FLG Business Technology

You may have noticed improved information on screen when using import/export and bulk actions over the last week. We’ve finished rolling out some updates related to this which bring these improvements:

• A completely overhauled background request processing system which brings better scheduling (less queuing) and more visibility on the progress of requests.
• Better information on screen. We now tell you when your request is waiting in a queue, and when it’s being processed. For bulk actions, you can see what percentage of your actions have been processed.
• The ability to cancel bulk actions. All remaining actions will be cancelled – those that have already been processed won’t be reversed.
• A new ‘Background Requests’ status page (accessed below the main menu), where you can return to whenever you want to see all requests that are in progress and cancel (where applicable).
• To ensure the smooth (and fair) operation of the background requests system, we now impose a limit of 3 concurrent background requests per user, and impose a service wide limit on the number of concurrent import/updates.

Updated Search Leads & Reports Interfaces

We’re making some changes to the way search leads and reports user interfaces work. The changes are fairly minor in terms of the functionality they bring, but will make the screens cleaner and allow new features to be added in the future without cluttering up the pages.

There are really three things different about the new controls:

1. To add an extra filter (other than date), you’ll need to click on a button to show the filter before you can select your filter. There’s a ‘remove’ button next to each filter that you can use to quickly remove it.
2. The ‘date referred’ option which used to sit on the date row is now under ‘Options’. Just click the ‘Options’ button to show it, plus some others we’re adding.
3. There’s no ‘Reset’ button anymore – to reset your search/report filters, either click the ‘Search Leads’ or ‘Reports Centre’ left menu button again, or just remove all the filters you’ve added.

New Search Leads Options

Through the new options menu in search leads, you can now:

• Exclude sub leads from the results.
• De-duplicate linked leads.

De-duplication of linked leads works by only including the most recently added linked lead if linked leads are found. Note that the feature only considers leads that are found based on the date range and search filters selected.

Consider a situation where 3 leads are linked:

Lead 1 received on 10th November
Lead 2 received on 20th November
Lead 3 received on 10th December

When searching for all leads in November with de-duplication, then none of the 3 leads are returned (lead 3 is the most recent but out of date range). If the date range is now changed to all year (or December, or November-December), then lead 3 is returned.

If you have any questions about this change, either now or after release, please get in touch. We’ll be happy to help.

We’re pleased to be launching a revamped bots feature set this morning.  Whilst the principles of bots remains the same – the new features make bots capable of running intelligent workflows, not just drip marketing campaigns.

Here’s what’s new:

• Bots can now do things immediately (after 0 days 0 hours).  You’ll also find that when managing bots, the days/hours you set is relative to the previous action, rather than to the start time.
• You can now ‘pause until complete’ on tasks.  All bots will wait in a ‘Paused’ state until the task that was created by the bot is marked as complete.  Use this to wait for a user to complete some kind of action.  You can have a set of tasks that all pause, creating a kind of checklist system.  As each task is completed, the next task appears.
• We’ve introduced ‘conditions’ to bots.  You can add conditions to a bot action so that the action only happens if the conditions you set are met.  This is very similar to the filters system on lead types.  You’ll see a new ‘No Conditions’ grey label to the left of each action when you update a bot, click this label to start adding conditions.
• Bots can now start other bots or stop themselves.  You’ll find new ‘Start Bot’ and ‘Stop Bot’ actions to do this.  Use along with conditions to add conditional logic to your bots (fork them).  For example, if a field within the lead is set to value A, switch to Bot A, if the field is set to value B, switch to Bot B.
• Defer option.  When you view the list of bot actions within the lead itself (by clicking on the bot bar), click ‘Defer’ to defer the bot (and all subsequent bots) for 1 day.
• Reorganised Bot List under ‘Settings > Bots’.  We’ve mirrored the recent improvements in the templates section and organised bots in an expandable list.

Some other things to bear in mind:

• We’ve removed the ability to change the lead group that a bot is available in.  It was becoming difficult to manage all the edge cases where this caused integrity problems, and it was rarely used.
• Actions that happen immediately aren’t skipped on Saturdays/Sundays, if you have these options selected.  Only actions that are scheduled for the future respect these settings.
• When a bot is ‘resumed’ (after a task that the bot is waiting on is marked as complete), all paused bots are rescheduled from the point in time that the task is completed.  So if the task is completed at 4pm and the next action happens in 1 hour, it will run at 5pm.  Saturdays and Sundays are skipped if these options are selected (and the next action is not to happen immediately).
• We also improved the list of lead type filters and conditions available, and made the user interface a little cleaner there too.

