Salesforce.com is an outstanding CRM platform and gives you the ability to send both mass emails as well as automated emails to individuals. If your organization uses Salesforce, you have the opportunity to create ongoing, automated drip marketing campaigns as well as distributing mass emails to your leads or prospects.

That sounds great, right? And it is. But once you get into the details you may notice a few potential issues with mass email and Salesforce marketing campaigns. Common issues that might impact your organization’s mass email strategy include:

1. Salesforce.com limits the amount of mass emails I send in a day.  Why can’t I send more than 1,000 emails per day?
2. We already use a mass email program such as Constant Contact, iContact, Vertical Response.  Will that work with Salesforce?
3. Can I connect my mass email solution to Salesforce?

Using Salesforce for Mass Email

One option is sending mass emails directly through Salesforce.  However, this may not always work with your mass email marketing strategy – here are some advantages and points to consider:

Salesforce  Mass Email Advantages

• You are paying for Salesforce and mass email is part of the package – so no additional cost.
• The mass email solution Salesforce supplies is native (within the application and fully compatible).
• You can easily target and segment list based on campaigns you create within Salesforce.
• Templates and Customization. Salesforce offers html, text and template options. You can also customize your email templates and personalize messages by inserting Salesforce fields.

Salesforce  Mass Email Considerations

• The daily email limitation – your organization will be limited to 1,000 mass emails through Salesforce per day.  That includes one off emails that might be coming from your drip marketing campaigns or sales team communications.
•  The email list limitation. Salesforce is not trying to enter the mass email market. Any mass email sent from your organization will be limited to 250 emails per send. Individual mass email limits are dependent on your Salesforce version – Professional and below are limited to 250 per mass email. Enterprise edition can send 500. Unlimited edition subscribers can send a batch of 1,000 mass emails.
• Email Sender.  This is a concern when companies send mass emails from a generic email such as info@, sales@ etc.  Salesforce requires the email is sent from the address from the user name’s email.

Salesforce Mass Email Options

If your organization is currently using and/or engaged with a third party bulk email marketing solution or you are seeking a mass email application that offers more flexibility than the native Salesforce mass email marketing option, you have several choices.

Your best resources can be found through the Salesforce AppExchange.  But to make it easier here are some of the most popular third party mass email services that integrate with Salesforce:

• ConstantContact
• VerticalResponse
• iContact
• Boomerang

In a future post I’ll write a review about each option. All have their advantages and disadvantages. The key is identifying the best Salesforce mass email marketing option for your organization’s needs – that typically involves pricing and functionality. Then you’ll want to customize Salesforce on the back end to best suit the needs of your company and employees.

Salesforce Mass Email Integration

Integration of your mass email solution with Salesforce will provide your Sales team to quickly see which email a lead or contact received as well as more detailed data.

You will want to consider if your mass email solution operates outside of Salesforce or if the mass email application is native to Salesforce.

The primary difference here is one mass email option will require your sales team to create and send mass emails through the 3rd party application, such as Constant Contact. Mass email applications that operate native can be created and sent within Salesforce.  Easy to use application typically result in higher adoption rates.

Salesforce mass email integration will be easily accomplished by your Salesforce administrator or a qualified Salesforce marketing consultant.

Drip marketing is a relatively recent term to describe a marketing approach that has been employed for years by effective marketing companies.

You may ask, what are the benefits of drip marketing? Consider:

1. Increased sales conversions
2. Improved lead nurturing and qualifying
3. Better long term customer retention
4. Increased reselling and cross selling opportunities
5. More opportunity for customer / prospect feedback

And the rapid evolution of technology has made sophisticated drip marketing campaigns more accessible to the smallest of companies. Not to mention the introduction of new communication methods – now we have an array of social media and other channels to communicate with our prospects.  So how do we take advantage of this to better communicate our message / product / service and generate more revenue?

Drip Marketing Defined

First, let’s define drip marketing. I consider drip marketing to be a defined set of marketing and sales actions that are triggered by a series of target-based and time-based events.  Essentially you are defining, integrating and to a degree, automating your sales and marketing processes.

If that’s not so clear, here’s how Wikipedia defines drip marketing.

The Drip Marketing Toolbox

SalesForce.com can Automate Drip Marketing Campaigns

So let’s presume you wouldn’t read this far if you didn’t believe in the value of a drip marketing program. You want to know what tools are required to launch your own drip marketing campaign.

Here’s what should be in your toolbox:

• A CRM system capable of marketing automation – I have had good success with SalesForce.com
• A mass email service if you have sufficient leads in your database
• A diligent person who understands the value in effective sales and marketing process
• The ability to mail information if appropriate for your business
• Social media if appropriate for your business

Connecting the Marketing Campaign Pieces

If you use or are considering SalesForce as your CRM, consider a version, such as Enterprise, that permits workflow automation – it will take your drip marketing efforts to a new level. Here is a related article on SalesForce marketing.

