Personalization With Salesforce For Fun & Profit

As companies search for a more personal connection to boost customer response, CRM solutions such as Salesforce house a treasure trove of data to meet this need. This blog looks deeper at how teams can use the data in their own CRM system to make that perfect personal connection with their customers.

Let’s explore.

Personalizing Your Messaging Starts With Salesforce

Your Salesforce system is already a gold mine of information about your contacts. But there is even more potential value lurking just beneath the surface of contact data. Personalization goes beyond information. Personalization is about insight. It is about making those with whom you engage feel like you take the time to get to know them, what they want and what they need. Sales Cloud is a treasure-trove of data that you can turn into insight which is presented to your clients or your prospect with sincerity and care. This is what will separate your messaging from all the spam your clients routinely receive. It is what transmutes a mere email, phone call or meeting into a correspondence, a communication and a collaboration.

Use it effectively and you can create that truly personalized engagement.

Personalization Produces Profit

Research from Salesforce shows that 76% of customers feel your company should know what they expect and need. Salesforce data also finds that 84% of customers feel being treated like a person, not just a number, is essential to win their business. Personalization is vital, and here are some tips on how Salesforce can help you add it to your outreach.

Mention the Details

Salesforce is your ground zero for client information — not only about the prospects themselves but about any other aspect of their work and lives that can help you personalize your messaging. Storing important dates, family member’s names, favorite sports teams and hobbies can help you tailor your messaging and make your conversations with prospects and customers instantly relatable.

• Ask your Pittsburgh-based client what they thought of the Steelers’ draft and the conversation will flow more smoothly.
• Mention their birthday, anniversary or work-anniversary
• Is it early June? Ask about the end of the school year if they have school-age children.

Chances are, you hear this information during chit-chat and introductions from meetings. Don’t waste that information. Store it in the contact details in Sales Cloud. Then use it when you’re communicating with them next. Set a task for yourself to connect with your client on or around the important dates in their life.

This shows that you have taken the time to learn about them as a person, not just a revenue source.

Make Their Calendar Your Calendar

Your company calendar is littered with important dates and the same is true for your prospects. Use Salesforce Chatter to remind yourself and your team of those important events and bring them into your conversations. Whether it’s the release of a quarterly financial statement, a recent acquisition or that all-important yearly conference, your demonstrated interest in the big moments of your customers’ lives will not go unnoticed.

• If it’s approaching the end of their fiscal year, send them a care package of coffee and chocolate to help them as they burn the midnight oil closing the books.
• If they issued a press release about a new product or service, be sure to mention it in your next conversation.
• If they attend or host an industry conference, send them a welcome-back note and express your understanding that they probably have hundreds of emails to catch up on.

Try Different Communication Channels

It is very likely that someone in your office is a “visual person.” Maybe it’s you. People see, understand and communicate in different ways. If you want to reach them, you need to be willing to do the same.

Sure, your email list is your bread and butter and it works for the majority of your clients, but truly personalizing your message may mean stepping out of your comfort zone and communicating with prospects through other means like video, social media or a blog. If you find a channel that seems to resonate with a particular client, record their preference in Salesforce and use it as your go-to solution in the future.

You’ll never know unless you try out different media.

• Try recording a short video message from your phone and texting, snapping or even emailing it to your contact.
• If they’re younger or into a fandom of a certain kind, try sending them a meme that you’ve personalized to their interest and your pitch.
• Try using LinkedIn messenger, Pinterest messaging, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Slack or something else to engage with them.

Always keep your go-to communication choice primary, but go ahead a mix it up. Novelty will get attention and at least be a conversation piece.

Make Every Communication Count

Personalized spam is still just spam. Don’t take the added knowledge you have and waste it on needless communications. Use your personalized solutions as an ice breaker or a way to make contact again after a long hiatus and then always deliver value as the second part of your message. This latter half is the difference between clients that are annoyed to hear from you and those that are excited to see your email.

Redpath Helps You Make The Most Of Your Personalization Powers

If your company’s personalization practices are lacking the power you seek, Redpath can help. Our experience designing and developing processes has helped for-profit and non-profit companies hone Salesforce’s power for personalization. We’ll concept it, we’ll create it and we’ll train your employees how to use it. It’s the kind of personalized support you can expect from Redpath. Contact us today.

We’re all trying to make that personal connection with our customers, but let’s be honest, in the modern marketplace, one interaction simply isn’t enough. You need to make that personal connection over and over again. It’s what keeps you top of mind, what keeps your clients coming back and what lets you grow your brand through repeat business.

The personalization of each of these interactions is essential to your long-term success. That personalization needs to be so much more than simply putting the contact’s name into your email messaging.