Soapbox Engage Blog

Non-Profit Soapbox can be your cash register. Want to accept donations or member dues or payments for event registrations without having your donor or member or attendee ever leave your site? Yep, you can do that. Our tools are tight with PayPal, Authorize.net, and Braintree so it all happens behind the scenes and you keep your visitor your visitor - rather than shuffling them off elsewhere.

It's great to be in a community of rock star non-profits doing amazing things for the social good. PICnet exists to make their jobs easier and their efforts more powerful. It's not about PHP and Javascript for us. It's about their missions.

Pick up any dime store counseling book. Listen to any celebrity psychologist on television. Call Dr. Phil personally. You'll find out the same thing: excellent communication is the foundation of any good relationship. With some recent additions to Non-Profit Soapbox, we're guaranteeing the relationship between Soapbox and Salesforce is solid as a rock.

We PICnetters are lucky to get a firsthand glimpse into the inner workings of social change agents in action. Our non-profit clients are why we exist in the first place ... what can I say, we love our clients! We feel even more fortunate to know that the feeling is mutual. We thought we’d share some recent praise for one PICnetter in particular, Amber Manning, our newest project manager.

Amber had the pleasure of working with Groundswell (née DC Project), an organization dedicated to combating both economic inequality and environmental decline by promoting clean energy in local communities. Groundswell underwent a rebranding and needed a new website to match their new face to the world.

So you know that the Soapbox User Summit promises affordable training and Salesforce goodness, but this week we’re going to focus on yet another perk of joining your greater Soapbox family in DC on April 19th:

Last week we shared Reason #7 of why you should attend the Soapbox User Summit—lots of training for a great value. This week we continue our countdown with:

With web technology raging full speed ahead and fundraising needs only growing, now is the time to maximize the value of your website to the fullest. The Soapbox User Summit on Thursday, April 19, 2012 in DC will be jam-packed with the tools and knowledge you need to take your website to the next level.

If you’re wondering what you stand to get out of this event, or if your boss needs convincing, we’ve put a list together of the top 7 reasons why you can’t afford to miss this phenomenal event.

Be forewarned, this article has to do with an often intimidating topic, but don’t run away screaming just yet, my accidental techie friends. Yes, we’re going to talk about C-O-D-E, as in the string of seemingly incomprehensible letters and numbers that make your website what it is, but *spoiler alert* we’re showing you a way around it.

So here’s the problem:  sometimes the code that you need to do magical things with your website is way too cumbersome to use often or doesn’t play well with your content editor.  Think: WYSIWYGUIAGYC (what you see is what you get unless I arbitrarily gobble your code).

In those circumstances, it would be great to have a shortcut for that windy path, which is why we’ve introduced Soapbox Shortcodes to our Non-Profit Soapbox platform.  Soapbox Shortcodes is a WYSIWYG-safe macro syntax that allows you to easily add complex HTML with a simple shortcut, or shortcode, saving you time and frustration and opening up doors to even cooler features for your site.

Data cleanliness and data integrity.  Ah, such fun things to work on, right?  Kind of like spring cleaning, but for some reason all the more frustratingly painful.  Since spring is coming early here in North America, we thought it could be useful to share some new insights we've had on this topic of data cleanliness, especially for inbound data to Salesforce.

A few of us penguins worked through this last night and today as we're gearing up for a new release of our Soapbox Engage products, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights of a good brainstorming session that could be useful for others thinking about matching rules.

Our discussions generally broke down into three main areas:

1) Matching scenarios to keep in mind

2) Matching rules

3) Data updating rules

Let's dive in to our best practices...

We've served up pudding recipes for Constant Contact and MailChimp in our price comparison with Soapbox Mailer for Salesforce. They are two great services in their own right. Anyone who has looked at options for email marketing within Salesforce, though, knows this little pudding taste test won't be worth the digital bits and bytes it's printed on without sizing up Soapbox Mailer for Salesforce against the obvious choice in the marketplace.

Next flavor: Vertical Response.

Still got your spoon from yesterday's Constant Contact taste test? Good because it's time to dig in to a second price comparison between Soapbox Mailer for Salesforce and another email marketing service.

Today’s flavor: MailChimp.

Yesterday, we claimed Soapbox Mailer for Salesforce is affordable. They say the proof is in the pudding, though, so we’ve whipped up a few recipes to tickle your taste buds so well even Bill Cosby would be proud.

First flavor: Constant Contact.

In January, we proclaimed “We are the 99%!” and challenged our sector to do better at providing effective, affordable tools for non-profits - tools that integrate their website, constituent relationship management system, email marketing platform, and social media strategy. We took this challenge personally and sought to lead the fight to provide these effective, affordable tools.

That wasn’t empty 2012 campaign rhetoric that has infected us through watching too much CNN lately. We meant business. And we’re here to deliver.

We’re proud to announce Soapbox Mailer for Salesforce. Email your donors, members, supporters, advocates, ex-girlfriends, future boyfriends, foreign dignitaries, the entire state of Texas, people named Bob - whomever you want - directly within Salesforce for less.

How much less? Try 10¢ for every 1,000 emails with a $19 monthly subscription fee. Already a Non-Profit Soapbox or Soapbox Engage client? We’ll waive the $19 monthly subscription. Yep, that’s “waive” as in not charge you - zip, nada, zilch on the subscription fee.

You’re not looking to just send 1,000 emails per month, though, right? Let’s make this a bit more interesting. Say you’ve got a mailing list of 10,000 that you email five times a month. That’s 50,000 emails - or $5 for the emails plus the $19 subscription fee for a grand total of $24 per month. Or, if you’re already using Non-Profit Soapbox or Soapbox Engage, that’s just $5.

As my grandmother would have said, you can’t beat that with a stick.

We’ll be launching Soapbox Mailer for Salesforce officially in a few weeks. You can sign up for first dibs now, though, and we’ll contact you when it’s out of the bubble wrap. Or, if you’re interested in more details, read on, my brethren and sistren!