Analyzing your data: Views and PDF Reports

How many new leads did you receive last month?

How many sales were closed?

Does one of your sales staff have way too many “No Sales?”

The answer to these types of questions are easily found using Views. Views are a combination of filters, and displayed data that users are able to save and load upon demand. In order to effectively create these Views to use as “Reports” for your account, a basic understanding of the filters that are available in your account is essential

Because Open Leads is based on an extremely powerful database, your account can contain a substantial amount of data that you can be extracted using filters. From your Lead List, filters are available to sort by the data contained in any of your fields, along with Type, User, Lead Source, Lead Grouping, Read/Unread, Date Added, Date Modified, Opted out (of email), Bounced (email), Active and Completed tasks. Take some time to add and remove some filters to get an idea of how you can best sort data. By combining filters, you can retrieve specific lists of leads. For example, adding the simple filter for “Date Added” then choosing “is in this month” you will display all new Leads entered into your account for the current month. Adding an additional filter for a Type, such as “Wiget Prospect” will show just those new leads that were interested in Widgets.

Customizing the columns displayed on your lead list adds to the functionality of your Views. Name will always be the first column, as it is used by Open Leads a key search and sort field. The next two columns can be customized by clicking on the blue asterisk icon in the header row. Once clicked, you can choose the data you wish to display, e.g. email address. Any column can be sorted alphabetically, or chronologically by clicking on the column header label. Clicking once for an ascending sort, and twice for descending. You can toggle between the date added and date modified fields, and you can elect to display or not display the assigned user, and can choose to display only the first Type assigned to your leads or all of the Types assigned to the leads on your list.

Once you have the data displayed, you can save this view, give it a label, and it will appear in your Current View dropdown. You can change back and forth between views at any time by selecting from this menu.

Saved views can be printed using the PDF Reports option in the Apply to menu. This dropdown menu appears just above the Types column on the right side of your Leads List – this is the same menu where your mass email and other mass apply options appear. Choose “PDF Report” then choose your display options, and you will be able to print a nicely formatted “report” from your view. From this menu you may also choose to export this data to a CSV file for use in an external application such as a spreadsheet.

Populate your Open Leads account with data directly from your lead gen sources

Open Leads supports many popular lead generation sites via direct XML data input. Our current list of supported sites includes:

Autobytel.com
AutoTrader.com
builtstronger.com
cars.com
communitiesnet.com
CreditJockey
Dealermade
Dealix
eBizAutos
eCarList
fmha.org
Ford Direct
FranchiseOpportunities.com
New Home Guide
New Home Source
RetireNet.com
SmartPillars.com
UsedCars.com

Don’t see your lead gen source listed? Contact them to see if they offer XML leads. Then let us know and we can get them added to this growing list of providers!

Change is never easy – and the Tasks Tab proves it

In adding more functionality to the Task system within Open Leads, it was necessary to make some changes to the way that Users were assigned to tasks. This is most apparent when a Workflow is used to assign Tasks, but not a user. The result is that any tasks attached to leads that are created by that Workflow will be assigned to “No User” (since no user was selected by the Workflow). In these cases, when users are assigned after the Lead is in the Lead List, users must open their Lead Detail to see tasks. It is a good idea to have them go ahead and edit the Tasks for new Leads assigned in this manner, and assign the Tasks to themselves. Tasks will then appear on the users Task Tab.

You will also notice a new selection menu on Tasks that are set up to trigger another Workflow upon completion, or Tasks that trigger Workflow Branching. This selection menu gives you the option of choosing the user to be assigned to the next round of tasks – either a specific user or the “User Assigned by Workflow.” This is a much stronger model than the previous options, which made it possible to assign a single Task to multiple Users assigned to the same Lead. This lead to some confusion and a lot of times the task not getting completed properly.

An additional function of these changes – all tasks now have a single user. Only one person should be responsible for any one task, and this ensures enforcement of this rule. This greatly increases the practical application of user Task Lists in the Task Tab section. Now it functions much stronger as a To-Do list.

Another Tasks Update

In the Task editor where tasks are created and assigned by a Workflow, the user selection dropdown has changed a bit. “Default User” has been changed to “User assigned by Workflow” – we think this change will make it clearer to users what is happening with the user assignment.

Minor Tweak to Tasks Tab

We made a slight adjustment to the Tasks Tab yesterday. It now defaults to “active” Tasks in all instances. Users must check box to display completed Tasks on the list.

New User Guide Available

We have updated our User Guide for Open Leads. Download it from Table of Contents on the online help section or click here.

Popup Calendar Added

You asked for it and you got it! Open Leads users requested a popup calendar to use when scheduling tasks to make the process a bit easier and we added that code to the application this morning. Although Open Leads had always used “Smart Dates” – allowing you to type in “tomorrow” or “2 weeks” on the date field when scheduling upcoming Tasks, it was not entirely intuitive when you needed to schedule a task “two weeks from Thursday” – assuming that today is not Thursday, of course.

