Sundog

The Importance of a Social Media Audit

alyssa.greve@sundoginteractive.com (Alyssa Greve) — 2014-04-18T15:22:51+00:00

Managing and maintaining a social media presence is a full time job especially when you have multiple profiles to manage and brand, competition and industry keywords to listen to. Then, there is the content strategy and real-time engagement—and don’t forget about strategic plans and social integration. With all of this to do, what’s left? Social media audits are often something that gets pushed under the rug. With so much content and creative moving around, companies should make an effort to take a look at their brand properties, including social, every one or two years to make sure they are relevant and consistent in writing style, brand and imagery.

Here is a short checklist of some items to think about when doing an audit:
1. Number of accounts and strategy of each account
2. Consistent profile images, cover images and backgrounds
3. Consistent toolsets to manage social profiles
4. Consistent tone and voice when writing
5. Consistent image strategy and video strategy

It’s also important to reflect on your social strategy as part of your audit. Questions to ask your team are:

1. What is working?
2. What isn’t working?
3. Should we adjust our listening strategy?
4. Are we capitalizing on what we are listening to?
5. What are our competitor’s doing on social media?
6. Are we on the right channels?
7. How are our social media efforts influencing business goals and objectives?
8. Do we need to adjust our content strategy?
9. Do we need to adjust our engagement strategy?
10. Do we need to adjust our internal workflow process?
11. Can we manage our social channels more efficiently and effectively?
12. Do we need to adjust our integration strategy?
13. Are we measuring the right things?
14. How did we perform from the previous year?

Once your social media audit is complete, its time to create a project list to prioritize. After all the action plans are created and executed, this is a continuous exercise that must be conducted every year or two.

Marketing Cloud Central

alyssa.greve@sundoginteractive.com (Alyssa Greve) — 2014-04-18T15:11:54+00:00

The “Marketing Cloud” is taking the industry by storm and other companies are beginning to figure it out. As Gartner predicted, CMOs would outspend CIOs on IT by the year 2017 and companies are on track to provide a solution these leaders want.

Social media is one area where these CMOs will be spending their budgets. Email, mobile and marketing automation are additional areas of focus and that’s just the start. Each of the areas have specific tools to enable workflow and support marketing initiatives. In the Marketing Cloud, multiple toolsets are brought together in one platform. We have seen in the social media space, larger companies are acquiring social tools left and right. Many large companies who acquire these niche tools are trying to build or create the next Marketing Cloud. Ultimately, with all these tools in one platform, The Marketing Cloud will enable integration across multiple brand touch points for a consistent experience. It will also create a loyal customer who will purchase their multiple marketing tools under one platform umbrella.

In a Marketing Cloud, there are multiple toolsets in a one platform. This provides a consistent experience, integration across your brand, workflow improvement and increased efficiency. It will take the guesswork out of the customer’s hands on researching what tool they should purchase next to automate their marketing channels. Additionally, this platform will allow marketers to tailor campaigns to specific customers based on their journey with the marketer’s brand. Measurement is also a big task for CMOs, which is why Marketing Cloud’s ties analytics into each platform.

However, multiple tools have different capabilities. If you like the email tool from Oracle, but like the social toolset from ETMC, it could cause some gray area of using multiple platforms. Prices may start to increase and integration may be limited.

We are at the tipping point right now where these tools have been acquired, but they are still in the beginning stages and are working together to integrate multiple tools as one. The latest video released of the Salesforce Exact Target Marketing Cloud demonstrates this.

Overtime, we will see these evolve and more CMOs will allocate their budgets to purchase these tools. Below is a current list of the Marketing Cloud platforms:
•Salesforce Exact Target Marketing Cloud
•Adobe Marketing Cloud
•IBM Marketing Cloud
•Oracle Marketing Cloud
•HP - The Autonomy Marketing Cloud

For a summary on these tools and who might be in the lead, check out this review.

A Simple Email Integration Between Gravity Forms on WordPress and Salesforce

terry.luschen@sundoginteractive.com (Terry Luschen) — 2014-04-13T11:53:48+00:00

Gravity Forms is a well know form builder that runs on WordPress. It is simple to spin up a form to collect data for whatever you need. But what if that data needs to get to Salesforce?

