Automated Proposals in Marketo/Salesforce

[Anonymous]

We are currently looking for a tool to automate (or at least simplify) the creation of proposals in Salesforce, while also tracking the open rates of the email and the proposal itself.
We found several tools to simply create PDF proposals in Salesforce (e.g., Conga Composer), but these files do not provide any trackable information.
We have also tried online proposals (Proposable). While the tracking information is fairly robust, the integration with Salesforce is lacking (it only retreives the contact info from the Opportunity, so we would have to re-enter all the quote details in Proposable each time).

Is anyone using a tool for proposals (in Salesforce or Marketo) that provides useful tracking information?

[Anonymous]

I love this question as I have also come across this use case and found that it's surprisingly not simple to execute.

One way to do this in Salesforce.com is to use the electronic signature vendors (Echosign or Docusign) to do the sending, no matter how the doc is created (Conga, manually, or another system) because those vendors will track the opens and forwards for you, not to mention automate the signatures.

There is also an entire universe of vendors called CPQ (Configure, Price and Quote) that offer varied levels of sophistication and integration with Salesforce.com (not to mention varied price points) that may or may not do the tracking for you.

I haven't seen examples of using Marketo to send out a quote, mostly because I work with companies in which a quote is sent 1-to-1 after manual configuration and Marketo's power is really in 1-to-many communication and automation.

[Anonymous]

Hi Adriel,

If I try to restate the objective, if there is a way to automatically generate a pdf file from your pdf template and populate it with information from that person's Marketo field values, and then to send this pdf (link) via a Marketo email, will that be useful?

That way, you do not have to manually generate the pdf for each person, you can track open's of the email and open (clickthru) of the pdf file.

Will that work for you?

Rajesh Talele

[Anonymous]

Hello, Rajesh,

That seems like something along the lines of what I am looking for. Can you direct me to where I can get more information on this feature?

Thank you,

~ Dana Jacob

[Anonymous]

Sure Dana,

I think it would be helpful to understand your exact requirements. I will send you a direct message.

Rajesh

[Anonymous]

Hi Rajesh,

Thanks for your reply.

In our case, we are looking for in-depth stats on how leads are interacting with our proposals, which I don't think is possible with a PDF. The services I have seen offering these stats have the proposal online, so we know:

• When it is viewed
• Who viewed it
• How long they viewed it for
• Which areas/pages they viewed
• If the proposal was shared

These are the types of usage stats we had in mind, but the existing services did not seem to have decent integration with Salesforce.

Cheers,

--Adriel