Common Automation Rules and Use Cases

If you're just getting started with automation, you are probably wondering "What Automation Rules should I put in place?" As you can see from our list of Automation Rules, there are a lot of different rules that you can add to maximize your team's productivity. 

The recommended best practice when it comes to Automation Rules is to craft rules based on your team's specific use case. Still, there are certain Automation Rules that are commonly implemented by SalesLoft users. Use this list of common Automation Rules as you start building the rules for your team:

• Importing Leads or Contacts from Salesforce
• Add People to Nurture Cadences
• Hot Lead Cadences
• Updating Fields with Validation Rules
• Rules from Disposition & Sentiments
• GDPR Compliance

Importing Leads or Contacts from Salesforce

To engage with anyone from SalesLoft and log their activity, that individual must be imported into SalesLoft. If your lead and contact data already exists in Salesforce, the best course of action is pull those records to SalesLoft so you can start running your activities.

While you can create and import list of people on your own, Automation Rules allow you to import leads or contacts from SFDC to SalesLoft and add them to a cadence based on specific criteria.

Things to Note:

• This setup works for both Lead and Contact records in SFDC, but they must be built as separate rules using the respective triggers.
• Any fields used in the criteria must be mapped in Field Configurations

Common Use Cases

• Add inbound leads to an immediate follow up cadence. 
• Leverage fields on Lead or Contact record to add people to active cadences based on your criteria.

Building an Inbound Leads Rule

1. From the Automation tab in your Team Settings, click New Automation Rule.
2. In the text box Automation Rule Name: enter the name of your rule, like "Inbound Leads" or "Import Leads"
3. Go to the When dropdown picklist and select When a Lead is not found in SalesLoft. 
4. Add the following criteria (Things to Note: Your criteria fields will depend on your field mapping, so names may be different):
   1. Select And:
      1. First Name > is not null
      2. Last Name > is not null
      3. Email Address (Email) > is not null
   2. Select Or:
      1. Lead Source > equals > (insert source preference)
5. Select the dropdown picklist next to Then and choose Create Person. 
6. Click + Add Field. 
7. Select Add to Cadence. 
8. Click Save. 

Add People to Nurture Cadences

Manage a person’s journey through various stages  of the sales cycle (like "working", "nurture", etc.) by automating movement from one cadence to the next.

Things to Note

• Make sure cadence settings include a stage change for “When a person finishes this cadence.” That will be needed to trigger the stage criteria.
• The persona criteria can be swapped out with any field they use to target and personalize, or removed altogether if they do not get that granular.

Common Use Cases

• When a person finishes an active outbound cadence with no engagement, move them to a specialized nurture cadence that matches their segment, persona, or other criteria.
• When a person doesn’t engage with hyper-personalized cadence content, move them to an automated email cadence.

Building a Nurture Cadence Rule

1. From the Automation tab in your Team Settings, click New Automation Rule.
2. In the text box Automation Rule Name: enter the name of your rule, like "Nurture Cadence."
3. Go to the When dropdown picklist and select When a Person changes in SalesLoft. 
4. Add the following criteria (Things to Note: Your criteria fields will depend on your field mapping, so names may be different):
   1. Select And:
      1. Person Stage > equals > "Stage name" (i.e. "Nurture")
      2. Persona > equals > "Title"
5. Select the dropdown picklist next to Then and choose Add to Cadence. 
6. Pick the Cadence you want to add the People to. 
7. Click Save. 

Hot Lead Cadences

A Hot Lead Cadence comes in to play with your high priority people and accounts. When a person registers multiple views or clicks on a cadence email, add them to a High Priority cadence for immediate follow up.

Things to Note

• Recommend limiting this rule to specific cadences to prevent it for firing for anyone who opens or clicks Lofted emails.
• Using “AND” vs “OR” can make a big difference on View and Click criteria, so make sure customers pay attention to that.
• Marking the destination cadence “High Priority” is a good way to get it to the top of a rep’s cadence to do list.

Common Use Case

When a person clicks a link from a nurture cadence email, add them to a simultaneous “Call only” cadence for a rep follow up with 3-4 phone calls over the next two days. Goals is to catch a prospect while they’re interested.

Building a Hot Leads Cadence Rule

1. From the Automation tab in your Team Settings, click New Automation Rule.
2. In the text box Automation Rule Name: enter the name of your rule, like "Hot Leads."
3. Go to the When dropdown picklist and select When stats for an email change. 
4. Add the following criteria (Things to Note: Your criteria fields will depend on your field mapping, so names may be different):
   1. Select And:
      1. Person Active Cadences > equals > (name of nurture or most used cadence)
   2. Select Or:
      1. View Count > exceeds > 2
      2. Click Count > exceeds > 2
5. Select the dropdown picklist next to Then and choose Add to Cadence. Select your high priority cadence. 
6. Click Save. 

