Hi folks,

 Last night Zoho's support team and I worked out a way to perform a very important use case.  Most of use have Zoho CRM, and we'd like to be able to send specific contacts from the CRM into MH for nurturing (if they are a recent customer) or reactivating (if they have not purchased for a while.)   Different customers should be able to receive different 'customer journeys' based on some sort of information held in the CRM. During the customer journey in MH, major events should be posted back to the CRM and the CRM contact record update.  Once the customer's journey has been completed in MH, the is remove from MH (so as to keep number of leads in MH within account limits.)

Here is a summary of the process:

 CRM Contact -> Added to MH list as a new Lead -> Added to MH Journey -> Journey actions -> Update CRM -> Upone journey end, lead is removed from MH.

 Here is how set up the CRM to MH to CRM process

 Phase 1: Set up Zoho CRM Customer Journey field and Views

 1. In Zoho CRM, create a pick list field for Contacts called "Customer Journey."  Populate this field's options with the types of journeys you plan. For example:  No Journey Active, Reactive Cold Customer, Nurture Recent Customer.  Make sure to set this as a logged field, so that you can track whenever this field is changes - it'll have a big impact on the messages that your customer's get, so knowing when and who edited is important, along with being able to see if you've already put a contact on a particular journey in the past.

 2. Add the new Customer Journey field to your Contact screen layouts as you see fit. I added my Customer Journey filed directly next to the Email Opt Out field.

 3. From the Customer list in Zoho CRM, create a view for each of the values of the Customer Journey field. For example, to get a view of only those customers flagged for the cold customer reactivation journey, you would set up a view as follows:

 View "Reactive Cold Customer" 

Customer Journey = "Reactive Cold Customer" +

Opt out = false

 Phase 2: Set up MH synchronized lists and journeys

 1. Create a new list in MH called "To remove from MH"  This list will be used to hold all leads that have completed the journey in MH.  Think of it as a holding cell for leads that are no longer needed in MH (though they are in the CRM now.)

 2. Create a list for each customer journey you plan to run. In other words, for every option in the Zoho CRM Customer Journey field you will have a list in MH (except, of course for No Journey Active).  Each of these lists sould be created as a Zoho synchronisation based list, using the appropriate Zoho Contact View as the parameter for the sync.

 IMPORTANT: BE SURE TO MAP THE CRM CUSTOMER JOURNEY FIELD INTO MH WHEN SETTING UP THE SYNC.

 You may also wish to map any other fields from the CRM that may be useful in the customer journey. 

 And make sure ALL LISTS SHARE THE SAME FIELD MAPPING (otherwise you run the risk of writing back black data in the CRM later on.)

You can set up the frequency of the sync as you see fit, but for me, weekly syncing seems perfect.

Setting up lists this way means that whenever you set a Zoho Contact’s Customer Journey field to a specific journey from the pick list, it is added to the corresponding MH list.

 3. Create MH journeys for each of your sync’ed lists. 

Each journey trigger is a lead being added (newly synced) to the corresponding list.

You can do whatever you want inside these journeys:  send emails, promotions, SMS messages, track clicks, and so on.  All the stuff that MH is build for.

Don’t forget – if you’ve mapped field from the CRM, you can use that information to make highly personalized journeys.  For example, I have mapped a customer CRM field (checkbox) that the customer has an interest in a specific product category (sci-fi), so can tailor specific MH emails to them during customer journeys.

Also remember that you can set can set a value of a field in a MH journey. For example, during a journey I could see that a lead has clicked on a link to sci-fi games, so I could then set the mapped sci-fi interest field to True.  Note that doig this does NOT write it immediately back to the CRM…

To write information capturing during MH journeys, you the ZohoCRM block in the journey, and map all fields you wish to update.

I am also writing significant events in the MH journey back to the CRM as completed tasks.  For example, if a lead clicks on a specific link (say, to buy a product), I use the ZohoCRM Create Task block to create a complete task letting me know what the CRM contact did.

4. When a contact is about to finish a MH journey, use the Add To List journey black to add them to the "To remove from MH"   The remove them from the list they are currently on  

5. Set up a journey for the “To remove from MH” list which does the following:

Use the Update Field Block to change the Customer Journey field to “No Journey Active”   

Uses the Zoho CRM Task block to write a completed task to the CRM, so we have a record of when the customer’s journey was completed.  Also, write back all mapped fields to the CRM, including the Customer Journey field! This is super important, because this is the flag that will stop the contact being re-added to the previous list.

That’s it!  You now have set up a process where all you need to do in the CRM is select the type of customer journey you want a contact to experience, and MH will take care over everything else…

 

Performing various actions for the customer (lead) added to the list

Removing the customer from the list once completed

Tracking important events as tasks in the CRM

Updating the CRM records once the journey is completed

As these leads complete their journeys are moved into the “To remove from MH.”  Once every week, I will delete all leads in this list, since they are no longer needed. Since all the important information is stored back in Zoho CRM, that is not a big problem.

I hope this process helps of Zoho fans.

MH still feels like a relatively immature product, but its potential to create highly personal customer experiences is compelling.  I can't wait to see how Zoho grows this product.