Salesforce.com is not just a database, it's a powerful communication tool. Many companies do not have a detailed, long-term customer communication plan because they don’t know what to say and some say the same thing over and over.

Here's a list of 50 different topics that you can use to craft e-mails, direct mail, paid advertisements, telephone calls, press releases, and online promotions. These messages serve to build trust between your constituents and your organization by providing them up-to-date information about your company’s activities. Follow these three communication tips:

• Consistency.  Create a bi-monthly communication plan. Start with a 6 communications and schedule them to go out to every 2 weeks over a 13 week period. That's a quarterly communication plan.
• Multi-Channel.  Deliver messages using multiple media (email, direct mail, and phone). If you need an excuse to call a constituent, call to reinforce the most recent message. For example, "Hi Donna, I'm calling to talk to you about
• Call-to-Action.  Make sure you present a clear call-to-action in every message. Tell the constituent what the next step is. For example, "visit our website today to volunteer" or "call today to set-up a recurring monthly donation."

1. Thank You 
   
2. Financial Success 
   
3. Market Success 
   
4. Team Member Success 
   
5. Customer Success 
6. Event Success 
7. New Product Introduction 
   
8. New Feature in Development 
9. New Feature in Beta 
10. New Price or Promotion 
11. New Feature Released 
12. New Team Member Introduction 
    
13. New Process Description 
14. New Customer Announcement 
15. New Partner Announcement 
    
16. New Vendor Announcement 
17. New Know-how Announcement 
18. Account Review 
19. Account Status Report 
20. Case Study 
21. White Paper 
22. Reading Recommendation 
23. How-to Tips & Tricks
24. Feature Overview 
25. Event Announcement 
26. Event Invitation
27. Training/Support Offer 
28. Feedback
    
29. Survey
30. Certification Announcement 
31. Membership Announcement 
32. Appointment Reminder
    
33. Award Recognition
34. Holiday Greeting
35. Birthday Card
36. Anniversary Greeting
37. Customer Recognition
38. Account Review
39. Up-sell Offer
40. Cross-sell Offer
41. Order Status Update
42. Legal Update
43. Industry Update
44. Market Update
45. Competitive Analysis
46. Partnership Invitation
47. Co-development Invitation
48. Co-marketing Invitation
49. Case Study Invitation
50. Gift

In order to experience the full benefit of CRM, realize that Salesforce.com is more than just a database, it's a powerful tool for  tracking and understanding behavior and steering subsequent customer actions. Customers for nonprofit organizations are constituents including (but not limited to) donors, sponsors, volunteers, vendors, and participants.

1. Database Basics. At this the second meeting of SNUG, we discussed some basic database concepts that will help users to find data quickly, add fields properly, communicate effectively, and assign roles prudently.

First, understand that Salesforce.com has many predefined "objects" including Organizations (aka Accounts), Contacts, Leads, Campaigns, History, etc... When you set up a new database, there is usually a great deal of discussion about the relationship between these objects. Salesforce.com makes this discussion very brief: Contacts and Leads are subordinate to Organization (aka Accounts) and everything else is subordinate to Contacts. Very little is tracked at the Account or Organization level. This means, if you want to know the contact history or status of negotiations with a prospective sponsor corporation, you have to refer to the activity and campaign history for that corporation's contacts. This structure my seem strange or counter-intuitive but it has some advantages, namely, it is customer-centric. Organizations or Accounts are abstract entities without personas, whereas Contacts are people with whom you can communicate and build relationships.

Second, all outbound communication tools in Salesforce.com are linked to the two types of people Salesforce.com enables you to track - Leads and Contacts.  Again, in Salesforce.com you don't communicate with Organizations, you communicate with people (Leads or Contacts) who are linked to those Organizations (aka Accounts), so avoid the common mistake of creating new Contact related fields within the Organization object because you can't use them to communicate. This means, if you want to send a newsletter to all organizations who are somewhere in your development process, you need to track the organization's process at the Contact level. Don't add the status field to the Organization object.

Third, if all Organizational information is recorded at the  Contact level, you have to be careful about who has permission to edit and delete Contacts. Imagine working two years with a Contact and an intern accidentally deletes your entire activity and campaign history. Be careful when you set up Profiles and Roles to limit access and privileges to your important information. 

