Coordinating Marketing Events Using Spanning Salesforce

By combining Salesforce.com, Spanning Salesforce, the Spanning Feed Builder, and NewsGator Enterprise Server, one MarCom manager's job just got a lot easier, and the executives she supports just got a lot better informed.

This afternoon I got an email from a Marketing Communications manager asking me if it was possible to automatically send out updates about her company's marketing events, which she manages in Salesforce.com, to her company's executives on their BlackBerrys.

As it turns out, her company uses NewsGator Enterprise Server, so the pieces were all in place. I called her on the phone and walked her through the process of installing Spanning Feed Builder into her Salesforce.com instance and creating a custom Events feed. She subscribed to it and said in a delighted (and more than just a little surprised) voice, "Hey, it works!"

I explained to her that should could email the link to the feed to anyone in her company so they could subscribe to it. But she reminded me that since they use NewsGator Enterprise Server, she could just add the feed to the proper exec's subscription lists and they'd start getting updated Events information--on their BlackBerrys--without lifting a finger.

So after 30 minutes on the phone, I've got seven new subscribers to Spanning Salesforce, she's got an automatic way to connect her company to its most valuable information, and Salesforce.com has one very happy customer. I love it when things just work.

Update: NewsGator investor Brad Feld thinks this is all very neat. Me too, Brad!