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**Marketing** is about establishing objectives and delivering tangible outcomes, not simply flashy advertising and amusing commercials. A campaign may provide quantifiable indications of such results, but only if it is well-designed. The initial step is to define a set of objectives.

Some important reasons for creating campaigns are attracting new consumers, improving brand loyalty and repeat business, boosting average sales, or offering new products and services to your customer.

Determine what you can do to advance your company and set specific objectives based on your findings. The more precise you can be (rather than, say, declaring a goal to improve profit), the easier it will be to quantify, initiate, and track the campaign's performance

Planning a marketing campaign may be daunting. However, delivering a consistent message across various platforms to reach your target demographic could even be more tasking. The truth is that without a well-thought-out plan and established procedures, it may rapidly devolve into a disorganized jumble. But it does not have to go that way. Here are some simple tactics to make it easier.

## **Decide what you're going to promote**.

Every marketing effort promotes a product or service. You don't have to scratch your brain to come up with a marketing strategy since you can work something out with the team.

Businesses often conduct **marketing campaigns** to promote a new product, feature, or service, as well as a resource (such as a blog post, webinar, or video) or a brand message. It's the most straightforward aspect of your marketing strategy, but it's also the most crucial.

## **Create a campaign concept or theme - brainstorm ideas with your team.**

Your **marketing strategy** should have an overall theme that binds everything together, even if you know what you're advertising. How do you come up with a campaign theme or a campaign idea? Make sure you know what you're going to promote.

* What message will your campaign go out into the world?
* Is there a new feature in the product?
* Is there a new subscription pricing plan in the works?

Use the checklist to ensure you don't forget anything throughout the preparation phase.

Consider your target audience's interests and problems. What issues do they have, and what would pique their interest?

## **Create Marketing Channels - Make a list of what you'll need to make for each channel.**

You have a clearer picture of what you aim to accomplish at this point. You've identified the consumers you want to target and created a message to appeal to them. It would be best if you now chose how and where your marketing messages will be delivered.

In real life, this involves understanding where to produce and distribute information so that your target audience can see it.

* Are there any media outlets where you've had a lot of success in the past Examine previous data and go to locations where you know your folks are.
* Do you have any channels where you need to grow your audience? It may be beneficial to design campaigns around weak channels with great potential to develop better resources for your brand.
* Are there any resource or time constraints? Suppose you don't have a budget for a TV commercial, a social media campaign, or a magazine ad. In that case, you'll have to limit your options. Keep both your human and financial budgets in check.

## **Set campaign goals**

Creating content just for the sake of creating it is a waste of time and money. Suppose you want your business to maintain a positive cash flow. In that case, you need to demonstrate that your efforts are producing measurable results. The best way is to meet or exceed campaign goals.

## **Use a marketing calendar to plan out the execution of your campaign.**

There are plenty of essential elements in a marketing effort. If you depend on your mental capacity to keep track of what's going on, you'll never be able to keep up. Consider it your all-in-one project management solution for developing, planning, and executing marketing campaigns, and not only.

It is vital to note that the [**Salesforce**](http://www.salesforce.com) CMS, which is a part of Marketing Cloud, may come in handy when you use a marketing calendar for your campaign. Salesforce CMS serves as the respiratory organ of your business, making it easier for multiple team members to access any file you need for the campaign.

![](/uploads/schedule-table-event-planner-concept.jpg)

The Salesforce Content Management System (CMS) is used to store and retrieve documents, pictures, videos, knowledge articles, and more. It's now integrated into many aspects of the Salesforce user experience, particularly in the **[Content **Builde**](https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/create-compelling-content-with-content-builder)****r**Additionally, if you track the campaign start and end dates in Salesforce, we developed a tool that makes marketing teams easier **work with the** [**marketing calendar.**](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000003Io4WEAS) It's as if you're sharing your mind with your colleagues.

## **Creating campaign reports**

Now that you know how to reach your campaign goals, you should also know that creating campaign reports is part of the concept. A good campaign report provides all of the information you need to make an informed choice and take action. The quantity of data you have is typically less than the amount of information you need to make a choice. To put it in another way, there's no need to include everything in the report.

Luckily, since the [**marketing calendar**](/marketing-calendar/) gives an overview of your campaigns, you can get one planning report quickly. Then use other reports to create a method to visualize the data for easy understanding. Visualizing data usually entails converting raw data (numbers) into graphs or charts. Pictures tell a thousand stories, and diagrams make tons of points. You can put all these charts together into a dashboard to give you one place to go to understand campaign effectiveness - a great starting point when discussing campaigns in meetings.

These reports aim to give all of the data necessary to determine the effectiveness of campaigns in a timely way. You undermine the point of reporting in the first place if you spend hours each week producing and updating them. Your reporting procedure should, ideally, be as automatic as feasible. Even though your Salesforce generally comes with report types that make it easier, you may consider the [report sender app](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000pvspEAA) for sharing the data with other team members. It allows you to send the report to Salesforce and non-Salesforce users in an excel file.

