The AppExchange Blog - September 2007

• Marketing Secrets from salesforce
  Step 1. Finding Leads

  Sep 28, 2007

  Lead acquisition involves finding leads, and then capturing them. This post focuses on generating "lead prospects."

  
  Of course, a great source of leads is your existing customer base, which presents arguably the best cross-sell and upsell opportunities since, being customers, they've already (literally) bought into your product. For net new leads, however, I recommend one or a combination of three online marketing strategies, depending on your business:
  
  1. Seek them out
  The ease and efficiency of email marketing has meant that businesses are buying prospect lists in larger quantities and greater frequencies than ever before. List vendors offer high-precision targeting, allowing you to slice and dice by industry, geography, role, company, and even past purchasing behavior.

  We have some great partners on the AppExchange for this. Every good marketer tests -- fortunately, all of these solutions offer some free trial or low-volume starter option.

  • Jigsaw. A popular online database of millions of business contacts and company information.
  • Reachforce. Find contacts by company and/or role. Option to pay per project or on a subscription basis (entry price is $5000)
  • iProfile. Database of Fortune 500 company profiles including their IT department org charts. Especially useful for software companies.
  • Demandbase.  Buy sales leads and marketing lists on a pay-as-you-go basis.
  • A+ Lead Finder. Helps you select from the over 50,000 lists out there and manage your lead generation campaigns.
  • Spoke Sales Prospecting. Identify new prospects from a network of over 35 million people at over 900,000 companies. Search for leads by title, company, industry, geography, revenue or other target account criteria. The Spoke Network enables you to find mutual contacts from which to request introductions.
  • Sales Spider. Free business social network for sales and marketing executives that allows you to search by industry and geography for qualified leads, government tenders and prospect lists. Members can also post, review and reply to B2B classified ads.
  • LinkedIn mash-up. Search for user profiles and data on LinkedIn, a popular social networking site for business professionals.
  • Faceforce.  View Facebook friends directly from within your Salesforce account, lead, and contact records. Augment traditional Salesforce fields with rich, dynamic Facebook profile information including photos and mutual friends (Note: I'm biased because I wrote this app :)

  In general, buying lists is more effective for certain products than others, ie those that 1) have an already-established need, such as mature products which don't require much additional education or market development (eg, emailing an expecting mother with special offers on baby strollers) and commodity products where you are competing on price, or 2) have an obvious need, such as new products that solve a critical pain point (eg, new version of popular cookie with zero trans-fat). For these, it's much more compelling if you have a trusted brand (ideally in the product area) and the claim is credible at face value.
  

  It's probably a waste of your marketing budget to cold-call on behalf of any product or service requiring explanation or convincing at the needs level. It also helps if the typical contract duration for your class of products is shorter, since the probability increases that your prospect happens at that moment to be looking to renew or source a new contract.
  

  If you already have prospective contact data and want to verify, update, and/or dedupe, the Data Cleansing section on AppExchange has over a dozen offerings, such as Access Hoover's, OneSource Account Intelligence, DemandTools, Diamond Data, CleanCRM, RingLead Declone, and the solution in my opinion with the best tagline, DataTrim -- your data laundry service.

  2. Let them find you
  Depending on your product, it might make more sense for you to let leads find you instead of spending precious marketing dollars on lists of contacts who send your email directly to their spam folders. Especially in the B2B world, it's hard for marketers to "generate" demand. Either the demand is there, or it isn't.

  The big breakthrough with online search marketing was really about finding prospects at the moment they are ready to buy. Whether you are already employing search marketing techniques or just looking to get started, Salesforce for Google AdWords provides an instant and seamless integration between Salesforce CRM and your Google AdWords campaigns, allowing you to track all of your website activity, associate ad clicks to inbound leads, and measure campaign ROI. Thanks to a strategic alliance announced in June between salesforce.com and Google, this application is free to all Salesforce users and comes bundled as part of the marketing application in all new orgs. For existing orgs that do not have SFGA installed, you can get it with three clicks from the AppExchange.

  If you really want to get fancy, there is a new solution on AppExchange, Marketo Search Marketing (interesting pricing -- 7.9% of your AdWords spend, or $499/month), that takes SFGA even further with tools that allow you to optimize ad bids based on which keywords resulted in opportunities and deals. Marketo also offers “what-if” analysis and forecasting, landing pages, and keyword discovery.
  

