I also thought this article was very useful. It's good to know that ACT! is continuing to search for new ways to remain relevant in the ever changing technology environment. I think it's important that ACT! Hosting providers also keep up - I will be watching the launch of ACT! 2010 carefully!
The newly designed ACT! by Sage 2010 delivers instant knowledge about your customers using social media integration, ability to generate actionable demand with end-to-end e-marketing*, completely customizable opportunities, insight into your biggest opportunities with new reports and dashboards, and more!
Upgrade to ACT! 2010 to better know, market, and sell to your customers.
Enjoy the newly designed look of ACT! with proven easier to learn and use navigation, instant access to search, related tasks, big “easy” buttons, and the new Welcome page.
Take advantage of leading-edge social media integration that automatically integrates profiles and data from LinkedIn®, Facebook, Google Maps™, and more with ACT! for instant knowledge about your customers.
Generate actionable demand with end-to-end e-marketing* that intelligently and automatically reaches out to your ACT! contacts and delivers results right to the ACT! Contact Record, saving you money by helping you focus on the right customers.
Tailor opportunities to fit your selling model with redesigned sales tracking functionality that allows you to maximize the way you manage leads. Sales opportunities now behave and appear like contacts, groups, and companies, making them more flexible than ever.
Unlock insight into your biggest opportunities for quick wins using new dashboards and reports viewable in a streamlined layout, or create custom reports with the new connector for third-party report writers. Get more from everything you keep in ACT!.
Send calendar invitations and contacts from ACT! to leading e-mail solutions, like Gmail™, Apple® iCal®, Windows Live™, and Microsoft® Outlook®. Work seamlessly with non-ACT! users.
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If you have been waiting for ACT! Opportunity tracking and reporting functionality to improve, ACT! 2010 is the release for you! In addition to Opportunities now being fully customizable1, we also have several new reporting features in this release that make ACT! reporting more robust and easier to use. The Opportunity and reporting enhancements new to ACT! 2010 are:
Completely customizable2 Opportunities
A new OLE DB provider
New stock reports
A new report view
New Dashboard components
Many of you have told us that you couldn’t find the reports you needed in ACT! or that when you did find it, it wasn’t named what you thought it should have been named. We took this feedback to heart in ACT! 2010 and made several changes that will help to streamline your ACT! reporting experience.
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1,2 Sage does not provide technical support for customizations.
ACT! E-marketing brings marketing and sales automation to your fingertips from within ACT!
ACT! E-marketing* lets ACT! users connect with their customers in many new powerful ways. ACT! E-marketing is tightly integrated with ACT! 2010; you can design and execute marketing campaigns from within ACT! and prioritize sales and other marketing activities automatically. ACT! users can choose from a range of (optional) service plans that enable E-mail, survey, web form, and drip marketing features.
With ACT! E-marketing, you can design e-mail templates, select which contacts to send it to, and schedule it for delivery whenever you want. All you have to do is create an account and start your free trial1 of ACT! E-marketing services. In addition to e-mail templates, you can design web forms or electronic surveys to send to your contacts or add to your website, to collect information from prospective or existing contacts. Or design a drip marketing campaign that manages all the sending and follow-up for you, qualifying your contacts and sending them the right information, when you want and how you want to send it. Maximize your sales time by spending time with the clients who want you to, while ACT! E-marketing keeps prospective clients in the loop with automated follow-ups.
Let’s see an example of how E-marketing works. Imagine you want to poll your customer base and find out what percentage uses Windows XP®, and what percentage uses Windows Vista®. When you have a rough idea, you plan to create a sale based on the data and send out an email campaign to let your customer base know.
ACT! E-marketing can make this happen easily and automatically. We’ll show you using this live example. First, you’ll create a survey form asking customers what operating system they use. To sweeten the deal, you can create a contest that enters them in a raffle for a free widget. For example, you might create a survey form to look something like this:
Once you’ve built the survey, you can put the survey form on your website (or e-mail it out!) and wait for the results. Behind the scenes, we will create a database with two new fields, one for Windows Vista and one for Windows XP. If the customer answers Windows Vista, that field becomes ‘Y’ and if they answer Windows XP, then the Windows XP field is set to ‘Y.’ Why do we do it that way? Because then I can send my offer out to only those customers that answered Windows XP, only those that answered Windows Vista, or all of them.
To see this in action, click here to take this sample survey live. We’ll actually send you an automatic e-mail confirming that you filled out the survey, and indicate your answer so you can see how this works! (By the way, we promise your e-mail will not be used for anything other than to show you how ACT! E-marketing can work.)
Now that the survey is created, you just wait for the results to roll in! Once there is enough data, you can send an e-mail out to survey respondents, or to all our customers. You can use surveys to poll your customers for data like this, or to get their e-mail address or other information.
This is just one example; we’re sure you can think of many others!
Paul Buckley
ACT! Product Manager, On-Demand Services
Sage
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1The ACT! E-marketing free trial lasts for 60 days starting from the date you first create your account. During the free trial, you will have full e-mail sending functionality (maximum of 50 emails per day per user), full Call List functionality, full Survey functionality, limited Drip Marketing (3 campaigns; 50 total contacts per campaign, and E-mail and Call List stages only). Further, during the free trial, each account is entitled to unlimited e-mail and survey users (1 user for each ACT! user), and 1 drip marketing user.
You probably noticed that eNews is now a part of the increasingly popular ACT! Online Community. This means you can subscribe to, share, and comment on individual articles, giving you the opportunity to weigh in on the subject with other ACT! users just like you!
