Categories
Productivity Booster SalesForce.com SEO and Paid Search The Marketeer

SalesForce.com for the Treo

About a month ago I noticed that with the exception of a “dummies” book there were very few print resources out there on the big SF so I decided to turn to the blogosphere. I stumbled across SalesforceWatch.com and found a post that they were looking for usability testers for the next release of Salesforce for the Treo.

Because I was an alternate I never got an NDA, but I’m not going to yap and betray Melissa, who gave me the guided tour. The one thing that I liked the most is already in the existing version – the ability to see the latest Opportunities that have Closed as Wins. It’s a cool system but I really need to upgrade my Treo 600 to take advantage of it. In other SF news I still have not been able to get the Google AdWords/Salesforce integration to work. My server only likes forms that use “Submit” and I need to use a different term if I want the SF snippet to work. More experimenting this week to see if I can get that to work. I’m also doing a bunch of hygiene with Ringlead and that’s working well.

Categories
Email Marketing The Marketeer

HTML vs Plain Text Email

I sent off an email campaign yesterday and finally got around to testing a full-color HTML message vs a plain text one. I’m an old enough fart to remember how open and click-throughs exploded when images were added to email so this could be the coming of the full circle. Trying to get a plain text email out proved to be quite a challenge, there’s no way in ConstantContact to just click “Text Only” (but I thought of a workaround for that, of course 1 day after moving hell and earth to get it out via an Outlook mail merge, which is another horror story of it’s own adding to my December from hell).

So in the spirit of the Rocky Balboa release today, I’m wondering if there are any opinions out there on who will be triumphant, the champion or the challenger?

Categories
Brain Buster Lead Generation The Marketeer

Virtual Telemarketing

As a follow-up to my post on “Just calling to check in” I was checking my voicemail and a message started up with the classic p0rn theme playing (you know the one, a little slap bass and guitar scratch – bowmp, ba-bowmp, wacka-wacka). After a few seconds a woman’s voice came on trying to sell me something, I can’t even remember what the hell it was.

It just struck me as odd that this virtual voice was “talking” to my voicemail. Just as weird as the lovely Carin talking back to our GPS as we drive around Boston. We hear a human voice and the device IS alive. If I could find a way to automatically delete any voicemail that’s machine to machine that would be it, I’d be in my beach house on Nantucket.

Categories
Daily Life Lead Generation Productivity Booster The Marketeer

Just calling to check in

About a year ago I attended a session on how to sell on the phone by Jeff Hoffman of Basho Strategies. He brought up a point that’s become a pet peeve of mine – people calling just to check in. Any time I get a call from somebody trying to sell me something, they’re “just calling to check in”. I immediately noticed I do it all the time. Whenever I’d call someone to bug them about something, or try to sell them something, I was really calling just to check in.

I’ve given up answering my phone, everybody gets to leave voicemail and then I can sort through them every hour or as necessary. As soon as I hear “Hey, it’s X and I’m just calling to check in…” I hit the delete key and move on. I’ve picked up at least an hour a week. I’m wondering if there’s a future in phone sales at all, or has my heart just turned to stone? Is it wrong for me to make change when I throw a $5 in the homeless guy’s cup over at the off-ramp to the Pike on Storrow Drive?

Categories
Podcasting

The M Show – Game On

Live from Boston! It’s Sunday Night! That means there’s a hot fresh M Show waiting to be loaded on your iPod. If you don’t have one, get one for the holiday – you need it, you know you do!

The only stuff newsworthy involved the gaming industry so that’s all we’ve got, that and some field recording with some people who slept out outside for a shot at a Nintendo Wii. Tomorrow it’s back to work.

Categories
Gaming The Marketeer

Big Bumpin’

I was a the local Burger King this week feeding my junk food addiction with one of my favorites – the Burger King Chicken sandwich – basically the chicken equivalent of a hotdog, rolled in batter and deep fried. Add a toasted bun, mayo and lettuce and I’m ready for the defib to zap my rapidly hardening arteries.

BK has a great campaign going now where if you buy a value meal you can get an XBox game for $3.99. The games run on both the new Xbox 360 and the original Xbox. Always a sucker for a novel campaign, and a card carrying gamer I had to try one out. I immediately had to laugh as I asked for a copy of “Big Bumpin“. Am I just being too Beavis and Butthead or does this seem outright blatant:
The lit marquis on the game cover says “Big Bumpin'” and you’ve got the king, known for slinging the meat, and his huge (game) cock right there with him. I haven’t actually had time to try it out myself but the reviews on the gamers sites I hit now and then say that this is the best of the three and not bad, especially at the price. So if you hear that 70’s scratch guitar theme later these week, you know I’ll be busy in round of Big Bumpin’ with the King and will deliver my verdict.

Categories
Brain Buster SEO and Paid Search

Big Google is Watching You

I had a chance to chat with one of the Crayonistas last night and he tipped me off to this:

http://www.google.com/psearch

I feel like Shatner… “This is going to be big, REALLY big”

Categories
Daily Life The Marketeer

Live, from Second Life, IT’S THURSDAY NIGHT!

So I just got off stage from talking about paid search at the Second Life Case camp. It was a lot of fun, but I have this problem talking about new media, I have an irrational fear of running out of content so as a result I always set up too much content and end up presenting like an ADD crack addict that’s just shotgunned 3 triple espressos. At least it feels that way, hopefully it sounds a little better than that.

I’m working on the company newsletter and starting to flesh out a blogger relations program. Tomorrow will also release the next SCM Podcast from AccuRev, for those of you into learning about SCM and SOA (Rock on!). There’s also the holiday gift story that is still evolving so I am unable to speak about it at the present time (but when I can, it will be worth it, I have some venting to do). With that, thank you ladies and gentleman, you’ve been great, try the virtual veal, it’s excellent!

Categories
Daily Life Email Marketing

Holiday Battles

Yesterday was consumed by 3 items: an email campaign, an unbelievable story involving our corporate holiday gift (when it’s done I will tell this tale, for now all I can say is that I want to jam a coffee cup so far up someone’s (*&@#$ that they can taste it), and my evening trying to get my Second Life avatar not to look like a blue Celine Dion.

A lot of those moments when I sit back and remind myself of a quote from Winston Churchill (or maybe Roosevelt?), something about “All that matters is persistance, that’s the only way things get accomplished”.

My open rates for the email campaign are a little bit low, I’m averaging mid-twenties, ConstantContact is saying the average across all their customers is 37%. I’m thinking that since many small businesses use CC that there are a lot of small lists that perform better (like my M Show mailing list that has something ridiculous like 60% open 50% clicks). The good news is the clicks are twice the CC average, and most importantly I always see a good list of Company names that have some F-1000 cache.

I’m at CaseCamp Second Life tonight, but I’m sorry, it’s sold out. I’ll probably record my session and post it later.

On the plus side Shel Holtz picked up my Web 3.0 video, and then Steve Rubel posted his link in his daily links – thanks to both of them. Not bad for a newbie blogger!

Categories
SalesForce.com

Boston Salesforce.com Meetup

Salesforce.com is holding an event here in Boston on Jan 23rd at the Hyatt Harborside. Here’s a link for more info, if you are going to be there feel free to send me an email, this is my first one and it would be cool to know somebody else going.