  In addition to search marketing, you'll also want to focus on improving your organic search relevance (aka "search engine optimization) -- that is, how high up on the search results page your website turns up on a search for relevant terms. For more on search strategies, check out the Learning Center on our in-house Salesforce for Google Adwords blog.

  
  3. And make sure you know (and respond!) when they try to find you
  Do you know who is visiting your site? What happens when a prospect visits your site? What about your competitors? In the age of spam, web users are increasingly wary of lead capture forms, especially earlier on in the sales cycle. Two innovative new tools on AppExchange help you address this:

  • Domodomain. Identifies website visitors based on a proprietary database of Internet activity tracking and immediately collects and presents up-to-the-second information about the prospect's company.
  • ActiveConversion. Identifies new leads (by company) based on online activity. Tracks the online activity histories of your Salesforce leads and contacts.

  Bonus Marketing Tip of the Day
  Offer a free trial. Get people hooked, and then they'll buy.

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• Secrets from salesforce: five steps to marketing success

  Sep 28, 2007

  So you have your product or service, maybe a few customers. How do you generate leads and manage them to close? Over the next couple weeks, I'll be presenting the "five steps to on-demand marketing success" we follow here at salesforce.com, highlighting some of my favorite AppExchange solutions along the way.
  
  The best part about AppExchange, with so many apps and vendors is that you can choose a comprehensive marketing automation solution for all your needs or mix and match at each step. Plus, all of these solutions come 100% pre-integrated with Salesforce -- whose marketing functionality  by the way just keeps getting better with each release (Did you know: campaign hierarchies are coming in Winter 08!).

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• AppExchange Incubator 2.0: Announcing the Native Appcelerator!

  Sep 26, 2007

  Well, what's next? The next phase of the incubator program, the Native Appcelerator, will focus on cultivating native platform applications built on Force.com. Appcelerator participants will have even greater flexibility, access, and support across their product lifecycle and go-to-market plan.

  • Embed your team. Participants will no longer be limited to one cube per company. Accepted ISVs have the choice of embedding an individual, their product team, or their entire company in our world-class facility.
  • Design and develop like we do. Appcelerator companies will have the opportunity to collaborate closely with salesforce.com product management teams, including access to our usability labs and customer focus groups that are renowned in the industry.
  • Fund your idea. The Native Appcelerator will receive special access to the newly formed AppExchange Venture Network investor consortium. Our corporate development team will facilitate introductions and relationship-building.
  • Join us in pioneering Platform as a Service. Be part of the first wave of native apps launched to our customer community. Native Appcelerator companies will be promoted at the forefront of this incredible technology and breakthrough new model where we are investing most heavily.

  Two companies from our charter incubator class have already joined: Apttus, whose on-demand contract management solution we featured during May's Platform Edition webinar, and Appirio, which has decided to move their entire company into our facility.

  As customers, the Native Appcelerator means two, very exciting things for you-- first, you can apply to send your product team, IT folks, or whomever you see fit to work onsite alongside our developers and product teams even if the apps they are developing are for your company's internal use only. Second, you will soon see the next wave of innovation on the AppExchange -- native to Force.com and therefore faster, more reliable, more secure, and better integrated with your CRM and entire On Demand system.
  
  

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• AppExchange Incubator Report Card

  Sep 26, 2007

  Just one semester into the AppExchange incubator program in our new San Mateo, California facility, we have exciting progress to report on our charter class participants:

  • Tremendous innovation. Over twenty-five applications spanning multiple segments and categories have been developed and listed on AppExchange by incubator ISVs. More are on the way!
    
  • Unrivaled access. Incubator participants have had special access to weekly colloquia and networking events (eg, meetings with salesforce.com product managers), and have received over $40M in venture funding. 
    
  • Collaboration and community. Thanks to the natural synergies arising from physical collocation, incubator companies have self-organized to form valuable relationships, both formal (eg, joint product development, reseller arrangements, services, etc) and informal (eg, technical product forums, ad hoc discussion groups, etc). There are already over 2,500 joint customers!

  
  Thanks and congratulations to the 32 charter class incubator companies (some, in stealth mode, are not listed): Appirio, Avankia, BackWeb, Bluewolf, Business Objects, Centive, Clicktools, Cloud9 Analytics, Convenos, DomoDomain, DreamFactory, Eloqua, iNeoMarketing, InsideView, InvisibleCRM, Kailea Networks, NextNine, OpenAir, OpSource, Pervasive, Portaga, Ribbit, Right90, RingLead, StakeWare, TwoConnect, VerticalResponse and Xactly.