Marketing is about establishing objectives and delivering tangible outcomes, not simply flashy advertising and amusing commercials. A campaign may provide quantifiable indications of such results, but only if it is well-designed. The initial step is to define a set of objectives. 

marketing-campaigns-how-to-plan-execute-and-report

Marketing campaigns - how to plan, execute and report


Technology has changed the approach to daily living. One of the main areas it has significantly impacted is e-commerce across the globe. Business has moved from a more physical exchange of goods and services to online sales where you can summon any product at your fingertips, and get it delivered conveniently and reliably. 

According to a [recent study](https://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/digital-marketing/the-adobe-2016-digital-trends-report/), many customers believe that the changes noted in the past few years have changed the history of eCommerce. Indeed, this transformation has taken a dramatic turn since Covid-19 hit the World. Even companies like [Defcon sauces and Kintec Finds](https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/offline-to-online-business-advice-digital-transformation/#defcon-brings-the-heat-to-their-online-store) took to a digital transformation to expand their reach.

While this article provides valuable tips for effective online sales, here are some ways eCommerce is changing the World one website per time; 

## **Ecommerce strategy**

- **Mobile friendly purchase:** A recent study found that [mobile users](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/03/u-s-consumers-now-spend-5-hours-per-day-on-mobile-devices/) spend an average of 5 hours daily on their phones. Therefore, they are more likely to use their phones for purchase instead of heading to a store. This approach provides accessibility and availability while allowing the consumer to browse through several products simultaneously.
- **Voice commerce**\- eCommerce has opened the door to voice interaction so that you can ask your digital assistant to make an order for you. Amazon Alexa, Google phones, and Microsoft Cortana are in this category.

## **Ecommerce software and tools**

In 2019, e-commerce hit $547 billion in the US alone. By [2020](https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.pdf), it reached $791.7 billion. There is no doubt that it is a lucrative venture. However, running an eCommerce business comes with much competition. For effective online sales, consider using e-commerce tools. 

These tools help automate and simplify every task about your business. They help your management time, customers, and yourself effectively.

## **What are the best e-commerce tools?**

1. ### **Customer Relationship Management software**
    

CRM ensures efficient interaction with customers and consumers to maximize profits. Since the tools in this category gather data from several channels, detailed purchase information helps you understand customer behavior.

[Salesforce](http://www.salesforce.com), a brand dedicated to bringing customers and businesses together through cloud-based solutions, has the tools that could help you.

2. ### **Online stores**
    

In a booming industry like eCommerce, several online eCommerce platforms are setting the pace. Since there are a number of platforms, it is essential to consider fees, technical skills, logistics, mobile-friendliness, and many other factors before you choose one.

- **Shopify:** an all-in-one solution for eCommerce startups. It is shopping made easy for everyone. Luckily they support third-party marketplaces, social media sales, and POS software. One of the reasons Shopify stands out is its versatility and accessibility on mobile devices. It has three payment plans; basic ($29 monthly), Shopify ($79 per month), and advanced ($299 per month). Again, with the BuildFire tool, you can build a Shopify mobile app for your business.
- **BigCommerce**: since its inception till date, this platform has processed over $25 billion in sales. It is presently used in over 120 countries in the World, and it comes with pre-loaded features. Furthermore, it has exceptional inventory management, SEO, and conversion tools. You are also sure of responsive customer support on a 24-hour basis. B2B favors the platform because it provides enterprise-grade solutions. With $29.95, $79.95, and $299.95 per month, you can enjoy the standard, plus, and pro plans, respectively.

3. ### **Delivery experience**
    

According to a report by [BizReport](http://www.bizreport.com/2015/06/77-of-online-shoppers-say-free-shipping-most-important-optio.html), 77% of online shoppers prefer to choose free shipping for their purchases. Therefore, it is clear that unreasonably high shipping costs may turn customers off, causing them to leave their carts. It may potentially reduce conversion rates. So, it is best if you considered low shipping costs, a good return policy, fast delivery, and periodical sales.