Try using the new bot features to build workflows of tasks that you want your users to complete in sequence (automatically changing the status and/or the user as they go).  Or maybe use conditions to add new intelligence to your drip marketing bots.  Even combine workflow and marketing actions into 1 bot.

If you don’t use FLG 360 for your sales lead management and sales crm, you can try it absolutely free now.

We’d like to tell you about some improvements we’ve made to FLG 360:

Validated, Qualified, Converted & Invalidated Lead Action Events

These events let you trigger actions (such as sending emails or creating tasks) when the billing point of a lead changes.  Billing points only move forwards.  So once a lead goes to any ‘Validated’ status, the ‘Validated’ event would trigger once and never again, even if the lead’s status was changed back to ‘New’ and then to to ‘Validated’ again.
Because there is no billing point for ‘Contacted’ or ‘Closed’, these are not available to trigger events, which has long been a limitation.

From today, we’ve made these events trigger every time a status changes from one conversion point to another.  That means every time a lead changes from or to ‘Validated’, ‘Contacted’, ‘Qualified’, ‘Converted’, ‘Closed’ or ‘Invalidated’, an event will trigger.

If you have 2 statuses with the same conversion point, for example, ‘Processing’ and ‘To Be Processed’ both set to the ‘Validated’ conversion point, then the ‘Validated’ event will only trigger once, even if the status keeps changing between ’Processing’ and ‘To Be Processed’.

The most important difference between what used to happen and what now happens, is that events will re-trigger.  An example will explain this.  A lead goes from a ‘Validated’ status to a ‘Qualified’ status then back to ‘Validated’.  Here’s what used to happen, and what happens now:

• Before, the ‘Validated’ event would trigger, then the ‘Qualified’ event would trigger, but when the status changes back to ‘Validated’, nothing would happen as the ‘Validated’ event had already happened.
• Now, the ‘Validated’ event will trigger, then the ‘Qualified’ event will trigger, then the ‘Validated’ event will trigger again as the status changes back.

More Reports

We’ve made some very minor changes to existing reports and added some new ones:

• Lead Postcode Report: This is a new report that provides key statistics about the postcode areas of your leads.
• Partner Coverage Summary & Detail Reports: These have been renamed ‘Partner Postcode Summary Report’ and ‘Partner Postcode Detail Report’.  They now include coverage of partners who are active but currently paused (those that show as ‘Offline’ in the partner selection screen).
• Partner Lead Type Summary & Detail Reports: These are new reports that are similar to the ‘Partner Postcode’ reports.  They show which lead types are currently selected by partners.  Again, these also include partners who are currently paused.
• Partner Eligibility Report: This is a new report which aims to show you which of your partners are available to accept leads, and if not, why they may not be eligible.  Note that there may be other factors other than those detailed on this report which may effect whether a partner will receive a particular lead.

Filtering Partner List

There are now controls on the partner selection screen so that you can filter by the type of partner and the partner’s current status.

Lead ID Now Available through iFrame and Web Post

When a lead is successfully received through the iFrame or web post methods, if you are redirecting to a custom success page, then an ‘id’ parameter will be added to the success URL with the new lead’s ID.  For example, if a new lead is created with the ID 6111111 and the success page is at http://www.example.com/success.html, then the iFrame or web post would redirect to:

http://www.example.com/success.html?id=6111111

You can then get the ID from the URL using your web scripting language (perhaps PHP or Javascript), and do other things such as update your own records, present the ID to the customer, or use our API to get more details about the lead and present more information to the customer.

Only Let Introducers Submit to Relevant Lead Groups

Until now, if you let introducers create leads directly through the partner portal, they would be able to create leads in any lead group.

The chances are though, if there’s no possibility of an introducer being paid out on any lead types within a lead group, you don’t want them to be able to submit to that group.

It’s now possible to hide these other lead groups.  Go to ‘Settings > Configuration > Preferences’ and under ‘Partner Preferences’, untick ‘Allow introducers to create leads in any lead group’.

If you don’t already use FLG 360, find out more at www.flg360.co.uk.

