Workflow Automation – BizConnector

Working with SMS – A New Feature

In addition to email, BizConnector supports SMS (text) messaging – both outbound and inbound.

Outbound text messages, which are set up as rule actions and are sent when a rule fires, have an impact unlike emails. For example, they are more likely to be read immediately by their recipients and are useful when simple communication is required, such as confirming an appointment, and perhaps responding to a question.

Outbound and inbound text messages show up as related lists (after installation) in your Salesforce Lead and Contact pages.

sms_related_lists

In addition to message logs, rules can be defined which can fire on receipt of an SMS message.

sms_rule

Up till recently, rules based on inbound SMS messages were restricted to text messages from people who were already saved in your Salesforce Lead or Contact database.

But now that has changed! We are pleased to announce that inbound SMS messages can result in a new Lead or Contact record being created. And that rules can be written to fire when this happens.

This new feature now enables a type of application: For example, capturing new lead subscriptions – eg. when people send a specific text or number pattern to your SMS number.

I hope this gives you some ideas for applications or workflows that you can build using BizConnector. If you have questions or would like a demo, please contact us.

How BizConnector Helps You Keep Your Emails Relevant

The relevancy of your emails is a deep topic, and is surely something of interest to businesses and organizations who wish to maintain the interest of their prospects and customers. You don’t want to annoy people with irrelevant emails!

This is especially true with tools, such as BizConnector, that are interacting with recipients who, for example, have already registered for an event or a service and should not receive another email inviting them to do so! This happens all too often with other email marketing tools.

So how does BizConnector do it?

The secret lies in a feature called ‘Check Before Send’. Although this is an option when you create a rule, it is on by default, recommended, and used in most of the rules written by BizConnector customers.

It works like this:

The second before a scheduled email is sent, BizConnector checks that the rule conditions (which caused the email to be scheduled in the first place) still apply. If not, the email is suppressed.

Simple as that!

So, for example, if the rule has conditions like:

and if Lead.Status is changed to ‘Working – Contacted’ (see note below)

then the rule conditions no longer apply, and the next email scheduled to go will not be sent. Relevancy of your email communication is thereby maintained!

Note:
There are a number of ways that Lead.Status can be changed. This can be done by a member of your staff – manually. And it could also, in BizConnector, be updated by another rule – say, for example, when the recipient opens an email, clicks on a link, or responds in other ways.

If you would like more information on this feature, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Triggering Messages Based on Anniversaries

BizConnector makes it very easy to trigger emails, SMS messages, and other actions based on the anniversary of any date in your Lead, Contact, Account, or Opportunity records.

This could, for example, be a birthday, an appointment date, or a contract start or expiration date.

As usual in BizConnector, this is done by setting up a rule. In the Rule Editor, you will find ‘pseudo’ fields that are related to date fields in your records. These ‘pseudo’ fields are not real fields, but they are inserted in the field list to make it easy to create a condition.

For example, let’s say we want to send a message on the anniversary of an appointment:

The above condition reads ‘Five days before the appointment anniversary’. That’s all it takes to make the rule fire. This example makes the assumption that you want to send a message five days before the date. Once it fires, you can set any action – for example send an email or sequence of emails, send an SMS message, etc.

Do you have any need to automate messages on the anniversary of a date? If you would like more information about this and other features of BizConnector, please contact us.

Happy messaging!