We’re always getting good questions from new users on the benefits of using LoopFuse in various ways. One question that seems to come up time to time is: “How do LoopFuse web forms differ from Salesforce.com’s Web-to-Lead feature?” Web-to-Lead and LoopFuse forms do share a lot of common functions, so I think that is where the initial confusion lies. LoopFuse forms can do everything Web-to-Lead does, such as capture data, return to a Thank You page, trigger an auto-response email, and assign registrants to a specific Salesforce.com campaign. There is quite a bit more, however, that LoopFuse forms can do for your Lead capture.
Here are a few ways that using LoopFuse can be better for capturing Leads on your website. (more…)
This is a guest post from Tom Callway, Marketing Manager at IT monitoring platform company Opsview. You can connect with Tom on Linkedin or follow him on Twitter @opsview. Also be sure to check out Tom talking about the impact LoopFuse made at Opsview in this video.
I joined a UK technology start-up as Marketing Manager in 2009 and was immediately tasked with increasing the number of high quality leads to our sales team by 500%. Tough call? Yes, but this is how I did it. (more…)
Lauren Carlson, who is a CRM Market Analyst at Software Advice, recently shared results from a “what do you wish you had asked your marketing automation vendor” survey. Lauren is great and very proactive in the way she engages and shares her research so we wanted to point it out on our blog as well as invite these questions from anyone contemplating using marketing automation (or having buyer’s remorse after purchasing another solution).
LoopFuse is pretty unique among the options that automate marketing. How so?
We offer a free version to allow our customers to try before they buy as well as smaller companies with big aspirations can use the free version until their prospect lists or site traffic grows. Even then we are extremely competitive with our pricing – we want to be part of your success and not just another technology vendor.
We are deeply integrated with Salesforce.com so those customers with the greatest success on our platform use Salesforce.com for their CRM needs. No doubt there are other CRM products out there (MS Dynamics, Netsuite, Oracle, etc.) but we are focused and committed to Salesforce.com and their customers at this point. We haven’t ruled out supporting other systems in the future but we like being able to focus on Salesforce.com to deliver as tightly integrated marketing automation to CRM system experience as possible vs. spreading ourselves too thin or creating weak integration in the pursuit of adding logos to our partner page. We have found that taking the step to centralize, organize, and monitor sales pipeline performance is an important indicator about how successful a marketing automation deployment will be. Remember – technology is just an enabler, you need to design an integrated marketing to sales process first. This doesn’t have to be complex but at least connect the dots to understand what happens when a lead is captured, what the follow up options are, and how sales engages on each opportunity.
We focus on small and medium-sized businesses with the goal of providing sophisticated marketing automation without the overhead, cost, and headache of systems designed for extremely large companies and serious complexity. We actually have many customers who are departments within larger companies who were looking for a straight-forward and easy to manage approach to lead nurturing.
If you run a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business or happen to be the Vice President of Marketing at one, you need to have marketing automation in place. Why you may ask?
Most, if not all, SaaS companies offer a free trial of some kind whether that is based on a period of time or staying below a usage threshold. Either way there is a large volume of user registrations at the top end of the funnel and these can vary from curious passers by to genuinely interested sales opportunities.
Sorting and segmenting out those opportunities from the rest can be time consuming not to mention highly frustrating for the sales team as they lack an understanding of just how interested each “lead” is in the product and can end up wasting time on unqualified opportunities. (more…)
Several folks from the LoopFuse team are here at Dreamforce at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and enjoying a great show. Dreamforce, salesforce.com’s annual tradeshow, is delivering on all their promises so far. We are excited to leave the cold weather of Atlanta for the sunny 60 degree weather that San Francisco, the host to Dreamforce 2010, is providing. Announcements such as the launch of Salesforce Database.com, chatter free and an appearance by Will.i.am have created quite a buzz.
So far I have enjoyed seeing several LoopFuse customers and partners.
Many thanks to Salesforce.com for putting on such a great show where we have the opportunity to get some one-on-one time with many of our customers and partners while meeting a lot of new friends along the way. This year’s show is packed full of exciting, educational and networking events. Hope to see all of you there and let us know if you are interested in meeting up (@loopfuse) while we are here in San Francisco.
