VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Dreamforce Download - What Happened at the TradeShow

For those who use our VerticalResponse for AppExchange integration and are interested in what happened at Dreamforce this week, I tried to do some "live blogging" from the show as did some other fantastic CRM Bloggers.

Newsworthy

Salesforce Foundation Event - Team VR makes it through painting and "landscaping". Great pix and videos of the team!

Sunday Night & Monday Morning - What's up and coming and a must-see: the "Baron of Beef"!

Monday Afternoon - Who did VR run into? Check it out!

Tuesday Morning - George Lucas, Second Life and JP's Panel on Social Responsibility.

Tuesday Evening - VerticalResponse get the Appy Award for Best in Show! Yeeha! Bonus, they played the Nuthin' But an AppThang video! Pix of the show here.

Other Posts of Note:

Mark Mangano had some excellent coverage of the show at Salesforcewatch. Great to meet you Mark!

Jeff Grosse has a ton of Dreamforce coverage at CRM FYI. Great to meet you too Jeff.

The Salesforce Foundation put up their own info on the event.

I know that Selling Power Magazine did tons of video taping so hopefully we'll see some coming soon.

VR Sessions

Josh Feinberg did a super session on list building and campaign metrics. Funny? Alex put the Appy Award for Best in Show right on the podium. Waytago Alex! Look for a webinar from him because we thought it was so good.

I (JP) spoke on the importance of corporate social responsibility along with some very esteemed professionals on a panel.

All in all, a super, super busy, well attended and tiring show. But the best part? We loved seeing and talking to our amazing customers. Great to see you all!

Case Study - VR Goes Viral Again With a Music Video...Check Out These Numbers

VerticalResponse released our latest music video Nuthin' But an AppThang starring our own Furious ALF and 2Fein. Videos like this and last year's AppEx Baby are not only fun to do, they really turn into a great viral marketing tool. (Viral, that's soooo 90s). These videos are specifically designed to get the attention of Salesforce employees, partners and customers about our email marketing solution a month before the big Dreamforce Tradeshow. Anyway, I've written about why we do these videos.

I decided to put a few more dollars into the video and this year we think it worked! The shoot took 4 hour  (we storyboarded our ideas) and the editing took a day. We worked with a great team called The Big Picture.

Here's where we stand:

August 20th - We launched it internally, had a preview party and then we "viraled" it into Salesforce, that is, sent email with the link. Crowd goes wild. In minutes (on a Friday afternoon no less) it was going through the company like wildfire and our own employees were sending it to their friends like crazy.

August 21st - Alf posts it on YouTube and we start getting 100+ views a day.

August 23rd - We post it in the VR Facebook Group (we don't actually know how many views we get because it's not hosted by YouTube but this is a must do.)

End of the first week: We had 1000 views.

August 28th - We post it in every group or event that is related to Salesforce on Facebook. We send it in a VerticalResponse email marketing campaign to a small subset of users, another 35 views, we include it in the email newsletter to everyone on the sidebar...another 120 views.

Viewing slows down around Labor Day but picks up again to 100 views a day.

By end of this past week we were at 2600 views on YouTube alone.

September 10 we sent out another newsletter and posted on Facebook to help us get to 10,000 views. By September 13 we're at close to 3,000. Probably won't get to 10k but it's sure picking up.

By September 16, we're at 3,025 views and loving it.

In all of the last year and a half our old video "AppEx Baby" got 4400 views, those also started to pick up as a result of these efforts and are now over 4700. All in all a success so far, and it's not over.  For not that much of a spend, we're getting our name and message out there. And no, it's not a million veiws but for a B2B video it's pretty darn good. Isn't word of mouth great? Email marketing and other forms of social media are really the culprit in this effort.

Our mission? To get to 10,000 views. Can you help? Watch the video and tell your friends!

VR Music Video Premiere!

Many of you have seen "AppEx Baby" music video. Our very own Furious ALF stars in it. If you haven't seen it you should, it's a good short watch. Due to popular demand, VerticalResponse has released our 2nd music video, "Nuthin' but an App Thang" starring the crazy antics of Furious ALF and debuting another VR star, 2Fein.

Read why we do these crazy videos here.

We Launched the VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Yeah we know, you need to read another blog like you need a hole in your head right? But one thing we've heard is that for the VerticalResponse for AppExchange customers, you'd like more information on how to use us, and what's in store. This is a forum where you'll get exactly what you're looking for.

I'll be blogging in there a tiny bit (I'm a bit busy with this blog), but you'll get closer to the action with our AppExchange crew here, Josh Feinberg, Chris Carpio, and Alex Scalisi. (Funny hidden site of why VR for AppExchange rocks, pump up the volume!)

So if you're a VR for AppExchange user, check out the new blog.

Announcing NEW VerticalResponse for AppExchange!

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.

Got any comments on the new upgrade? Love to hear them!

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.