You could try to interact with the Salesforce API. Salesforce has great APIs for interacting with its data, but doing that on the WordPress site can be pretty technical. Let’s try to keep this simple.

Let’s just have Gravity Forms send an email to Salesforce with the results of what was entered on the form. This is how Gravity Forms works already for most people. The efficiency problem though is that the usually email ends up in somebody’s inbox and then the data needs to be copy/pasted into another system.

But Salesforce has a way to process this email for you. It is called an Email Service. Here is how this can be done.

1) Create an Apex Class that implements Messaging.InboundEmailHandler
Here is an example piece of code that will accept a Gravity Form email and then parse it into a list that will contain the questions and answers. It would need to be extended for your specific questions and then what action to take. Maybe you want to convert a lead or create an opportunity.

global class inboundSalesEmail implements Messaging.InboundEmailHandler {
	//Email for this service: NameOfEmailService@longlistofCharacters.otherChars.na1.apex.salesforce.com
	global Messaging.InboundEmailResult handleInboundEmail(Messaging.inboundEmail email, Messaging.InboundEnvelope env){    
  	    Messaging.InboundEmailResult result = new Messaging.InboundEmailResult();
  	    
		system.debug('Subject: ' + email.Subject);
  	    //system.debug('PlainText Body: ' + email.plainTextBody);
  	    //system.debug('HTML Body: ' + email.htmlBody);
  	    
  	    //The email comes in broken by line feed
  	    list splitBody = new list();
  	    splitBody = email.plainTextBody.split('\n');

		//Now that we have a list of the lines spin through them
		// and remove the blank rows
  	    list splitItems = new list();
  	    for(string s : splitBody){
  	    	if(string.isBlank(s) == false){
  	    		splitItems.add(s);
  	    	}
  	    }
  	    
  	    //Here is where you would do your logic.  
  	    //Both the questions and the answers from the Gravity Form 
  	    // are in this list of strings.
  	    for(string s : splitItems){
  	    	system.debug('Incoming Item: ' + s);
  	    }
  	    
  	    result.success = true;
  	    return result;
	}
  	    
}

This code is making use of the plainTextBody of the email. You could get the htmlBody too from the email parameter for more detailed parsing, but that is going to contain all of the table tags like

and

and all of the formatting. I really just wanted to get right at the data for this example.

2) Create an Email Service
a) Go to Setup, Build, Develop, Email Service
b) Click on New Email Service
c) Fill out the form and specify the Apex class that you created above
d) After the Email Service is saved click on the ‘New Email Address’ button to generate an email for this Email Service.
e) This last step is the piece that ties is all together. It is saying that when Salesforce receives this email, that it will route the email to the Apex class that was created above.

That is really all there is to it! Your Gravity Form and Salesforce are now linked!

You will have to be careful about how Gravity Forms sends over tables and other more complicated structures. As you go through the loop you may need to build a set of questions so you know where they start and stop.
I wrote a blog post last week about creating a task with an email service too if you want to look into how to write a test class for your email service.

An email integration is just as powerful as a REST/SOAP integration. It gets the data where it needs to go and it stops the dreaded time-killer of copy/paste work.

Let me know if Sundog can help you with your next integration!

A Salesforce Task Creator By Email

terry.luschen@sundoginteractive.com (Terry Luschen) — 2014-04-06T18:36:52+00:00

A big push very recently has been the Salesforce1 app for Salesforce. Within Salesforce1 you can do all kinds of actions like viewing Accounts, Opportunities and creating Tasks. But what if Salesforce1 does not work for you? What if you need an even quicker way to create a task in Salesforce? How about by simply sending an email?

Sure! Here is how it can be done…

1) Create a new Apex class that implements Messaging.InboundEmailHandler.
1a) This is the class that will accept the email so we can view its parts. There is a Messaging.inboundEmail parameter that can be used to get the Subject and PlainTextBody values from the email.
2) The subject of the email will be formatted as #-SubjectOfTask.
2a) So an example subject could be 1-Please call the big account today
2b) What does the number stand for? It is used to match who should be assigned the task. On the User object create a custom number field called ‘EmailTaskID__c’. When you look at the code below it is referenced in getUserIDForTask().
2c) After you have setup this new custom field go into the User records and edit them to fill out this new field. So you might assign Sara = 1; Joe = 2; Jim = 3 and yourself =4. Now you will know what number to put at the front of the subject line.

