Planning makes a difference

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” goes the old adage. Success depends on having a plan in place to make sure everything goes smoothly. It’s a good idea to even make a back-up plan in case the first one doesn’t go as you’d hoped. For marketing automation efforts that could be creating alternate email campaigns or different copy on landing pages to run some A/B testing. Have more than one person record that webinar (been there – ouch!) or make sure you have extra customer quotes for a press release. Your efforts are more likely to be rewarded if you take your time and make plans in advance rather than throw things together at the last moment.

Valentine’s Day Tip: Buy her a card just in case you can’t get that iPad. Get her flowers regardless. 

It takes time, baby

Don’t rush things. You may be getting pressure from others to get things done quickly but make sure you’ve got enough time to get the done right. Do your research and find out the best practices that others are using to be successful. Don’t be afraid to ask for more time if you’re not confident in your time-line. If they are really good, your team will support your decision in making sure things are taken care of the first time. Too much time and money is wasted trying to come back and fix things that should have been done correctly out of the gates. Automating a poorly crafted message will negatively affect how people perceive your product, employees, and company.

Valentine’s Day Tip: Romance is not dead.

Greater effort – greater reward

Let’s be honest here, most marketing automation tools out there have just about the same amount of core features to get the job done. The difference between success and failure lies mostly with the implementer and the amount of effort the team is willing to put in for reward. It’s not necessarily how much you spend, but how well you execute the plan and use the tools at your disposal. Sure, you can see some results with a quick implementation but it may not be the quantity or quality you desired. Find a nice HTML template instead of plain text emails. Design a lead flow that captures more complex user behavior than simply dripping them email. Integrate your SaaS product with LoopFuse Custom Events and turn your product in to a self-regulating marketing engine.

Valentine’s Day Tip: You know it’s worth it, so put in a little extra effort to show her you care.

Richard Murdock (@shinyranger) is the Senior Manager of Customer Support at LoopFuse. Our goal is to make sure you have the best experience possible with our products.

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

Removing Duplicates

Before importing a list, it’s usually best to remove duplicate entries. Sure, we’ll de-duplicate based on email address as we pull in the list, but cleaner data is better data. In this example we’ve highlighted all the rows we want to clean and then used the “Remove Duplicates” function in Excel. Once we hit OK, the second “dwhite@acme.org” entry in this screen shot is removed because we’ve selected only the Email. If we had left all three boxes checked there would be no removal because “David” is unique from “Dave” and is therefore considered a separate entry.

Comparing Values

This is one request we get quite often when customers are looking to clean up old lists or remove dead leads from their database. I have the customer export the list they want to clean from LoopFuse. (This can be done by following this help article.) Next they can strip out all the extra columns except the Email address. That is the unique value we use when importing a list so it will simply be merged back in to the existing record. Now we need to get the values that are being scrubbed against in to the same sheet.  I usually make sure I name the columns in a way that helps me keep things organized.

Now it’s time to compare the two columns. The first formula will list out the common values found between the two columns.

=IF(COUNTIF($A$2:$A$14,B2)>0,B2,”")

$A$2 is the top end of the column and $A$14 is the bottom row. If you had 5,000 records, for example, it would be $A$5001. You can adjust as needed. Copying that formula all the way down in Column C will list out those who appear in both columns.

The formula for finding only the values in Column A is this:

=IF(B2=”",”",IF(COUNTIF($B$2:$B$14,A2)=0,A2,”"))

As seen in this screen shot, you can have different sized columns and still do a comparison. There is a catch with this formula, however. You need to have something in those “blank” fields in Column B to compare against. I just typed in a space and copied it to the blank cells.

The formula for finding only the values in Column B is this:

=IF(A2=”",”",IF(COUNTIF($A$2:$A$14,B2)=0,B2,”"))

Just as in the “Only Column A” example, you’ll need some holder value in the blank spaces in the shorter list.

Once you have scrubbed your list you need to save it out properly. What I do is save it as a CSV list, close the file, and then re-open it in Excel. This will remove the formulas and leave you with just the values in the fields. You can then delete the unwanted columns using the “Remove Duplicates” trick to get rid of the blank rows and save it once again as a CSV file. Your file should now be ready for import back in to LoopFuse.

Resources

Most of this article is based on the information I found at this page: http://www.officekb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/ms-excel/89947/comparing-two-columns-of-data-to-find-common-values

I’ve also used this method in the past to get familiar with the concept of just highlighting differences in Excel. It led to other finds on data management. http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/06/17/compare-2-lists-in-excel/

If you have a better or easier way to do this kind of thing, feel free to share your tips here or over at our “Share Your Stuff” forum on the Customer Portal.

