Small Business Marketing and Workflow Automation
It has taken some time, but at last, here are some videos that you may find helpful. We’ll be adding videos to the list, so check back in when you need some help or inspiration.
| Installing BizConnector | |
| Getting Started with BizConnector | |
| Building Your First BizConnector Rule (to Nurture Leads) | |
| Testing a BizConnector Rule |
At this juncture, with the start of a new year and the relaunch of this website, it may be useful to take a look at the history of BizConnector since its appearance in 2005, to relate it to its offshoot ‘Lead Follow-Up’ on Salesforce.com, and in a future post, to describe its expected evolution and roadmap.
BizConnector started off as ‘a web-based email communication tool that enables ‘contextual interaction’ with recipients, addressing the needs of companies seeking to cultivate their customers and grow their businesses by using the latest web technologies to manage marketing campaigns in an intelligent way’. Essentially, it was a mass-emailer with interactive ability – a trail-blazer in many ways.
The original BizConnector had a place for business rules, but it was the development of Lead Follow-Up – a marketing automation app on Salesforce AppExchange – that featured real-time business rules as its core architectural foundation. As the name implies, Lead Follow-Up was built – with a more restricted vision than the original BizConnector – to address the needs of marketers to nurture leads and prospects. Integrated deeply with Salesforce.com through the API, its basic modus operandi is to use events in Salesforce data to trigger ‘drip marketing’ campaigns and workflows. It was expanded to attach not only to Leads, but to Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, Tasks, Events, and Cases. And it incorporates features such as landing pages and a closed-loop feedback mechanism that makes it a powerful tool, despite its apparent simplicity.
BizConnector can now be described, at its core, as a (Near) Real-Time Business Rules Engine for small business. With the development of ‘channels’ that can be used for business rule triggers and actions, BizConnector now has the ability to connect with external systems and applications, be triggered by events outside Salesforce, and pull content from multiple sources. Channels are open-ended, and can be developed by third parties. And the forthcoming BizConnector API, to be announced, will provide a platform for new and exciting applications.
Please visit here again for more information about the BizConnector roadmap.