Salesforce's Marketing Power- Increase your lead conversion by contacting web visitors within minutes of completing a form

I found one of the most valuable tools salesforce has to offer is the ease of creating a data entry form for capturing web visitor information. SF email templates allow you to notify staff of a new lead, create a task for a specific staff member to followup, create a customized msg to the prospective student, and call the student within minutes of the student completing the form.

Generating the html code for the web to lead form can be done in minutes, where the work comes in is editing this code. However, once you have created one form you can use it as a template and simply copy the code and make the minor adjustments such as updating the campaign id.

You also need to establish an assignment rule for these new leads. You can assign all new leads affiliated with your record type to one individual who will receive an email notification OR perhaps you want to you would like to assign a lead based on the campaign or program of interest. If you would like a group of co-workers to receive an email notification of the incoming lead then create a user queue to share the workload. It is a best practice to establish a generic email alias (with all queue users as recipients) to use as the queue email. This will ensure all staff receives a message when a new lead has been added.

An autoresponse sent to the prospective student is an optional feature but can easily be setup. Create an email template to convey a customized msg to the prospect that is automatically emailed upon creation. You can also establish multiple templates if you wish to send a specific message based on the data entered. For example, you may want to send program information based on the program of interest selected on the form.

Some of My Success Stories With Web to Lead Forms
I created a general inquiry campaign to capture new web to leads that complete a form requesting general information. One of these forms captured over 120 new leads within the past 8 months with one already converting to a student. Another program recently had two Open House events & advertised these events in the local paper directing them to the website. Within a few weeks over 70 leads were created :)

Then of course there is Google Adwords an easy an affordable way to advertise your website programs on the Google Search Engines. Web to leads can be used in conjunction with this long tail marketing technique in order to measure your Return on Investment (ROI). These forms & tracking code allow you to capture the number of converted leads from each Google Adword Campaign.

So generate your code...
edit your picklist values... set your record type, and campaing id value etc
determine which staff member(s) will receive the email notification
setup an email autoresponse to the prospect (optional)
be sure any necessary tracking code (Google Analytics/Adwords) are added to the page
and please come back and comment with success stories of your own :)

Marketing - Salesforce Web-to-Lead Forms Overview

Are you looking to more effectively respond to program inquiries? Would you like to enhance you websites' interactivity by adding a data entry form to request additional information about a program? Would you like an email notification sent to a co-worker each time a visitor to the site completes the form?

A web to lead provides users the ability to gather information from their website visitors which automatically tracks and stores in salesforce. You can use standard lead fields on this form such as name, address, email, phone number, lead source etc. in addition to any custom field. Perhaps you would also like to capture the prospective student's program of interest (a custom field) along with their contact information. Salesforce provide you the ability to easily add this field to the form. If you have a basic understanding of html, you can also include hidden fields, identify a specific value for these fields, as well as format the form fields.

A website could potentially contain several web to lead forms, so it is highly recommended that you create a campaign prior to generating a web-to-lead in which to associate the leads. For example, the off campus group has a "General Inquiry" campaign established in order to group all web to leads that completed the "Request Information" form as well as an "Information Session" campaign established for recruiting events. So a user to the site has the option of "Requesting information" or "Registering for an Information Session". The potential uses for a basic web to lead forms are endless.

Web to Lead Best Practices

• Be sure to the following hidden fields & associated value:
• Campaign ID (tracks to specific campaign)
  
• Record type id (tracks to specific program)
  
• Web to Lead (check box value on the lead record to denote the lead was created via web to lead)
• If you would like to notify a co-worker when a new lead has been added you will need to:
• Be sure the co-worker is an active salesforce user (has access to salesforce)
• Establish Assignment Rules to specify criteria or rules used to determine the recipient of an email notification. For example, you may want all new web to leads for your record type to be assigned to a user(s) or perhaps you would like to notify co-workers depending on the campaign or program of interest. Assignment rules allow you to identify the necessary criteria for the rule.
  
• Create a Queue in order to assign a lead to a group of co-workers
  
• Create a public email template for the automatic email notification that will be sent to the co-worker.
  
