Marketers know that at the core of all their practice is the customer. Having the skill to connect and manage your clients allows for a seamless transition between marketing efforts, sales and ultimately, your entire organization. If you haven’t already worked with a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM), the purpose is in the name: To better manage your customer relationships. If this is your first time working with Salesforce, don’t let its complexity feel daunting: All these moving parts are there to make sure that your client communication is seamless– a marketers dream!
While many people believe that Salesforce tends to lean more towards the sales division of your organization, here’s how it can help marketing thrive:
Salesforce allows for marketers to classify their portfolio and segment their clients to allow for more a more structured database. This will take the guesswork out of when and who to launch a campaign to, allow you to see just where your clients are really coming from (and which of their efforts are really working) and most importantly, creates a way to better focus targeting.
Here are the top 10 things you should consider in your new marketing role when you’re entering into a company that’s using Salesforce.
- What Salesforce edition do you own?
- Since features vary between the different editions of Salesforce it is important you know what you own.
- Which departments currently use Salesforce?
- Is it just sales the Sales team, or is it used but other departments, like Service or Operations? This will help to give a sense of the data that is available for you to use.
- What data do you currently capture?
- Start with Accounts and Contacts
- Does the Account data align with your segmentation needs?
- Does the contact data align with personas?
- Is it clean and complete?
- Then check out what else is being captured that you might want to use to market with.
- Start with Accounts and Contacts
- Is Salesforce integrated with any other solutions?
- This will help you understand where the data goes and if other information is available for marketing use.
- Does your new company have an email marketing tool?
- What is is?
- Is it integrated with Salesforce?
- Are you following GDPR, if needed?
- How has the company been managing preferences and opt-outs and does the tool align?
- Where or how were the email lists generated? Basically, did they have permission?
- Does your company use Campaigns?
- If so, how?
- How does our company manage leads?
- Does your company use the lead object to track and manage leads? Not all companies use this feature, so make sure you double-check.
- Where do leads come from?
- What is our lead process?
- When are leads converted?
- How does your company assign leads in Salesforce? Do they use Lead Routing?
- How is the buyer lifecycle reflected in Salesforce
- Is Salesforce aligned to our buying lifecycle?
- Can I track it end to end today or only some of it?
- Can I measure time in each stage of the lifecycle?
- Lead Qualification
- Does your company use the concept of MQL and SQL and if so does Salesforce align to this?
- Is your website integrated with Salesforce?
- Your contact us page can go directly into salesforce as a lead.
Understanding the items above, allows you to be in a good place to know what you can use today as well as what work might need to be completed to better align Salesforce to increase your marketing capabilities. As we know data is at the core of marketing and Salesforce can help you get your customer data organized.
Still want to know more about where marketing and Salesforce align? Check out this marketing report from Salesforce here