My Dreamforce Wrap Up - Published by MarketingSherpa

Last week was the Dreamforce show. For those of you who don't use Salesforce, it's the annual user conference and this post may not appeal to you whatsoever. Worry not, I've got some cool posts coming up. Anyhoo, MarketingSherpa, an amazing site for all things online marketing-related, asked for a show wrap up, so here it is as published on their site:
   
SUMMARY

Do you know what marketing ideas your sales reps are being exposed to? Last week, 4,250 sales execs attended salesforce.com's annual user get-together, the dreamforce expo, where they discussed far more about marketing than you might expect. Here's MarketingSherpa's behind-the-scenes show report from one of the 750 marketers who also attended:

By MarketingSherpa Reader Janine Popick, President & CEO VerticalResponse

Last week I attended (and spoke at) Dreamforce Expo, Salesforce.com's annual user conference in San Francisco. 

It's turning into one of the most influential shows in business-to-business sales and marketing. Yet, only about 15% of attendees this year were from the marketing department. Here are my show notes from a marketing perspective for my fellow MarketingSherpa readers who couldn’t make it:

Quick Show Outline:

In his keynote, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff asked how many attendees were existing salesforce.com customers, and it seemed like 85% of the 5,000 people in the audience raised their hands.

Attendees broke into three groups:

• Sales managers wanting to learn how to better use CRM to convert leads
• Administrators of the salesforce.com platform
• Small business owners
• Marketers responsible for filling the lead pipeline

There were also about 160 partners exhibiting on the show floor.

Marketing Buzz Around the Show: 3 Points

#1. Marketing automation.
Although a hot topic, marketers don’t want to pay big bucks for it. They want drip campaigns and they want it integrated into their CRM system. Any CRM system that doesn't integrate with email is on its way out.

#2. Landing page integration.
This seemed to be hot when integrated with a CRM solution, so companies can track exactly where visitors go from their campaigns. The data needs to be is updated right into your CRM system. It solves problems because SMBs don’t have the resources to hire creatives and enterprise customers are fighting in-house for them.

#3. Marketers want to learn from marketers.
In general, marketers attended the sessions! Somewhat of a surprise, since at some other shows people aren’t so crazy about attending sessions (instead, networking in hallways and on the floor). At dreamforce, there seemed to be a general “want” to learn more about how to improve CRM.
Note to other vendors -- use more client-presented case studies at your user conference instead of endless pitches from your own management and sales team.

The addition of the Appy Awards (celebrating new salesforce applications) was a brilliant idea, rewarding mostly customers who do some great implementations and great customizations and a few partners doing some great things with the API.

Feeling on the Show Floor: Salesforce Community Feels Like Apple Users

At first, I didn’t know how to feel about the layout of the show floor, which broke partners out by “Sales,” “Marketing,” “Financial Services” and “Business Productivity.” But in reality, it saved attendees a lot of time. It was like a grocery store, with the aisles clearly marked. People were checking off their partner grocery list.

The floor setup also established the very middle as the salesforce “campground.” The interesting thing was that immediately after demos if someone were interested in a specific feature, they sent them directly to the appropriate partner. (That's a clever layout other user conferences should steal.)

Contrary to other shows we attend, people come to Dreamforce with a mission. They do their homework with questions to ask partners to solve real problems. You can be three deep at your booth at times instead of having to drag people in with hokey giveaways.

Some said it was good that there were more salesforce customers than prospects because customers understand the need to plug in more functionality, while prospects don’t necessarily understand the need until they have already deployed and used salesforce for a while.

Chris Hoffman from Triple Tree told me that this was their fourth Dreamforce (ours, too) and that while the early days had a lot of solutions looking for a problem, now it’s real problems looking for great solutions.

All in all, the show is a lovefest. It is extremely energetic. You’re constantly moving and talking, whether your customer is a salesforce user or a partner. There are many deals done among partners as well. The zealotry of the Salesforce community feels like that of Apple users.

VerticalResponse is Going to Dreamforce!

It's happening again, Dreamforce that is. What is Dreamforce you ask? It's the Salesforce.com annual conference here in San Francisco. We have gone to it every year, even when it was just 6 of us partners in a conference room in the back of Salesforce! It's bigger and better than ever this year.

The best part? We'll be unveiling some pretty cool new features at the show, stuff our customers who use us through Salesforce.com have asked for. What you ask?

• Enhanced query functionality - Now you can build lists and personalize your emails based on Account and Owner fields.
  
• View the content of the emails you send right from within the Lead and Contact record. No more guessing what your recipient received!
• Did you spend time creating email templates within your Salesforce account? Now you can use them when sending emails through VerticalResponse.
• Custom reports and dashboards built off of response data to help you analyze your results.
• And much much more!

We'll also be speaking in a few sessions this year so be on the lookout.

Josh our VP of Product Management and Wes our Sr. Developer have been working around the clock to be ready in time and we'd would love to see you there!

