Archive for 2012

Logging activities in Salesforce for maximum speed

By | Published Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Q. How should you track activities in Salesforce? 


 The key to setting up any new workflow in a high volume sales environment is speed of data entry. Rather than creating a dropdown box with the phone call types, use the task subject line with defined activity codes for quick data entry. 

Use activity codes in the "Subject" field for faster data entry

This way, a rep can quickly type in the status message and hit enter, without needing to point and click with the mouse. These small speed improvements go a long way to improving the overall efficiency of your sales reps.


As an example, here are the activity codes that my team uses to record different phone interactions.

Activity Code Cheat Sheet

LVM
Leave voicemail
LM
Leave message [with coworker]
RVM
Receive voicemail
RM
Receive message
C-NM
Called, did not leave messae
Call
Call, conversation
QC
Quick call 

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Firstname Subject Line Open Rates in Email Campaigns

By | Published Saturday, November 24, 2012

I recently had an email campaign go out to a list of 10,000 in Australia, thought it good to test some basic assumptions subject line and message format.

The tests run were first name in the subject line vs not, and a basic HTML template vs plain text. There were no images in the body of the email, so little incentive for people to enable images and thus open rates are probably lower than actual.

The first test was starting the subject line with the prospects first name, which is a fairly standard email formula. There was a 4% increase in open rates compared to the control, and was consistent across different variations (Firstname followed by comma, first name followed by hyphen).

Interestingly, unsubscribes were higher for the plain text emails and non-existent for the HTML versions.

The full results:
 


The second email in the sequence used only first name subject lines, and tested some body copy changes enhancing the exclusivity of the offer. Open rates higher than the first email, either due to familiarity with the sender, or a shorter email subject line. 

Analysis by PinPointe seems to suggest that a very short subject line performs best of all (although begs the question if short + first name would get a double boost?)


What subject lines work well for you?

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