Tracking Email Campaign Click Throughs in Salesforce.com

As you already know, Salesforce.com has a pretty good system for managing campaigns. You can send emails from those campaigns, among other things. They even have the native capability to track opens when the email is an HTML formatted email.

However, as great as all that is, there is no native capability in the Salesforce.com campaign system to track click-throughs (or "click-thru" depending on your preference). Now what I mean by that is that when you send an email to your list of recipients, you'll frequently have links in that email, inviting the reader to click through to your website or to various landing pages. The marketing manager is always going to want to know how many people clicked on a particular link. This is useful for testing and improving the marketing message. What do you do though if Salesforce has no native capability to track this?

There are some third party applications that can do this for you, but price a few of them - they'll run thousands and thousands of dollars - PER YEAR!

An Inexpensive Alternative

There is a better way! Well, by better I mean easier and less expensive.

Salesforce.com has what they call  "Sites." It is a system that lets you publish anything you desire from your Salesforce org publicly to the web. We use it for forms, for portals, for applications - for anything where you want to interact with individuals who are not license holders in your Salesforce.com org.

By virtue of that powerful system we can setup a method of tracking click-throughs. Here is how we do it. We setup sites so that you have a domain (like yourcompany.force.com). Then we deploy a page to your site, named something like "tracking", and on that page we have some code to manage the tracking of a view and a redirect to where you really want them to land.

So the site address would be:

http://yourcompany.force.com/tracking

Now, the key is what comes as a parameter on that page.

Use Salesforce Campaigns and Sites

In Salesforce, in a new separate object under the Campaign, we setup an object called "Email Link" or something similarly named. The main field on that object is an auto number field. After that we have two other fields, one is an input field where you enter the link that you want to put in your email. The other field is a formula field that returns the link you'll actually put in your email - which is completely different than where you want to send your reader. Let me explain.

In the email, there will actually be placed a link to your sites page, that link is similar to what I showed above. That link will also contain a parameter, so fully formed it looks like this:

http://yourcompany.force.com/tracking?LinkID=0004

The link ID is the auto number in the Email Link record that you setup.

So let's say you wanted to place a link in your email to www.greatcompany.com, but you want to track the click throughs. You'll make a record in your Email Link object under the campaign. One like this:

Now, instead of placing http://www.greatcompany.com in your email as a link, you place http://yourcompany.force.com/tracking?LinkID=0004 as a link instead.

Track Click-Thru Rates in Salesforce

On the sites page, when someone arrives there with the URL populated with that LinkID, the code can find the email link record associated with that number, find the actual destination link, and redirect them to the actual http://www.greatcompany.com link. BUT - while they are there, we'll track the fact that they arrived there and were redirected. Plus, while they are there we can pick up a few details about them such as their IP Address and Browser. All these details we save into a Click Through record. This record is in another custom object that lives under the Email Link object.

So the data model looks like this:

And then after people receive the email and start clicking through, you'll see those Click Through records appearing in Salesforce.com.

(You can see my example near the bottom of the picture above).

Report On the Click Throughs to Your Campaign

Those links can now be easily reported on using a custom reports that you can easily make in Salesforce.com.

Would you like to have this system? If you have a developer, then they can fairly easily build you such a sites page, the logic shouldn't be too difficult for them to figure out.

 If you'd like us to do it, we charge a flat rate of $1500 to install this system into your Salesforce org (an enterprise level org or above) and give you some training on how to use it and build you some reports to show those click throughs per campaign. We can even make some minor tweaks to the code if you need those. Most likely we could include that in the price quoted above. For more significant changes, we'll estimate those separately.

No Subscription Required!

That is a one time charge for our effort to install this system and get it setup for you - that means NO ONGOING SUBSCRIPTION FEES!

Would you like to discuss having us install this click through tracking system into your Salesforce.com org? If so, reach out to us at the contact us page at www.snapptraffic.com. We could have this installed and working for you in just a few hours.

Google Maps in Salesforce

A very common requirement for Salesforce.com subscribers, and our clients who we help to set it up, is to implement maps that incorporate data from their Salesforce org. Most clients meet this requirement by subscribing to a mapping application that is installed into their org.

The Downside of Subscription Based Applications

While these applications are powerful and generally have a boatload of features, they also come with a hefty monthly subscription that goes on and on for as long as you need those functions. Over time, the total subscription cost could far far exceed the cost of simply having the features you need developed instead.

Further, you are very likely buying features that you'll never need or use. You might want to consider another approach.

The Power of Custom Development

A recent project we did is a good example of why a company might want to have an application developed rather than buy a subscription. Our customer finds recruits to work in their client's business locations. The people they are looking for need to be in close proximity to the business.  They needed a Google map to show their Salesforce data in two specific situations:

1. They needed to be able to find workers when a new job came up. When this happens they need to see a Google map centered on the business location with pins surrounding that showing the closest consultants, recruits, and leads. This required finding and displaying data from 4 different Salesforce.com databases on a Google map.
2. Their second requirement was to see a Google map, again centered on the relevant business, showing possible replacement consultants and recruits near the business when someone doesn't show up. Again, this required finding and displaying data on a Google map from multiple Salesforce.com objects

To satisfy this requirement, we built several components into their Salesforce system. First we wrote a trigger on each Salesforce object (database) from which addresses would be mapped. These triggers would geocode (a number that represents the latitude and longitude of the address) the address found on the particular record. The trigger executes whenever a new record is created or the address is edited. This process speeds up operation and reduces the number of API calls made when the map is generated.

To display the maps, we gave them two options. The first option displays the map right in the page layout so that they see it whenever they look at the relevant record. The second option makes a link that opens the map into a new window when clicked. That link can be placed almost anywhere so that they can put the link in various relevant locations such as lists or reports.

Is Custom Development Expensive?

This project, built specifically to solve the specific requirements that this client had, cost about $2000 to have developed. This might seem like a lot at first glance, but a key thing to remember is that this is a one time development fee. We gathered the requirements with the client, wrote the scope, conducted feasibility, developed the code, tested it, and deployed it to their team.

They now own this code and will incur no further costs with regard to this system going forward.

If you have a requirement to place Google Maps into your Salesforce.com org to display data unique to your organization and want to have it made to suit your specific requirements without ongoing subscription costs, you may want to consider custom development. We can take advantage of any of the features provided by Google Maps while displaying your map either right in your salesforce org or on external pages launched from Salesforce.

The options are nearly limitless, but the key is that they are built to your specific needs.

If this sounds like something you require in your Salesforce system, we'd be happy to speak with you, listen to your requirement, and give you an idea of the cost to have us do it for you. You can reach us via the contact us page at www.snapptraffic.com.