2. CRM Blueprint.  Read any of the white papers on my website (www.goodmancapone.com) and you'll learn quickly that as many as 60% of all CRM implementations fail because there is no strategy. Instead of using the CRM platform as a tool for tracking, analyzing, and steering constituent behavior, it's used as a dumping bin for data. Remember, Garbage In, Garbage Out. Creating a CRM strategy is straightforward and easy in Salesforce.com owing to its customer-centric structure. All you have to do is answer 4 questions:

1. What is this Contact?
2. Where is this Contact in my development process?
3. What do I want this Contact to do next?
4. How will I help this Contact to perform the task I want him/her to do next?

1. What is this Contact?   Nonprofits manage many different constituents like donors, sponsors, volunteers, participants, customers, etc...  Each constituent type wants different information from you and the message, channel and frequency of your communications to these types will vary greatly. In order to send donors information that is relevant to donors, volunteers information that is relevant to them, and customers offers that are relevant to customers, you have to be able to segment your Contacts, accordingly. Create a list of all your organization's constituents and define each constituent type. Your constituent type names are for internal use only and don't have to make sense, but they do have to be unique so you can differentiate between them. One nonprofit marketer uses Lord of the Ring characters to track her 7 constituents: Frodos, Sams, Gandolf's... Next, train everyone in your organization to refer to use these types consistently, add a picklist field to your Contact object, and make sure every Contact in Salesforce.com has a constituent type.

2. Where is this Contact in my development process?  Donors don't just see an advertisement and write a big check. Volunteers don't usually call out of the blue and ask "can I volunteer every Monday?"  No matter which constituent you're talking to, in order to get a commitment of money, time, or resources, you have to win trust. Winning trust is a process and knowing where a donor or a volunteer is in this process determines what kind of messages to send to him or her. Clearly, you'd communicate differently with a first-time donor versus a long-term, dependable donor.  The only way to  send these differentiated and relevant communications is to know that (a) this Contact is a donor (and not a volunteer), and (b) this Contact is a potential donor (versus a first-time or recurring donor). For each constituent type listed above, create a series of incremental goals. Realize that before you can get someone to commit to volunteering every Saturday, you need to motivate that person to volunteer at least once. Your incremental development objectives for volunteers might look like this list:

• apply to be a volunteer
• volunteer on a single project
• apply to be a project volunteer coordinator
• serve as volunteer on an on-going basis
• apply to be a volunteer project coordinator

In order to tack a constituent's status, you need to create a simple stage name for each status.

• Newbies - those who have applied to be a volunteer
• Singles - those who have volunteered once time
• Applicants  - those who have applies to be a project volunteer coordinator
• Recurring - those who volunteer on an on-going basis
• Projectors - those who coordinate on-going volunteer programs

Again, your names are for internal use only and don't have to make sense, they just have to be unique. Add a picklist field to your Contact object, train your staff to use these status names consistently, and make sure every Contact has a both the constituent type and status field occupied.

3. What do I want this constituent to do next?  Answering this question is easy when you know where the constituent is now. Using the stages listed above, you want Singles to become Applicants, Applicants to become Recurring, and so forth.

4. How will I help this Contact to perform the task I want him/her to do next?  The answer is communication. For each constituent type and stage, list 4 weekly or bi-monthly communications that you will send to help the constituent to get to the next step. Salesforce.com has built-in outbound e-mail capabilities and you can use third-party applications from Appexchange to manage direct mail and telemarketing campaigns. Experiment with different channels (email, print, and phone) and different formats (newsletter, calendar, article, case study, announcement). For a list of 51 things you can talk about, download the PDF file called "51 Touches."

3. Salesforce.com Basics.  We concluded the 2nd meeting with a brief tour of Salesforce.com. Most pertinent are the abilities to add and edit users, applications (a group of tabs), tab names, fields, page layouts, and communications. All these can be managed by clicking the Setup tab. Probably most relevant to all users today is the ability to setup an e-mail. Here are the steps:

1. Prepare a header and footer file. Both should be H 1.25" x L 7.5"  72 dpi and saved as JPG images.
2. Open the Document tab and create a new folder titled something like "Communication Images."
3. Upload your images to this new folder and make sure you select "Make Public" for each image.
4. Click Setup/Communications/Letterhead/Create New
5. Follow the step-by-step wizard to create your organization's letterhead.
6. Click Setup/Communications/Email Templates/Create New
7. Follow the step-by-step wizard to create an e-mail

Once you create an e-mail, there are two ways to send it:

• Manually to an individual Contact. Open the Contact, scroll down to the Activity block and click Send email, click select a template, edit the e-mail and click send.
• Manually to a group of Contacts. Click the Contacts tab, scroll down to the bottom right and click Send Mass Email, create a view (aka list) of the recipients using, for example, constituent type and status fields, and click send. You can also schedule an e-mail to be sent in the future.