Here is the code for the Apex Class:

global class clsInboundEmailHandler implements Messaging.InboundEmailHandler {

  	global Messaging.InboundEmailResult handleInboundEmail(Messaging.inboundEmail email, Messaging.InboundEnvelope env){    
  	    Messaging.InboundEmailResult result = new Messaging.InboundEmailResult();
  	    
  	    string subject = email.Subject;
  	    string userID = '';
  	    integer userIDNumber = 0;
  	    string restOfSubject = '';
  	    
  	    if(subject.contains('-') == false){
  	    	result.success = false;
  	    	return result;
  	    }
  	    list subjectSplit = new list();
  	    subjectSplit = subject.split('-');
  	    userID = subjectSplit[0];
  	    userID = userID.trim();
  	    if(userID.isNumeric() == false){
  	    	result.success = false;
  	    	return result;
  	    }else{
  	    	userIDNumber = integer.valueOf(userID);
  	    }
  	    boolean firstOne = true;
  	    for(string s : subjectSplit){
  	    	if(firstOne){
  	    		firstOne = false;
  	    	}else{
  	    		restOfSubject += s;
  	    	}
  	    }
  	    
  	    //Now find the user
  	    string userIDForTask = getUserIDForTask(userIDNumber);  
  	    if(userIDForTask == ''){
  	    	result.success = false;
  	    	return result;
  	    }
  	    
  	    Task t = new Task();
  	    t.Subject = restOfSubject; //This is from the subject line
  	    t.ActivityDate = date.today();
  	    t.Description = email.plainTextBody; //or email.htmlbody;
  	    t.Priority = 'Normal';
  	    t.OwnerId = userIDForTask; //Set to owner
  	    t.Status = 'Not Started';
  	    t.IsReminderSet = true;
  	    t.ReminderDateTime = System.now() + 1;
  	    insert t;
  	    
  	    result.success = true;
  	    return result;
  	}
  	
  	private string getUserIDForTask(integer userIDNumber){
  		list userList = new list();
  	    string userIDForTask = '';
  	    userList = [Select ID
  	    			From User
  	    			Where EmailTaskID__c = :userIDNumber];
  	    if(userList.size() <> 1){
  	    	return '';
  	    }else{
  	    	return userList[0].id;
  	    }
  	}
  	
}

3) Now that we have the email handler ready we need to assign an Email address to it.
3a) Go to Setup, App Setup, Develop, Email Services
3b) Create a new Email Service and it will generate an email address that you can. Any time an email is sent to that address it will be sent to the Apex class that was created above.
3c) You can add security around who to accept emails from in case it should only come from certain people.
4) That is it! Now you can quickly send an email with the correctly formatted subject line and your task will show up in Salesforce.

This idea could be extended to create all kinds of objects or perform all sorts of actions in Salesforce. The possibilities are limitless.

Enjoy your new email task generator!

Test Code for the above class…


@isTest
private class clsInboundEmailHandlerTest {

    static testMethod void clsInboundEmailHandlerTest() {
        // create a new email and envelope object
  		Messaging.InboundEmail email = new Messaging.InboundEmail() ;
  		Messaging.InboundEnvelope env = new Messaging.InboundEnvelope();
 
  		// setup the data for the email
  		email.subject = 'This is my subject';
  		email.fromname = 'FirstName LastName';
  		env.fromAddress = 'someaddress@email.com';
  		email.plainTextBody = 'Body of the Email';
  		
  		Messaging.InboundEmailResult ierItem;
  		clsInboundEmailHandler emailProcess = new clsInboundEmailHandler();
  		ierItem = emailProcess.handleInboundEmail(email, env);
  		
  		system.assertEquals(false, ierItem.Success); //The subject did not start with a number
    }
    
    static testMethod void clsInboundEmailHandlerTest2() {
        // create a new email and envelope object
  		Messaging.InboundEmail email = new Messaging.InboundEmail() ;
  		Messaging.InboundEnvelope env = new Messaging.InboundEnvelope();
 