Now when you schedule a new task you will see a small calendar icon next to the date field. Clicking on this calendar opens a popup with a graphical calendar. Clicking on any date will select that date for the Task, and it will then display a time selector. The time selector works on a scroll wheel in 24 hour time which may take some users a bit of time to adjust to. However, by only having to fields to select from (hour and minute), it ultimately makes the selection of time very quick and easy – in keeping with our goal of being an easy-to-application. The default time is the current time on your computer, but a quick scroll and you can set the task to any time you require. You can also click on each field and enter a hour and minute. Once rendered into Open Leads your time will appear in standard 12 hour formatting.

A simplified, date-only, version of the popup calendar has also been added to any data fields you have created that contain Date information.

For those of you who have mastered the “old” way of entering dates for scheduled Tasks – all of that functionality remains the same and will still work as it did before.

Tasks Tab

The latest addition to Open Lead is the Tasks Tab. We wanted to create one central location where all of a users tasks are quickly and easily viewed.

The Task Tab consists of two elements, the Calendar and the Tasks List. As you open the Tasks Tab, your default view is all Tasks scheduled for today. On the calendar, today’s date is outlined in red for easy visual identification. Dates with tasks scheduled are displayed in bold.

You may move forward and backward in the calendar and click on any day to view the Tasks, both active and completed for that day. You may also select a date range within the calendar by clicking on the beginning date, and then Shift+Click on the end date. Your Task List is then updated for the selected date range.

Your Task List consists of columns showing the User Assignment, Task Name, Lead that the Task is associated with, and both the Scheduled Date and the Completed Date. You may use the search box to find specific tasks by name, lead name, etc. that are displayed in those columns.

To complete any of the Tasks, simply click on the Task Name or the Lead Name, to be taken to the Lead Detail screen, where you may complete the task, edit it or add additional tasks for that lead.

Toggle between your scheduled tasks and all of your tasks by clicking on the “All Tasks” link in the top. This is useful to see all of your tasks “at-a-glance.”

Two new features on the Task Tab are the “Suscribe to iCalendar Feed” and “View in 30 Boxes” options.

Your Open Leads Task list is now available as an iCal feed. Clicking on this link will open your default iCalendar-compatible application, such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple iCal, and you can then subscribe to your Open Leads Tasks, and display them on your default calendar. The iCalendar feed only shows Active (uncompleted) tasks and only goes back 30 days. You should use your Tasks Tab inside Open Leads if you need to explore a longer range.

For those who prefer a web-based solution, clicking on the “View in 30 Boxes” will cause your iCalendar feed to be displayed in a 30Boxes.com read-only calendar – offering a quick view in a full-calendar mode.

** NOTE: Both the iCal and 30 Boxes features are for individually assigned tasks. Account Administrators, by default, have “All Users” as their initial screen, so that they may see all of the leads for their entire account. Admins should switch to the view for their User Account (switch users in the dropdown to the right of the calandar) to subscribe to their iCal feed, or to view their Tasks in 30 Boxes. The links for these features appear in the blue header bar on the Tasks List.

Stay tuned, as will be adding additional features and functions to the Task Tab in the near future.

Open Leads Supports Popular Real Estate Leads

The Open Leads “Email-in” feature now supports XML emails from NewHomeGuide.com and NewHomeSource.com, in addition to leads from RetireNet.com and CommunitiesNet.com – giving builders, developers and realtors the ability to have their leads from these website written directly into their Open Leads accounts.

Using filters created especially for these sources, Open Leads automatically parses the data and enters it into the appropriate fields in your account. Plus, using our Workflow feature, you can automatically assign users, send an autoresponder email, and schedule followup for these new leads as soon as they hit your account.

Email Bounce Handling

Open Leads is committed to maintaining high deliverability rates for email that is sent out from our application.

One of the most important elements of this is maintaining good relationships with the major ISPs, and the way we handle their email bounced from their systems is a key variable in that process.

Open Leads Email system manages bounces and classifies them as either “hard” or “soft” depending on what message is received back from the various ISPs that mail is sent to.

So what is the difference between a “hard” bounce and “soft” bounce, anyway?

Hard Bounces
We consider an email to be “hard bouncing” if the error message we get back from your leads email provider indicates a permanent condition, such as:

* email account doesn’t exist
* there is a spelling error in the email address (htomail.com versus hotmail.com, etc.)

In this instance, these leads will be blocked from your Open Leads Mail System – and will not be included in any mass emails. This will save you from using up credits on a bad address, and will serve to maintain good relations with the major ISPs by not bombarding them with repeated requests for mail delivery to non-existent email addresses.

Soft Bounce
If the error message we get back from your member’s email provider does not meet the criteria for a hard bounce, then the error is considered a soft bounce. Soft bounces can be due to the lead’s email inbox being over the allotted space limit, or other temporary problem.

If the email address generates an occasional soft bounce error, it will be logged but no other action will be taken. However, if the email address continues to return soft bounce errors for several days, then that then we will consider that a hard bounce.