We’d like to tell you about some improvements we’ve made to FLG 360:

Friendlier Date Handling on Imports

If you’ve used our import or update tools, you’ll know how strict and inconsistent FLG 360 was when it came to date fields.  That’s changed today, because you can now provide any date field in either dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy-mm-dd format, and also many variations on this format, such as a 2 digit year field or single digit month.

Lead Additional Information Moved Above Contact Preferences

We’ve made a small change to the layout of the lead details and edit pages by moving ‘Additional Information’ above contact preferences.  We think this makes more sense and feedback tells us you do too.

Column Changes to Email Delivery Report

The ‘Sent’ and ‘Total’ columns on the Email Delivery Report were a little confusing, so we’ve removed the ‘Sent’ column (which was the number of emails sent that hadn’t bounced, unsubscribed, replied, etc..), and moved ‘Total’ in front of the other columns.

We Need Your Help!

Over the past couple of years improving FLG 360 has been about adding new features and iterating existing features to improve useability.  This isn’t going to change, we’ll still be continuing to develop FLG 360 as we always have, but our focus over the next couple of months will be about fixing small user interface issues that we can address quickly.

So we need your suggestions of what we should do.  We’re not talking about feature related ideas – just the little things where you think ‘if only this worked a bit differently, and surely it wouldn’t be hard to do!’  The smallest of suggestions could be useful to us – this exercise is really about picking the low hanging fruit of UI tweaks.  If you have any, just let us know.

To take a free test drive of FLG 360 and get £10 worth of text message credit for free, visit www.flg360.co.uk.

Improved Referral Partner Distribution

Previously, a random eligible partner was selected each time a lead was referred.  Now, the partner who has waited the longest time to receive a lead is selected.

This means leads are referred on more of a sequencial basis.  For example on the old random system, a delivery pattern may be Buyer 2, Buyer 1, Buyer 1, Buyer 1, Buyer 2, Buyer 2, Buyer 1, Buyer 2.  With the new system, the delivery pattern would instead be Buyer 1, Buyer 2, Buyer 1, Buyer 2, Buyer 1, Buyer 2, Buyer 1, Buyer 2.

Selection priorities will still work and prioritise a particular buyer where necessary.  If all the partners have been waiting the same time, then a buyer will still be randomly selected.

Apply Daily/Monthly Lead Limits at the Lead Type Level

In ‘Partners > Referral Setup > Edit’ you’ll see new options to add daily and monthly lead limits that apply to specific lead types.

This is in addition to the daily/monthly limits you’ve always been able to set at the partner level.  For a partner to be considered eligible to receive a lead, the partner’s daily/monthly limit and the partner’s lead type daily/monthly limit must not have been exceeded.

The limits work the same way as at partner level – enter zero for no limit.

We’ve been working hard again to bring you some major improvements to email (amongst other things):

• Email Tracking: Turn on email tracking in ‘Settings > Configuration > Email’, and we’ll track email bounces, opens, clicks, replies, unsubscribes & spam reports.  You’ll see new labels in addition to the existing ‘Bounced’ and ‘Failed’ on email items in the lead summary, plus a new report in the Report Centre – ‘Email Delivery Report’.  More about this below.
• Spam Report Feedback Loops: As noted above, we now automatically process and report back to you the data we receive from major ISP’s on subscribers clicking on the ‘Spam’ button.  We currently integrate with Yahoo! and Hotmail, and are in the process of joining the AOL feedback loop.  As we haven’t integrated all the ISP feedback loops we intend to yet, please be aware that week to week trends may be distorted for a few weeks as we add new ones.
• Unsubscribe Links Now Automatically Added: If an email template is being sent in bulk or automatically (i.e. through bulk actions, bots or as a lead event action), and the {LEAD_UNSUBSCRIBE} variable is not found, an unsubscribe link will automatically be added to the bottom of the email.  This template variable is also now replaced at the time of sending, so will show in it’s none substituted form when you view processed templates.
• Strengthened Email Deliverability: As long as you have ‘Receive and allocate email replies and bounces’ selected in your user/site settings, messages are now signed/certified with both SPF and DKIM (DomainKeys), and we also integrate with some email clients to add ‘Unsubscribe’ buttons within the interface for bulk/automated emails.  All this means better delivery and trust rates for your emails sent through FLG 360.
• Better Performance for Homepage Task Lists: Homepage task lists should now load up quicker thanks to some database improvements, and the ‘Expand’ buttons have been tweaked slightly.
• Reply Messages: The ‘Send Reply’ link on messages now has an icon and the reply feature works a little better.
• User Activity Report & User Task Report: A small change has been implemented for consistency – the ‘user’ filter now does the same as on all other reports – filters results by the lead’s assigned user (that is, the user assigned to the lead that the activity happened on, rather than the user assigned to the activity).

