Corrao Group Blog

The release of Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will help manufacturers gain access and visibility into their full business operations. Having one single source of truth is critical for collaboration on sale agreements, forecasting, and more. Salesforce solved major points for the manufacturing community by creating a new cloud for the next generation of manufacturers. Below is a list of our favorite Manufacturing Cloud features.

Sales Agreements

Manufacturers can unify their run-rate business with information housed on the Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP) and order management system. Both the account and operations teams will now have access to a single source of truth, continually updating in real-time as changes to the deals are made. Sales Agreements give users full visibility into committed and actual order volumes, the performance of the agreement against the forecast, and other time-phased metrics.

Account-Based Forecasting

Manufacturers can now gain insights into their current business as well as future opportunities. Leverage account-based forecasting to develop more accurate forecasts for your sales, finance, and operation teams. “Account teams can also add updates on changing customer needs or market demands, allowing the team to collaborate and adjust forecasts in real-time (Salesforce).”

Einstein Analytics

Automatically gain insight into your account health, demand insights, product penetration, and sales agreement process. According to Ashish Kofhani, the Senior Vice President of Products, Einstein Analytics is his favorite new feature. He says, “Of all the new features, my personal favorite is the Manufacturing Einstein Analytics Pack. Einstein analyzes all the data from net new business, run rate business, past orders, current orders, etc. and churns out insights and recommendations on which accounts to target, products to position, and prices to quote. It is AI in action.”

Community Cloud

Extend pre-built sales agreement templates to your channel partners to collaborate on deals, leads, and opportunities. Leverage Community Cloud for company-wide visibility into all business processes to ensure all your partners are on the same page. Through integrating the Community Cloud platform, you can extend real-time transparency and collaboration capabilities in Manufacturing Cloud to your clients and partners.

Mulesoft AnyPoint Platform

The Mulesoft Anypoint Platform’s ERP plugins and templates make it easy to collect order information from your ERP or order management systems. By unifying your back office with your front office, you can reduce the complexity of integration. Mulesoft’s platform helps manufacturers maintain a real-time, accurate view of their account activity.

Forecasting

Manufacturing Cloud allows users to take control of their forecasts to have a more accurate description of their entire business. We talked more about how forecasting will impact manufacturers in our last blog, which you can find here.

Decades of Manufacturing Experience

Working with Salesforce since 2008, we’ve have seen the invaluable benefits that a CRM can have for companies, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will allow customers and their partners to have company-wide visibility into all business processes. With tools such as sales agreements and forecasting, data can be analyzed effortlessly. Salesforce consulting services have been just as important to us as business process optimization, and we strive to help businesses maximize their investments into their CRM and Manufacturing Cloud.

Sources

https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/stories/2019/09/091619-kc/

https://www.salesforce.com/products/manufacturing-cloud/overview/

 

 

We’ve attended the webinars, read through the release notes, and used the features. With our customers in mind, we trained our team on these new features to improve our Salesforce consulting services. In addition to the full Salesforce Winter ’20 release notes found at the bottom of the blog, here are some of our favorites.

Sales Cloud 

Einstein: Forecasting Enhancements

• Description: Einstein forecasting allows users to conduct quarterly forecasting along with monthly forecasting.
• Benefits: Receive better insights from AI to make better business decisions concerning the stages of your deals.

Sales Cadence Branching

• Description: Branching, which looks and feels identical to the branching in Pardot’s Engagement Studio, allows you to create two different next best steps for your sales representatives.
• Benefits: Sales Cadence Branching saves your sales reps time and moves their lead or contact to the next best step, whether that’s through an email or call.

Service Cloud 

Einstein Case Routing

• Description: Einstein Case Routing automatically classifies and routes support cases based on a range of criteria including qualifications, areas of expertise, and historical success rates.
• Benefits: Service Agents don’t have to manually review cases and have more time to help customers.

Lightning Knowledge Enhancements

• Description: Users now have the ability to send knowledge articles on any platform in real-time.
• Benefits: Share a Knowledge Article with customers in conversations or with social posts when they are having issues.

Pardot 

Snippets

• Description: Creating snippets in Pardot allow companies who host webinars or other recurring events to reuse content without having to update the email and email templates themselves.
• Benefits: Save your users more time and increase productivity with the ability to reuse content.