  Keep up the great work!

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• The information you want, when you want, right on the AppExchange home page (New!)

  Sep 23, 2007

  Some of you like seeing the most installed apps. Some of you love Latest Listings (thanks for all the feedback when we temporarily replaced those with Top Business Needs). We know you are at different levels of familiarity with AppExchange, have different business needs and preferences, and work in very different roles and industries.

  Therefore, one of our top initiatives in the coming months will be to offer increasing levels of customization and personalization on the site. As a first step, we've rolled out five widgets containing information important to you on the AppExchange home page:

  1. Latest Listings. To help you stay current with the innovations our community of over 300 ISV partners and 50,000 developers are making available via the AppExchange. (RSS subscription available)
  2. Top 10 Installs. So you can see what is most popular among the customer community. This is, of course, just one measure of popularity. We could also show you "Most Test Driven Apps" or "Apps with Highest Ratings." We are counting on you to tell us what's important. (RSS subscription available)
  3. Common Business Needs. To save you time and clicks, we've taken the most popular business need areas (based on our quarterly customer surveys) and site search terms and displayed them here for easy access.
  4. Latest Community Review. See what other customers are saying about AppExchange apps. Don't forget to return the favor by reviewing the apps you've installed and sharing tips & tricks!
  5. Featured Native Apps. So you can experience first-hand the power of the Force.com platform. With Apex code and Visualforce, just about anything can be developed and run completely on demand. Native apps boast higher performance, better security, more seamless integration, and ease of use and administration.

  

  Well, what next? Eventually, these widgets will be movable and collapsible, just like iGoogle or My Yahoo! Have suggestions for other widgets we can provide? Please tell us on the IdeaExchange!
  
  

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• New to AppExchange? Get started with the dashboard pack!

  Sep 23, 2007

  With over 725 solutions on the AppExchange and new applications being added every day, we often hear you say "I don't have time to test drive hundreds of apps. Just tell me how to get started!"

  Generally, the quickest and easiest early wins are with the dozens of dashboards available. To make things even easier, Chris Cranis, who is a senior account executive at salesforce.com and our resident AppExchange expert in the sales organization, has bundled together our most popular free dashboards into the AppExchange Dashboard Pack so that you can in one click achieve instant visibility into your Salesforce deployment.

  

  Thanks, Chris! Now, there really isn't an excuse to not give the AppExchange a whirl!

   

   

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• Very cool Force.com video

  Sep 22, 2007

  I love this five-minute video that was played at Dreamforce about the past, present, and future of software. It really ties everything together and sums up where salesforce.com, AppExchange, and the Force.com platform fit within the industry.

  It is the creative masterpiece of Bruce Campbell, our Chief Creative Officer. Watch video

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• Congratulations to this year's Appy Award winners!

  Sep 22, 2007

  On Tuesday afternoon, Marc Benioff and Jim Steele announced the winners of this year's Appy Awards, given to outstanding customers and partners who are leading the On Demand revolution. Here are the AppExchange winners:

  • Best AppExchange Adopter: SIRVA
  • Best Force.com Native App - Partner: Apttus Contract & Proposal Management
  • Breakthrough App of the Year: Model Metrics for Accelerate4Pharma
  • Best Apex Developer: Glenn Wilson, CRMfusion 
  • Dreamforce Best in Show: VerticalResponse

  Congratulations to everyone who was nominated for an award!

  

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• Highlights from AppExchange @ Dreamforce

