Integrating PipelineDeals with ActiveDEMAND Marketing Automation

ActivDEMAND adds some killer features to PipelineDeals:

Automating Deal progressions
Automatic lead insertion
Contact insertions
Click to call
Deal closed won posting to ActiveDEMAND
Real time continuous contact imports
Lead scoring
Task Posting
Activity Scheduling
etc

As PipelineDeals forces assignment of a lead to a specific sales person in PipelineDeals, you will require at least one sales person in PipelineDeals to have an account in ActiveDEMAND.

Before getting started, consider reviewing this article on CRM Integration Strategies.

ActiveDEMAND Lead Insights for PipelineDeals

To get the most out of ActiveDEMAND and PipelineDeals, your first step should be to install the ActiveDEMAND Lead Insights Chrome extension. This adds outbound call tracking, prospect and account overlays into PipelineDeals.




The Basics


ActiveDEMAND is used to market to prospects, nurture leads, and report on marketing/sales results. Not all data from ActiveDEMAND should go to PipelineDeals ... there are many very early stage actions that a prospect may take that are not yet ready for sales engagement. Using Automation, you can determine which prospect activities are ready for PipelineDeals and which are not. The base case: Data flowing to PipelineDeals from ActiveDEMAND happens when a prospect does something that ActiveDEMAND is tracking. For example, a prospect fills out a form, this could create a new deal in PipelineDeals.



Note: The flow of data FROM ActiveDEMAND to PipelineDeals is controlled in the Lead Processing workflows (Automation->Lead Processing).



If we can make the assumption that marketing 'assumes' a lot of things about a prospect, and that the sales people 'know' what is going on with a prospect, then we can assume that the data in PipelineDeals is 'more accurate' than that in ActiveDEMAND. Thus when a contact updates in PipelineDeals, we should tell ActiveDEMAND about the contact.



Note:Data flowing FROM PipelineDeals to ActiveDEMAND is handled automatically using the Import Scheduler (Contacts->Import Scheduler).



The import scheduler sets up the connection between PLD to AD. It is not a scheduler ... there is a real-time update from PLD to AD whenever a contact is updated in PLD.

Setting Up PipelineDeals and ActiveDEMAND Communication

Steps 1-4 needs to be done for each sales person in your organisation who has a PipelineDeals account.


In PipelineDeals
Step 1:
In the sales person's PipelineDeals account (in PipelineDeals), go to the personal settings:




Step 2:
Select the individual's API Token (in PipelineDeals)




In ActiveDEMAND
Step 1:

In ActiveDEMAND, go to the account settings (Administration->Account Settings) scroll down to the Employee's section. If the person who you want to connect PipelineDeals with is not in the list, click the 'Add Employee' button. Add the employee. Click 'Save Account'.



Step 2:

After the employee is added, in the account settings, scroll down to the '3rd Party Applications', click on the 'Add Application'

Scroll down find Third Party Apps,



Select 'PipelineDeals' from the list:



Select the employee from the drop down, paste in the API key. Click 'save account'.

Now on every contact details page (in ActiveDEMAND), in the Sales Notifications area (not all account types have this), you will see a Post to CRM button



Clicking the button will post the prospect to PipelineDeals in the first position of your pipeline as a new deal.

Step 3:

In ActiveDEMAND, under Automation->Lead Processing you can customize your lead distribution and lead management. If you have access to the Sales Lead Notifications or Phone Call Sales Notification workflows, you now will see a new workflow item in the Workflow Actions.


NOTE: If your Sales Lead Notifications workflow is read only, send an email to support@leadintuition.co.uk, they will add the PipelineDeals workflow element to your workflow for you.





This action will give you the ability to post/update a deal in PipelineDeals.



You will be able to choose who the lead gets posted under (i.e. sales person) or to the assigned sales person.




Note, that if the prospect does not have a contact manager in ActiveDEMAND and you choose 'contact manager' in the drop down, the deal will not be created/updated. You must ensure there is an assigned contact manager before the deal is posted/updated. You do have the option in the sales contact dropdown to choose who the deal will be posted to.


Step 4:

Whenever a contact is pushed to PipelineDeals from ActiveDEMAND, the standard and custom fields in ActiveDEMAND can be mapped to the standard/custom fields in PipelineDeals. You must set this mapping up for ActiveDEMAND to know which fields to update in PipelineDeals. In the Account Settings (Administration->Account Settings), scroll down to the Integrations Tab, Scroll down to the Field Mapping



You can map ActiveDEMAND fields to PipelineDeals Fields:



Optional (but highly recommended):


In PipelineDeals

Set up custom fields in PipelineDeals. The two fields we highly recommend you add are:
In your settings, browse to Customise fields, select the People Tab:




Add the following fields:


Field Name: ActiveDEMAND Lead Score
Field Type: Text


The ActiveDEMAND Lead Score will add the current lead score (calculated in ActiveDEMAND) to the contact.

In ActiveDEMAND
Importing Contacts From PipelineDeals -> ActiveDEMAND

After PipelineDeals has been linked to your account, importing contacts is easy. In ActiveDEMAND, browse to Contacts->Import Contacts. You should see an option for pulling contacts from PipelineDeals:



You will be given full control over what to do if contacts exist, what fields map to what,etc.

Automatically update contacts in ActiveDEMAND from PipelineDeals

One of the more powerful features of the ActiveDEMAND-PipelineDeals integration is the ability to update contacts in ActiveDEMAND automatically. To automatically push changes from PipelineDeals to ActiveDEMAND, use the contact import scheduler (Contacts->CRM Contact Updates). PipelineDeals will update ActiveDEMAND whenever a contact is changed in PipelineDeals. The import scheduler filter system allows you to have full control over what gets data and which contacts are automatically updated in ActiveDEMAND.

Note: the web hook is called to update when:

An organization is updated
A deal is updated
A contact is updated
A contact is created

In PipelineDeals
First you have to create webhooks in PLD that post events to AD when specific triggers occur. There are 6 new web hooks that need to be created:

Company Updated
Company Created
Person Updated
Person Created
Deal Updated
Deal Created

Browse to Account Settings, <Automations. Click Create New Automation



Company Updated:




The target URL format is:

'https://api.activedemand.com/v1/contacts/pipelinedeals?data_import_id=4020&api-key= AD API Key>'


Repeat the above process for the remaining 5 Automations. The target URL format is exactly the same for all of these.


Automatically Push Prospect Engagement to PipelineDeals


If you are looking to have marketing email sends and marketing email opens in PipelineDeals, you will want to use the Activity Scheduler workflow item.


In PipelineDeals
Step 1:

Add new activity types:

Marketing Email
Asset Download
Email Open (Optional - this is handled by the chrome extension)
Email Link Click (Optional - this is handled by the chrome extension)



In ActiveDEMAND
In the PipelineDeals Email Activity Posting workflow (Automation->Lead Processing->PipelineDeals Email Activity Posting), you will need to update each of the existing custom activity objects to map to the custom activities you created in the previous step. Be sure you assign a contact owner to each step as PipelineDeals requires a contact owner for all engagement with a contact in PipelineDeals.



The results of activity posting will show up in Pipeline deals

Updated on: 16/11/2022