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  • Revive Engagement: Combat Score Decay

    A Primer on Scoring

    Before we get into score decay, let’s level set on Account Engagement scores. Account Engagement scores are a measure of calculating engagement with your account engagement assets. Prospects with higher scores have had greater engagement and are therefore more sales-ready.

    Base Scoring

    All Account Engagement accounts come with base scoring rules configured. These rules add and subtract points for actions like email opens, form submissions, page views, link clicks, and more and are intended to be a starting point. It’s highly recommended that you customize these rules based on your organizational needs and conduct periodic reviews to ensure that prospects are not scoring up too slowly or too quickly. 

    Review Your Scoring Rules 

    Account Engagement Setting > Automation Settings > Scoring

    Additional Scoring

    Scores can also be increased in Account Engagement manually at the prospect level, using automation (automation rules, completion actions, and engagement studio programs), or in bulk when importing prospects into Account Engagement (by mapping to “Add to Score”).

    Score Decay Methods

    There are two primary ways that scores can be decayed – Activity-Based Decay and User-Based Decay.

    • Activity Based Decay is based on activity (or inactivity in Account Engagement). This method simply decays scores to a set value (or reduces by a set amount) based on the last activity date of the prospect.
    • User Based Decay is score decay that’s triggered by internal Salesforce users based on updates to the contact or lead record. This could be actions like updating the status or any other field.

    Activity-Based Decay

    Activity-Based Decay is very simple to implement but requires a few decisions to be made in advance.

    •  When should a lead be decayed?
    • By how much should the score be decayed?

    The “when” question differs greatly between organizations and is often related to the length of sales cycles. Organizations with longer sales cycles tend to tolerate longer periods of inactivity while those that are more “transactional” in nature tend to decay scores quicker.

    The decay amount is also based on the organization and its scoring model, but I can offer some guidance and best practices based on experience.

    • Tip #1 – Don’t decay to 0. I like to keep some points associated with the prospect as an indicator of past engagement. As a starting point, I would recommend decaying by 50% of your threshold for passing leads to sales. If 100 is your threshold, decay to 50. 
    • Tip #2 – Decay to a set number vs. by a specific amount. Scores in Account Engagement continue to increase over time – if measures are not taken. It’s not uncommon to see some older prospects with very high point values. As an example, if a prospect has a score of 275 and you reduce by 50 points, you still have a lead with a score of 225 points who has not been active in an extended period. This does not help at all. My recommendation is to reduce it to a set value so you can be assured that the lead drops off the radar or your sales team – until new engagement is recorded.

    Implementing Activity-Based Decay

    1. Create an automation rule in Account Engagement with a descriptive name.
      • Example: Score Decay – Last Activity > 45 Days Ago
    2. Make use of the “Description” section to summarize what actions the rule will take and when.
      • Example: Decays scores that are greater than 50 to 50 if the last activity is greater than 45 days ago. 
    3. Set the rule to repeat and specify the number of days before eligible to repeat.
    1. Configure the rules and actions.
      • The example below is very simple, but you can add additional rules as needed. For example, you can omit records that have open opportunities or are being worked by sales so their scores are not decayed.
    1. Since this rule will be altering the scores of prospects, be sure to preview the matches before activating. Also, be sure to review all automation in Account Engagement and Salesforce that could be triggered as a result of score adjustments.

    User-Based Decay

    Account Engagement scores are intended as an indicator of engagement within Account Engagement. Since scores can only be changed in Account Engagement, decaying scores based on actions taken in Salesforce requires a bit of ingenuity and a “handshake” between the platforms. The goal is to tell Account Engagement to decrease the score based on an action that occurred in Salesforce.

    In this example, we are going to use flows and custom fields to trigger score decay in Account Engagement from Salesforce. I like this option due to the ability to easily set the criteria that trigger the action and the fact that code is not required.

    Scenario

    Scores should be decayed to 50 if the status is changed to “Nurture” by a user in Salesforce.

    Implementing User-Based Decay

    1. Create “Trigger Score Decay” custom fields on the contact and lead objects in Salesforce.
      • Data type = Checkbox
      • Default value = Unchecked
    2. Create a “Trigger Score Decay” custom field in Account Engagement.
      • Type = Radio Button
      • Sync behavior = Use the most recently updated record value
      • Values (these are case-sensitive)
        • true
        • false
    1. Create flows on the contact and lead objects to update the “Trigger Score Decay” checkbox based on the defined entry criteria. This is a straightforward flow that uses a single element to update a checkbox field. The checkbox will later be used to trigger an automation rule in Account Engagement.

    Full Flow

    Entry Conditions Configuration

     

    Update Triggering Records Element:

    1. The final step is to create an automation rule in Account Engagement that will decay the score if the “Trigger Score Decay” checkbox is checked. The rule will also need to uncheck the box as a way of “resetting” the record.

     

    Score Decay – Status – Nurture Automation Rule

     

    1. Test, validate, and activate. As with all automation, be sure to test by debugging your flows and previewing automation rule matches before activation.

    Address Overinflated Scores

    Scores in Account Engagement are meant to identify prospects that are actively engaging with your marketing. If scores are not decayed, identifying prospects with recent activity can become a challenge and lead to confusion for your sales teams.