Marketing Cloud 

Einstein Send Time Optimization

• Description: Use Journey Builder activity to find the best time for each individual email subscriber based on their history of engagement.
• Benefits: Helps improve your open rates by making sure your emails are sent at the most relevant time for your customers, leads, or contacts.

Platform, Productivity, and Integration 

Real-Time Event Monitoring

• Description: Use real-time event monitoring to detect and prevent risky events in Salesforce.
• Benefits: Get greater insights into security concerns, performance metrics, and system usage.

New Salesforce Mobile App

• Description: Rebuilt to bring a brand new experience. Completely personalized navigation allows users to customize their app to their own personal needs.
• Benefits: Lightning helps unify the Salesforce desktop and mobile experience with power navigation and AI-powered out-of-the-box functionality that improves productivity.

Salesforce Data Integration Enhancements

• Description: Users will be able to easily embed Salesforce reports and list views in Quip. Log calls in Quip and sync them back to Salesforce without having to leave Quip.
• Benefits: Increase user’s productivity by getting all your work done in Quip.

Einstein Analytics 

Einstein Discovery: Automated Story Creation

• Description: Create a story by selecting a data set in which Einstein Discovery intelligently determines which metrics to optimize and which fields to analyze to give you insights about your data.
• Benefits: Einstein Discovery does all the work for you, which frees up more of your time to work on other tasks while getting the best trends and insights into the data you want to see.

Einstein Analytics in the New Salesforce Mobile App

• Description: Access all your important data through search, favorites, chatter, and embedded dashboards.
• Benefit: Have to work on the go? No problem. Salesforce’s new mobile app mixed with Einstein Analytics allows users to stay on the go while being able to harness the same power of Salesforce on a desktop.

The Salesforce Winter 20’ Release Notes does bring exciting new features for Salesforce employees and customers. However, customers still using classic will not be able to use these features.

Lightning does need to be activated to maximize the Winter Release Notes. Lightning will be enabled for all users coming this January. It’s important that you start thinking about making the transition if you haven’t yet. We have the tools and knowledge to help you with your transition.

Sources

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/winter20/release-notes/salesforce_release_notes.htm

https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/winter-20-release-highlights

All Images and logos from Salesforce 

 

The year was 2019 and on this particular foggy October morning, Mr. Joestar, the head of a large software company walked into his office to get his day started. He put down his mug next to the little pumpkin his son carved for him and logged onto his computer.

The day went on as normal, calls being made and emails being sent. Recently, two very intelligent sales representatives, Austin and Sandra, have been closing deals left and right. Neither of them ever asked for bonuses or even a raise, they always pulled their weight and always finished tasks before the deadline. In a nutshell, they were the ideal sales employees. 

Mr. Joestar wanted to give them a little bonus. So he put it on his to-do list, in the meantime, there were major company updates past due that he had to send out to the staff. He wrote them back-to-back, both the bonuses and company updates.

Lunchtime was finally rolling around and all thoughts of work left his mind, all he thought of was the leftover barbeque he was about to have for lunch. He sent out the emails and left his office. 

Mr. Joestar sat down for lunch in the outside patio, opening up his lunch bag and taking out the Tupperware, when Patrick from accounting walked by and said.

“Extremely generous of you, Sir.”

“Anytime, I care for each and every one of my employees!”

Mr. Joestar thought …

“There was nothing on that email about employees, just updating software and a big customer was coming to us… it’s probably nothing.”

He went on with his lunch, not knowing the grievous mistake he had made. Once lunch was over, he walked back into the lobby and told the receptionist.

“We should put fake cobwebs all around here, really get us in the Halloween mood.”

“Absolutely, sir. That’s a great idea.”

Once he got into the elevator and pushed his floor. Carl and Denise from the got on at the 3rd floor and rode up with him. Carl started up a conversation with the boss. 

Carl:

“That email you sent us, I mean.. Wow, thank you, boss.”

Denise:

“Yeah, I can’t wait for it to go through!” 

Mr: Joestar:

“It’s not really that big of a deal, I plan on sending more out like that, hopefully, every month.”