Now that we've covered some conceptual basics (database structure and CRM blueprinting), we'll spend more time next month on setting up Salesforce to support a development strategy.

Thank you Christianne White from Shakti Rising for hosting us in her beautiful home and thank you everyone for coming. Please send to me your questions, topics, and learning objectives for the next meeting.

Attendees:  A. Bechill, E. Rollinson, S. Blakeslee, J. Dobbins, J. Valencia, T. Ayotte, E. Erne, C. Bromu, B. Densmore, C. White,  M. Capone

Make Salesforce.com successful for you by participating in our monthly meetings. Membership in SNUG is free and it's a fun (and confidential) way to share strategy, tricks, best practices, product reviews, tips, rants and raves with your peers at other nonprofit organizations.  Please accept our invitation to attend the July meeting of SNUG, the Salesforce.com San Diego Nonprofit Users Group. Details below.

When                
Wednesday, July 9, 8:30 am - 11:00 am

Where          
2404 F Street, San Diego 92102 (map below)

Venue Host   
Christianne White, Business Manager, Shakti Rising
www.shaktirising.org  

Food and Beverage
I'll pick up schmears at Einsteins. Send me your special order by Tuesday, July 8th.

Agenda
Our goal for the first 3 months is to get everyone comfortable with CRM practice and Salesforce.com functionality. We'll review some basics to help you enhance your current set-up or help you to set-up your new license right.

• Welcome New Members
• CRM Basics, by M. Capone
  • Object Hierarchies.  Does a donation belong to an organization or to a contact? Modern CRM platforms make set-up easy for non-technical people, but there is one abstract database concept that we all need to understand in order to set-up Salesforce properly - hierarchies.  Learning objective: Understand relationships and Salesforce limitations.   
    
  • The Development Process.  The only way to send constituents relevant and timely communications is to know where each individual constituent is in your development process. You'll need to track constituent by type and stage. Learning objective: Create your own CRM Blueprint.   
    
  • Salesforce.com Basics.  The goal of CRM is to track, analyze, and steer constituent behavior. I'll show you the basic tools and plg-ins for managing and analyzing your data and communicating with constituents. Learning objective: Add, edit, and delete a user, account, contact, file,d view, template, communication, and role.
    
• Presentation by our venue host (15 minutes).
  
• Open Discussion
• Tentative meeting schedule and venue hosts
  
  • August, Volunteer Center San Diego
  • September, CONNECT

Next Step
Send an e-mail to mcapone@goodmancapone.com to join SNUG, reserve your seat to the July meeting, and place your special schmear order.

What an exciting meeting! Of the 41 SNUGgies (San Diego Nonprofit Users), 14 attended the kick-off meeting on Wednesday, June 4th, at the Entrepreneurial Management Center at SDSU. Discussion was candid and lively and I know we're going to be able to help each other a great deal. Here's a summary of the discussion and next steps:

Member Profile. All members in attendance are marketers (versus technical staff or developers) and most are new SF users. On a scale of 1-5 (5 for expert), the comfort level of members today is a 2. A complete list of attendees and their contact information is below.

Goals: The business challenges that members want to use SF to solve are numerous. Below is a list of the "Top 10 Wants." 

1. Enhance business continuity - document processes and set-up
2. Automate follow-up (internal and external) to all constituents
3. Track constituents  (volunteers, donors, partners, leads) status
4. Train more staffers
5. Set-up mass e-mail campaigns
6. Improve data quality - consolidate, scrub, and manage constituent information
7. Integrate payment gateway w/ SF and 3rd party accounting package
8. Monitor and analyze performance
9. Manage staff and volunteers
10. Consolidate financial reporting

Our immediate goal is to increase the comfort level of all members to a 4. We agreed to dedicate the next 3-4 monthly meetings to bringing everyone up to speed on processes, applications, set-up, features, and functionality. We'll address the challenges listed above in order. Once all members are comfortable with SF, we'll discuss again the idea of expanding our discussions to include general nonprofit issues. Eventually, we may invite vendors to present to the group and only in the context of educating members versus power selling to us.