Richard Murdock (@shinyranger) is the Senior Manager of Customer Support at LoopFuse. Our goal is to make sure you have the best experience possible with our products.

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

This is a guest post by Matt Heinz, President, Heinz Marketing. Read more on his Marketing blog.

The fine folks at Focus.com let me do a Webinar on this topic several months ago, but I wanted to summarize what I consider to be 10 fundamental B2B sales & marketing metrics here as well.

You can get an on-demand recording of the full Webinar here, but below (with some qualifying thoughts & questions) are the 10 metrics.

Quick Disclaimer: Just because you can track it, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you can track it, doesn’t mean it’s important. Choosing the right metrics that will give you clarity and drive action in your business is most important.

So without further adieu…

1. Marketing Cost per Sale
You absolutely must track leads through to close and beyond. This helps you understand not only spend efficiency but cost per lead source and, eventually, lifetime value of leads you may be generating from higher-priced channels. Even better if you can track those leads through to renewals, referrals and other post-sale activity.

2. Customer Lifetime Value
What are you willing to spend to acquire a new customer? It’s more than just the first purchase or first month’s revenue. Which customers are most profitable to you? What do they look like, where do they come from, and how can you get more of them? How will this insight drive sales incentives and behavior as well? And is your customer experience team involved in defining target customers and setting expectations before the sale?

3. Nurture Database Performance
First off, how are you defining a lead that’s in a “nurture” category – someone who’s somehow qualified but not yet ready to buy? What number and percentage of deals come out of your growing nurture database? Do you know what catalyzed their movement out of nurture and into an active buying cycle?

Bonus points if you can use this insight to predict future revenue from your nurture database over time. What’s a new “nurturable” lead worth to you based on this model?

4. Sales Cycle Length
How long is each sales stage once a lead is qualified and in the market to buy? What catalyzing events (internally or externally) accelerate deal velocity? Where are your opportunities getting stuck and is there anything you can do to proactively move them through more quickly?

Many lead generation models don’t take into account sales cycle length and duration, and therefore overestimate new sales in too short of a period of time. This metric is critical to accurate forecasting.

5. Addressable Market Size
Does your entire organization define your target market the same way? How do your sales goals translate to market penetration expectations? Based on your funnel input and conversion assumptions, are those market penetration expectations realistic?

Depending on the maturity of your market, you may also want to make sure your addressable market is small enough. Are you unique enough for your immediately most addressable customers, or are you reaching too broadly?

6. Lead-to-Opportunity-to-Sale Conversion Rates
You can quickly over-complicate this one, but at minimum make sure you understand two numbers: How many leads does it take to create an opportunity, and how many opportunities end up closing? Bonus points, of course, if you can further break this information down by lead source, vertical industry, sales rep and any other angles that help you optimize for acquisition cost and sales volume.

7. Deal Size
Are some deals not worth pursuing? Do you know where your sweet spot is, and are you proactively targeting it? Are you adjusting your sales & marketing strategies based on revenue, margin and lifetime value yield potential?

8. Qualified Leads
First, ensure that sales & marketing agree on a common definition of a qualified lead. And it’s OK to have different stages of qualified leads. But make sure there are explicit next steps for managing these leads moving forward, and explicit roles for both sales & marketing to do that. Now look back at your lead sources, nurture paths and other activities to determine where you’re most successfully generating qualified leads from, and double down there.

9. Referrals
Too often companies constrain potential referral volume by making the act of generating a referral too difficult. A cumbersome form or registration process may be easier for you to track, but may lower your capture rate. What programs and incentives do you have in place to drive the right referrals? And are you segmenting referrals from customers vs. prospect, influencers, etc.?

If you’re doing it right, the biggest source of referrals for your business may be a group that’s never given you money, and never been an active customer. How are you engaging, capturing and measuring referrals with that audience?

10. Customers
Quantify your best customers, and ensure that your sales & marketing efforts are focused on finding and closing more of them. Is your core or most-valuable customer segment growing or shrinking? Can you quantify your share of wallet? What additional opportunities do you have to increase loyalty, lifetime value, referral potential and more?

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

Just like a well-proven recipe, Marketing Automation programs (like LoopFuse) can generate success such as a 178% increase in deals if you start with the right software and get your processes in place to take advantage of it.

Start with a good recipe

This may take some trial and error to find something that suits your tastes, but there are plenty of recipes out there that can be used as a starting point for your next masterpiece. The salsa recipe I use came from my dad. He found it at a county fair about 15 years ago when he bought an “all-in-one” salsa maker. The source didn’t matter as much as the end results. I liked the combination of ingredients and the overall flavor, but there was room for me to interpret it the way I wanted to.

