This is a guest post by Ann Smarty, creator of the best guest blogging community and editor on Search Engine Journal.
With the thousands of plugins available in the WordPress Plugins directory plus those who are not yet listed, it practically becomes too gruesome to find those plugins that really work. Certainly, there are many useful plugins available that extends WordPress functionality as a CMS.
CRM Integrates with WordPress
Salesforce recently rolled out a WordPress plug-in geared at adding new functionality to the way your blog handles contact forms called WordPress-to-Lead. This plugin integrates with Salesforce CRM (customer relationship management software) in pulling out data from the contact forms and lets you track interactions and sync with Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and more. It also allows you to manage and organize your contacts and lead information in one place, eliminating the need to keep track of your leads from your inbox to CRM.
In other words, WordPress-to-Lead is a free plugin that allows you to create contact forms and publish them to your WordPress site or blog. With this plugin, you can turn your WordPress site or blog into a lead generation machine.
More than Just a Contact Form for WordPress
All Things CRM recently had an impressive experience with the WordPress-to-lead plugin. He expressed his disappointments with the current crop of WordPress contact form plug-ins such as cforms II, Enhanced WP Contact Form, SimpleModel Contact Form, Clean Contact and other similar plug-ins. While each of these plugins may claim to be an effective contact form solution for your website, one major problem that he encountered, especially since he is not a WordPress developer, was how to get any of the plugins to work on his website.
Those plugins surely work one way or the other, but how to get them to work effectively and seamlessly is a challenge. That’s the beauty of WordPress-for-Lead. It practically does all the work for you and turns your website into a business lead generator. The plugin ensures that your contact forms gets into your inbox and not caught in the sea of spam that gets in to your email or website contact database. In addition, the plugin also gives you some more time to organize and enter customers and leads into your CRM.
WordPress-to-Lead in Action
This video shows how to install, activate, and configure the WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM plugin.
Learn More
Want to know more about this plugin and how it can benefit you? Check out the following write ups and reviews about WordPress-to-Lead.
- Yoast’s Overview of WordPress-to-Lead – The creator details their new plugin.
- Learn More About Blog Visitors – How bloggers can use WordPress-to-Lead.
- Testing WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce – Simple step by step setup.
- About Salesforce and Pricing – To clarify, you must have the Group ($25 per month) plan to import information from the plugin.
Free Trial
If you want to try this plugin out, you may want to sign up for a Salesforce CRM (Group edition) 14 day free trial. This will help you familiarize yourself with the plugin.
Your Thoughts
Do you use a CRM program for your business or blog? What other great benefits do you see possible using this plugin for WordPress and CRM integration for contact and lead management?
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{ 21 comments }
It is really hard to find working plugins for Wordpress at the moment. There are so many around and with all the problems between different plugins and the different versions of Wordpress this whole can be a major annoyance.
Currently I am not using this kind of plugin to generate leads but this sounds pretty effective to me.
Thanks for sharing! Btw I like the voice in the video
.-= New from Alex@Zahnbleaching Braun Oral-B Sonic Complete DLX – Testbericht =-.
Hi Ann,
It certainly is interesting to read your post about yet another plug in but I’d rather stick with email list building and lead management that doesn’t add any more plugs in to my blog.
I’ve already had issues with huge amount of spam caused by one plug in and recently my top commentator was hijacked and unsavory link was added to my blog because of another plug in. Having to police each plug in to make sure that they don’t do more damage than good is a lot of waste of time.
Another issue is with Word Press being updated so frequently that some of the plug ins can’t keep up and no longer work properly with the new WP version.
So your plug in may be good for some people but I think that the classic way of building email list and the time tested lead and customer management tools like Aweber are the way to go for me and many others.
Vance
.-= New from Vance@Email List Building Email List Building Ebook, How To Build Email List In Any Market =-.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
May 18, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Great video!
Like Vance, I use aweber like now and and am pretty satisfied with it. However, you have written a very nice review regarding this plugin, looks interesting. If I am not using one as of now. I will really try it out.
.-= New from Andrew@BloggingGuide Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Internet Scamming =-.
@Alex, right you are. In general, the less plugins you use, the better. However sometimes going with a reliable plugin that adds some useful functionality is not a bad idea.
@Vance, agreed. Therefore it is so important to stick to plugins from trusted sources and reliable developers. As for Aweber, that’s a good choice but it is used for a bit different purposes.
@Andrew, please let me know if you do
.-= New from Ann Smarty Testing WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM Plugin =-.
Amazing. This sounds to be the next level of email list building. I think this plugin provides ample scope for customer analytics as well. The main reason people stick to wordpress is because of development of plugins like this every now and then. Ann, thanks for the brilliant review. The video is self emphasizing.
