April 9, 2015

Marketing Automation Using Salesforce with Customer Journey Strategies

Earlier this week, we enhanced our built-in Salesforce CRM integration with two new triggers to help you automate your lead nurturing. Because we love connecting with your favorite, best of breed apps. A quick word before we hop into the triggers: integrating a customer relationship management (CRM) system and marketing automation software is like connecting peanut butter with jelly. With an integration:

• Your marketing and sales teams get a 360 degree view of your leads’ behavior

• You can automate your sales workflow

• You get insight into how to nurture leads through every stage of the buying cycle

Marketing automation software and a CRM are better together. Alright, onto the new triggers and the must-have marketing journeys! **Using the [Field Changed trigger**](https://autopilothq.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204025905-Trigger-Salesforce-Field-Changed), you can now kickstart a marketing automation journey based on any field value change on a Salesforce Lead or Contact. For example, you might add leads or contacts to a journey based on a field update. Let’s see it in action with two examples: 1) nurturing leads that go cold, or 2) triggering an upsell campaign.

1. Automatically nurture SaaS trial leads that go cold

So your lead downloaded a whitepaper you spent weeks on, clicked on a nurture email you tested over and over, spent an hour on a demo with your best sales rep, finally signed up for a trial…then dropped off the face of the earth. Isn’t that a pain? Yes, yes it is. When this worst case scenario happens, you can automatically change the lead status in Salesforce to “Nurture,” then use the Field Changed trigger to kickstart a lead nurture journey.

So what does this journey do to nurture trial leads?

In the example above, an email with “Tips to Automate Nurturing” is sent five days after the trial ends to a) give some space between the trial ending to not seem pushy and b) share educational content to regain trust with the lead. Ten days later, if the lead does not open the email they are sent a “SaaS Industry Trends” email to stay top of mind and position the company as a thought leader. When the lead is ready to buy, they’ll remember who to come back to. For the leads that clicked, they are sent a nurturing webinar invite. Because webinars require a greater investment of time and energy, asking the lead for a deeper commitment moves them closer to a sale. After all of your hard work, SaaS trial leads that go cold aren’t the end of the story. A journey triggered by a Salesforce field can nurture your leads back to a subscription.

2. Trigger an upsell campaign to newly minted power users

Here’s the scenario: You’re a subscription based business with bronze, silver, and gold plans. As your customers upgrade, more features and privileges are unlocked. Not to mention, your company makes more money. When a silver user hits their send limit in June and becomes a “Power User,” it’s prime time to upsell them with a nurture journey.

How does this journey help me upsell power users?

In this example, three things happen after a customer’s status changes to “Power User” in Salesforce:

• A notification is sent internally to the marketing team letting them know there’s a new power user

• An upsell email is sent to the power user with all the details about the gold plan

• A task is assigned to an account executive to call the power user about upgrading

The notification is sent because one of the marketing team’s focuses for Q2 is testing different pricing plans. The upsell email is sent in hopes the power user updates without a sales call. And the sales call is assigned to add a personal touch over the phone. If they don’t upgrade via email or pick up the call, a final email is sent seven days later with a hard sell to upgrade. Maybe they were busy, traveling, or didn’t have time to respond, and your email is the needed final nudge to upgrade. Could you imagine having to manually send these emails and assign tasks to sales reps every time? With the Field Changed trigger, you don’t have to. The second trigger we added is the Campaign Status Trigger. This trigger allows you to add Salesforce leads or contacts to a journey based on a change in their status on a Salesforce campaign. Let’s see it in action with this third example journey - trade show follow-ups and ROI determination.

3. Tie revenue to leads you met at your trade show booth

For people experienced with Salesforce campaigns, this is for you. Imagine this: You spent $50,000 on a trade show booth at your industry’s biggest event of the year, got hundreds of new contacts, and want to convert those leads, fast. This is where the Campaign Status Trigger comes in handy.

How does this journey help me follow up with trade show contacts?

The day after the trade show when you’re still in post-conference recovery mode, you upload your new contacts to Salesforce. After that, you change their status to “Attended” in your “Trade Show Booth” campaign in Salesforce and this journey goes to work. New leads are sent a “Thanks for stopping by our booth!” email with an invitation to sign up for a trial and mailed a physical postcard at the same time. These two touches across a digital and physical channel jog their memory of meeting you at the trade show while inviting them to take the next step. Five days later, the system checks whether the lead signed up for a trial. If they haven’t yet, a follow up “Sign up for a trial” email is sent in case the first one fell through the cracks. The cool part? Revenue from leads who sign up for trials and become paying users are tied back to the trade show. And voila, you can see what your return was on your $50,000 investment.

Now it’s your turn to create journeys

There’s so many possibilities of what you can create with two new new triggers to automate your lead nurturing and grow your business in the process. The above three must-have journeys are just a start. What kind of journeys will you create using Autopilot and Salesforce? Let us know in the comments.