release does not support this but I've been pushing for that change to be added into their API so we'll keep you updated! Thanks for your feedback!

[Janine]

For Stacy - I'm going to have Josh our VP of Product Management comment on this one.

[Stacy]

Will future upgrades allow email lists to be pulled from current SF.com reports that are not associated with any particular campaign?

[Terry]

When is this new version available to Salesforce users?