  		// setup the data for the email
  		email.subject = 'A-This is my subject';
  		email.fromname = 'FirstName LastName';
  		env.fromAddress = 'someaddress@email.com';
  		email.plainTextBody = 'Body of the Email';
  		
  		Messaging.InboundEmailResult ierItem;
  		clsInboundEmailHandler emailProcess = new clsInboundEmailHandler();
  		ierItem = emailProcess.handleInboundEmail(email, env);
  		
  		system.assertEquals(false, ierItem.Success); //The subject did not start with a number
    }
    
    static testMethod void clsInboundEmailHandlerTest3() {
        // create a new email and envelope object
  		Messaging.InboundEmail email = new Messaging.InboundEmail() ;
  		Messaging.InboundEnvelope env = new Messaging.InboundEnvelope();
 
  		// setup the data for the email
  		email.subject = '1-This is my subject';
  		email.fromname = 'FirstName LastName';
  		env.fromAddress = 'someaddress@email.com';
  		email.plainTextBody = 'Body of the Email';
  		
  		Messaging.InboundEmailResult ierItem;
  		clsInboundEmailHandler emailProcess = new clsInboundEmailHandler();
  		ierItem = emailProcess.handleInboundEmail(email, env);
  		
  		system.assertEquals(false, ierItem.Success); //The id in the subject line was not found
    }
    
       static testMethod void clsInboundEmailHandlerTest4() {
        // create a new email and envelope object
  		Messaging.InboundEmail email = new Messaging.InboundEmail() ;
  		Messaging.InboundEnvelope env = new Messaging.InboundEnvelope();
 
  		// setup the data for the email
  		email.subject = '1-This is my subject';
  		email.fromname = 'FirstName LastName';
  		env.fromAddress = 'someaddress@email.com';
  		email.plainTextBody = 'Body of the Email';
  		User u = CreateUser(1);
  		
  		Messaging.InboundEmailResult ierItem;
  		clsInboundEmailHandler emailProcess = new clsInboundEmailHandler();
  		ierItem = emailProcess.handleInboundEmail(email, env);
  		
  		system.assertEquals(true, ierItem.Success); //The id in the subject line was not found
  		list taskList = new list();
  		taskList = [Select ID, Subject, Description
  					From Task
  					Where OwnerID = :u.ID];
  		system.assertEquals(1, taskList.size());
  		system.assertEquals(taskList[0].Subject, 'This is my subject');
  		system.assertEquals(taskList[0].Description, 'Body of the Email');
    }
    
    private static User CreateUser(integer numberForEmail){		
		Profile p = [SELECT Id FROM profile WHERE name='System Administrator']; 
        User u = new User(alias = 'newSUser', email='newSAuser@testorg.com', 
            emailencodingkey='UTF-8', lastname='SATesting', languagelocalekey='en_US', 
            localesidkey='en_US', profileid = p.Id, 
            timezonesidkey='America/Los_Angeles', username='newSAuser@testorg.com', 
            CommunityNickname='CN');
        u.EmailTaskID__c = numberForEmail;
        u.FirstName = 'TestUser';
		u.LastName = 'TestLastuser';
		insert u;
		return u;
	}
}

Mobile Technology for the Consumer: iBeacon and NFC explained

shawn.tennyson@sundog.net (Shawn Tennyson) — 2014-03-31T23:50:20+00:00

Since Apple’s announcement last year of iBeacon, Near Field Communications (NFC), has been cast aside by the tech media as antiquated technology. But upon closer scrutiny, there is a place for both when engaging the consumer via their mobile device.

A recent article in Digital Signate Today, and their sister publication Mobile Payments Today, explains both technologies via a BLE-vs-NFC-infographic.pdf and a more detailed white paper by Steve Gurley from Pyrim Technologies (an NFC advocate): “Comparing iBeacon to NFC is fundamentally wrong. A more appropriate scenario would be to compare Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to NFC as it is BLE’s feature-set that the press has mistakenly attributed to Apple’s iBeacon. Many readers may be surprised to learn that iBeacon is not a device nor is it a software application. iBeacon is nothing more than a set of services (APIs) that operate between Apple’s iOS7 operating system and iOS7-compatible apps. In essence, the iBeacon API does nothing more than enable iOS apps to recognize that they are within the wireless coverage zone of a BLE transmitter.”

