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Understanding Campaigns in Salesforce

Understanding Campaigns in Salesforce

Campaigns in Salesforce are one of the more underutilized objects in the CRM. Properly using campaigns admittedly takes a decent amount of planning and setup to yield any significant benefits. However, it can definitely be worth your time if you do it right!

Campaigns are ideally used to track marketing efforts, connect leads and contacts, and give you data on how effective that campaign was towards creating opportunities and sales. So no, you probably shouldn’t use them to make a list (that’s what list views are for!) In this article, we will take a quick look at some important elements of campaigns and how you can use them to your advantage!

Lead Source vs. Campaigns

One way in which campaigns can be misunderstood and misused is by using them more like a lead source field. Campaigns are designed to track specific marketing efforts, from start to finish. Which means the lead source is only a small aspect of the campaign.

For example, say your team went to a trade show this month and collected a nice list of new leads. Beforehand, you would have created the campaign for that specific trade show, recording the date, place, people involved, and any expenses associated with that campaign. As you enter the leads into Salesforce, you would assign them the Lead Source of “Tradeshow”, and if you like more specific details, add the name of the show and date to the “Lead Source Detail” field.

Once you get that list and add it to the campaign, you kick off whatever post show follow up you have in mind, emails, calls, etc. You can even attach important resources to the campaign in Salesforce, such as brochures or flyers, so that everyone involved can have easy access! As the campaign goes along, you will be able to see which members have converted to opportunities, and if you have added your numbers diligently, get cost to opportunity value for that one specific trade show!

One final benefit of using campaigns is that you can’t attribute more than one lead source to a lead. But as any marketer knows, leads often have many touch points associated with your various efforts. Campaigns allow you to indicate all of the different interactions a lead is having with your marketing materials, so you can get a fuller picture of how the funnel is working.

Campaign Hierarchies

Continuing on the example above, we can then add in the practice of campaign hierarchies to track the results of many similar campaigns over time. Depending on how you want to build them out, you can do two, three… however many layers you want.

For our example, let’s then say we create another campaign of “Trade Shows 2020”. Using the parent field on the campaigns, you can associate any individual trade show campaigns to this hierarchy. After attending and running a few different tradeshow campaigns, you can go into the “Trade Shows 2020” campaign, and see detailed results and statistics on how successful your trade show efforts have been that year, and see comparisons on which ones worked the best!

 

 

Define Your Fields

Another best practice is to plan out and define some standard campaign and campaign member fields before you get going. Specifically, the “Campaign Type” and “Campaign Member Status” fields.

Campaign Type

Campaign type will help you predefine the general type of initiative the campaign falls under, such as email, referral program, seminar, etc. Ideally, you want to pick a set of list options that are general enough to cover all efforts your business will be involved in, while keeping them specific enough that everyone knows what you are talking about. Keeping the campaign types consistent across many years will ensure you can quickly sort and retrieve metrics on the effectiveness of the different initiatives.

Campaign Member Status

This one can take a bit of planning, but can be oh so important to your long term tracking. Similar to above, you should define a concise picklist of options, such as “sent, called, responded, etc.” that will indicate how that lead or contact is associated with the campaign. You may need to create a series of custom values here, depending on what type of campaign it is.

So with all of that laid out, you should have everything you need to better understand and use campaigns in Salesforce. As a final word, don’t forget to check back on them often and see what results you have been achieving!

 

Click to learn more!

 

-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team

 


 

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Quickly Setup Campaigns with AAkonsult Campaign Status

Quickly Setup Campaigns with AAkonsult Campaign Status

 

Do you know the time-consuming pain of building campaign after campaign in Salesforce, with redundant fields and statuses? The AAkonsult Campaign Status app takes a long and slow manual process and builds in some smart shortcuts. Rather than populating all campaign details fresh every time, this app allows you to create campaign templates, that can be applied with just a click and applies your default values to whatever fields you specify.

aakonsult

 

Tired of having to set up Campaign Member Status’s every single time you create a new Campaign. Simply setup a list of default status values by Campaign Type and the system automatically assigns.

Check it out here!

Tip of the Week – Tips for Salesforce Campaigns

Tip of the Week – Tips for Salesforce Campaigns

Salesforce Campaigns are one of the best additions you can make to your marketing plan. Why are they so good?  First off, you get instant access to all your Salesforce accounts, contacts and leads. Not only that, but the data, reports and metrics that you can access can’t be beat. Here are a few tips for getting the most of your Salesforce Campaigns:

  • Parent Campaigns can make your process faster as well as keep you better organized.
  • Make sure to check your Salesforce reports for campaign effectiveness data.
  • Use automated features to add different contacts / members to different campaigns. You can also target specific groups of members, to maximize impact.
  • If you have both a marketing and sales team, think about creating a standardized Campaign process to ensure both teams understand their responsibilities and all gaps are covered.

Click here for more tips on campaigns!

-Ryan and the CMB Team

App of the Week – Simplify marketing with the Campaign Segmentation Wizard for Salesforce

App of the Week – Simplify marketing with the Campaign Segmentation Wizard for Salesforce

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Marketing is mission critical to any business, and Salesforce is a powerful tool for supercharging your marketing efforts. But if you need to randomly segment your campaigns for any reason, such as for A-B testing, it can be time-consuming and a bit tricky. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could segment a campaign in just a few clicks and get on with your day? Well, you should check out the Campaign Segmentation Wizard for Salesforce!

Easily break down Campaigns for A-B testing or using the Salesforce.com Mass Email wizards. Create segments of whatever size works for you and randomly assign campaign members to those segments, all of them rolling up using standard Campaign Hierarchy.

This free, unmanaged package is provided by Salesforce Labs, and it’s pretty cool! Watch the video below and check it out today!

Tip of the Week – Wish your clients Happy Holidays from Salesforce

Tip of the Week – Wish your clients Happy Holidays from Salesforce

Happy Holidays!

Customer relations is central to any CRM implementation, and happy clients tend to mean more revenue. You work hard all year to make your customers feel good about your products and the services you provide, but with the winter holidays approaching, the task of reaching out to all your clients to wish them a happy holiday season can seem daunting. How do you keep track of who’s been called, emailed, visited? Who’s getting a card or gift? Not to fear, Salesforce can help!

The simple solution to your holiday metrics needs is Campaigns. Create a Campaign called 2014 Holiday Outreach, then create separate child Campaigns for each of your holiday initiatives (such as Christmas Cards, Chocolate Boxes, or Holiday Email). Once you’ve set these up, you can go ahead and add your campaign members to the appropriate campaigns and track their status (Email Sent, Turkey Cooked, Santa fed). You can even mass email your pretty holiday email template with 4 easy steps. Now you can keep track of costs, contacts made, and not miss making that powerful connection in this time of thankfulness, family, and friends.

Special credit to one of our awesome clients who recommended this week’s holiday tip!

-Jared and the Salesforce Guys