Email Delivery Tracking

Several actions are tracked on a ‘unique’ basis – each email is always at one of the below statues:

• Sent – Email sent (the default status).
• Bounced – The email could not be delivered, but may be deliverable in future (more attempts will be made).
• Failed – The email could not be delivered and won’t be attempted again.
• Opened – We embed a ‘tracking pixel’ into the email, and when the email is viewed, an ‘open’ is registered.  However, note that this is a very flaky metric – most email clients now block images by default so the user has to click ‘show images’ for the open to track.  Use this as a relative metric only.  An open rate of 10% should not be taken literally!
• Clicked – All links are converted to tracking links and when one is clicked, then the email is set to this status.
• Replied – A reply was received.  Note that this label isn’t shown on email items on the lead summary, it only appears on the report.
• Unsubscribed – The user clicked on the unsubscribe link.  An action record is also recorded on the lead as the ‘permission to email’ is also set to ‘No’.
• Reported Spam - The user clicked on the ‘Spam’ button in supported email clients.  An action record is also recorded on the lead as the ‘permission to email’ is also set to ‘No’.

When viewing the ‘Email Delivery Report’, statistics are shown for ‘Direct’ emails (those sent through ‘Lead Summary > New > Email’), and for all bulk/automated emails grouped by template.  Even if an email is sent through ’Lead Summary > New > Email’ using a template as a base, the email will still show under ‘Direct’.

If you don’t use FLG 360 yet, try our CRM and lead management application today – it’s totally free to try for 14 days.

We released a new version of FLG 360 overnight.  Here’s what’s changed in this update:

• Improved ‘Capture Leads’ tool. It’s now a little easier to use, and from now on when you choose the ‘API’ method, you will need to have an access key, or create one, before continuing.  This is because using the API without an access key is being deprecated in the future.  This won’t affect anyone already using the API without a key for now and in the foreseeable future.  The ‘Lead Create & Update API Guide’ has also been revamped and simplified in view of this.
• Set permissions on access keys. You can now choose whether an access key can be used to create, update and/or read leads.  For example, you may want to create an access key for an introducer that just has permission to create leads, and one for internal use that has all permissions.
• Use your own confirmation page with the iFrame. We often get asked about adding Google Analytics and other tracking code to the iFrame.  This wasn’t possible until now, as when a lead was successfully received, the user would see a standard confirmation page that couldn’t be customised.  That’s changed now – you can create your own confirmation page, upload it to your website, and provide the full URL in the ‘Confirmation Page URL’ box when getting your iFrame code.  Note that this page will load within the iFrame, so keep it quite simple.
• Faster keyword search. We’ve optimised the search engine to make searching for leads by keyword (and partners/transactions) up to 4x faster in some cases.  More improvements to search performance coming soon.
• New template variables. You can now use new template variables, such as {LEAD_GROUP_ID} and {SITE_EMAIL}.

If you don’t already use FLG 360 for your lead management or crm, you can try it out for 14 days for free.

On Wednesday we updated FLG 360, introducing several new features and improvements:

• Lead referral improvements. The ‘Refer’ and ‘Reverse’ buttons have been replaced by a new ‘Referral’ menu button, please see below for more details.
• New lead returns feature. A new lead return management system has been introduced, see details below.
• New ‘Bulk Transactions’ feature. Select ‘Partners > Bulk Transactions’ to add transactions to many partners at once.  This is useful for adding invoice amounts to partners in bulk once you’ve done a weekly/monthly billing.
• Add filter improvements. When using ‘Add Filter’ in Search Leads, the possible values for certain fields are now presented as drop down selections.  For example, choosing ‘Permission to Call’ will give the options ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Unknown’.
• Lead Update API no longer requires the lead group ID. When updating leads through the API, only the lead ID and access key are required, plus of course the details that need updating.
• Leads from multiple lead groups can be updated in bulk at once. The ‘Update Leads’ tool (Tools > Update Leads), now accepts a CSV/XML file containing leads from many lead groups at once.  Choose ‘Not Specified’ when prompted for the lead group.
• Partner ID’s are now included in the partner export file (the internal FLG 360 partner ID).
• Partners are now able to search for leads by reference. To do so, partners should go to ‘Search Leads’ and click ‘Switch to Keyword Search’, then enter the reference (lead ID) to search for.