By using workflow automation you can automatically: schedule tasks for sales people to execute, send out email communications, trigger direct mail events, initiate social media updates and more.

Consider the following marketing process:

1. New lead comes in through your company’s website – an auto-response email goes out immediately
2. Collateral (hard copy) marketing material is scheduled to mail to the new prospect (or emailed in electronic format)
3. The new lead is automatically assigned to a regional (or product/interest based) sales representative
4. A follow up call is assigned to that sales person
5. Management has access to dashboard reports showing how many leads are followed up by each salesperson
6. Another email / phone call / mailing is scheduled based on the customer actions of the above steps.
7. This process continues in more sophisticated methods and your marketing and sales operations become more efficient
8. And it’s all tracked to determine ROI if done correctly

Closing the Loop – Drip Marketing and Drip Customer Service

These principles can be applied after the sale as well as before (and during). Consider sending out a customer satisfaction survey as part of your drip marketing efforts.  Simply schedule an online survey email a certain time period after the sale has completed. With the recent developments in technology, you are practically only limited by your imagination when it comes to effective drip marketing.

Drip Marketing Campaigns Work

That’s why effective marketing companies have been using them for years.

Drip marketing techniques can be applied to almost any business model but if your business model involves online lead generation and a relatively long sales process, drip marketing may be a very effective solution to improve sales conversions and your bottom line.

Send me a message about your drip marketing campaign success stories!  I’ll use it in a future drip marketing and SalessForce post.

Most small businesses have dabbled in email marketing – whether it’s a newsletter, e-blast or other email marketing strategy.  Let’s cover some of the most effective email marketing strategies and some practical email marketing tips that will help your small business.

Email Marketing Strategy #1: The Email List

Your list is the single most important factor in your email campaign.  Your house list (you are developing a prospect database, right?) is your best email marketing list.

If you have integrated your email marketing platform and your customer database (typically requiring a CRM system) – that’s the best option.

Email Marketing Strategy #2: The Email Communication

Email communication comes in many forms – informational, newsletters, promotional, etc. For purposes of this article, let’s cover promotional (revenue generating) email marketing communicating.

Email Marketing Strategy #3: The Offer

This goes without saying but developing a compelling offer is critical to the success of your email marketing strategy.

Email Marketing Strategy #4: Segmentation

Once you’ve selected your offer and your email list – it’s time to segment the email marketing file. There are unlimited ways to segment your email marketing file – age of leads, geography, purchase history, recent activity, marketing acquisition channel – be creative and think about what is most relevant to your offer and list.

Email Marketing Strategy #5: Email Delivery

Depending on your business model the day of the week and time of the email delivery can impact open rates. Personally – for most B-to-B or B-to-C email marketing communications, I recommend Tuesdays (Wednesdays are second best) around 11am – eastern time.  That hits your email prospects before lunch on the east coast of the US as well as around the start of the day on the west coast.

Effective Email Marketing Tips

Let’s cover small of the most important design elements of your email marketing campaign. Follow these email marketing tips and you will develop optimal email marketing communications.

Email Marketing Tip #1 – Value Propostion

You have (at most!) 5 seconds to communicate your value proposition through email. Think about how you go through your own email. Your value proposition must be clearly communicated and the first ways the recipient discerns that is through:

1. The From line
2. The Subject line
3. The Email Preview Pane (if applicable) – Images and Content

Email Marketing Tip #2 – The From Line

The is the most important line for establishing trust. If you are using your house email marketing file, the recipient should know you. If you segmented recent or previous buyers, you have a greater chance establishing trust. Send your email from an email address that builds trust and contains your brand.

Email Marketing Tip #3 – The Subject Line

Get to the point – early. And make it compelling to the email recipient. Most email recipients open their inbox, read the From Line first and then the read the Subject Line, and decide to open, delete or save.  Subject Lines and From Lines work together – don’t emphasize brand in the subject line – communicate value to the recipient, in 40 characters or less.

Email Marketing Tip #4 – Images and Content

Your content should clearly reinforce the value proposition and benefit to the prospect. Your images and layout should be attractive. If you choose to send HTML based emails with images – check the layout of the email in multiple email clients.  Odds are your email will arrive with the images turned off, so make sure your value proposition is clearly communicated with and without images.

Email Marketing Tip #5 – Personalization

Personalization, using the email recipients’ information in the email (i.e. name, etc.) is information you should leverage. Consider how you can capture and use prospect data to improve conversion rates. At a minimum, it is generally better to use Dear [first name] instead of a generic salutation.