There are all sorts of good examples on the web on how to build lead flows, set up scoring, and build email templates for your marketing automation campaigns. Find the resources that match your needs and then build from there. We have some great Tips & Tricks in our customer database, but you can use email templates from other vendors, lead flow structures and logic from competitors, or scoring rules based on your own experience.

Tweak the recipe

With a good base, I was able to experiment with the recipe a bit and make it my own. For example, normally I use Serrano peppers for my heat. It has sort of a delayed heat to it so you get that kick at the end of the bite. Sometimes I’ll use jalapenos if I can’t find the Serrano peppers. They deliver a more immediate kick. For the occasional special knock-out I’ll put in habanero peppers. Although my recipe is fairly well set, now, I do still allow for tweaking during each batch. For example, I’m able to adjust the amount of lime or cilantro if needed. This allows me to zero in on the preferred taste.

Once you have a Marketing Automation mix that looks good, adjust it to your needs. No example flow or email template is going to be an exact fit right out of the box. Own it. Make it work for you. With the right Marketing Automation suite of tools like LoopFuse, you can make those examples fit within your business process and produce the results you’re looking for.

Refine the technique

When I started out making salsa, I used the exact same method as my dad. I bought a salsa maker and dropped in the ingredients to chop them up by hand. I didn’t do that for long because it was too much work… and if I wanted to make a larger batch for a party I had to repeat that process over and over. I quickly moved to using a food processor. I would pulse the individual ingredients to get the right texture and then combine them in a larger bowl to get the right balance of flavors. It was some work at first to get the recipe *I* wanted, but now I can repeat the process in almost no time at all and get consistent results.

It will take a little while to get your Marketing Automation in place because each business case is different. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not being honest with you. There are methods you can use to help shorten that implementation time, but there will always be a bit of customization to make it perfect for your needs. Don’t get frustrated with that personalization time. Use it to your advantage and create something you’ll be proud of.

Not all salsa is created equal

I took some salsa to a family event over the holidays. My sister came up to me and asked me what I put in the salsa that made it different (and better )than hers. I asked her what recipe she used and it turns out we started with the same basic ingredients that our dad had put together. The difference was in the execution. She was still using a hand-crank salsa maker and dropping everything in together. I had moved on to a more automated, carefully crafted recipe that was now producing much better results.

Marketing Automation can be a success or a failure, depending on who is cooking up the recipe. Given the same basic ingredients, instructions, and techniques, a Marketing Automation plan can still fail if it’s not executed properly. You may get decent results if you just grab a recipe off the shelf and copy what others have done, but you won’t see true success until you take some time to tweak and refine your processes to suit your needs.

By now you’re probably hungry for salsa and you want that recipe. I’m happy to share it. Just remember that it won’t turn out exactly the way I make it. This is for a decent sized batch of salsa.

15-20 Roma (plum) Tomatoes
1 White Onion
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 Green Bell Pepper
2-3 Serrano Peppers
1 bunch of Cilantro
3-4 cloves Garlic
1-2 Limes
1-2 Tbsp. Salt

Chop the tomatoes, onion, cilantro and bell peppers in the food processor. I use a food processor to pulse my ingredients individually to a good texture. I don’t want the pieces too big (crunchy salsa is not good) or too small (we don’t want soup). I do the tomatoes first and set them aside in a strainer over a bowl to catch the extra juice. This helps keep the salsa from getting too runny later because the salt will draw out moisture from the tomatoes.

I usually chop the Serrano peppers and Garlic by hand. My processor is too big to effectively chop them individually and if I mix them with other ingredients I may get the balance wrong. I can also control the heat better by removing some or all the seeds from the Serranos before chopping them up.

Once I have chopped the main ingredients and they are in the bowls I start to mix them together. Cut a lime in half and squeeze the juice over the mixture. Sprinkle salt over the salsa and mix it in. Remember, you can always add salt and lime if there isn’t enough, so make sure you taste the batch after getting it mixed so you find the right balance for your palate.

Richard Murdock (@shinyranger) is the maker of a killer salsa, a “to-die-for” cheesecake, a fantastic Pecan pie, and Senior Manager of Customer Support at LoopFuse. Our goal is to make sure you have the best experience possible with our products.

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

There are some really great points made here about engaging prospects early, building out an editorial calendar to drive your content marketing strategy, reminding yourself to always have a call to action in any marketing message, and focusing on customer pain/outcomes vs. your features/benefits.  Great stuff!

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.