Twitter: DennisEdell
May 19, 2010 at 7:43 am
I’m confused by other comments, is this supposed to replace things like Aweber?
.-= New from Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing 10 Social Share Sites Chosen – Do You Agree? =-.
Looks like an awesome WordPress plugin. I will definitely try out the free trial.
.-= New from Chris @ find guest bloggers If you register your site for free at =-.
@Dennis, no, this is not the same as Aweber. I guess you need to try both to see which bst suits your needs though (or maybe both)
.-= New from Ann Smarty Testing WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM Plugin =-.
Perhaps I need to try both. I know very little about Aweber, and we need a contact solution for our blog. Do you have a beginners guide to Aweber you can recommend?
.-= New from Colleen@Kennewick Real Estate West Pasco Washington Homes For Sale =-.
Thanks for your blog, Ann. I too have found it hellish to sift through the various plugins. I try very much to narrow it down to the most purposeful and proven ones so I only have what I need, more or less. Nothing’s worse than multiple versions of the same basic thing, in my opinion.
Till then,
Jean
Like previous commenters, I use Aweber and whilst it ain’t cheap, it works and I am a happy customer.
.-= New from Jorgen @ Personal Branding Personal Branding Talk at the Smart Marketing Warriors London =-.
This is a well-timed post for me. We do not have an effective way to monitor leads from our blog. We’ve done a very good job in tracking leads from our static website, but our blog is in dire need of some better contact management, especially since the traffic from our blog is gaining on that of our static website.
Love the video, btw. Personally, I like few works and lots of video.
.-= New from Colleen@Kennewick Real Estate Tri Cities Washington Cold Winter Nights Makes For Abundant Springtime Babies =-.
This is only slightly related, but I wonder what effect the lawsuit Microsoft has for salesforce. I have a number of clients who use and rely upon salesforce and it seems that all too often, big corporations, like Microsoft, can’t compete on the playing field by making a better product and have to fall back on questionable software patents.
.-= New from Steve@Lift Chairs Types of Senior Safety Tools =-.
That looks really cool. I need to start looking into a real CRM program, because TextEdit is getting kind of messy haha. SalesForce looks like a real good contender, but I think I’m still going to go with Highrise. I don’t know if they’re even comparable, but Salesforce looks a little intense for me.
.-= New from Matt@Thesis Wordpress Theme How to Easily Change Thesis Skins =-.
a very informative and interesting post, i want say thanks for good Video about Wordpress manage easily contact..i love Wordpress and it’s plugin are very best for managing your comments etc..Seems like a cool utility…
.-= New from SEO Company keep your domain away from copyright issues =-.
Like most, I don’t like to add too many plugs to my blog(s). But I look at it like balancing the budget. At this point, if I add a plug-in, then I’ll make sure I delete another that I can do without.
It is hard because there are so may good plugins.
I guess it depends on what you want to do with the data. If you are looking to automate and set up contact with the lead without your personal intervention then aweber is the choice. If you are looking to track your direct contact with a potential new customer then sale force is the plug in you want providing you have the sales force application and know how to use it.
I have been searching for a CRM tool for a long time. I have tried Highrise, and many others. I never considered Sales Force because it looks so complicated. After viewing the video, I will take a closer look. And since it can integrate with my Wordpress Blog, this is great. Thanks for the post.
.-= New from Kristal @ Key Client Services Keyword Power: Tools for your Website Content =-.
We have a blog on our ecommerce website and also use Salesforce for our CRM. Thanks for doing this quick video guide – I’m actually going to have a chat with our sales team right now about possibly integrating it.
Thanks, Ann, for talking about Salesforce’s new plugin.
Do you know how (and “if”) their plugin integrates with aWeber or Constant Contact?
Obviously, there’s a need for an affordable lead capture & management Wordpress solution:
*Web form creator – must create all kinds of forms such as Gravity Forms and include captcha.
*Email marketing similar to aweber or Constant Contact
*Lead/customer management – must provide ease-of-access and manage backoffice.
By chance, does anyone know of any other “affordable” solutions I should check out…that might work for real estate agents and brokerages?
I guess I haven’t considered SalesForce for years, thinking they (like ACT! and others) still were stuck in the OFF-line world.
Thank you,
Mike
Mike the Sarasota Real Estate Guy recently posted..Sarasota Homes For Sale – Housing Market “TRUTH” Is NOT In The Numbers-
A client wants a CRM so I’m researching through the WordPress plugins for an appropriate solution. Thanks Ann for writing this article!
Haroun Kola@Social Entrepreneur recently posted..Promote Yourself
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