Scenario Guide: Using Interactions to Send to Salesforce Reports and Campaigns

This document is intended for users of ExactTarget for Appexchange, the integration between ExactTarget and Salesforce.com.

Scenario: Using Interactions with the Salesforce Integration

A marketer at Northern Trail Outfitters uses Salesforce to manage customer relationships and ExactTarget for creating and sending email communication to leads and contacts.

Northern Trail Outfitters offers a 30-day free trial on its premium shoppers program. Every day, the marketer sends:

  • A standard welcome email messages to new leads who have signed up for the free trial that day (Day 1).
  • A standard follow-up email message to leads who signed up for the free trial 14 days before (Day 14).
  • A standard notification message to leads who signed up for the free trial 27 days before to remind them that their free trial is about to run out (Day 28).

The marketer would like to automate these tasks to save time, prevent human error, and make the send time consistent from day-to-day, even on weekends.

Because the marketer had been performing these tasks manually, some of the pieces he needs already exist:

  • In Salesforce, the reports that contain Day 1 Leads, Day 14 Leads, and Day 27 Leads.
  • In ExactTarget, the email messages and user-initiated email message send definitions to send to each of these reports.

To begin automating sending to these audiences, the marketer logs in to ExactTarget and clicks the Interactions tab. He selects Messages>Email>User-Initiated Email to display the User Initiated Emails screen. Here he clicks the Create button to begin creating a user-initiated email interaction (also called a "send definition").

In the Message field, the marketer selects the email message content that he used for completing this process manually. In the Audience section, he clicked the Edit Audience link to display the Send Definition Audience screen.

On this screen, the marketer selects Salesforce Reports in the Select an Audience box and clicks the >> button. The Add Reports window appears, where the marketer can perform a search to find the report he wants. He selects the Day 1: Today's New Leads report and clicks OK. He saves the audience and the user-initiated email message interaction.

He repeats this process for the Day 14 and Day 27 audiences to create a separate email message interaction that associates each report to each email message content.

While still on the Interactions tab in ExactTarget, the marketer clicks Programs>My Programs. He clicks the Create button to start a new program he can use the program to group the send definitions to be processed together.

NOTE: The marketer also could have used a Salesforce.com campaign, and even filtered the campaign members based on their status.

He clicks the Edit Process link to tell the system to use the three send definitions that he created when running this program.

This program contains only one step because the three send definitions can be sent at the same time. If the program contained tasks that needed to be completed before the next one could begin, the marketer would include the tasks in separate steps.

When the marketer clicks the Add Task link, the Interactions window appears. The marketer selects each of the three send definitions that he wants to automate and clicks the add button.

When he is done, he clicks the Save button.

To schedule the program to run automatically and recur every day, the marketer clicks the Edit Schedule link. He selects the starting date and time and indicates that he wants the program to repeat daily.

He enters a very high number of occurrences so the program does not stop sending messages in the foreseeable future, unless he intentionally stops it.

The marketer clicks the Save button to save the schedule for the program.

Even though the program is complete, the marketer must start the interaction in order for it to run. He starts the program from the screen where he creates it by clicking the button.

Beginning on 7/21/2008 at 2 p.m., the ExactTarget application runs the 30 Day Free Trial Lead Nurturing program. The system gets the appropriate Salesforce report and sends the email message content automatically to leads based on which drip campaign report they appear on that day.

If, later, the marketer wanted to add a message on day 30 to remind the leads that the trial expires today, the marketer would:

  • Create a report in Salesforce.com with the 30-day old leads.
  • Create the content for the email.
  • Create the send definition for the email.
  • Pause the program by clicking the Pause button.
  • Add the new send definition to the program in the same step. © 2008 ExactTarget, Inc. Page 8 of 13
  • Start the program again.

Procedures

This section contains procedures you use to use interactions to automate and schedule sends to Salesforce reports or campaigns.