If you haven't registered for the event yet, use the code "VRRE26D" to get a $100 discount. To use the code, click on the "General Attendees" button on the registration page.

Case Study: Going Viral with VR!

Have you seen this? It's one of the funniest, most clever videos I've seen, but then again, I'm a bit biased since we created it!

It's a video that outlines the benefits of using VerticalResponse in Salesforce.com's AppExchange, in an "on-beat" kind of way.

VR for AppExchange? It's pretty sweet, you can basically send mass email campaigns using VerticalResponse right from within your Salesforce.com account. Finally closed-loop marketing at its finest.

PROBLEM: Even though Salesforce.com does a great job getting us here on their site, they don't really do outbound marketing internally or externally highlighting any one partner of theirs. So VR needed to get in front of their employees as well as their customers in a cost-effective way. 

SOLUTION: When Salesforce.com met with us, Rob Lamb, Partner Relations Manager, said to me "Janine, if you want to get in front of our employees, all we need is a simple 5-point slide on why you guys rock."

Hmmm. I thought. Thanks for the idea Rob. We'll take that 5 point slide a few steps further.

So I went in to my Creative Director's office to brainstorm a bit.  "Alf, we need to get in front of Salesforce.com employees to tell them why their customers need us, it needs to be hip and cool and something they'll want to forward to all of their friends."

"JP, I think we need to do a video, maybe a rap!" Alf said, in a very "un-rappy" way.

Crazy? Maybe but off we were and in all of 45 minutes, Alf, Josh our Director of Product Management and myself sorted through my iTunes, picked out a song and wrote it. The choice? A tongue-in-cheek update of Vanilla Ice’s (in)famous “Ice, Ice, Baby”  (apologies to David Bowie and Freddy Mercury).

One week later the video was done - GarageBand and iMovie to the rescue. Alf transformed himself into a rap hero and his team really pulled it off. A video that is by far the most fun and most viral thing Salesforce.com has seen yet. It's the next wave of "Lazy Sunday" for businesses! If you haven't seen the feature "Lazy Sunday" from Saturday Night Live, check it out. The clip has been viewed more than 5 million times.

In our clip, Furious Alf (his alter ego perhaps?) stalks the mean streets of San Francisco and rhymes about the many benefits of VerticalResponse for the AppExchange.  With lines like this we knew we had a hit on our hands:

“Will it ever stop, yo, I don’t know
Install the app and let’s go
Lists of any sizes, you know we can handle
Light up the app and watch it burn like a candle”

The folks at Salesforce.com thought so, too.  The video made it all the way up to the CEO and landed a spot on the company’s CRM Success blog, which you can read here.

To date, there have been over 600 views of this video. 

Not bad for a self-produced video - no amount of advertising could have made inroads as quickly or as cheaply – or inspired people to willingly pass it on. And no other medium would have facilitated this process like email.  Email has become such a part of everyday life, that it’s easy to forget just how effective a tool it can be, particularly when it’s done with a light, creative touch. 

Remember:

“Email’s a problem VR solves it
Test drive the app while your client installs it
AppEx, Baby
VR for AppEx, Baby!”

So check it out, forward it to your friends, and if you're interested in more information about the AppExchange go here.

I Drank the CRM Kool Aid

CRM, Customer Relationship Management, has been around for years. "Closing the loop" i think it was probably called at one point. As business grows this becomes valuable with a capital "V" and many of us don't think about it until it's too late.

When I started VerticalResponse everyone had their own prospect and customer data in their own programs. I thought that was ok the first year, but as our customers and our business grew it was painfully obvious we needed a solution where all of our data was in one place.

Did you ever call on a customer to ask for a testimonial only to find out they just got done screaming at one of your reps? Ouch! (Not that that ever happens here ;-) Did you email a customer that just bought something from you offering them the same product at a different price? Double ouch!

Those are just two things I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are hundreds of stories like this.

Here's the immediate value we saw when we implemented our CRM Solution:

1. History - Track a customer's history from prospect to purchase, and all of the touchpoints that were made.
2. Email - Send an email from within the CRM solution so that everyone can see the communication.
3. Customer Tracking - Track that a customer or prospect clicked on a link in an email so that they can be followed up with.
4. Marketing ROI - Track an email or direct mail campaign's ROI
5. Reports - Run reports to see where sales are coming from by salesperson or marketing program.
6. Customer Support - Track cases and history of a customer

Our CRM solution is salesforce.com, but there are many out there that are affordable and will fit your budget.

In the end we save time and money - Troy, our PR Specialist doesn't have to run around to Sales and Customer Support asking them what happened the last time they talked to Ms. X before he calls for a testimonial. Dana, our VP of Sales can easily see that Alex has just closed a deal. Sonya, our Account Manger, can see that a customer proactively needs a call. All with a simple query.

We chose an ASP, because we believe in the On Demand "stuff". But if software works for you there are plenty of those to choose from too. Oh and the Kool Aid was refreshin'!