• This email can contain merged SF fields such as their contact information so there is no need to login to salesforce to retrieve this information
• You may also want to include a link to easily access the record within SF
  
• Create a lead autresponse rule to automatically send a message to the prospective student completing the form.
  
• Create an email template for this message which can be customized with merged fields in order to make it more personalized.


• If you are using Google Analytics/Google Adwords be sure to include the tracking code on the webpage of the form


Web to Lead Limitations

• A max of 5,000 web to leads can be generated in one day (org wide)
• Custom objects and encrypted fields are not available for use on a web-to-lead form
  

CRM Demand Tools - Mass Convert

Are you looking to convert a group of prospective students (leads) to student accounts within salesforce? Do you wish to avoid having to search & locate each student then manually click the "convert" button for each individual? Would you rather convert a group of lead records by using specific criteria? If so, the Mass Convert is the tool for you.

Mass Convert allows you to:

• Enter criteria in order to identify only those leads you wish to convert. For example, I use this tool to identify all leads affiliated with the "Off Campus - Student Lead" record type with a lead status value of "Applicant".
• Create an opportunity upon conversion (however currently Rutgers is not utilizing the "opportunities" object)
• Specify account ownership as well as create notifications for these individuals. This is a great way to notify a co-worker of a newly admitted student and provides options to assign a follow-up task for staff member
• Provides a final confirmation dialog box indicating the number of errors, converted leads, and location of the log file
  

CRM Demand Tools - Mass Change & Mass Impact

Both Mass Change & Mass Impact are great tools for maintaining data integrity and routine data cleansing. The MassChange tool allows you to specify a condition to find matching objects of most salesforce.com tables and set values for those tables to specific values that you choose. It is designed to allow you to quickly change hundreds of records that require a common value in minutes.

With the off campus data, there is a critical field "location of interest" that delineates student data for each off campus site. I have decided not to make this field required for various reasons but it is important that the field is populated. I have created a video demo showing how to update this field using Mass Change. Since the staff at each site is unique, I use Mass Change to update the location of interest field based on the owner of the lead. You can also schedule this update to automate the process using Mass Impact. Both Mass Change & Mass Impact are great tools to assist with managing your data from a global perspective.

However, Mass Impact is more a powerful feature as it provides the use of advanced operators as well as the ability to run scheduled scenarios, completely automating the process. For information regarding the creation of a scheduled task please click here.

CRM Demand Tools - Mass Effect

Are you looking to update a group of records within salesforce but want to avoid having to manually search, locate the record, and make your desired change? Would you rather export a group of records to Excel make the changes within the spreadsheet and simply upload the changes? Mass Effect provides you the ability to do just that and much much more.

Recommendations for using MassEffect

• If you are looking to update leads/contacts that you are unsure exist within salesforce and do not have a unique identifier to identify potential matches, please utilize the "People Import" tool as it provides varying matching levels other than exact such as fuzzy, alphaclean etc
• If you have just completed and import using "People Import" and wish to manipulate the data in a spreadsheet, please save the report located on the final step which includes the id field for both matched records as well as newly imported records.
• If you are looking to update group of any records you know exists within salesforce, using MassEffect create a report to export the fields you wish to update and be sure to include the id field.
• If the updates you perform in MassEffect are routinely completed with identical mapping and update options, simply save the scenario to avoid having to identify the mapping and update options with each process.
• If the group of records you are looking to update is a routine task schedule the salesforce report to run automatically. This report can then automatically be emailed to your user group including the id, so they can simply copy and paste the data to a spreadsheet, make the desired changes, and process the updates using MassEffect.
  
• If you are using Excel 2007 please be sure to save the file under the previous version as xlsx is not an acceptable file type.
• Be sure your report does no contain duplicate id's as it will produce errors on the final stage of Mass Effect for those duplicate records and will not complete the desired update.

