To continue with the theme of the previous post, here is another problem that I frequently see with Opportunity management in Marketing systems. The high level business requirement that we hear is, "We need to track opportunities created in SFA systems and tie them back to Marketing campaigns". If you use a Marketing solution that integrates with the Sales system for ROI measurement, here are a few thing you might want to consider:
1. Is there an option for selecting the appropriate "Campaign Types" for Opportunity tracking. For example, a "thank you email" that gets sent out after a webinar might also be treated as a Campaign in the Marketing system. Obviously, such follow up campaigns are not candidates for Opportunity tracking. You should be able to include/exclude "Campaign Categories/Types" for Opportunity tracking.
2. Is there an option for selecting from a list "Campaign Activities" for tracking ROI? For example, you "Sent" a Prospect an email that he did not "Respond" to. If at a later point an opportunity was generated from this Prospect, do you credit this Campaign or not? Another example is, A Prospect "Registered" for a Webinar but did not "Attend" the webinar. Do you credit the webinar Campaign with any future opportunity generated from this Prospect?
I am sure we all must have been in a situation where we pull a Report and go "Why are Opportunities A,B and C tied to this follow up Campaign that we sent out?". This results in last minute run around and manual fixing before the Report makes its way to a Sales and Marketing executive review meeting.
