I’ve been wanting to do a deep dive into Beaufort12’s Campaign Monitor app for some time, because it’s a niche I’ve developed and have some expertise in.

So a while back I started to write some articles (linked to below). Each time I wrote an article I thought I would go into lots of details about the specific app – but each time I sat to write, I realised that there were a hell of a lot of general themes that apply to all products.

This time I sat down to write about installing the app itself and I realised that there are still loads of principles that apply to any app you select. Hopefully you’ll appreciate my thoughts, and of course feel free to comment at the bottom.

Here’s what I’ll go through:

• Choosing that AppExchange product
• Recap (my story so far)
• User Buy-In
• Timelines
• Features
• Licensing
• Pricing
• Next Steps

p.s. Worth noting that the section order may appear a bit odd. But this is the order I generally go through.

Recap (my story so far)

I strongly recommend very few suppliers (in this case Campaign Monitor with Beaufort12’s connector app), but when they provide a good user experience and decent consistent support, then I’ll 100% advocate for them. I want decent suppliers to have successful businesses – after all, it’s in my own long-term interest.

Speaking of Beaufort12, other mass mail tools are available, but none of my clients have ever expressed regret for choosing this particular combination, so I’ve never looked elsewhere as 90% (or even 60%) is more than good enough. I can save my energies for looking into other challenges.

As a bonus, Campaign Monitor works and hasn’t felt the need to add distracting bells and whistles (“enshittifcation”) which distract from the core purpose.

User Buy-In

If your users don’t care, then the product roll out is much less likely to be successful. Passion is the #1 indicator of success.

Passionate users will put in more effort. Knowledge alone isn’t sufficient – I am seriously grateful for the number of times an engaged user has discovered features (and problems!) that I hadn’t been aware of, completely redirecting my onward journey.

Passionate users will contribute to the requirement gathering phase, be prepared to challenge your assumptions (whether that’s use cases, or different perspectives), will go through the pain of testing thoroughly, including identifying edge cases, and are more likely to pay attention during training/handover. They have lived experience; empathy and even the best blogs can only get you so far!

No buy-in? You can’t solve every problem, but if you detect a lack of buy-in, it could be beneficial to discover why. Could it be that this isn’t a priority project or perhaps people with the wrong skill sets or experience have been brought together? Basically your stakeholders’ attention is somewhere else. Once you identify that, it could be useful to reallocate roles, or to change the rollout so that specific benefits are delivered earlier to improve incentives for the wider team.

Timelines

I’m always a bit surprised when people haven’t sorted out their pricing and contracts beforehand. Inevitably I get the “this is urgent” statement and then there’s a delay of many months whilst the contractual/authorisation stage is undertaken. 

The good news is, if that happens, it gives you free range to take anyone else’s “deadlines” with the pinch of salt that they deserve – especially if you are a people pleaser. Deadlines are usually artificial as there’s always some sort of existing solution in place, no matter how bad. Put your mental health first.

Also, there’s what we say we want, what we think we want, and what we actually need. These are three different things with little to no overlap.

To diffuse the situation I usually now ask, fairly early on: “Apart from yesterday, when do you want this?” This helps everyone take a step back, reassess the situation, and put in a more realistic timetable, including being honest about their own capacity restraints.

Features

Here I let the client make the choices. It needs to be their decision. They understand their business the best. That said, in a sane world, my recommendation is to go with the minimum and then add additional features as needed. There a few reasons for this:

• Get the basics right. No point focusing on “nice to haves” if the core elements don’t work. Will you actually use (eat!) it?
• Complexity. By focusing on the minimum you get the initial benefits quickly.
• Mission creep. Everyone wants the moon on a stick. There’s unlimited wants but only finite capacity. Is that extra feature really going to be the make or break?
• Cost. Not the case with Beaufort12, but often once you are in a higher feature package, you are locked into a contract or there are other limitations meaning you cannot go back to a “lighter” offer. Those features all add/weigh up, and do you need to start paying for them straight away?

TIPS

When looking at a feature table, if you or your users need to ask what a specific feature is, you’re generally unlikely to need it for a while!

Encourage your users/colleagues to say “I don’t know” if they are unsure. Sometimes I just hear silence instead. At least with “I don’t know” we can discuss it, unpack it and work out what’s going on.

Feature Adoption: And this is just as true for the team using the product, as for whichever people are selecting the features. Users will need a ramp up time. Sometimes it’s been a year or two between a Salesforce instance going live and serious reporting being done. If that “delay time” is true for the core product – whilst users get familiar with the new environment and toolkit – then it’s just as true for any additional functionality. Users have a day job to do, so they don’t have time to learn all the new frills and spills in one go, or even during the few months.

Licensing

For integrations you will probably want a dedicated integration licence. This will help you tell the difference between when you/a human cocked something up, and the app is not working as anticipated. You can try to skip this step, but as soon as something goes wrong, this will cost you far more time-wise, than any money you have saved by not buying a licence.

Salesforce now offers free 5 integration licences out of the box. Great! Or they would be if they allowed access to the Campaigns or Opportunity objects (they don’t). So you are typically needing a “full fat” licence regardless. This can add up cost-wise, so I tend to share my integration licence between well-behaved products… sometimes this involves setting up a product and moving it to a shared licence once I have enough confidence. It also stops the vendor blaming another product if something goes wrong.

The app/platform you are connecting to also typically needs a licence. Ideally you should have a dedicated user there for the same reasons.

So, for Campaign Monitor this means an user licence on Salesforce and setting up a new dedicated user account on Campaign Monitor too – at least that part is free.

NOTE: Weirdly – and scarily – security seems to be off by default on Campaign Monitor and another program I regularly use for backups, Cloud Ally. Multi factor authentication exists with both of these but it’s not on by default. I really don’t want my entire system hacked by a back-door entry point (e.g. just a username and password), so I switch MFA on for these products as soon as I have logged into them for the first time. And then I usually have to insist that all the other user accounts have MFA enforced too – including checking that this has been done.

Pricing

Even though this appears at the end, in fact Pricing seems to be done twice – once for the initial investigations and then again, towards the very end (here) where someone asks you to revisit all the original assumptions. There’s rarely any change. That’s just the way it is. 

Confirm the billing contact at your client is, and clarify who will be signing off any decisions. Otherwise you might find yourself with an unexpected delay if that’s not the person you have been liaising with.

Specifically, here are links to the Campaign Monitor features and the Beaufort12 features that your users will have to decide upon; their tables also include pricing at the same time. Ultimately it is up to the customer to decide on how many emails they are likely to send within any given period, and what features they need. They need to take responsibility – and therefore ownership – for this. 

Worth noting that “don’t ask don’t get”. Nonprofits will get a standard 15% discount from Campaign Monitor if they ask, and a 10% discount from Beaufort12, but only if you ask!

Random. I’ve recently heard the “nonprofit sector” referred to as the “for impact sector” and I am all for it.

Next Steps

And now you’ve done the logistical pre-planning and may be able to experiment with the product itself. After taking that backup, of course.

Enjoyed reading? I write about Salesforce and neurodiversity matters. Subscribe to avoid missing out 😊 (details usually on the right hand side, but mobile views may differ). You can also follow me on Bluesky and/or LinkedIn of course.