“The bottom line is this; BLE and NFC are designed to serve two very different purposes:
1. BLE, like a lighthouse, is used to call a mobile app’s attention to its current surroundings so that it may initiate a pre-defined action appropriate to the given location.

2. NFC, like a telephone, is used to facilitate a one-to-one, data-oriented communication session between a person and a thing or between two NFC-equipped individuals. Although BLE and NFC are designed to serve different purposes, they can be used together to create a collaborative application.”

The white paper illustrated an example of a scenario using both technologies:

“A consumer enters a retailer. Their BLE-equipped smartphone senses a signal emanating from an in-store BLE transmitter. The consumer’s smartphone automatically employs the operating system’s BLE extension (iBeacon if it’s an iOS7 device) to evaluate the transmitter’s device ID so that it may execute the appropriate action. The ID results in a prompt to the consumer’s smartphone to display a notification that they have an offer from the retailer. The consumer removes the smartphone from their pocket and acknowledges the notification on the screen. They then choose an option on the now visible offer to save a coupon to their mobile wallet. Once saved, they shop, select the promoted item from the store shelf and use their phone to tap on its NFC-equipped shelf tag for additional savings. Once satisfied with their selection, the consumer puts the item in their basket and continues shopping. They soon pass a digital sign advertising another product that catches their attention. They tap their phone on the NFC tag affixed to the digital sign and receive detailed information about the product plus a coupon for its purchase. They then select the product from the shelf, save the coupon in their mobile wallet and then proceed to checkout.

The checkout clerk rings up the purchases and then redeems the mobile coupons by scanning the coupons’ embedded barcodes. Once the sale is complete, the consumer selects the appropriate payment card from their mobile wallet, and then touches their phone to the retailer’s payment terminal. The consumer’s payment credentials are then securely transmitted to the payment terminal via NFC and the payment transaction is sent to the payment processor for approval. Once approved, the sale is complete and the consumer leaves the building having utilized both BLE and NFC wireless communications.”

iBeacon, or more appropriately Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), is an exciting way to engage consumers via their mobile device. But, NFC still has a useful place that complements the engagement initiated by BLE.

Customers Don’t Trust Marketers, But You Can Do Something About It

lynlee.espeseth@sundoginteractive.com (Lynlee Espeseth) — 2014-03-31T23:37:01+00:00

A new report is out from SDL that studies how much consumers trust marketers with their personal data. They found that, unfortunately, consumers don’t have much trust for marketers at all. 65% of people in the US worry about their information being used in marketing.

Considering recent data breaches, the prevalence of identity theft, and the general creepiness consumers feel when they realize how much brands know about them, it’s difficult to blame anyone for being nervous about sharing their information. Still, that information is vital if you want to create personalized, useful marketing campaigns. Here are some interesting findings from the study, and ways you should use that information to guide your data collection efforts.

1. People are uninformed about privacy.
The research found that few people read privacy statements on websites, or understand why companies want their data. That lack of understanding leads to distrust. What can you do about it? Explain, in easy to understand words, why you are asking for the data. Even if laws require you to explain privacy in words no one but a lawyer would understand, try to deliver that information to consumers in simplified ways too. Be ready to answer questions in person, and online. Open up a conversation about data collection so consumers know what to expect.

2. Consumers demand service no matter what.
Lots of marketers want to tell consumers that by collecting their data, they can offer a better experience. That’s fine, but that experience must be truly stellar. Customers demand great service from companies, regardless of how much data they have. Use data in ways that actually help consumers in relevant ways, in the right moment. An email for a spring sale is fine. An email to a specific part of the country about a rain boot sale just before a storm hits is even better.