4. ### **Marketing**
    

- **SEO and SEM**\- online sellers never finish it all in their businesses. They continue to optimize things until its better. Therefore, you should consider this. You want to be sure your business is visible. The best way to ensure this is to have a solid content plan and employ SEO and SEM. 
- Build a trusted brand- a picture is worth a thousand words. It is valid for online sales. To provide value by staying true to what you promise. Consider testimonials and rewards for referrals.
- **Email marketing**\- marketing will always be vital for online businesses, so you want to stay with it. Email marketing is a personalized approach that helps you keep in touch with existing customers while providing them with information. Also, consider affiliate marketing with influencers on Social Media platforms. These guys get your active business engagement for the right price. You might consider featuring your brand in their posts too. 
- **User recommendation** (sharing buttons, testimonials on the website)- referrals and recommendations are a traditional but effective way to increase your online sales. Potential customers are more likely to trust you more when they have heard good things about you. Also, encouraging customers to click your sharing button on social media helps you reach more people. 
- **Ads-** ads increase visibility and help funnel your audience. They raise awareness of your product and ultimately improve the traffic on your website. These help sales and conversions. 
- **Study the data-** knowing what your audience thinks of your business goes a long way in improving their experience. Google Analytics and other available on the market analytic tools help you to keep optimizing your shopping experience. 

## **Wrapping it up**

There are several effective ways to improve your online sales. Technology has come to stay, and it will continue to make life easier for you and your customers.

Technology has changed the approach to daily living. One of the main areas it has significantly impacted is e-commerce across the globe.

tips-for-effective-online-sales

Tips for effective online sales

Following gut feeling is not the way to measure organization performance and it takes a lot more than that to run a successful business. What you need is a deep analysis of the sales, marketing, support, and financial results. And the only way to achieve it is to track **relevant operational metrics**.

The three departments that are most associated with the influence of [**CRM systems,**](https://www.salesforce.com/) utilize a whole range of different operational metrics to measure their related performance. By department, these include:

## SALES

- Number of prospects
- Number of new customers
- Number of retained customers
- Close rate
- Renewal rate
- Number of sales calls made
- Number of sales calls per opportunity
- Amount of new revenue
- Number of open opportunities
- Sales stage duration
- Sales cycle duration
- Number of proposals given

## MARKETING

- Number of campaigns
- Number of campaign responses
- Number of campaign purchases
- Revenue generated by the campaign
- Number of new customers acquired by campaign
- Number of customer referrals
- Number of web page views
- User goal completion rate on the web
- Time per website visit
- Customer lifetime value
- Cross-sell ratio
- Up-sell ratio
- Email list growth rate

## SERVICE

- Number of cases handled
- Number of cases closed the same day
- Average time to resolution
- The average number of service calls per day
- Complaint time to resolution
- Number of customer callbacks
- Average service cost per service interaction
- Percentage compliance with SLAs
- Calls lost before being answered
- Average call handling time

### **Operational metrics** are worth implementing in all areas.

In addition, to these more traditional operational metrics, recent years have seen businesses expand their measurements outside of the strict business metrics. These are specifically incorporating Voice of the Customer feedback like customer satisfaction net promoter score, customer loyalty, social media metrics like sentiment, influence, reach but also Project Management, Innovation and Leadership.

### **Because using data to evaluate what is working and what isn’t is a very valuable management process.**

And it is still a habit that is used too less. It can play a giant role in identifying and tracking the progress of organizational goals and identifying opportunities for improvement. That is an important step in formulating business direction and reducing declines in business performance.

Check also:

[How to calculate Annual Recurring Revenue and Monthly Recurring Revenue](https://cloudanswers.com/how-to-calculate-annual-reporting-revenue-and-monthly-reporting-revenue/)

#### Trusted and reliable Salesforce partner. Your support and help in Salesforce CRM implementation with all functions that your business requires. **Get in touch!**

Operational metrics are key performance indicators that display a measurable value that shows what's going on in the business in real-time.

what-operational-metrics-should-you-measure

What operational metrics should you measure?

for-administrators

For Administrators


Email: The easiest way to either a high marketing ROI or the easiest way to ruin someone’s day. [According to a survey ran by Crain BtoB Magazine](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/survey-shows-many-marketers-are-behind-in-use-of-data-targeting-and-measurement-143303436.html), 59% of marketers say that email is the highest revenue generation channel in their company. However, over 50% of people who receive subscription based emails unsubscribe because they never expected communication from the company.

Even if you have a loyal subscriber list to your content, there may be other factors in the way of your email marketing. These other factors can be summarized into one general issue: technical optimization. Emails are much more than sending awesome copy and a great content offer, they have several other properties that affect how they are sent, where they will get sent, and even the first impression people make of them in their inbox!

