This is fairly easy to do in Salesforce using field history tracking.

For each object you want to monitor, go to its Field page and click “Set History Tracking”.   Choose the fields that are important for you to see changes within.  Some field types you can see the actual values being changed, while other field types you’ll simply be able to see that something changed.

Then create a report based on the History table for the Object.   For instance, for Leads this would be the “Lead History” report.     I find it helpful to summarize by the record ID so that multiple edits to the same record are grouped together.   Then set the time frame to be yesterday for the edit date.     Schedule the report to email to yourself each morning and then you are set.

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Here’s a simple example of what a Google Charts URL looks like:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=p3&
chs=250×100&
chd=t:60,40&
chl=Hello|World

To get started, create a new formula field on your Campaign object and set the returning value to text.   Then, enter a formula like the one below to provide a campaign member summary:

IF ( Total_Members__c = 0, “”,

IMAGE(

“http://0.chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chf=bg,s,65432100&chs=325×100&chma=20,20,20,20&chco=” &

IF(NumberOfLeads – NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, “DD8107,”)&
IF(NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, “951DD6,” )&
IF(NumberOfContacts – NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, “422F7A” ) &

“&chd=t:” &

/* Unconverted leads */
IF( NumberOfLeads – NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, TEXT( (NumberOfLeads – NumberOfConvertedLeads) / Total_Members__c) & “,”) &

/* Converted Leads */
IF( NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, TEXT( NumberOfConvertedLeads / Total_Members__c) & “,”)&

/* Contacts */
IF( NumberOfContacts – NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, TEXT( (NumberOfContacts – NumberOfConvertedLeads) / Total_Members__c) ) &

“&chl=” &

IF(NumberOfLeads – NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, “Orig. Leads: ” & TEXT( NumberOfLeads – NumberOfConvertedLeads ) & “|” )&
IF(NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, “Conversions: ” & TEXT( NumberOfConvertedLeads )& “|” )&
IF(NumberOfContacts – NumberOfConvertedLeads == 0, “”, “Orig. Contacts: ” & TEXT( NumberOfContacts – NumberOfConvertedLeads)& “|” ),

“Member Summary Chart”)
)

In making this chart, I took a closer look at the standard Campaign fields.   The Campaign object provides fields that provide: the number of leads, the number of contacts, and the number of converted leads associated with the Campaign.  It turns out that there isn’t an easy way to see the total number of Campaign Members because the sum of these fields is not the right number.     If a Lead is converted,  the converted Lead count and the Contact count go up by one, but the Lead count does not decrease.    This is why I didn’t map these values directly to the pie chart sections above.    It’s a simple fix to create a formula field that sums the three numbers appropriately to give you a member count.

This can be extended to summarize response counts as well as Opportunity win rates.   An added perk is that these fields are available on reports, letting you see a collection of the summary charts for all of your Campaigns at once.

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It is easy to encounter a set of records that don’t meet your existing Validation Rules due to some unexpected circumstance. Perhaps you encounter foreign addresses for the first time, for instance. By allowing Validation Rules to be disabled for particular records you gain some flexibility when importing diverse data sets.

The “Disable Validation” Checkbox

For each Object that you are creating Validation Rules for, create a checkbox called “Disable Validation”.   Set the checkbox to default to unchecked.  You can also set Field Level Security to hide the field from regular Salesforce users so that only Administrators ( and possibly Marketing) can change the setting.

Then for each Validation Rule you write, simply wrap the logic you’ve created with the following:

AND( NOT( Disable_Validation__c ),

/* Your Logic */

)

Ways To Use This

There are a few ways you can use this checkbox.   You can import a list and disable all Validation Rules for the new records without disabling them for other records.  This is helpful when you encounter valid data values that you didn’t incorporate into your Validation Rules.    For Web-to-lead forms, you can easily set the checkbox to true in a hidden form field to make sure that Leads insert without errors.

As you build more Validation Rules for an Object you can turn the checkbox on for all records and then attempt to turn it off.   Turning the checkbox on will succeed for all records since the Validation Rules are disabled.   Turning it off will only succeed for records that meet the new Validation Rules — effectively giving you a list of records to clean.

Going Further

There are a few ways you could expand on this idea.   Instead of using Field Level Security to restrict who can access this field, you could create a Validation Rule that allows the box to be turned off by all users, but only turned on by Administrators.

You could also make the override field be a picklist to create different levels of Validation Rules.   I often find myself creating Validation Rules that should never be disobeyed and others that would be ‘nice to have’.  This enhancement would let you expand the logic to incorporate this concept.

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What is the most important Google Analytics report?  Landing page versus Bounce rate.

Why?  It doesn’t matter how many thousands of visitors your site attracts if they are simply leaving the minute they arrive.   This report encapsulates this concept quite simply.   It also allows us to focus on a small collection of pages that contribute a lot of traffic to our sites. Here’s how to work with the report:

1. Set your date range to 3 months (or longer depending on  your site traffic) so that you have a pretty large set of traffic to work with.
   
2. On the left under Content select Top Landing Pages (the page that a visitor first sees).
3. You’ll immediately know how many pages on your site actually contribute visitors (You can compare this number with the number of pages that had at least one visitor by looking at the Top Content report.  For example, it is not uncommon for this to be less than 50% of your total number of pages.)
4. This full list is a bit daunting to work with so let’s filter down to a manageable set.   Sort by the Entrances column and see how many entrances each of your top 25 pages contribute.   In my case it’s at least 61 for each.
5. At the bottom of the screen you’ll be able to enter an Advance Filter.  Choose to filter by the Metric of Entrances and enter “greater or equal to” your number of entrances.
6. You’ll now know the total number of entrances these pages contribute and what percent of your total site visits that equates to.  In my case these 25 pages contribute 60% of the total traffic to my site.
7. Now that we are only looking at 25 pages, click the Bounce Rate column so that your poorly performing pages are at the top (high bounce rates).
8. Try to answer some questions about them:   What do you notice about them?   Are they a particular format of page?   A particular program area?    If you arrived at these pages knowing nothing about your organization would you know what to do?
9. Focus on what you can do better to engage visitors that start at these pages.   Small improvements to this crucial set can make huge impacts.   Run this report monthly and try to improve the numbers.

