5 Ways to Improve Salesforce Productivity

The biggest strength of Salesforce CRM is it helps automate your customer data collection so that your organization can personalize the customer experience. Salesforce provides the opportunity for your organization to better reach your target audience and ultimately achieve greatness. You’ll have more data at your fingertips than past businesses could have accumulated in a decade.

But what are the best ways to leverage this centralized data about customers’ preferences, motivations, and purchase history? How can you target various audiences in a way that stands out from the competition? This article will share tips for maximizing your Salesforce investment to connect with more customers and with the best messages.

Tip 1: Collect “Persona” Data Points

While it can be tempting for some marketers to think of all potential and current customers as one audience, doing so is about as effective as an oceanographer referring to all sea life as “fish.”

Using Salesforce data, you’ll be able to assess customer data to find the trends that guide audience segmentation. Some of the first groups to create are based on demographic information such as age and geographic location. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find “personas” that make similar purchases, engage on the same social media platforms, respond to emails with the same gusto, or share common interests.

Developing these customer profiles is essential to your marketing. Anyone who has ever received a dose of medicine via a syringe knows that things always work better when they’re concentrated in a small area.

Tip 2: Organize Your Audiences

Based on the persona insights you’ve gathered about your customer segments, you’ll be able to identify the best ways to find new leads. For example, you can look for shared preferences and then create marketing messages that will attract new customers who have the same interests and motivations.

This is truly a situation of compounding benefits. The more data you collect, the more enticing you can make your marketing.

Tip 3: Test, Test, Test

Even when your marketing is guided by customer insights, you’ll notice a huge range of effectiveness. The only way to figure out the reasons for the variability is to track key metrics and test new concepts.

For example, let’s say you were sending a targeted text to prospective customers who might be looking to make a purchase in the next few months. You could send three versions of the message right out of the gate. If an open rate winner quickly emerged from those three, you could lock in on that version and then continue testing messaging and calls to action.

Because Salesforce helps you track the entire customer journey, you can see which marketing campaigns not only get clicks, but create loyal customers. This type of comprehensive visibility is only possible with a quality CRM.

Tip 4: Personalize All Content

Aided by a trove of customer information, you’ll be able to tailor your messaging. The low-hanging fruit is to use their name and reference their interests. But one of the most important ways to personalize your content is to choose the best communication channels for your customers.

For most of your customers, SMS text messaging will likely be the preference. The average open rate for text messages is 98%, compared to just 20% for emails. The engagement is exceptionally high, with the average response time for texts clocking in at 90 seconds.

Tip 5: Find New Ways To Reach Customers, Like Texting.

The beauty of Salesforce is that it enables you to sync other top-tier marketing tools. With a truly native SMS texting integration, your teams can send texts directly within Salesforce. As long as the SMS platform has direct carrier connections, it’s the most reliable, secure, streamlined, and cost-effective way to communicate with your target audiences.

The most crucial aspect to consider is whether the integration is truly native. Some SMS texting platforms claim to offer Salesforce integration but are just third-party vendors which would operate mostly outside of your CRM. These generic options force you to send messages from their system, rather than directly through Salesforce. This causes workflow friction, as well as exposes your proprietary data. It is also usually more costly to work with this type of middleman, because you’re required to pay additional rates for your messages to pass through their system.

You’ll avoid these pitfalls by using an native SMS solution. Your systems will work smoother together and all your valuable customer insights become accessible to various teams in your organization. This means that marketing, sales, and customer support can work together to support prospects as they navigate the customer journey.

The personalization and responsiveness that is required in modern marketing become second nature with a truly native SMS platform. You’ll be able to meet customers where they are and when they need you.

The best Salesforce CRM SMS integrations work with Salesforce Flows, so you can easily build automation and workflows. You can also use templates for your messages and leverage merge fields. With perfect communications ready and waiting to be triggered, you can focus on the more customized messaging that modern customers crave.

All of your Salesforce text messaging is tracked and saved within the contact timeline. Simply click into any activity in the timeline and you can see the message content, as well as the sender, date, and time. This makes it easier to identify effective marketing communications and replicate them in the future.

Here are some potential SMS-based marketing ideas:

• Create interactive promotions that customers can manage by text
• Launch VIP programs that reward loyal customers with early access to your newest offerings
• Use automated text alerts to update customers on shipping, delivery, and inventory status

Native integration in your text marketing also makes it easier to avoid compliance issues. When a recipient opts out of your messages, it’s saved within the contact timeline. Salesforce then prevents you from sending future messages, sparing you from the human errors that occur every day when a system isn’t effectively managing opt outs. It’s also easier to manage the content of your short code and long code messages, ensuring your promotional messages are correctly designated and you don’t incur penalties.

Upgrade Your Marketing Efforts with Native SMS Integration

Salesforce is one of the most powerful CRM systems on the planet, and it becomes even more effective when enterprise-grade SMS functionality is natively integrated. Your marketing efforts will be more efficient, effective, secure, reliable, and trackable.

You can capture all these benefits by using TrueDialog. We have been text marketing leaders for more than a decade and provide US-based customer support to help you get the most from your Salesforce CRM SMS integration.

Schedule a demo today and see how TrueDialog can help you get more from Salesforce and deliver more to your customers.