This morning started with a flood of calls with various eMarketing questions. Small wonder considering that the Triumvirate of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Christmas are right around the corner. Not to mention the various health insurance and other industry-specific deadlines. Why Can’t I use Outlook For My eBlasts? In short, while Outlook is useful for…
Struggling with content for your eMarketing Campaigns? This webinar will help! If you have either Act Premium or Zoho CRM your account includes a FREE eMarketing Account. Unfortunately, many of you are not using it and don’t know where to start. This webinar is designed to get you up and running quickly by giving you…
One of my clients recently reached out to me asking if there are any CRM addons or other features that he should be considering to go with their CRM installation. My first thought was I didn’t fully understand what they found lacking in their CRM, or what they were looking for. On second thought I…
Act! Growth Suite – Part 1 Anyone remember New Coke? Me neither. Manufacturers often like to change naming conventions; why, I’m not sure. Maybe they feel compelled to “freshen” things up a bit, or maybe their marketing folks just needed further justification for developing new strategies. I have been bombarded by questions lately from confused…
I am asked to compare Constant Contact vs Act E-Marketing several times a week. My explanation revolves around all the benefits you receive from using Act Emarketing. Constant Contact and Act Emarketing are both “email service providers.” That means that these products send out your messaging using their servers. Typically you must pay a fee…
Register for the Act EMarketing Webinar Are you struggling to reach out to your Act! database? Are some of your contacts old and outdated? Does pressing “Send” make you a nervous wreck? Maintaining the accuracy of a database takes time – which most of us don’t have. But you do have a secret weapon: Act…
I know what some of you are thinking – another year, another Act! version. Like it or not, technology is not standing still and one of the reasons that the Act! software product has thrived for over 30 years is that Act! has always kept up with the times. In fact, you might even argue…
Curious about what’s new in Act v19.1? You’ve come to the right place! Act has lots of great new features including: Act eCommerce Connections Connect with popular eCommerce solutions BigCommerce, Ecwid, Etsy, Shopfy, Volusion, and WooCommerce for visibility into customer purchase history in Act! Premium. Use those details to have informed sales conversations and send…
In the past I’ve shared one of my favorite Act! tricks which is to copy the holidays from outlook to Act! so that you’ll have them on your Act! calendar. You might want to review my past blog article because this is a quick way to populate your Act! calendars with holiday information. Act! has…
I usually don’t mix politics with my Act! consulting but I read an article over the weekend that just fascinated me mainly because it showed that even the wealthiest folks with ostensibly the best consultants can run amok when it comes to e-marketing. Unfortunately, the story reminded me of all too many of my Act!…
We all receive an over abundance of e-mail, and your Act! E-Marketing blasts might get lost in the clutter. Here are a few tips that will increase your “open rate” when using Act EMarketing. Concentrate on the words you choose. The subject line makes the first impression on your email audience so avoid selling language…
Act! software can benefit any type of business. It’s never too late to get started building processes into your database that will make you more productive and profitable. Using your Act! database as an electronic rolodex and calendar is not a viable option, particularly if you find that contacts and opportunities are “falling through the…
When I work with Act users with either Swiftpage E-Marketing or Act E-Marketing I like to point out that there are two separate but equal processes: Composing and sending an e-blast Reporting on the results If you are sending an E-mail blast in Act to more than 50 contacts I strongly recommend that you use…
It seems these days that everyone wants to have use Act hosting so they can view their Act! database in the clouds. We provide Act! web hosting and think we do a great job of it: We provide you with all the support you need to get started We give you with the ability to…
Whether you’ve been using ACT! for years or are fresh in the game, there is always something new to learn. Now that you’ve upgraded to ACT! v17, you’ll need to make sure everyone on your team receives the proper training. Even a beginner can figure out the basics, but often times there are some fields…
On Thanksgiving, we take pause to appreciate what we have and to celebrate with family and friends. Numerous customers and even vendors impart the feeling of Thanksgiving within your company and your Act software makes it easy to thank them. As we begin to anticipate the new year, it’s the perfect time to think about…
The holiday season is quickly approaching. Your events calendar is filling up twice as fast. Between the marketing meetings and researching your target market for segmenting, you barely have time to breathe. The note you wrote yourself about the lunch meeting with a long-time customer was accidentally thrown away and it completely slipped your mind…
Back in 2008 I wrote a blog article recommending that you switch to an Act! E-Marketing account if you were sending out marketing blasts of over 50 emails/send. Here it is 2014 (gasp!) and I’m still passing out that same exact advice. However, as the world of the internet – and e-mail – gets more…
As most of you know the “C” in CRM stands for Contacts and that’s the focus of these clean-up tips. I see a lot of databases in a variety of formats (Act!, SugarCRM, Salesforce, Zoho) and I’ve made one assumption: the typical database consists of 25% “dead wood.” I define dead wood as: Contacts that…
Many of you already know the common definition of assume; if not, look at the word again and break it into smaller pieces: ass_u_me because that’s just what happens when you “assume” something. ACT E-Marketing is a wonderful tool. It’s easy, inexpensive and it works directly from ACT. And, as is the case with all…
I often expound on the virtues of ACT! E-Marketing, formerly known as Swift Page E-mail. I thought I’d share a conversation with one of my clients who had some reservations about switching to ACT! E-Marketing from one of the “other guys.” “Hey Karen, I know you push ACT! E-Marketing. I use MailChimp and I’m pretty…
The other day I was working with a client when his ACT! alarms window opened; I must say that the number of alarms he had was, well, alarming. He quickly clicked the Select All button, selected Snooze and put all the alarms to rest for the remainder of the day. Curiosity got the better of…
Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects when designing marketing materials. What has more appeal – a sales pitch or useful information? Which one would entice you enough to open it and which one would be instantly deleted?
Technology upgrades should be considered a necessary, recurring cost of doing business. You can’t run your business without a telephone and office supplies, and you shouldn’t be running a business with outdated technology. Ironically, technology is the single best way to lower the overhead of a business.
My rule of thumb for writing a marketing piece is to pretend that I am writing to one of my buddies with a bit of friendly advice.
Sending an e-mail blast in ACT can be a pain. Learn how to send ACT e-blasts with a minimal amount of pain and effort!