RingLead's Data Quality and Lead Management Blog

ROI Reporting on only New Leads Created

Accurate reporting for return on investment (ROI) for marketing campaigns has never been easier.

To identify only the new Leads in a Salesforce report which were created by web form submissions or lists imported, set the RingLead field action for any field to "Do Not Update" for matching Leads. If RingLead finds a matching Lead, this field would not be updated. However, if RingLead created a new Lead, this field would contain the value submitted in the web form.

A report can be created to identify these new Leads created by setting the criteria for this field in the Salesforce report to "not equal to blank". This will filter out any Leads or Contacts that were already in Salesforce before the campaign began.

Why Choose RingLead?

We frequently are contacted by marketing or sales personnel looking for a deduping solution and asked why they should choose RingLead.  We wanted to share some of those reasons here.

RingLead is the first validated partner of Salesforce and has been focused on improving our customer's data integrity for years, making us an industry expert at it.  Our clients run the gamut from small, one user Salesforce customers to very large, enterprise users.  And because RingLead is the only company to offer such a diverse suite of deduplication tools, our clients are able to build the deduping solution necessary to meet their specific needs. 

Beyond the aforementioned reasons, what else makes RingLead the obvious choice? 

• RingLead is on-demand and accessible from any computer with internet capabilities.
• By combining our tools with Salesforce, we can often save you from spending additional funds on a third source to do lead nurturing and lead management.  Contact sales@ringlead.com for more information.
• The automation and convenience you'll get from using our tools to not only dedupe but to streamline your lead management process will show a return on investment in a short period of time.
• Our tools are user-friendly and don't require you to do any programming or difficult set up within your database.
• We frequently upgrade our tools based on customer's suggestions.  Upgrades are free of charge and rolled out automatically.
• RingLead's tools can be utilized to significantly decrease the amount of time it takes to get new and updated leads into your sales teams' hands.  They'll have hot leads to follow up on rather than lukewarm prospects. 

Ready to learn more?  Email sales@ringlead.com or call 888-240-8088 ext. 1 today to get started with a free trial account or schedule a demo with an Account Representative.  Find out why our tools are recommended by Salesforce.

Web Form SPAM

What is Web Form SPAM?
Web Form SPAM is a computer generated web form submission that bypasses security protocols to create a Lead. The Lead contains advertisements for the marketing and sales personnel who view the Lead details. Spammers also obtain email lists and implant them together with their advertisements in Salesforce. A future email campaign sends SPAM on the behalf of the infected victim.

Web form SPAM is common for any company with a significant web presence. It damages the infected company's brand image and may have legal consequences. However, it is possible to significantly reduce Web Form SPAM in Salesforce.

RingLead Can Help
Using Declone Web-to-Lead, web form SPAM can be ignored or sent to a Salesforce Queue to confirm and delete rather than sending directly to your sales team. The following features are available:

IP Address Filtering
- RingLead can be configured to ignore web form submissions from specific IP addresses from known spammers.

Domain Filtering
- RingLead can be configured to ignore web form submissions containing specific email domains in the email address.

Company Name Filtering
- RingLead can be configured to ignore web form submissions containing specific company names.

Content Filtering and Containment Queue
- Assignment rules in Salesforce can assign potential web form SPAM submissions to be owned by a Salesforce queue. The queue can be cleaned out on a regular basis. It becomes much easier to maintain with RingLead. Subsequent web form submissions will simply match the existing Lead in the queue rather than creating duplicate Lead.

Lead Scoring for web forms

Lead scoring is a great way to trigger notifications after one ore more web forms have been completed. Workflow rules can be setup in Salesforce to send an email or create a task after a certain score has been reached for any prospect.

By using a custom field in Salesforce and increasing the value of this field by one or more points for each web form, lead scoring management is easy to setup and manage.

in Declone Web-to-Lead, field actions for updating fields in a matching Lead can be configured to count the web forms submitted or score the Lead based on which web form was submitted.

Using the "Increment" field action, the custom field will be increased by the number submitted in a hidden field on the web form.  Using this field action, each web form can be configured to increase the lead score by one or more points depending on the web form.

