Hello,
We use Salesforce to coordinate communication for both prospective and current students in our non-semester CBE programs. We use ActOn for most of our prospective student marketing, and find it serviceable. However, our needs for current students are very different and ActOn doesn't seem to be a good fit.
Current students require some emails to be triggered immediately based on data events in the system, as well as scheduled emails relative to the beginning of subscription periods or other arbitrary dates. This is a hard fit for ActOn, which essentially runs campaigns off of lists. Additionally, ActOn adds an unsubscribe link to all emails which is unsuitable for communications with registered students.
We've handled some of these requirements with Process Builder Flows triggering Email Alerts and Apex methods using the built-in Messaging class. However, this is very time-consuming to develop on a one-off basis. (Not to mention the looming limitation on outgoing emails from Salesforce.)
Has anyone had success using an AppExchange (or otherwise integrated) email tool for this variety of communication with students? Have you found a tool that isn't explicitly for marketing, or been able to mold a marketing tool to this purpose?
Thanks any tips,
Mike Kellum
Salesforce Developer
UW-Extension CEOEL
@App Advice and Consumer Reports
@System Administrators
@Sector: Higher Education
Thanks for the helpful replies!
Paul, I'll see what Marketo, Pardot, and Predictive Response look like – it's possible someone on our Marketing team would be familiar with one or all of them. I'm interested to know what overriding the opt-out on your emails looks like. Are you fully removing the text from the emails, or just preventing the opt-out from registering with the system?
Buyan, I'm hearing about the same ExactTarget features from our SFF contact. Sounds like it might be a good deal more flexible than our current solution! I appreciate the specificity and research.