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The new advanced segmentation feature in Google Analytics can really kick it up a notch.  Unlike Goals, which need to be identified ahead of time, advanced segmentation can be applied ad hoc after the fact to discover interesting insights.   Here are a few I’ve found useful:

How many visitors never see your homepage during their visit?

• Where do they come from?
• How does their navigation compare to those that land on your homepage?

How many visitors didn’t land on your homepage (may or may not have seen it)?

• Do they engage with your site as well as those that land on the homepage? (similar bounce rate, pageviews/visit)
• Do they come from different sources compared to general traffic?

Did they accomplish viewing/signing up/donating?

• What source do they come from?
• How do they navigate to successfully complete the goal?

How do visitors that view 3 or more pages compare to general visitors?

• What drives these visitors to our site?
• What content are they most interested in?
• Are these mostly visitors we know (email driven visits, return, etc.)?

From there you can start coming up with more complex segments.  Perhaps you drop individuals onto a third part site for donation processing and you can’t measure an actual goal completion, but you can segment out those that exit your site on a particular page.  Perhaps you want to look at individuals from a particular geographic region, or see if visitors with small screen resolutions can use your site effectively.  It’s all answerable with advanced segmentation.

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A lot of our clients still use third party donation processing services instead of integrating it directly within their website.  Tracking conversions with Google Analytics is possible with third party sites, it just isn’t as easy.  The key factor is whether the third party pages can  have javascript added to them; most won’t let you do this.

In fact, Google Checkout itself won’t let you use Analytics to track your donations if you use the ‘donate now’ button functionality,.  This would be such a great differentiator for a payment processing system.  Who’s up to meet the challenge first?

If you can add javascript to your payment processing pages, you’ll need to carefully ]]> http://nonprofitdata.org/2009/05/google-analytics-e-commerce-tracking-issues/feed/ 0 http://nonprofitdata.org/2009/05/google-analytics-e-commerce-tracking-issues/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NonprofitData/~3/z6sgQPcK0Oc/ http://nonprofitdata.org/2009/04/the-web-for-social-change/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:12:15 +0000 Jeremy http://nonprofitdata.org/?p=107

A few months ago I gave a presentation about using the web for social change with my coworker, Linda Widdop.   We designed the presentation to be run as a workshop centered around a hypothetical nonprofit’s mission.

The central message of our presentation was that in order to be effective with online engagement — whether it is fundraising, advocacy or outreach — an organization needs to think about three main things:

• Building an Audience
• Engaging the Audience with Content
• Motivating the Audience to Action

As organizations experiment with new online tools for communication I feel they often overlook how they fit into their strategy.   The objective after all is not the tool, but the end result.

Building an Audience

Drawing an audience has two approaches.  Either you engage an audience in their natural environment; or you attempt to draw them to your venue.   Social media tends to be about going where the people are — Facebook, MySpace and the like.   This approach is so powerful because it is a push medium in the sense that users are already checking Facebook daily and seeing your message automatically.

What tends to be overlooked is integrating this into a standard website.   If your website both pushes and pulls information from Facebook, you lower the barrier to keep things current and active and meld the user experience of the two.  Facebook connect is a great example of this that I think will really take off in the next year.

Engaging the Audience

I think this is where nonprofits tend to be weakest.    Engaging an audience does not mean asking them for money the first time they meet you.   It doesn’t matter how large your donate now button is, it doesn’t equate to engaging visitors with your content.   How does your content relate to the user?  Are they receiving actual information that is useful or simply information that sounds like an organizational sales pitch?

The informal voice of blogging and social media can really shine in this area.   Have your program staff communicate in the first person with your constituents.   It’s more genuine, it’s more meaningful, and you’ll form stronger relationships.

Motivating the Audience

How do you represent your relationship with a constituent?   Nonprofits are more likely to be able to tell me when the last time someone donated than when they last wrote a letter to the editor.  This needs to change.  Measuring the engagement of a constituent by tracking their advocacy allows you to segment your database and target fundraising appeals appropriately.   “John, you do so much for us with writing letters to the editor about indoor smoking, could you chip in $20 to our campaign to get the bill passed?”

CRM is where the change is happening, but it isn’t easy to wrangle imprecise processes into the confines of a database — it is quite a challenge, but one worth tackling.

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Overall, MailChimp’s integration matches what I see as the standard way nonprofits deal with e-newsletters.  They mostly need little segmentation and to collaboratively create content.  In this respect, MailChimp is a great option.   Think of the integration as an automation of the process of dumping contacts and uploading them into an email list manager.   At present you can pull across name, addresses and the Salesforce id — at least in theory.

I tried this first in a Developer account which worked fine.   For some reason the integration errors within our production instance at NPower PA if I try to pull over addresses.   Without importing addresses, the integration works, but is currently pulling the First Name field from Salesforce into the Last Name field in my MailChimp list.   (We are not on the original nonprofit template, so I am not sure what is causing it.)  Mailchimp is looking into the trouble ticket some more, so we’ll see where that goes.  Keep in mind that my developer’s account didn’t have this issue, so perhaps it’s instance specific.

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