Next Steps.

• The next meeting will be held at CONNECT offices in La Jolla, tentatively the 2nd week in July, probably 8:30 - 10:30 am. Michael will email invitations as soon as date and time are confirmed with CONNECT.
• Michael will email links for the SNUG blog and discussion boards. All members are encouraged to use these to eliminate the need to answer questions more than once and also share ideas and best practices with everyone.
• Michael will create a tentative calendar of discussion topics and distribute to all for review.
• All members are reminded to refer Salesforce.com to an NPO friend. After all, it's powerful, scalable, customizable, secure, and FREE to designated 501c3s.

Thank You. Bernie Schroeder, Program Manager at the EMC and our venue host, extended a generous offer to support SNUG members:

• Interns.  If you need business expertise and don't want to pay high fees to consultants, contact Bernie to arrange for a graduate student to assist you with projects ranging from secondary research to complex data issues. All projects are monitored by a subject matter expert and faculty member.
• SEI.  Learn best practices in NPO management and fund raising from your peers and industry leaders by joining one of the SEI forums. The EMC is eager to grow participating and the published rate is negotiable.

Attendees (no particular order)
Michael, SNUG Leader, SDSU/UCSD
Joe, CONNECT 
Jesse, CONNECT
Erin, Outdoor Outreach
Terry, Outdoor Outreach
Sarah, San Diego Coast Keepers
Caitlin, Las Palmas Housing / CARE
Madeleine, Las Palmas Housing / CARE
Christianne, Shakti Rising
Elise, Volunteer San Diego
Connie, Rolling Readers
Steve, Culture of Life
John, San Diego Oceans
Ron, Logix Biz
Bernie, SDSU EMC

Meeting Name    Kick Off

Date/Time    Wednesdauy, June 4th, 8:30 – 11:00 am

Venue        SDSU Entrepreneurial Management Center (EMC)
5250 Campanile Drive, Suite 1502
San Diego, CA 92182-1915

Venue Host    Bernhard Schroeder, EMC

Sponsor        Salesforce.com

Coordinator    Michael Capone, SDSU/UCSD, Salesforce Consulting Partner, AppExchange Partner

Members    Sarah Locher, Africa Aid
        Marjy Tatlor, Mainly Mozart
        John Valencia, SD Oceans
        Ron Wild, Logix Biz
        Caitlin Pincus, Las Palmas Housing
        Christianne White, Shakti Rising
        Connie LaFuente, Rolling Readers
        Elise Rollinson, Volunteer San Diego

Chapters    San Francisco
New York
Philadelphia
Washington DC
San Diego (41)

Goals         Customer Success. Share with peers best practices, tips, reviews, and ideas.
Foster a community of enthusiastic Salesforce.com users, developers, and partners.
Moderate blogs and discussion boards.
Organize meetings online and face-to-face.

Agenda        Introductions
1.    Name and organization description
2.    Salesforce user since, profile, competency, favorites, dislikes
3.    What are your organizational challenges

Venue Host Presentation     Bernhard Schroeder, EMC

Open Discussion
•    Confidentiality and Candor
•    Marketing or Technical
•    Peer or Partner
•    General Training or Case Study
•    Salesforce–centric or CRM eco-system

Next Steps
•    Does this time work?
•    Tell a NPO friend to use Salesforce or become a member – it’s FREE
•    Next meeting venue host
•    I will send link to blogs and discussion boards
•    I will send a list of presentation topics for you to select

We are  excited to announce the creation of a User Group for nonprofits in the San Diego area.  Your group leader will be Mike Capone, who among other things, teaches classes on Salesforce at San Diego State University.  He is planning a first meeting on campus in early June

Please sign up for this user group so that you can stay informed of  meetings and events. Just use the simple form on the left under Join Now! and select "Nonprofits San Diego from the pull-down menu. 

We hope you will get involved!