  Sep 22, 2007

  Thank you to everyone (over 7000 of you!) who made it out for Dreamforce last week. What a show! Nothing is more inspiring and rewarding for us than to see so many customers and partners out engaging with us about the future of On Demand. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Deliver any user experience with Visualforce. During the first day morning keynote [watch here], Marc, Parker, and George unveiled to a standing-room only audience our new upcoming Visualforce technology, which allows full UI customization and development on-demand. Together with the salesforce.com data model and logic (workflow and Apex code), Visualforce completes a radical, unprecedented vision for "platform as a service" which we now call force.com. For AppExchange, this will enable an even greater breadth and depth of applications that can be developed natively.
  • Blaze through your IT backlog with AppExchange. In our Monday breakout session, we talked about how the AppExchange model aligns business users with IT. The Old Way (Infrastructure): IT spent all of its time maintaining legacy code and messy integrations, could never keep pace with business needs, only got called when something went wrong. The AppExchange Way (Innovation): instead of reinventing the wheel each time, IT can find and deploy AppExchange solutions with a few clicks, customize using the force.com platform, IT plays a key strategic role in delivering business results.
  • Get inspired by customer success. One of the most exciting aspects of Dreamforce is the networking and friendships that form. I heard  many great stories about creative ways AppExchange is being used -- thank you for sharing them with me and with each another.
  • Relax... your business problems are solved with AppExchange. We had a fun yoga & relaxation theme at Dreamforce this year. A few hundred lucky conference attendees received an AppExchange yoga mat and had the opportunity to attend a free yoga class taught by our very own Salesforce yoga instructor!
  • Find the app of your dreams on AppExchange. On Monday and Tuesday afternoon, I had the pleasure of hosting the AppConnection, a hit new gameshow (limited to Dreamforce only, unfortunately) where Salesforce users can find the app of their dreams. We've all been burned in the past by on-premise software that was unloving or unfaithful, but those days are over. With hundreds of pre-certified solutions, you don't need to be a contestant on AppConnection to find The One. Just visit the AppExchange!

  

  Thanks again for being a part of our family and community. See you next year!

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• Dreamforce session - IT 2.0 with the AppExchange

  Sep 16, 2007

  For those of you in IT who are attending Dreamforce, be sure to check out my session tomorrow on how AppExchange can be a powerful tool for implementing your SaaS strategy.

  IT 2.0 with the AppExchange

  The Web operating system for IT is here! Join us to learn how IT organizations everywhere are using the AppExchange Directory of business applications to run more and more of their companies" critical applications on demand. Discover the new IT standard for rapidly finding and deploying certified, pre-integrated solutions from marketing automation to HR developed by the hundreds of partners on the AppExchange.

  • Where: North Hall E: 120
  • When: September 17 5PM to 6PM

  We will be featuring two customer speakers, who will share tips and tricks, best practices, and creative ways they have used the AppExchange:

  • Jason Hunter
    Manager of Support + Services, Vicon
  • Donald Dy
    IT Manager, Magma Design Automation, Inc.

  I look forward to meeting many of you in person! For those of you who can't make it, stay tuned for a link to the recording.

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• New whitepaper available from THINKstrategies on "Building Your SaaS Strategy with AppExchange"

  Sep 10, 2007

  The research analysts at THINKstrategies have just released a whitepaper on SaaS strategy for IT and business leaders entitled "Building Your SaaS Strategy with AppExchange: How Salesforce.com’s On-Demand Marketplace Helps Customers Find and Integrate Industry-Leading Software-as-a-Service Solutions."

  The whitepaper is available for free on the AppExchange, under the "Analyst Reports" section:

  

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• Latest Listings are back... and more to come!

  Sep 7, 2007

  By popular demand, we have gone back to featuring "Latest Listings" on the AppExchange home page. As before, you can click on the orange icon at the upper right of the widget to subscribe to RSS feeds.

  

  In the coming weeks, we will be unveiling more widgets for you to choose from, such as featured apps, customer reviews, and popular business needs. Please share your additional suggestions with us on the IdeaExchange!

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• Four more ways to experience AppExchange at Dreamforce!

  Sep 6, 2007

  In addition to the speakers and training sessions I highlighted in my last post, we are excited to share four additional ways you can interact with our team and learn more about AppExchange at Dreamforce.

  • The AppExchange Gateway is your portal to hundreds of partner booths in the Expo Hall. Our staff will be there to greet you and provide personalized guidance to help you navigate the show floor based on your top business needs. (Expo Hall Booth 301, Mon 7:30am-8pm, Tues 7:30am-5pm, Weds 8am-noon)
  • Next, Demo AppExchange! Our experts will show you just how easy it is to find, trial, and install from over 650 applications. And if you're ready for the next step, they'll help you find the right partners on the show floor for more information and in-depth app demos. (Salesforce Campground, Mon 7:30am-8pm, Tues 7:30am-5pm, Weds 8am-noon)
  • Last but not least, play or watch the AppConnection Game Show find the app of your dreams and win fabulous prizes (Demo Theatre, Mon 12:30-12:45pm & Tues 2:30-2:45pm)

  And of course, during all of these events, you'll have the opportunity to meet other AppExchange customers and hear how they are using the AppExchange to achieve their top business goals.

  We look forward to meeting you!

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