3. Consumers will be much quicker to give you data if they trust you.
You have to build a relationship with customers before you deserve their data. The study sites Amazon as an excellent example of this. They have great customer service, customers have a relationship with the store because they can write reviews, get recommendations and make wish lists, and they are known for being a reliable place to shop. Because of this, people are willing to give Amazon their information. You should look to Amazon as an example. When people interact with you, make sure they have a good experience. Look for touch points where you can make someone get to know your brand. If they are willing to give you an email, can you communicate great information? Is there a portal or login on your website that people can join without offering too much, but get lots of benefits? How do you interact with customers when you don’t know anything about them? Can they see your success stories, your social interactions with others, or your customer reviews? Never barge into an interaction asking for a name, email address, phone number, physical address, and credit card information. No one will offer it to a company they don’t feel good about yet.

4. Consumers are willing to give some information, but not all.
In the study, SDL found that customers are reasonably willing to offer data like gender, date of birth, hobbies, and marital status. When it comes to information about their friends and family, their spouse’s name, and social security numbers however, they became far less willing to share. Consider this when you are gathering information. Knowing that someone is married is generally much more valuable information then knowing that a husband’s name is Steve. Likewise, you can make significant assumptions about the relationships a person has based on their gender, age and even hobbies. Don’t create a basic form that asks for all information and expect it to work. Only ask about what you absolutely need, and you know consumers are more willing to share.

While data use, data sharing and data protection are going to be issues that continue to be widely talked about in the future, there are some efforts you can make now to help grow consumers’ trust. Be smart about how, when and why you ask for information, and be sure you deserve the trust your customers have in you.

How frequent should promotional emails be?

susanna.oliver@sundoginteractive.com (Susanna Oliver) — 2014-03-31T22:12:33+00:00

“I signed up for their promotional emails so I would hear about their next big sale, but they started sending me so many emails, I unsubscribed.” These were the telling words from a discussion last week about a super-sale my sister had discovered a few weeks before at a new store. She was an eager repeat customer and wanted to be notified of their next blow-out sale, but found their promotional emails so annoyingly frequent that she unsubscribed. Such is the tragic mistake of so many retailers who, in their zeal to “stay in front of customers,” end up blocking their view and annoying them instead!

Finding that happy balance is difficult because it varies from person to person. A frequency that is acceptable and even welcome to one person is a nuisance and intrusion to another. It’s time to throw out one-size-fits-all and start letting individuals determine how often and what kind of emails arrive in their inbox. What are their interests? Do they just want the featured product emails? Do they want the newsletter, too? Most likely they’ll be open to receiving more frequent emails if it’s something to which they’ve opted in. My sister, for example, only wanted to know about the next big sale, not every featured new item the store sells. Studies show that segmented emails have a much higher open and click-through rate than blanket approach emails. Read a personal experience with the success of segmented emails.

When it comes right down to it, the answer is: it depends. If you don’t have enough content, corporate size, or diversity to offer variety and choice in your emails, then err on the side of caution. Let your users tell you what they like (or didn’t like when they unsubscribe) by giving them opportunities to provide feedback. And remember, tangible incentives go a long way in eliciting responses from your audience.

Upcoming community for Filmmakers

rob.burke@sundoginteractive.com (Rob Burke) — 2014-03-31T14:59:29+00:00

I came across this site and had to share it. Stillmotion is building a community worth paying attention to. It is a free membership centered around building local communities. It allows you to find people close by who can help make your productions come to life. Say you are strong in directing, but poor at audio, or love to shoot, but hate to edit, Story&Heart is centered around this idea of making connections with those who can compliment your strengths.

The other side of Story & Heart is their video licensing. This is how they plan to support the community and keep it free, all while helping you make a little extra cash on the footage that never made it into your final video. Stillmotion says the site should be live within two months. They have show they can produce some amazing work, I believe this site has great potential to help bring together collaborators and help build a community with your local and national talent.

The Importance of Mobile In A Developing World

lynlee.espeseth@sundoginteractive.com (Lynlee Espeseth) — 2014-03-31T01:27:48+00:00

What do you think of when you picture technology in a developing country, perhaps one in Africa? Do you picture clunky desktops, the likes of which we haven’t seen in the United States in twenty years? Maybe a rotary phone?

It might surprise you to learn that that couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a rather interesting phenomenon happening in many developing nations. They skipped advanced desktops, and even laptops, and went right to mobile. Developing nations have gone quite high-tech.