Email Marketing Tips and Strategies that Work

Effective email marketing requires testing. Once you have the basics in place, it’s important you test and track your results.  Implementing effective email marketing strategies is very important. But out of all these email marketing tips the most important one is to track your results. Email marketing is iterative and specific to your business’ niche.

Contact Marketing Practicality directly to optimize your email marketing efforts.

Here are some 5 email marketing tips to better interpret, test and analyze your email marketing campaigns.

Email Marketing Tip #1: Interpreting the Open Rate

After reviewing your email marketing metrics, you notice one person opened your email 30 times. You think, “Wow! What a hot prospect!”. Not so fast. If you sent HTML email and your recipient uses Outlook with the reading pane, your results can be skewed. If someone uses a reading pane and scrolls over your email using the up or down arrow keys, the email is opened in the reading pane. That counts as an open, even though the intent was nothing more than quickly scrolling past your email to get to a different email. So interpret this metric carefully.

Email Marketing Tip #2: Test, test, test!

If your email marketing list is large enough, you should segment and test your list every time you start an email marketing campaign. Common and useful things to test in your email marketing efforts include:

• Subject line – this is critical
• Email Offer or Call to Action
• List Segmentation – including: geography, age of leads, previous buyers vs. prospects, etc.
• Landing Page
• Creative

Email Marketing Tip #3: Use Website Analytics

If an email generates a click to your website, then what? Use your Web Analytics program to understand what happens next. Depending on your call to action, your Analytics program can tie in the performance of your email marketing campaign to the actual result.

Email Marketing Tip #4: Send HTML and Text Versions

Most email marketing service providers allow you to send an HTML version as well as a text only version of your email. Nowadays, most people use HTML as their default – but many people intentionally or not, only accept text based emails. Make sure you use both.

Email Marketing Tip #5: Follow Up with Qualified Leads

Prospects that opened up your email message multiple times or clicked through to your website, identified themselves as interested. Your next step should be to follow up directly with that prospect.

Email Marketing Service Providers

There are many email marketing service providers out there. Two of the most commonly used are iContact and Constant Contact. My personal preference is iContact but I use both depending on the client. If you have a small business and are looking for a quality email marketing service provider, you be satisfied with either of those two.

Email Marketing Tips Wrap Up

These are some basic email marketing tips. Email marketing can be as sophisticated as you want. But most importantly, your email marketing efforts should continually improve and yield a better marketing ROI. Contact Marketing Practicality for expert email marketing help with your small business.

If you are a small business and looking for an affordable way to reach out to your prospects, email marketing is a great channel. Most email marketing service providers have built in analysis and reporting so you can view your email marketing metrics in an almost real-time environment. But do you fully understand what the reports are telling you? Here are some email marketing tips to help you better understand email marketing metrics.

Overview of Email Marketing Metrics

Most email marketing services provide the following common metrics:

• Bounces – A bounced is mail didn’t get delivered to the intended recipient. This could be for a host of reasons – the email address was spelled incorrectly, the address no longer exists, the email was blocked by a firewall, etc.
• Released (sent) – Released emails were sent and delivered to the recipient.
• Unsubscribes – The email was delivered and the recipient unsubscribed from your email service – basically they have removed themselves from your email list.
• Opens – The email was opened (more on this later)
• Clicks – If there are links in your HTML email, any clicks are tracked.
• Forwards – The recipient used your email marketing service provider’s forwarding feature to send your email on to another person.
• Complaints or Spam – Complaints are registered when an email recipient reports your email as spam to their ISP (Internet Service Provider). It is usually done by clicking a Report Spam button in their email client.

The Most Important Email Marketing Metrics

The three most important email marketing metrics. When analyzing a campaign I initially focus on three key email marketing metrics:

Bounce Rate: the bounce rate is an indicator of the quality of your list. If you are emailing an in-house prospect list and you experience a high bounce rate, it’s time to perform some database hygiene and get your email addresses updated

Open Rate: The higher the better. If your email isn’t opened, your message is not conveyed. A good open rate is influenced by crafting a great subject line and how familiar the recipient is with your email address and company. It also indicates the relative level quality of your list; better prospects will yield a higher open rate. Interpreting the open rate can be tricky though, see my email marketing tips post.

Click Rate: These recipients are even more engaged than those who just opened your email and deserve special handling.

Email Marketing Metrics Wrap Up

Once you have a good grasp on email marketing metrics, you’ll be much better prepared to interpret the results of your email marketing campaign. Next step is to understand the basic nuances of email marketing which can be found under my 5 email marketing tips. Contact Marketing Practicality for expert email marketing help with your small business.