Luckily, we have a prescription if you think you’re suffering from the ailments of poor technical email practices:

**Your Email Technical Prescription:**

1. One verified sender to email from — If you’re using a CRM or marketing automation software for email campaigns, that’s great! BUT… you have to make sure you have a verified sender in that software. Using the default sender tools in CRMs will insert a @company.image: /uploads/.com at the end of your sender line! Your recipients will immediately know that you’re sending an automated email, which can lead to unsubscribes and unopened emails. There is a cure though! Just make sure you have a dedicated email address, and verify it through your CRM! Not only will you agree to be compliant with CAN-SPAM law, but your subscribers will feel as if a person is sending over the content they love!
2. KISS: Keep it Sweet and Simple (for subject lines and preview text) — So you’ve made a killer subject line, your preview text does a great job describing your content, but when you send the email it cuts off. Generally, you want to aim for 50 or so characters when writing subject lines! Hopefully you tweet a lot because 140 characters is tough enough, but 50 is less than half of that! Meeting this challenge creates a simple but effective outcome: your subject lines and preview texts can be fully read without needing another click. This also ties into our next item…
3. Optimize for mobile devices always! — Did you know that almost 80% of email recipients open email on their mobile device! Yes, you’re reading that correctly! Over the last five years, email opens have greatly shifted from desktop to mobile! Hence why we say optimize your emails for mobile always! Those short but sweet subjects? Already optimized for mobile and desktop! CTAs? Make your CTA a square button to perfectly accommodate mobile screens! Always test your templates and see what they look like on phone screens. Apple Mail dominates mobile opens (over 55%!) because they integrate with every client. Now another nice transition (two for two) as clients are hugely important in technical optimization…
4. Make sure your emails are viewable in any email client! — There is an ongoing argument about HTML vs. plain text and which one is better. While most subscribers (people who have already dedicated their time to see your content) wish to see HTML emails from companies, colder leads are generally more inviting to plain-text. However, there are even people who still use basic clients that can ONLY VIEW PLAIN TEXT! So what do you do? Make an HTML and plain-text version of course! This increases not only how many emails you are able to send, but also allows “client-challenged” email users to view your content!

If you use CRM software or similar tools, you should be in great shape to use technical features of email marketing to your advantage! And as always, make sure to double up on CloudAid prescriptions to supercharge your CRM/marketing automation!


Email: The easiest way to either a high marke...

the-four-technical-supplements-that-will-help-your-email-open-rates-reach-peak-performance

The four technical supplements that will help your email open rates reach peak performance


You operate or work within a medium-sized business. Over the last few months, you and the team have created some great marketing content. You’ve been sharing it and seeing conversions like crazy… at first. But now you notice that all these great inbound leads have started to disengage from your business. The content is still great. The pathways are still open, but it’s as if customers are “window shopping.”

Don’t fret! All this means is that your business is now ready for a shiny new Lead Management program.

Lead Management, or “Lead Nurturing,” is the process of qualifying inbound leads by educating them with resources, and building trust with them until they’re ready to buy. A lot of salespeople and marketers think that once a lead subscribes to a blog, or downloads a piece of content, they’re ready to buy. Not the case. In fact according to SiriusDecisions, 98% of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) don’t result in a closed deal or business. This is where Lead Management/Nurturing comes in. Let your consumers and prospects teach themselves and get more comfortable with what you’re selling.

**Reported Symptoms of Effective Lead Management:**

- Leads who are effectively nurtured produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities. (Source: DemandGen)
- Effective lead nurturing generates 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. (Source: DemandGen)
- Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)
- Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. (Source: Juniper Research)
- 82% of prospects say lead nurturing content targeted to their specific industry is more valuable. (Source: MarketingSherpa)

Before you break into a cold sweat thinking that Lead Management is unattainable, don't worry. Have comfort in knowing that anyone can build an effective Lead Management Program. Here is your CloudAnswers Prescription to get started:

**Your Lead Management Program Prescription:**

- A (single) designated strategy

Lead Nurturing begins with making sure you have a clear objective in mind. Are you looking to engage with new inbound leads through generally useful resources, or are you providing educational awareness about why your solution helps them? Make sure you define lead engagement and lead education. For example: if your business resonates with the story at the beginning, you’ll now start to educate your inbound leads.

- Content that is relevant to your Nurturing Strategy

You've decided on your strategy, awesome! Now it’s time to build content around that goal. Keep your content simple and easy to read. Especially if your leads are just learning about your brand and products. Keep content relevant and useful to whatever stage they’re at in the buying process. If you’re executing on an engagement strategy, make sure you’re resonating with the same ideas and interests as your leads.

- Organize and Analyze with Technology

You know what you’re trying to attain with your lead nurturing, you have the proper content, now you just need the tools to catalogue your leads and measure your inbound activity. This is where CRMs like Salesforce and Marketing Automation tools like Marketo or HubSpot come in. These help automate your marketing campaigns and identify behavioral trends of your inbound leads.

Once you’re read to launch your Lead Management operation, get your team on the same page. Make absolutely sure that Sales and Marketing are aligned. This is critical in identifying leads that are ready to consider purchasing decisions. Have an expert take a look at your CRM. Have that expert properly organize leads, and fully optimize marketing activities.

Implement Lead Nurturing to turn your Pipeline from sickly to sprightly. You’ll thank yourself later once you do it.


You operate or work within a medium-sized bus...

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Lead Nurturing Checklist

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