Campaigns for existing customers

[Makiko_Hultz1]

Hello!

We are in a unique industry where we mostly promote our products and services to our existing customers. They are in SFDC as Contact. We would like SFDC to create a new lead every time someone fills out a Marketo form, whether that person is a contact in SFDC or brand new lead. Right now, SFDC is only creating a lead if the person who filled out a Marketo form is a brand new lead. I spoke with Marketo support and I was told what we are looking for will require a custom solution. But there must be other businesses who market their products/solutions to existing customers. How do you manage inquiries that are coming from existing customers in Marketo to SFDC? Your input is much appreciated!

Thank you!

[Eric_Salamon1]

I think this issue is more of a question on how your SFDC instance is structured. Normally you would have a lead become a contact/ account. Once a contact/account is established, you would attach an opportunity (the sale). Once the sale is complete the person remains a contact in the system and can still be marketed to. There can be many opportunities locked into a contact or account, so nothing should prevent you from marketing to them.

One thing you may want to consider is unique scoring based on the individual focus points that you may target them for.

[Makiko_Hultz1]

Eric,

Thank you so much for your comments. I believe what you described is our current SFDC structure. So when our current customer submits an inquiry via Marketo form, SFDC should create an opportunity that is attached to his contact information. Am I understanding the process correctly? Also, could you elaborate or give me an example on the unique scoring based on the individual focus points? Thank you!

[Eric_Salamon1]

Makiko,

When a person fills out the form you can choose where they go either to a campaign or somewhere in the system. Normally someone reviews this person and decides what they will do with it. if they are far enough through the process in SFDC the opportunity needs to be created. Marketo may be able to do that, but it is usually better to have human interaction at that point because marketing should be handing the leads to the sales team.

Now in terms of focus points. I worked with a company that sold new add-ons to their customers as well as new units to new prospects, the ideal way to score that was to create an individual score based on product category and have it increase or decrease to gauge the level of interest. This will vary based on your individual industry.

[Makiko_Hultz1]

Eric,

Thank you for your input!

"When a person fills out the form you can choose where they go either to a campaign or somewhere in the system. Normally someone reviews this person and decides what they will do with it. if they are far enough through the process in SFDC the opportunity needs to be created."

This totally makes sense and I think our issue is we are trying to automate everything. I will suggest this to our team for sure. Another issue is we aren't able to add existing customers into SFDC campaigns because campaigns are associated with Lead in SFDC. Do you have any recommendation on how we can sync/collect inquiries from existing customers in SFDC so that our lead management team can review them and create opportunities if they are qualified? Right now they are manually inputting the opportunities

[Eric_Salamon1]

That is a unique structure. The few SFDC instances I have seen contacts and leads are apart of campaigns. Think of campaigns like events anyone can attend an event but can only be there once since there is only one person.

It sounds like your structure and SFDC functions need to be reviewed. I would suggest building a work flow of how the leads should convert and how opportunities should be handled. Then evaluate your SFDC structure to that flow, if it doesn't match why and what should be done to fix it are the questions I would ask.

[Makiko_Hultz1]

I think so too... Thank you so much for your help!