In a recent article, the Christian Science Monitor explored the many ways mobile technology has changed developing nations. Considering that much of the industry in African takes place far away from any kind of traditional office, mobile technology can help farmers and other workers communicate and have a pulse on global business. For those working in healthcare, text message reminders to AIDS patients have increased the number of people taking much needed medicine.

While this mobile revolution is still in its early phases, it is an important development for businesses across the world, and imperative to those doing business on a global level. In the United States, in other developed nations, and now, in developing nations, mobile is where more and more people are accessing your website, portals, doing B2B work, gathering information and connecting with others. If you plan to do business on any sort of a global scale, mobile is going to change everything (indeed, it already has).

How can an app change the way people interact with your brand? How can text messaging keep you connected with employees and customers, no matter where they are? Is your most important information easily accessible on a phone? Where are people located (at home, out and about, far away from towns and business) when they need to give or receive information? These are all questions you must ask yourself when making business decisions, marketing decisions, and the decisions that will guide your company into the future.

Salesforce - Recipe for Web-to-Contact Process

terry.luschen@sundoginteractive.com (Terry Luschen) — 2014-03-30T12:17:45+00:00

Salesforce has a simple process for creating a lead from a web site. It is called a ‘Web-to-Lead’ form. All you need to do is…

1) Setup your Lead object with any custom fields
2) In the Setup menu under Build, Customize, Leads select the ‘Web-to-Lead’ link.
3) Click on the ‘Create Web-to-Lead Form’ button.
4) Select the fields you want captured on the Web-to-Lead form and specify a ‘Return URL’ for where the user should be directed after the form is filled out.
5) Add the generated HTML to a page in your web site.

That is all great and it is easy to plug that generated HTML into your web site so you can start capturing leads. But what if you do not use leads? When we look under the Contacts link in Setup we do not see a ‘Web-to-Contact’ button.

What should we do? It really is pretty simple. Here we go!

1) Add a custom checkbox field called ‘AutoConvert’ to the lead object.
2) When you generate your ‘Web-to-Lead’ form include this custom field in the selected fields.
3) Hit the Generate button
4) When the HTML is generated it will produce your ‘AutoConvert’ field like this

AutoConvert:<input  id="00NE0000005D8Oq" name="00NE0000005D8Oq" type="checkbox" value="1" /><br>

5) Change that line to be this line so that it is hidden on the page and it will always be set to true (value=“1”). Make sure the long string in the name attribute matches.

<input type=hidden name="00NE0000005D8Oq" value="1">

6) Add the Web-to-Lead form to your web site and make sure that when it is submitted that it is creating a lead in your org.

As we said before we do not want a lead, but rather we want a contact. So we need to have a trigger like the one below that will convert that Lead to a Contact when our new ‘AutoConvert’ checkbox is checked. This checkbox will allow leads to be created in the system without having it auto convert.

Here is the trigger code:

trigger LeadConvert on Lead (after insert) {

	list leadsToConvert = new list();
	Database.LeadConvert lc;
	string convertedStatus = '';
	list convertStatusList = new list();
	convertStatusList = [Select Id, MasterLabel 
							from LeadStatus 
							where IsConverted=true limit 1];
	if(convertStatusList.size() > 0){
		convertedStatus = convertStatusList[0].MasterLabel;
	}else{ 
		convertedStatus = 'Closed - Converted';
	}
	
	for(Lead l : trigger.New){
		if(l.AutoConvert__c == true){
			//This lead should be converted automatically to a Contact/Account
			lc = new database.LeadConvert();
			lc.setLeadId(l.ID);
			lc.setDoNotCreateOpportunity(true); 
			lc.setConvertedStatus(convertedStatus);
			leadsToConvert.add(lc);
		}
	}
	
	
    list lcrList = new list();
    lcrList = Database.convertLead(leadsToConvert);
}

Now go back and try your Web-to-Lead form again. Since the form should automatically set the new custom checkbox field ‘AutoConvert’ to true, the trigger will notice that and will automatically convert the lead to a contact.

Voila! We have a ‘Web-to-Contact’ process.