New Referral Menu Replaces the Refer and Reverse Buttons

The ‘Refer’ and ‘Reverse’ buttons have been removed, and a new ‘Referral’ menu button has replaced them.  The options available on this new menu are:

• Refer – Works exactly as the old ‘Refer’ button.
• Unrefer – A new option that lets you revoke a previously referred lead from the buyer (without invalidating the lead or reversing transactions).
• Return – A new returns (refunds) feature, details below.  This option allows returns to be started, decisioned, or cleared.
• Reverse – Reverses all transactions (both introducer and buyer).  The existing ‘Reverse’ button is not being replaced as such.  Instead, its function can be replicated exactly by either using the new returns feature, or simply setting a lead to any Invalid status and using this ‘reverse’ menu option.  This option no longer emails partners or sets the lead to an Invalid status.
• Reverse (Introducer) – A new option that reverses only introducer transactions.
• Reverse (Referral) – A new option that reverses only buyer transactions.

The Invalidated Billing Point

Up until now, selecting a status with an ‘Invalidated’ conversion point didn’t set the lead to an ‘Invalidated’ billing point.  Only clicking the ‘Reverse’ button did this.  From now forward, choosing any status with an ‘Invalidated’ conversion point will also set the billing point to ‘Invalidated’, and the partner will see the status within their account as ‘Invalidated’.

This shouldn’t have any adverse affect, and the new behaviour is more consistent with how we feel a user would expect the system to work.

Using Reverse where a Lead Has Been Referred to Multiple Partners

It’s important to understand how the reverse options work differently when selecting it on a main lead compared to when you select the option on a sub lead (when a lead has been sent to several partners).

• Selecting reverse on a main lead reverses all transactions, relating to the main lead and sub leads.
• Selecting reverse on a sub lead reverses transactions that relate to that sub lead only.  So if the lead has been sent to 3 partners, only transactions relating to the buyer of the sub lead that is selected will be reversed.

(This is consistent with the way reversals have always worked, it’s just to clarify).

Lead Returns

The new lead returns system allows a partner (or an internal user) to create a return request.  This request is notified by task to a user who is defined under ‘Settings > Configuration > Preferences’.  You can also search for ‘Open’ returns within Search Leads, using the new returns related filters under ‘Add Filter’, instead of sending a task to a user.

Once received, the return request can be accepted or declined, and additional information can be recorded against the return decision.  The returns feature will also (optionally) email the introducer & referral partner, reverse transactions, and set the lead to a new status.

Users that previously had permission to invalidate leads will now have permission to unrefer leads, handle returns and reverse transactions.
The feature is configured in a similar way to de-duplication settings, within preferences (Settings > Configuration > Preferences), and/or within the lead group (Settings > Lead Groups > Edit).  You can set the feature to work the same across all lead groups (set it up within preferences only), or optionally set the feature to work differently for one, several or all lead groups (use the settings at lead group level).

A partner can start a return (if enabled and if a return doesn’t already exist), by going into a lead within their partner area and clicking ‘Return’.  They’ll see details of the return on their lead summary page, and also see an orange, red or green square (for open, declined and accepted respectively) next to the lead’s progress in Search Leads.

A user can start a return by clicking ‘Return’ on the new ‘Referral’ menu on the lead summary.

A user can deal with a return by clicking ‘Decide Return’ on the ‘Referral’ menu and following the prompts.  The default selection for whether to send the introducer and referral partner an email can be changed in preferences, under ‘Partners’.
Whilst a return exists, either open, declined or accepted, another return can’t be placed.  To enable the partner to place a new return, a user can click ‘Clear Return’ on the ‘Referral’ menu, once a return decision has been made.  This removes the return, but history about the cleared return will still be saved as actions in the lead’s history (select ‘View All Items’ at the bottom of the lead summary).
New reports are also available within the Reports Centre that provide breakdowns of how many leads are set to each return status (open, declined or accepted) and return reasons.

As always we’re happy to help you get started with these new features – if you need any help just let us know.