Before you begin these procedures, you must have the Salesforce reports to send to and the email message content to send. If the reports do not already exist, first create them in Salesforce.com. The reports (also referred to as "buckets") that you create for your drip marketing campaign can be simple or complex, depending on your business need.

For example, to create a simple, relative-date report of new leads created 14 days ago, create a Lead Report with the follow criteria:

  • CreatedDate equals Last 14 Days
  • CreatedDate does not equal Last 13 Days

How to Create a Sender Profile

NOTE: If you use an enterprise parent account, you can create a sender profile to cause the lead owner to appear as the from address for each email that is sent with the program.

Use the following steps to create a sender profile:

  1. Click the Admin tab in the navigation bar.
  2. Click Send Management.
  3. Click Sender Profiles. The Sender Profiles workspace appears.
  4. Click the Create button.
  5. Complete the information in the Properties section:
    • Name - The name of the sender profile. You use this name to identify the sender profile in the ExactTarget application.
    • External Key - A unique value that identifies the sender profile. You use this value to identify the sender profile with an API call.
    • Description - The description of the sender profile. You use this description to further help identify the sender profile within the ExactTarget application.
  6. Complete the information in the Sender Information section:
    • Sender - The from name and address that the system uses for sends associated with this sender profile. Select the Choose from list option, and select Lead/Contact Owner Name or Lead/Account Owner Name in the drop-down.
  7. Click Save.

How to Create an Email Message Interaction

Complete this procedure for each email message send to a Salesforce report or campaign that you want to include in a program. You must create the email message content before you complete this procedure.

Use the following steps to create a user-initiated email interaction:

  1. Click the Interactions tab on the navigation bar.
  2. Click Messages.
  3. Click Email.
  4. Click User-initiated.
  5. Click Create from the toolbar.
  6. Complete the information in the Properties section.
    • Name - The name of the message. You use this name to identify the message in the ExactTarget application. Subscribers cannot see the name.
    • External Key - A value you choose that uniquely identifies the message. You use this value to identify the message when using the API.
    • Description - The description of the message. You use this description to further help identify the message within the ExactTarget application. Subscribers cannot see the description.
    • Message - The message content that is sent by this interaction.
    • Subject - The subject line of the email message sent by this interaction. Click the Insert button to select a personalization string.
  7. Complete the information in the Send Management section:
    • Send Classification - The send classification the system uses for this interaction.
    • Override Sender Profile checkbox - Determines whether the interaction uses a different sender profile than what is specified on the send classification. If you select this checkbox, you must select the override sender profile to use.
    • Override Delivery Profile checkbox - Determines whether the interaction uses a different delivery profile than what is specified on the send classification. If you select this checkbox, you must select the override delivery profile to use.
    • Use Throttle checkbox - Determines whether the interaction limits the rate at which email messages are sent. If you select this checkbox, you must specify the throttle rate.
  8. Click Edit Audience:
    • Target Audience - The report or campaign to receive the email message sent with this interaction. For Salesforce campaigns, you can filter based on member status. See the Salesforce help for more information. NOTE: Your ExactTarget user must be mapped to a Salesforce user to use this functionality. Select salesforce reports or salesforce campaigns and click >>. Select the desired report in the window and click OK.
    • Excluded Audience (optional) - This report or campaign to exclude from the send. Subscribers that appear in both the Target Audience field and the Excluded Audience field are EXCLUDED from the send. Select salesforce reports or salesforce campaigns and click >>. Select the desired report in the window and click OK.
    • De-duplicate by email address checkbox - Determines whether the interaction prevents multiple messages from this interaction from being sent to the same email address.
    • Exclusion Script checkbox - Determines whether subscribers are excluded from the send based on script logic. If you select this checkbox, you must provide the exclusion AMPscript.
  9. If you have the test sending feature enabled on your account, click Edit Test Audience:
    • Target Audience - The report or campaign to receive the email message sent with this interaction. For Salesforce campaigns, you can filter based on member status. See the Salesforce help for more information. NOTE: Your ExactTarget user must be mapped to a Salesforce user to use this functionality. Select Salesforce reports or Salesforce campaigns and click >>. Select the desired report in the window and click OK.
    • Excluded Audience (optional) - This report or campaign to exclude from the send. Subscribers that appear in both the Target Audience field and the Excluded Audience field are EXCLUDED from the send. Select salesforce reports or salesforce campaigns and click >>. Select the desired report in the window and click OK.
    • De-duplicate by email address checkbox - Determines whether the interaction prevents multiple messages from this interaction from being sent to the same email address.
    • Exclusion Script checkbox - Determines whether subscribers are excluded from the send based on script logic. If you select this checkbox, you must provide the exclusion AMPscript.
  10. Complete the information in the Message Properties section:
    • Multi-part MIME checkbox - Determines whether the system sends the message using multi-part MIME to provide an HTML version of the message content to inboxes that can display it and a text-only version to inboxes that cannot render HTML.
  11. Complete the information in the User Tracking section:
    • Track all links found within this email checkbox - Determines whether ExactTarget collects tracking information on the links in this email. If you select this checkbox, the system collects tracking on the links.
    • Suppress this Send from Reports checkbox - Determines whether sends with this interaction are included in reports. If you select this checkbox, sends from this interaction are excluded from reports.
  12. Click Save.