    Score decay is fairly simple to implement, but should not be done in a vacuum. There are likely processes in your Salesforce or Account Engagement orgs that could be triggered when the score of a contact or lead is decayed. For this reason, it’s highly recommended that testing is conducted in a sandbox organization before implementation in production and that key stakeholders are included in the process. 

  • Salesforce Spring ’24 Features: Top 10 Admin Updates

    The Salesforce Spring ‘24 release is just around the corner and the release notes have arrived as an early festive gift. 

    You can find everything you need to know about how to prepare and when your instance will get upgraded here. For now, let’s dive into the hottest declarative features of the Salesforce Spring ‘24 release.

    1. New Dynamic Forms with Related Object Fields

    Drill into lookup relationship fields from the component palette in the Lightning App Builder and access fields from related objects. To display relevant data from related objects, drag the cross-object fields onto your record page.

    2. Device-Specific Salesforce Dynamic Forms
     
    Previously, you could set visibility rules based on device form factor on Field Sections and other components but not on individual fields. Now, you can customize your desktop and mobile Lightning record pages even more granularly and restrict field visibility by device form factor, such as desktop or phone.
     
     
    3. Dynamic Actions on Mobile for Standard Objects
     
    Give users more personalized experiences on record pages by using dynamic actions for standard objects on mobile devices. Assign actions in the Lightning App Builder instead of the page layout, and apply filters to control when and where actions appear for users. Set filters based on user fields, form factors, and other criteria. 
     
     
    4. Updated Analytics with Dashboard Ownership and Visualisation
     
    • Transfer Lightning Dashboard Ownership (Generally Available): Historically, when the owner of an important dashboard leaves the company, you have the hassle of cloning and recreating the dashboard. From Spring ‘24, the ability to transfer ownership of a dashboard is generally available. The new owner then has complete control of the dashboard. If someone leaves your organization, you can transfer their dashboards in bulk!

           

    • Supercharge Your Visualizations with Images, Rich Text, and Dashboard Widgets in All Salesforce Editions: Salesforce users in all editions can now use rich text and image widgets in Lightning dashboards. Explain charts, describe metrics and KPIs, and clarify tables with rich text right where users need it. Add company logos and branding, flow diagrams, and embedded images. Guide users through their data with section titles, narrative text, and even animated GIFs. 

    • Focus Your View with More Dashboard Filters in All Salesforce Editions: Users in all Salesforce editions can now refine and target dashboard data with up to five filters on Lightning dashboards. With more filters, you can reuse the same dashboard for different teams while preserving the filters that are already set up. Save time and effort and reduce dashboard redundancy by eliminating the need to clone dashboards for different teams and business units.

    • Easily Update Fields in Lightning Report Filters: If you want to change a filter on a report, you can now select the new field you wish to filter on. Previously you would have had to delete the filter and add a new one.

    5. New Account Intelligence View

    Account Intelligence View
    In the Account Intelligence view, you can See account activity, scan opportunity metrics, review cases, and log activities, all in one place in the Account Intelligence view. Previously, the account home page provided only a simple list view and required users to navigate to individual records to view opportunity, activity, or case data.

    6. Enhanced Permission Management

    There are three important updates to Permissions in the Spring ‘24 release:

    1. Use Permission Set Groups in All Editions: Permissions Sets are now available in all Salesforce editions.
    2. Get Notified Before Deleting Permission Sets Assigned to Users: When attempting to delete a Permission Set that is included in a Permission Set Group that currently has users assigned to it, you will receive an error.
    3. Reference Picklists, Groups, and Queues in User Access Policies (Beta): Reference picklist fields, groups, and queues when creating User Access Policies.

     

    7. Updated Lightning Page Performance with LWC

    More objects are Lightning Web Components (LWC)-enabled in Spring ’24. Create, view, or edit the record home pages with improved performance, stronger accessibility support, and better service availability.

    A record home page has this URL pattern.

    https://MyDomainName.my.salesforce.com/lightning/r/ObjectApiName/RecordId/ViewOrEdit

    For example, view an account’s record home page.

    https://my-dev-org.my.salesforce.com/lightning/r/Account/0012L00001OCuehQAD/view

    8. Updated Migrate to Flow Tool for Migration of More Processes

    The Migrate to Flow tool now supports partial migration for most actions. At a minimum, you can partially migrate all actions except for invocable actions. The migration results identify which actions need further configuration in Flow Builder for your migration to be complete.

    9. Einstein Search Is Enabled by Default

    Einstein Search is now enabled in all Salesforce organizations, unless your org has the DoNotAutoEnable flag turned on. You can opt out of Einstein Search features by disabling them on the Search settings page. 

    Previously, Einstein Search wasn’t enabled in organizations that didn’t have the MySearchPilot and SearchAssistant permissions.

    10. Seller Home for Improved Sales Experience

    Now Sales team members can start their day with a complete view of their business. Seller Home shows users an overview of their opportunities, accounts, leads, and contacts, along with their day’s agenda. Seller Home also lets users set goals track progress and view their to-do items, recent records, and contact suggestions from Einstein.

    Sales users can get a ton of useful information at a glance including:

    • Opportunity Overview
    • Account Overview
    • Lead overview
    • Contact overview
    • Weekly or monthly goals
    • Today’s Events
    • To-do items
    • Recent Records
    • Contact suggestions—identified by Einstein from a user’s emails and events

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