In Salesforce, workflow rules can be configured to trigger various actions when this custom field reaches  predetermined values. For example, if a person submits a web form with a lead score value of 1 and another web form with a lead score value of 2, a workflow rule in Salesforce can be configured to notify the owner of the Lead that this lead score has reached a value of 3 and it is time to reach out and give this prospect a phone call.

Generating Duplicates in the Sales Pipeline

Every once in a while, RingLead is asked to do something it is unaccustomed to; create duplicates. This can be for various reasons. A customer may have a specific product where they consider every single hit an opportunity. In these cases, they usually want these records forced through their sales pipeline.

Recently, a RingLead customer wanted to create duplicates in some cases, and dedupe in others. They needed any incoming web form with the Lead Source “EULFC” to only dedupe against Leads from other sources. If another Lead already existed in Salesforce with the Lead Source “EULFC,” they wanted to create a duplicate. If RingLead found a match and the Lead status was not “EULFC”, they wanted to overwrite the Lead Status with “EULFC”.

Using the allow duplicates feature developed by RingLead, we were able to do this using a formula field. The allow duplicates feature is very simple, but can be powerful when combined with Salesforce logic.

This Declone Web-to-Lead feature allows customers to choose a single field to determine if a duplicate should be created or not. If the field value submitted in the web form DOES NOT match the value in Salesforce for this field, a duplicate WILL be created. To set this up, the user just needs to enter the field’s API name into their Declone Web-to-Lead configuration page.

In this customer’s case, the formula field’s name was “RingLead Create Duplicate,” with an API field name of RL_Create_Duplicate__c, and they only wanted it triggered for Leads. This field is only visible to his RingLead user, and not added to any page layouts, so his users aren’t even aware of it. The formula was:

CASE(LeadSource, "EULFC", "TRUE", "FALSE")

This means that if the value of LeadSource is EULFC, this field is equal to TRUE. Otherwise, this field is false.

Next, we had him add a hidden field to his website:

<input name=”RL_Create_Duplicate__c” value=”FALSE”>

When a user submits a form, we only dedupe against records that have a value of “FALSE” for the field “RL Create Duplicate.” Any other record is ignored. The end result is we will dedupe as normal unless the Lead source of a record is EULFC, in which case we’ll create a record.

ROI Reporting Using Lead Source field

Tracking Lead Sources can be difficult especially when duplicates are merged. If your goal is to track original source for each Lead, Contact, and Opportunity, then consider using the Lead Source field in Leads for this. If RingLead finds an existing Lead in Salesforce and updates it with the new information from the web contact form (or list import or manually created Lead), this field can be set to "Do Not Overwrite". This will ensure that the value of the Lead Source field will only be populated when the Lead is originally created. When an existing Lead submits a web contact (or imported from a list or attempted to be manually created a second time), this field is not overwritten.

If you need to maintain a log of all Lead Sources, a custom field can be setup to store every source. RingLead can be configured to append (or prepend) the new Lead Source value from a web form, list or manually entered) to the old Lead Source value already in Salesforce.

How can I associate Leads from a list with both a Lead Source and Campaign but not run a list more than once?

Whether you're using a Salesforce list uploading tool or a tool from an AppExchange partner such as RingLead's Declone Mass List, you can always create a column within your Excel spreadsheet titled "Lead Source" and populate it with the Lead Source you would like to associate with each record in your list.  You can then use Salesforce's Lead or Contact list uploader to create new Leads and/or Contacts in your database and then later search for duplicates and merge any that you may find.  A Campaign can be associated by either uploading your list to the Campaign or assigning members to a Campaign after using the general Lead or Contact upload tool.

RingLead has also created a list upload service which will not only de-dupe your list against your entire database of Leads, Contacts, and Accounts, but it will also associate the campaign when chosen, create new Contacts within existing Accounts, associate same company Leads, support lead assignment rules, and assign a task to inform a sales person when one of their Leads/Contacts responds to a new campaign or marketing tactic.  An added benefit is the flexibility it will provide you to either overwrite an existing Lead Source with the new one from your list, update a blank Lead Source field, or append the new Lead Source into a task while allowing you to keep the existing Lead Source intact.  All of this in just one uploading of a list.