How to Create a Program

Use the following steps to create a program:

  1. Click the Interactions tab from the navigation bar.
  2. Click Programs.
  3. Click My Programs.
  4. Click the Create button from the toolbar.
  5. Complete the information in the Properties section:
    • Name - The name of the program. You use this name to identify the program in the ExactTarget application.
    • External Key -A unique value that identifies the program. You use this value to identify the program with an API call.
    • Description - The description of the program. You use this description to further help identify the program within the ExactTarget application.
  6. Complete the information in the Notifications section:
    • Send Status Notification checkbox - Determines whether the system sends a notification email when the program completes or encounters an error. The email is sent to the user who started the program.
  7. Click Edit Process. The Program Process screen appears.
  8. Click Add task. The Interactions window appears.
  9. Select the email message interactions to send in this step.
  10. Click Save.
  11. If you want to schedule the program, click Edit Schedule. See step 6 of the procedure How to Schedule a Program.

How to Schedule a Program

You must create the program before you perform this procedure. After you complete this procedure, you can start the program. The program will not execute according to the schedule until you start the program.

Use the following steps to schedule a program:

  1. Click the Interactions tab on the navigation bar.
  2. Click Programs.
  3. Click My Programs.
  4. Select the checkbox next to the program to schedule.
  5. Click the Schedule button.
  6. Complete the fields:
    • Start Date - The date of the first time this program will run.
    • Start Time - The time of the first time this program will run.
    • Repeats - The frequency with which the program recurs. The value in this field determines the fields you set in the Repeats every section. Valid values include:
      • Hourly
      • Daily
      • Every Weekday (Mon-Fri)
      • Weekly
      • Monthly
      • Yearly
    • Repeats Every - The specifics on the recurrence of the program. The fields in this section vary depending on the value you select in the Repeats field.
    • Ends - The ending information for the report. You can choose a specific date when the program ends or the number of occurrences to complete.
  7. Click Save.

How to Start a Program

You must create the program before you perform this procedure. You can choose to schedule the program before you perform this procedure. After you complete this procedure, you can stop the program to prevent the steps that have not already started from occurring.

Use the following steps to start a program:

  1. Click the Interactions tab on the navigation bar.
  2. Click Programs.
  3. Click My Programs.
  4. Select the checkbox next to the program to start.
  5. Click the Start button.
  6. Select the start options. Valid options include:
    • Start once
    • Start using the recurring schedule
    • Schedule once
  7. Click the Start button.

 


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