Updating Fields with Validation Rules

Some Salesforce fields require data in an additional field - or validation field. SalesLoft does not currently support validation fields, which can cause SFDC syncs to fail when a validation field is involved. To accommodate this, admins can create automation rules to update a custom field in SalesLoft to correspond with a validation field in SFDC.

Common Use Case

• Wherever a validation field is required in SFDC.
• When a person’s status in SFDC is changed to Disqualified and a second field for Disqualified Reason is required in order to save the change.

Things to Note

• Admin will need to create a custom field in SalesLoft for “DQ Reason.”
• If the team has multiple DQ Reasons (e.g. Bad fit, Bad timing, No longer at company, etc.) they may need to create a separate stage and automation rule for each item on that list.
• Best practice for naming the stages is “DQ - [Reason]” where [Reason] exactly matches each option in their list.
• The text entered for “DQ Reason” in SalesLoft must match exactly to the text in the SFDC picklist for that field. That includes spacing, capitalization, hyphens, etc. Otherwise, the sync will fail.

Building a Rule to Update SFDC Validation Fields 

Things to Note: In this example, before a lead status can be updated to "Disqualified," a "Disqualification Reason" must be entered into the validation field.  

1. From the Automation tab in your Team Settings, click New Automation Rule.
2. In the text box Automation Rule Name: enter the name of your rule, like "Disqualifying Status"
3. Go to the When dropdown picklist and select When a Person changes in SalesLoft. 
4. Add the following criteria (Things to Note: Your criteria fields will depend on your field mapping, so names may be different):
   1. Select And:
      1. Person Stage > equals > "Disqualified"
5. Select the dropdown picklist next to Then and choose Set Person Fields. Add DQ Reason as Bad Fit (or the appropriate data entry for your team). 
6. Click + Add Field. 
7. Select Remove Person from all Cadence. 
8. Click Save. 

Rules from Disposition & Sentiments

When a call is logged with a certain disposition or sentiment, update the person’s stage accordingly.

Things to Note

• Dispositions and Sentiments can be customized from Team Settings.
• A rule like this can be used in conjunction with others to manage the prospect journey from active cadence to nurture cadence to hot lead cadence if they engage with nurture cadence content.

Common Use Cases

• A rep connects with a prospect who is interested, but would like to not like to take a meeting at this time. Instead of marking them Disqualified, you can update their stage to Nurture and have them automatically added to a nurture cadence to keep the lead warm.
• A rep connects with a prospect and disqualifies them, so would like to automatically remove from all cadences once the call is logged.

Building a Rule to Update based on Dispositions & Sentiments

1. From the Automation tab in your Team Settings, click New Automation Rule.
2. In the text box Automation Rule Name: enter the name of your rule, like "Call Sentiment > Cadence."
3. Go to the When dropdown picklist and select When a Call is logged for a Person. 
4. Add the following criteria (Things to Note: Your criteria fields will depend on your field mapping, so names may be different):
   1. Select And:
      1. Disposition > equals > Connected
      2. Sentiment > equals > Timeline 6-12 months
5. Select the dropdown picklist next to Then and choose Set Person Fields. Choose a Person Stage. 
6. Click + Add Field. 
7. Select Add to Cadence. Choose the appropriate Cadence.
8. Click Save. 

GDPR Compliance: Automatically Add EU Residents to a GDPR Specific Cadence

In addition to the vendor compliance in SalesLoft's privacy settings, automation can help manage the way your reps communicate with European contacts.

Building a GDPR Cadence Rule

Before you can create the rule, complete the following:

• Speak with your Security and Legal team about your company's GDPR settings. 
• Map a EU Resident SalesLoft field to a Salesforce field. Your Salesforce admin will need to create a Salesforce field. We recommend creating a checkbox field that will designate "GDPR Compliance."
• Create a Process Builder in Salesforce: since your prospects are coming directly from Salesforce lists, your Salesforce admin can build a "process builder" in SFDC that will check the GDPR compliance box on the lead/contact if it meets one of the following criteria:
  • Country (on the contact): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
  • Phone Number Starts with:  +43, +32, +359, +385, +357, +420, +45, +372, +358, +33, +350, +49, +30, +36, +354, +353, +39, +371, +423, +370, +352, +356, +31+, 47, +48, +351, +40, +421, +386, +34, +46, +44, +355,+376, +374, +994, +375, +387, +298, +995, +983, +389, +373, +377, +382, +7, +378, +381, +41, +90, +380

Once everything is set up on the Salesforce end, create a new Automation Rule that will check for this GDPR compliance box when a lead/contact is added to a Cadence. If the box is checked, it will remove them from the Cadence and add them into the GDPR team Cadence as a holding bucket.