By sharing eNews in the ACT! Community, articles that were once purely informational spring to life as conversation topics among community members. In this new role, eNews will also take on a new name. So don your marketing hat and get those creative juices flowing because we’d like your help in creating a new moniker for eNews! Click on the link below to submit your most imaginative ideas for the new name; and if your idea is chosen, you will have the choice to win a copy of the current version of ACT! or the next release, plus have the distinctive honor of being featured in the rebranded Fall edition!1
Did you find this article useful? Let us know by posting your thoughts here in the ACT! Online Community. You must be a registered member to reply or post. To reply, click on the reply link at the top of this post.
1The contest runs from August 4, 2009 until August 31, 2009. The contest is open to all recipients of eNews. Employees of Sage are not eligible to participate. Submissions should contain no more than 20 characters. A winner will be selected by October 31, 2009 and will receive a single license of ACT! 2010. All submissions will become the property of Sage Software, Inc. Contest rules are subject to change.
Social CRM: Your Customers are Talking, So Join-In and Build Lasting Relationships
People are talking about your products and services online! Your product might be the topic of discussion on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, You Tube and many other social media outlets. Knowing what people are saying gives you a holistic perspective on your customer’s awareness of your brand, and helps you build meaningful relationships with them.
The Cone 2008 Business in Social Media Study* found that most Americans believe companies should have a presence in social media. Those who use social media agreed they feel a stronger connection and are better served when they can interact with companies and brands through social media, according to the study. This means that many of your customers and prospects expect to find you somewhere in the world of social media, and are likely to look there first for information about your products or services. If there’s anything negative about your company out there, you can balance it with positive, accurate information. You can also use social media to reinforce your brand messages, and establish yourself as both a thought leader and promoter of other thought leaders in your industry.
Build relationships online
Social media enables you to network with customers and prospects—without leaving the office. Ask yourself: How can I use social media to build relationships and ultimately increase revenues?
To get started, create a profile on one or more of the social media sites and start building your own content. (You may want to note which sites are most frequented by your customers and prospects, and start there.) Or, create a blog on your Web site (see the ACT! by Sage Team Blogs in the ACT! online community for an example). You can then promote your blog using your social media profiles. Bottom line: find out where your audience hangs out and become part of the conversations!
Create thoughtful content
Whichever site(s) you choose, content is key. Show that you are a trusted expert in your industry with relevant information for your customers. It’s also important to promote content from other thought leaders so you appear as part of a dialogue and not simply promoting your self-interests.
“Whether it be a blog post, podcast, YouTube video, or WebCast, creating attractive content is a key pillar of social CRM strategy,” according to Brent Leary, CRM Essentials, in the Sage-sponsored Social CRM: Customer Relationship Management in the Age of the Socially-Empowered Customer White Paper.
Stay the course
Don’t expect to see immediate results. It takes time to build relationships this way. But it will be worth it to understand and gain the trust of people who will look to you for the products and services they need.
Dharmesh Shah, on HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog, says, “You should give yourself at least 6 months (perhaps even a year) to determine what kind of interest there is out there before giving up due to lack of traffic. Early momentum is hard, but once things start moving, lots of things will start working in your favor.”
Joyce Ethridge
Senior Copywriter
Sage
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* Fielded by Opinion Research Corporation on September 11-12, 2008 among 1,092 adults 18+.
ACT! Pummels Salesforce.com as Best of Breed in Technology and Customer Service
Challenge
KM Medical was losing time, opportunities, and money due to unresolved issues with their previous solution provider – Salesforce.com.
Solution
ACT! was implemented literally over night.
Results
KM Medical attributes saving several thousand consulting-dollars per year to the knowledgeable tech support staff at Sage. Over 100 hours of data entry are shaved with a team-shared view of customer interactions within ACT!.
“I knew where I wanted to take the business, and Salesforce.com couldn’t get me there.” Kathy Logan, Owner, KM Medical
Do you have an ACT! story to tell? Join the Sage Software Customer Reference Program.
Participating in the Sage CRM Solutions Customer Reference Program generates positive exposure for your organization, your people, and your products and services, while publicizing how your use of technology provides better business solutions and improved customer service. If you are interested in joining or would like to nominate someone, please e-mail our Reference Program Manager or call directly at 480-444-4923 to discuss program details and reference opportunities.
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As part of Sage, ACT! by Sage joins a long tradition of salespeople serving salespeople. In essence, our role is to make time in front of the customer more effective. A large part of that effectiveness is due to the resounding success of our network of ACT! Certified Consultants5. If you need help installing ACT! for your team, converting and consolidating data or just want to customize ACT! to meet your specific needs, ACT! Certified Consultants are ready to help.
With more than 450 ACT! Certified Consultants (ACCs) in North America, you’ll get the help you need to be more effective than ever. Every Sage Certified Consultant goes through a comprehensive certification process that covers advanced functionality of the product, including installation, importing, and customization. They are then tested on their overall knowledge of the product and awarded certification upon passing the exam. ACC’s can help you with:
Installation & Migration
Customization6
Reports
Training
And much, much more!
To find an ACT! Certified Consultant near you, click this link to get started: ACC Finder, select your state or province from the list, and make contact. Then stand back...and watch your sales soar!
Russ Carpenter
Strategic Marketing Manager
Sage
Did you find this article useful? Let us know by posting your thoughts here in the ACT! Online Community. You must be a registered member to reply or post. To reply, click on the reply link at the top of this post.
7The ACT! E-marketing free trial lasts for 60 days starting from the date you first create your account. During the free trial, you will have full e-mail sending functionality (maximum of 50 emails per day per user), full Call List functionality, full Survey functionality, limited Drip Marketing (3 campaigns; 50 total contacts per campaign, and E-mail and Call List stages only). Further, during the free trial, each account is entitled to unlimited e-mail and survey users (1 user for each ACT! user), and 1 drip marketing user.
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