I recently attended the Atlanta Salesforce User Group where Loopfuse was sponsoring and one of my founders, Roy Russo, was speaking. The topic on hand – enhancing your CRM with Loopfuse. One of his first comments was “what makes a lead qualified?” We have several customers who believe all leads that perform any activity on the site should be considered qualified and routed to the CRM and the sales team. And then there are others, present company included, who use lead scoring to determine which leads will be followed up on by sales. By using lead scoring within Loopfuse OneView, you are allowing your prospects to self-qualify themselves based on criteria you set. Loopfuse OneView will then assign each prospect a grade based on their score.
First step, talk to your sales team. Get an understanding of what they are seeing come through the pipeline. Who are the most qualified prospects? Is it webinar attendees? Or is it simply companies based in a specific industry or geography are the hot leads. They are the experts in talking to leads day in and day out and can really give you an idea of how to set up your scoring.
With the highly successful launch of our Loopfuse Freeview offering in June and our innovative Partnership program in August, we have had several requests to share information amongst our community. So today, I would like to informally introduce the Loopfuse Exchange. The goal for the Loopfuse Exchange is to share the best practices from some of the best sales and marketing professionals in the business who give their companies a competitive edge. The Loopfuse Exchange will be the place to visit for the most up to date sales and marketing best practices, and central to the Exchange will be a series of articles on various marketing functions — contributed by Loopfuse customers, partners and friends — that will help new and experienced marketers alike increase their effectiveness generating market awareness and demand. Topics will include Website construction and design, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Lead Nurturing and Scoring, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay per click (PPC) advertising, Social Media and Networking, E-mail marketing, Event marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Reporting and more.
Later this afternoon, we will have our first guest blog post for the Loopfuse Exchange by one of our partners, Greg Malpass of Traction Sales and Marketing. Stay tuned for more exciting information on the Loopfuse Exchange.
Join us for the second installment of our new webinar series “Light the
Fuse.” This series is intended to provide you, the LoopFuse user, valuable
tips and tricks on how to use LoopFuse OneView to grow your business.
Learn about the different options available when integrating your CRM with
LoopFuse from Tom Elrod, co-founder of LoopFuse. He will walk you through
the CRM integration process, start to finish, and give you tips along the
way on how to use LoopFuse more effectively.
How will this help grow my business?
By integrating your sales and marketing tools together you have taken the
first step in closing the loop between marketing and sales. You can give
your sales team visibility into the hottest leads by providing lead
activity and scoring right in your CRM.
You will learn how to:
Configure your CRM and the different options available
Create the CRM interaction rules best suited for your business
Send real-time activity inserts to your CRM
Set up lead nurturing flows to specify what lead information is synchronized with your CRM
Lead Nurturing is the corner-stone of today’s marketing automation and automated email marketing processes. With it, marketers are able to lower their costs of new customer acquisition, build interest and awareness for their product and services, and help retain existing customers; all in an automated fashion requiring little effort from marketing staff.
Before making a purchase decision for a marketing automation platform, buyers should research and accumulate knowledge on successful lead nurturing programs, and more importantly, what types of lead nurturing programs they plan to implement. Of all features found today in marketing automation systems, it is important to note that with lead nurturing you should choose the system that is right for you and not simply buy the prettiest, cheapest, or what-the-consultant-tells-you. Implementing a Lead Nurturing program is a serious undertaking that seldom get right the first time. A system that can grow with you and can produce measurable and refinable results will suit you best in the long-run.
We’re always getting good questions from new users on the benefits of using LoopFuse in various ways. One question that seems to come up time to time is: “How do LoopFuse web forms differ from Salesforce.com’s Web-to-Lead feature?” Web-to-Lead and LoopFuse forms do share a lot of common functions, so I think that is where the initial confusion lies. LoopFuse forms can do everything Web-to-Lead does, such as capture data, return to a Thank You page, trigger an auto-response email, and assign registrants to a specific Salesforce.com campaign. There is quite a bit more, however, that LoopFuse forms can do for your Lead capture.
