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Melissa McCready

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CRM Consultant, CRM Happy

229 points

CRM enthusiast with passion for making sure business process best practices influences how technology is designed and implemented. Over 12 years experience with CRM and business automation packages like ERP. Mad about usability and data quality processes.

April 30, 2012

Melissa McCready and 1 other person answered this question at this roundtable

Retargeting Best Practices for B2B [4/5 @ 11 am]

How do you integrate retargeting efforts with lead scoring?

I think this comes down to how you are processing lead scoring. Depends on the tool. For example, if you are using a Marketing Automation tool and have set up a program/flow specifically for lead scoring, this could be much easier. If you have scores ... more

Demand Generation

Marketing Automation

Jan. 4, 2012

Melissa McCready and 7 other people answered this question

Is anyone using Marketo's automated marketing software? Possibly matched up with Salesforce?

Hi Jason,
Many of my clients use Salesforce.com (SFDC) and Marketo coupled with Data.com. These are all nicely integrated. Data.com is also integrated with Marketo and offers a scrub function at an additional cost.
In September 2011, I presented at the Marketo Users- Silicon Valley ... more

Marketing Automation

Oct. 16, 2011

Melissa McCready recommends this answer by Jim Dickie

What are the three biggest mistakes "newly minted" sales managers make.

Answer this questionI'll give one to leave room for other answers. CSO Insights just finished our 2011 Sales Management Optimization study, gathering data from 875 firms regarding the people leading our sales teams.
Looking at sales managers who have been in the job for less than ... more

Sales Management

Oct. 15, 2011

Melissa McCready and 13 other people answered this question

For a start-up, what are the best CRM and marketing automation apps that need the fewest add-ons?

In regards to Marketo Spark, it nicely integrates with Salesforce.com. However, I would only recommend using Salesforce.com Enterprise or Unlimited with that integration so you can take full advantage of Salesforce.com workflow rules- i.e. field updates that you can automatically update based on certain types ... more

Constant Contact

Oct. 11, 2011

Melissa McCready and 2 other people answered this question at this roundtable

MAI Series: Three Views of Marketing Automation [10/13 @ 1 pm]

What is the latest data on successful marketing automation implementations?

Hi Craig,
Are you looking at this from a what is involved in maximizing implementation success and/or metrics such as the increases in volume, conversion, etc., or perhaps, both?
The metrics are very specific to the organization. A way to do this would be to reach out ... more

Customer Service

Information Technology

Oct. 11, 2011

Melissa McCready asked a question at this roundtable

MAI Series: Three Views of Marketing Automation [10/13 @ 1 pm]

What are your biggest challenges w/ Marketing Automation tools- adoption, functionality, ownership?

Customer Service

Information Technology

Sept. 6, 2011

Melissa McCready is now following M Scott Schaffernoth and 3 other people

Sept. 6, 2011

Melissa McCready and 4 other people answered this question

What are the top 3 areas sales people can use CRM to leverage personal productivity?

"Autopilot" capabilities are my favorite to recommend to include:
1- Utilizing calendars, activity schedulers and reminders for follow calls, emails, etc.
2- Querying for low hanging fruit- it's simple, but so many people do not implement CRM with these canned at roll out. Sales people end up ... more

Sales Force Automation

Aug. 5, 2011

Melissa McCready and 3 other people answered this question

How will CRM's role in email marketing campaigns change in the future?

I absolutely believe they will become more integrated and that we might even see leading "platform" providers start to engulf marketing automation companies. There is definitely momentum being gained in the market space for marketing automation to finally be a part of the foundation for ... more

Email Marketing

July 21, 2011

Melissa McCready and 8 other people answered this question

Can anyone catch Salesforce.com in the CRM space? If so, how?

Salesforce.com (SFDC) is so deep and has so much traction given it's Application Exchange (APEX) strategy, it will very difficult for anyone to catch them. The strategy- "there is an app for that"- like Apple, is what I believe makes SFDC leaps and bounds ahead ... more

Information Technology

July 12, 2011

Melissa McCready and 9 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Modern B2B Marketing Strategies [7/12 @ 1 pm]

When should a company NOT invest in marketing automation software?

I'd like to echo Marcus's answer and add onto his #5 about resources. There has to be a dedicated resource or resources to train people on how to use Marketing automation, not justt for launch, but ongoing! All too often I see investments made into ... more

B2B Marketing Week

Content Marketing

June 30, 2011

Melissa McCready answered this question

What isn't working with social crm?

My experiences are specifically with Saesforce.com's Chatter...
Technology- I definitely think that it needs to be set up to be administered where you can turn on for some and off for others. It should not be an all or nothing! You have some teams that do ... more

Feb. 3, 2011

Melissa McCready and 3 other people answered this question

Does clean account & contact data promote better CRM adoption?

This is a double edged sword type of question really. I think that it can help, but there are may reasons ahead of account and contact data being clean that promotes adoption.
Here are the items I believe promote adoption in order of priority:
1- ... more

Sales Operations

Oct. 15, 2010

Melissa McCready and 1 other person answered this question

What are today's top priorities for a CRM manager?

Top priorities for CRM Managers:
Given CRM has been implemented and is in a sustainment period, I believe the following the top priorities:
1- Data Quality. If I had a dime for every dirty record, I'd be an extremely wealthy person! Dirty data should be ... more

Customer Service

Dec. 8, 2009

Melissa McCready recommends this comment by Emma Warrillow

Selecting the Best CRM Solution and Vendor for Your Business

The article makes some excellent points. I couldn't agree more about the need to articulate comprehensive business requirments right down to the business unit level. My firm finds that many of our clients lack the expertise to articulate this without Subject Matter Expertise in this ... more

Process Management

Oct. 30, 2009

Melissa McCready and 2 other people answered this question

Is Sales Software the Same as CRM?

Same, no. Sales software is a part of CRM tools. CRM= sales+marketing+customer service aka a customer database usable by customer-facing departments.
Certainly tools can support your efforts to "better" manage sales, however, identifying sales processes and implementing those within a tool will give you the ... more

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