Soapbox Engage Blog

There’s an endless opportunity to reach out to your community through email marketing, but limited hours in the day to do it. How do you increase your engagement levels without increasing the level of effort needed to do it?

Most people think that in order to have an automated email marketing system with Salesforce, you need to spend a lot of money on a big complex marketing tool. Not true! Built right into Salesforce is something called “timed workflows”, which is a gem of a functionality you can use to send emails without ever needing to click a send button.

How? Read on my friend!

“Drip marketing” is just an insider’s way of saying “automated email marketing.” Using this method, you’re providing value to your reader over time, reminding them of the great work you’re doing for your cause, and keeping them informed of the next step they can take up the ladder of engagement.

With a little bit of planning, and some sweat equity put into writing convincing emails, you can get started today on free drip marketing using tools built right into Salesforce. That’s right, keep your pocketbook closed, everything we’re talking about today is free!

Remember the ladders of engagement that we talked about in our first post? Have that handy, since that’s going to be your road map to automation happiness.

Let’s say you’re an advocacy organization, and one of your key on-ramps (remember those?) to engagement is having someone sign an online petition. You probably want to move this newly engaged community member from a one-time petition signer to a sustaining donor and an evangelist for your organization. Of course, you’re a busy person, so you want to shepherd this process without having to put a lot of time into it for each new supporter.

Here’s the building blocks of a free drip marketing process using tools built right into Salesforce.

1. Design an email template
   
   In the Salesforce setup system, you have the ability to create beautiful HTML email templates. Based on your online ladder of engagement, create a series of email templates that move folks along a path of engagement. Keep the emails simple, readable, and in the same brand and tone as your organization’s identity.
   
   
2. Build an email alert
   
   Now that you’ve created the email template, you need to tell Salesforce what to do with it, and when. An email alert workflow tells Salesforce key information about the email, such as who the email is from, who it will be sent to, etc.
   
   
3. Create a workflow rule
   
   With the email template and the email alert workflow in hand, create a workflow rule. This tells Salesforce when to trigger the firing of the first email alert through the conditions of a particular record, such as the creation of a Lead with certain fields populated via a website form.
   
   Now, here’s the critical part: you can create future timed workflow actions in the workflow rule. This means you can choose how many days after the trigger action (or other parameter) takes place that you want future workflow actions to take place. In this case, you could say that the second email alert should be sent 2 days after a petition is signed, then another email alert sent 4 days later.
   
   
4. Kick your feet up on your desk
   
   You’re done! Well, almost. You may want to keep tabs on how well your emails are performing, which ones are being acted on most often, etc. Other than that, each time someone takes the first triggering action requested, a nice drip email marketing flow will happen after that. Automation happiness ensues.
   
   

That wasn’t so bad, was it? With a little bit of time, creative thinking, and basic Salesforce best practices, you can have an automated drip marketing campaign done in a few days. Probably even faster for you over-achievers.

Now that you have an automated way to reach your new community members, it’s probably wise to make sure that spammers stay out of your systems. We’ll chat about a simple way to raise the shield on your Salesforce org to keep the bad guys out and the truly interested supporters in.

Keep engaging!

Let's go to the next post!

Other posts in this series

1. Simple online engagement secrets every savvy Salesforce organization should know
2. How Salesforce Campaigns can rock your data world
3. Get inspired by beautiful website + Salesforce integrations
4. Improve supporter nurturing by making Salesforce Leads your friend
5. Raise more money with Salesforce by demystifying online payments
6. Gain supporters faster by going beyond Salesforce Web-to-Lead forms
7. You are here >> Increase community engagement without pressing a key through drip marketing
8. Protect your Salesforce org from spam with one simple trick