Carl and Denise looked at each other confused and started whispering to one another. Carl was about to tell the boss what he had done, but there was a sudden ding and the doors opened up, and the boss walked out. Everyone seemed to be in a fantastic mood, people were smiling and laughing. Nothing unusual for a Friday afternoon. Joestar walked around the desks of his employees like he always does. 

“Hey, Thanks again, boss”

“You’re the best, boss”

“No one can top you, sir”

But one comment made my Sandra stood out to him.

“We really appreciate the bonus, boss, but why were Austin and I the only ones informed about the new company updates”?

Mr. Joestar stopped in his tracks.

“Excuse me? Can you please repeat that”?

“Well, we all got the email about the bonuses, but it seems that Austin and I were the only ones who got the update email.”

Joestar, pale in the face ran back to his office and logged onto his computer, he opened his email, hoping it wasn’t true. 

He first clicked on the “Company Update” email and looked at the recipient’s, only Austin and Sandra were selected.

He knew what he had done, he clicked on his “You’ve earned this” while reading the recipient’s line he slumped in his chair. The only recipient tagged, was everyone. 

At this moment, Mr. Joestar hears his phone ring, but it’s not his normal ringtone, it’s his morning alarm ringtone.

Mistakes like this happen quite a bit with Marketing Automation. Be sure this nightmare doesn’t happen to you by utilizing the Corrao Group to help set up, and run your marketing campaigns powered by Pardot.

 

 

 

Sometimes, companies make costly mistakes when emailing their customers. These can vary from minor typos to major emails being sent out to the wrong customers. Mistakes like these can lead to emails being sent to spam, businesses not taking them seriously, or email systems blocking them from emailing the company altogether. We’ll review five email marketing mistakes to avoid and how they could be impacting you today.

 

Not Personalizing Content

 One mistake that companies make is not personalizing their emails for their customers. They send out generic copied and pasted email content from inside their system. Customizing email marketing for each customer has many benefits for clients, it shows that you’re dedicated to working with them by spending the time upfront to know their business. It also reassures them that you pay attention and really cares about their needs and how your company can ultimately help them.

Not Optimizing for Mobile

Not optimizing your emails for your mobile customers can result in unread emails. According to Invespcro, “More than ⅔ of emails are being opened on smartphones and tablets” and “75% of smartphone owners use their mobile devices to check their emails”. Like the statistics state, a large portion of customers open and respond to their emails from their phones and not optimizing them to fit for mobile would be a mistake in itself. If emails are opened on mobile and they don’t render well within a few seconds, the customer is onto the next one. 

 

Not Updating Records

Another common mistake is using an old contact list instead of an updated one. Try to keep email lists up to date and routinely clean out the contacts that aren’t engaged with you anymore. Sending emails to old contacts can hurt your email sending reputation, causing future inboxes to flag your emails as spam and negatively impact your deliverability rate. As a marketing best practice, never send content from your marketing automation system to purchased lists. The list could be years old and if you send an email out and 80% hard bounced due to incorrect, or old, email addresses, your system could be shut down. 

 

Poor Subject Lines

Having poor subject lines in your emails can make or break whether or not your customers open them. According to Business News Daily, “the average open rate for emails across all industries analyzed was 20.81%. It’s hard to get consumers to open your emails, and bad subject lines can wreck your chances of boosting your open rate.” Most subject lines should be under 60 characters. People tend to open emails that have a simple, yet knowledgeable subject line. Using relatable wording for different companies can make all the difference as well.

 

Not Paying Attention To Spam Best Practices

There will be times where emails won’t be properly delivered. This is because of the customer’s inbox putting your emails straight into the spam folder. A couple of reasons why this happens comes from not including a physical address in the email, or if you use words that are usually linked to spam content. If you’re curious about whether or not your emails will be marked as spam there are tools, such as Salesforce Pardot, that can help give you feedback on if your email would be spam, and how to fix them if so.

 

 

All of these email marketing mistakes are common, but can easily be avoided if you follow best practices. Being too pushy, emailing un-opted in leads, and sending irrelevant content are also best practices to be aware of. Here at Corrao Group, we are trained in Salesforce Pardot and will help you enhance and maximize all of your marketing emails. If you’re interested in working with us, please feel free to visit our website, and sign up for our newsletter too. Hope to see you there!