#announcements
Important info for Customer Marketers & Community members
Thread
Where do you track everything that's going on in references and case studies? As I'm picking up where someone left off, I realize I'm doing a lot of running things down. Like which customer uses software A vs software B. Who gave us permission to use logos vs who revoked permission. I don't think I can adequately track this in salesforce. It's not set up for that. So where do y'all keep the extensive notes on customers so you can pull what you need at any time? Have you built a database for this? Is there something already out there that you use?
At my old company I had our Salesforce team add a checkbox field to the customer account for logo permissions so I could easily pull reports. Otherwise maybe some kind of project management software with Kanban boards tracking the stages of the reference/case study development? My old company used and my current one uses Asana.
Sounds like you might be reaching the right stage of maturity for a reference tracking tool. Any of the major players in the CMA space have functionality for recording this basic advocacy information at both a company and contact level. For something more homegrown, Asana, , or Airtable are great options. Otherwise, a lot of spreadsheets 🥲
yeah, this is beyond when the case study is happened. maybe a few months later they come back and pull it for some reason. or they want to remain unnamed or the point of contact changes. more like keeping extensive notes on them. i know SF can do that but the way we have it set up it's not ideal.
we use monday, but for this i have no idea how to set it up. we use it for task tracking, not this.
and not all teams use it, so i don't think it would be ideal either. i'm stumped.
To manage this, I've created custom fields in one org, and implemented SlapFive at another org.
Custom SFDC fields are great for this—but it really depends on the org culture. These fields have created new headaches when they're editable by the whole org ... including those who want to keep their reference information in their own private little black books.
yeah, getting additions to SFDC may be low priority for everyone but me. lol
Maybe a Notion database or Google Spreadsheet
We use Airtable and we synch it with our CRM to see additional details both for account and contact levels.
we do use some google spreadsheets already @Joel Primack so i'm trying to figure out how searchable it really is, considering i searched for a customer i already knew was in there and it didn't come up.
i haven't used airtable enough to be super familiar yet although i hear good things. i'm concerned i'll be told not to use additional unvetted tools, but i'm going to investigate. thanks y'all. and if you think of something else, please continue to add on. i feel like i'm chasing my tail as i try to figure all of this out.
@Valeria Gomez's Airtable set up is insane. Helps that she's CMA for Airtable ... but it is absolute goals if you can't get buy in for a dedicated CMA tool.