Best Practices In Data Entry and Searching

These company and naming standards will help increase the accuracy of the deduping process and the sf.com search tool

Entering new Leads, Contacts and Accounts in Salesforce:

1. Enter company names just as they are registered for trade marks:
   1. Copy/paste from footer of the company's website or the About Us webpage
   2. Check www.Hoovers.com
   3. Examples:
      1) Fast Net - Incorrect
      2) FASTNET Corporation - Correct
2. Be consistent by entering "Company" and "Inc."
   1. Co - Incorrect
   2. Co. - Incorrect
   3. Company - Correct
   4. Incorporate - Incorrect
   5. Inc - Incorrect
   6. Inc. - Correct
3. Use "and" and "&" exactly as they are registered for trade marks
   1. McCarter & English LLP - Correct
   2. Simon and Schuster - Correct
4. DO NOT use all lowercase or all UPPERCASE:
   1. smith anderson blount dorsett mithcell & jernigan - Incorrect
   2. SMITH ANDERSON BLOUNT DORSETT MITHCELL & JERNIGAN - Incorrect
   3. Smith Anderson Blount Dorsett Mithcell & Jernigan - Correct
5. Use apostrophe (searching requires special consideration)
   1. Peoples Bank - Incorrect
   2. People's Bank - Correct
6. Enter legal name AND nickname in first name field.
   1. William  - Incorrect
   2. Bill - Incorrect
   3. William "Bill" - Correct

Guard Against Manual Creation of Duplicate Leads

RingLead's Newest Application Features Real-Time De-Duplication and Eliminates Manual Merging

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca. – May 22, 2007

RingLead has risen to new heights once again as the company today announced the release of its new real-time, de-duplication tool, Declone New Lead.  This user-friendly application will prevent the creation of duplicate Leads in a user’s Salesforce database upon manual entering of information.

When a Salesforce user enters new Lead information, Declone New Lead scans Salesforce for an existing Lead, Contact, or corresponding Account. When the determination is made that a duplicate doesn’t exist, the Lead is created as normal. When duplicate Leads or Contacts are identified, they are updated according to a user's pre-determined settings. When a matching Account is identified, a new Contact is created and associated to that Account.

"Declone New Lead stops manually created duplicates in their tracks and will substantially streamline a customer’s business process." says Steve Lehr, CEO and President of RingLead. “Our customers asked us to apply our robust, on-demand de-duplication efforts to the manual creation of individual Leads, and we responded.  With the introduction of this product, RingLead now provides the only comprehensive suite of de-duplication solutions for Salesforce users."

Unlike other manual entry prevention products, Declone New Lead operates in real-time and doesn’t require time-consuming follow up activities such as the manual merging of records.  It is simple to implement and use and offers a familiar and intuitive interface with instant notification appearing for the person entering the information.  In conjunction with RingLead’s other real-time de-duplication tools, companies consistently using the suite of applications will soon see a cleaner database and a more efficient, organized lead management process as a result.

WELCOME to RingLead's Blog!

RingLead is pleased to unveil its unique and exciting Data Quality and Lead Management Blog, featuring best practices as developed by industry leaders in the use of the Salesforce CRM and partner applications such as RingLead. 

RingLead was created in 2003 in answer to an issue founder, Steve Lehr's, client was having.  After incorporating, Steve found that data quality and lead management, especially with regards to the problems duplicate Leads, Contacts, and Accounts can create for users of Salesforce, was and continues to be a major pain point for companies worldwide.  As a result of this and in his wish to ensure customer satisfaction, Steve and his team continue to improve their applications in a timely and effective manner.

RingLead was one of the first Salesforce partners and continues to provide on-demand, real-time de-duplication through their applications.  Currently, RingLead is the only company to offer a comprehensive suite of data quality and lead management applications for Salesforce users and includes de-duplication of web forms, lists, and manually created Leads as well as Leads, Contacts, and Accounts residing within a customer's Salesforce database.

In an effort to lessen this pain point for current customers and the numerous Salesforce companies worldwide, RingLead is pleased to offer this blog to introduce and share best practices for data quality and lead management.  Please check back often to learn what others are doing to streamline their lead management process or share your best practices with others as well.