Posted by Scott Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:56:00 GMT
Say you want to send a postcard to each of your best customers and you have tagged them all with “green”.
Now, with one easy click, you can create a spreadsheet to ship to your postcard vendor.
As always, thanks for your support and keep those good ideas coming by email at comments [at] synapsoftware.com.
Posted by Scott Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:36:00 GMT
We are adding Textile formatting starting today with Track Descriptions. Textile is a formatting markup that lets you do things like bold, italics, and lists:
Common Tags
When typing in a Textile enabled field, you can use these commands or “tags” to format how the text will be displayed. For example, enclose Textile enabled text in astericks and it will be displayed as bold.
*bold* _italics_ # List item 1 # List item 2 # List item 3 * An item * Another * Another
Or Just Simply Type
Even without using textile tags, you will see a difference because line breaks you enter will show up when the content is displayed.
Watch for new formatting to be added to comments tomorrow.
Posted by Scott Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:47:00 GMT
Today we release a lead measurement report as a part of new tools to help you will gain additional insight into indicators of your company’s marketing success.
By managing leads in LeadsOnRails lead management software, you are not only building a consistent marketing system, you are also capturing valuable information that will help you tune marketing and lead management efforts over time.
Starting with the very first release, LeadsOnRails has provided a “Pipeline Overview” that shows users the number of leads at each step of each track (a LeadsOnRails “track” is a treatment, or series of steps your lead goes through).
The Pipeline Overview is a great way to get visibility into where marketing and lead management efforts have bottlenecks. If you see a high number or leads stacking up on a given step, it is time to investigate that step and/or the person responsible for completing it.
New: Marketing Measure
While the Pipeline Overview helps you keep things moving, the new Marketing Measure helps you see what lead sources result in value and which ones do not.
Here is an example. (This is not real data.)
You can open the details behind this report by clicking the “see report details” link. Open the detailed report to see performance by source.
During its introduction, this report is found on your Dashboard. (Because not everyone will use it, it will soon become an item optionally moved to a new reports section).
How to Set It Up
Not all leads get captured into the new report. Only those assigned to both a source and a stage are included in the new measurement.
Source Here are some example sources.
If you want to use the new report you will first create some entries into the Source list. Click on Source in the Setup menu now. Source is important because it is where you specify your costs. If a lead source or offer results in high conversion rate, but also carries a high cost, that source may not be as effective as you first think.
Make sure to try to include all costs, including your time to make a call, write a blog entry, etc.
Fixed Cost
Some sources have fixed costs that are the same regardless of the number of leads generated from the source. Yellow Pages advertisement, booth at a show, etc. Enter the fixed cost component of this source or offer here.
Per Lead Cost
Some sources have a cost per lead, whether it is the cost to acquire the lead or the cost of each postcard sent out, for example. Enter this incremental cost here.
Enter source information into your account, save it and we are ready to look at stages.
Stage
You assign each stage a value. The represents the likelihood of conversion at that stage. This may be a guessing game at first, but as time goes on LeadsOnRails will gain a new feature that will actually be able to self-monitor the stage % value based on previous results.
Lead Value
Each lead record can be assigned an estimated value. What amount do you think the product or service the lead would purchase is worth? At each stage, this value is multiplied by the Stage value to give a present value. (e.g. If a lead has an estimated value of $1,000 and currently has a 50 likelihood, then its present value, for this purpose, is $500).
To enter a lead value, scroll down to the new ‘Opportunity’ section when entering or editing a lead. Look for this:
What Happened to the Old ‘Source’ Field?
For accurate reporting among your leads, the source field needed to become a dropdown list of choices. The lead field formerly known as ‘source’ has simply been renamed to ‘referred by’ and no data has been lost.
Try it Out
Create some source and stage entries in setup, and then assign some leads a source, stage and value. Don’t forget to make sure each lead has a value assigned or they will not show on the Marketing Measure report.
Do you find this useful? Do you have certain data you would like to see in the reports that are being developed now? Let us know.
Posted by Scott Wed, 07 Mar 2007 16:19:00 GMT
When you created your LeadsOnRails account, you choose a custom web address for your company’s account. For example, the demonstration account is found at demo.leadsonrails.com/login.
While a different address for each account helps keep your data private from any other users, it also means that you need to remember a unique login address. You also need to remember to add /login to the end.
We have added two enhancements to help with this. First, we’ve a added a “Login Here” link to the product page. So if you enter demo.leadsonrails.com for example, you will still be brought to leadsonrails.com and then can click on Click Here to Login to be brought to your personal login page.
Secondly, if you do not remember your web address, you will be brought to a screen where you can enter your email address to be directed to your personal login screen.
Thanks for the feedback and stay tuned for continued improvements and a big new feature later this week.
Posted by Scott Thu, 01 Mar 2007 04:07:00 GMT
LeadsOnRails.com now has an import feature allowing you to easily bring in basic information from a text file. This feature leapfrogged others because of strong demand from users.
”Imports” History and Management
After importing, you will be shown the list of leads that were brought in. If you want to revisit that list later, or want to “undo” the import, click on “Imports” in the menu (on the left hand side of the screen) to see your import history. From there you can click on the import to see the leads or click on “undo import – delete leads” to delete the leads that were in that batch import.
Details are in the product. Here is an overview of how to import leads from your file.
In Your LeadsOnRails.com Account
1. Click on Imports on your LeadsOnRails.com menu
2. Click on “Import Leads”.
Carefully review the details in the Help section for instructions on what fields are imported and the required order of fields in your text file.
To Import From Excel:
To import an Excel spreadsheet, you need to first convert it to a coma seperated values (CSV) format.
1. Open your spreadsheet and save as a different name because you will be modifying it.
2. Modify the spreadsheet columns as described in the Import help file.
3. Save as a “comma separated values” (CSV) file. Choose File, then Save As… from the Excel menu. Choose CSV or Windows CSV.
Help and Assistance
If you would like a walkthrough or assistance getting your lead file in a format for importing, please contact Scott (comments@synapsoftware.com or 303-683-3522) for assistance.
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