I have created three videos (available on the Salesforce User Guide site as well as in the Screencast video side bar of this blog) demonstrating some uses of mass effect such as:

• Updating an Accounts "Program" field
• Updating the "Status" field of a lead from "New" to "Contacted"
• Updating a group of tasks from "Not Staretd" to "Completed"

Demand Tools

People Import allows you to compare an external source, such as an excel spreadsheet, to pre-existing leads and contacts within salesforce based on the matching criteria you set. CRM Demand Tools offers several modules (as described in a previous blog post) assisting in maintaining & cleansing salesforce data. The maintenance module allows you to update leads and contacts as well as all other salesforce objects like accounts (with various update methods), task & activities, even custom objects, extending the functionality. As opposed to People Import, CRM Demand Tools is a much more robust app providing tools not available in People Import.

Over the next few weeks I plan on uploading both PowerPoint slides as well as step by step videos on the following CRM tools:

Maintenance Module

• Mass Effect - DemandTools MassEffect module is the ultimate data loader for salesforce.com. Used to insert, update, delete or export information to and from almost any salesforce.com table or field. MassEffect has a large advantage over other data loaders due to its support for advanced file types such as Microsoft Access, Excel, CSV and UDL files to add support for SQL Server, Oracle and other databases
• Mass Impact - The newest module that allows users to mass manipulate data across tables without importing or exporting of data. The entire process of searching and changing data between tables, all takes place directly on the salesforce.com servers.
• MassChange - The MassChange module is the easiest way to mass manipulate data in salesforce.com because no import or export of data is required. The entire process of searching and changing data all takes place directly on the salesforce.com servers. Essentially MassChange allows the user to find all objects that meet a custom criteria and then effect changes on a field level to all the matching objects.
  

Cleansing Module

• MassLeadConvert - MassLead convert allows the DemandTools customer to develop a custom criteria of Leads to look for and then have them automatically sent through the Lead conversion process. During processing ownerships, Lead source and Campaign data can be tweaked and even emails sent out to notify the new owners of the created Account and Contacts.
  

Demand Tools offers many more helpful tools such as de-duplication features but I will be unable to demo all of these options as I would like to conlcude with a section on marketing and web to lead forms.

People Import 5 Stages

The videos for the five stages of People Import have been uploaded to the Salesforce User Guide site and are also available in the screen cast side bar of this blog. I have detailed a brief description of these five steps below:

1. Mapping - Select the source file & map the fields (or column names) in the file (ex. spreadsheet) to salesforce fields.

• If the field names match exactly use can use the "automap" button to automatically mach the fields.
• You can also manually drag and drop the names to map the fields
• In this stage you can also choose from field options to update the Insert, Do not update, Update, or Update only if blank for each individual mapping

Helpful Tips

• Be sure to include all required fields on import which would include Last name and Company. For prospective students without a company affiliation use the "last name, first name" in lieu of this value
• Be sure to include the recordtype id to ensure newly created records are affiliated with the appropriately

2. Comparison - Compare the records in the source file against all salesforce records (default) or choice to select a subset of records for comparison.

Helpful Tips

• It is highly suggested you match the incoming records to those of the desired record type
• Matching against a subset of records within the system will not only expedite the elapsed time but can also enhance matching precision

3. Matching - The most involved stage of all five stages where you can create various matching steps to compare source records to those in salesforce in order to avoid importing duplicate records You can match almost any field that you imported in stage 1 of the import process such as matching the first name, last name, email, phone, or address in the source file to those in salesforce (certain fields such as long text areas can't be used in this stage)

• This stage also allows you to adjust the match type settings from "exact" match type to "cleaned account name" or select additional options to loosen matching capabilities with use of "fuzzy" or "alpha clean". For a complete list of match types click here
• You can create multiple matching steps to increase the probability of locating a potential duplicate with Salesforce.
• You can assign the leads matched with each step to a pre-existing salesforce campaign or create a new task for the matching group.
• The "Final Matching conditions" step is where you specify conditions for records in the source file that did not match any of the matching steps. You can choose to import these records as "new leads", "New Contacts" or "Do Nothing"

4. Global Campaigns & Tasks - This step is optional but provides the ability to assign records not matched in Step 3 to a campaign or create a new task for these records.

5. Results & Processing - This stage is where People Import checks for dupes and matched records are retrieved. You can also review, verify, and ultimately commit & update the matched records while importing new leads that were not matched (if specified in "Final Matching Steps" of Stage 3)