Some people may think this is weird…but I love KFC. I have since my early teens, and every time I travel somewhere I make a point to get some KFC. I’ve enjoyed it in New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Turkey, Costa Rica, Spain, Egypt, and Israel to name a few. I have also been to Kentucky to visit the birthplace of KFC, Corbin, KY. Therefore it wasn’t much of a surprise when I received calls from friends and family to let me know they heard about a contest for the Ultimate KFC Fan, with the winner receiving a lifetime supply of KFC! I quickly put together a video of why I am the ultimate fan (the contest is actually for the Ultimate Kentucky Grilled Chicken contest…but the reward is the same). Last week I was very excited to get notified that my video was chosen as one of three finalists. Voting for the Ultimate Fan began on August 1st and ends August 16th.
I think my video could win on its own…but why wait and see when I have Salesforce at my disposal? I’ve had a Salesforce account with all my contacts in it for a while, but I hadn’t really done anything with it. With the reward of a lifetime supply of chicken at stake, I decided this was the time to put it to use. Using the email template and the mass mailing functionality, I knew a professional marketing campaign was at my disposal. First I created a letterhead that included a KFC banner along the top and a “Vote For Howard” real big in the footer. My next step was to create an appealing looking template. Using the “Promotion Left” option, I was able to add a banner along the left side of the email that included a few pictures of me enjoying KFC through the years.
With the layout now set up, I went about drafting my letter. Using merge fields I was able to customize the letter by adding my contact’s name in the greeting of the email. The next section described my love of KFC. This portion I also wanted to semi-customize based on whether I’ve spoken to the recipient recently or not and based on whether they are aware of my love for KFC or not. To do this I cloned my template and changed the introduction. Using the dataloader, I quickly exported all my contacts and checked who received which letter. I then updated the contacts with this new info and filtered my mass mailing list with this criteria. Finally, I scheduled the email to go out midday on Monday while people are at work and sitting at their computer, so they can vote right away.
If I was able to do this, as a one man operation, imagine what your organization can do with a small marketing team and some better planning… This campaign allowed me to get the word out in just a few hours in a professional manner, without having to put in the days’ worth of effort to customize a standard looking email. In addition, by scheduling the email time I am able to send the email when I want to, without interrupting my work day.
Speaking of getting the vote out… If you’d like to vote for me, here’s the link to the video: http://creative.myspacecdn.com/Client/YumBrands/KFC/Tech/aug09_voting.html?24149615
Unfortunately, in order to vote you have to login to your myspace account…so dust off those username and passwords, or go create an account (you can always cancel it later if you want), and then VOTE!