Smart marketers use the holidays as a chance to reach out to their prospects and reconnect with their customers. What makes the holidays a great time to connect, is that these dates are recognized and celebrated, so you are on familiar ground. Holidays also give you a reason to reach out in a personalized, non-sales way to the people you want to stay in touch with.

The next few weeks, with Thanksgiving (oops, we missed the Canadian Thanksgiving in October), Christmas, Chanukah, and New Year’s, to name ... [Read more: Use Seasonal Greetings To Give Your Company a Lift]]]>

Smart marketers use the holidays as a chance to reach out to their prospects and reconnect with their customers. What makes the holidays a great time to connect, is that these dates are recognized and celebrated, so you are on familiar ground. Holidays also give you a reason to reach out in a personalized, non-sales way to the people you want to stay in touch with.

The next few weeks, with Thanksgiving (oops, we missed the Canadian Thanksgiving in October), Christmas, Chanukah, and New Year’s, to name a few, are a perfect time to contact the key peole you work with to let them know you are thankful for their business, wish them a safe and happy new year and mention you would like to work with them in the new year.  Remember, no hard sell here!

Here are a few quick tips to make sending your greetings a bit easier this season.

• Segment.  Ok, you have 15,000 contacts in your database, but you don’t really want to send to everyone, right? Segment your database and then create a group for the contacts you want to include on your list. You could use your ID/Status and look up all Customers, Prospects and Vendors as a example. Or combine a look up of Customers with sale revenue over X. (You do track sales revenue in your database don’t you?) Or maybe you have a “Holiday” field check box that can be updated, check it and that contact is on the list. All this work should be done in your ACT! database, not is Excell or Outlook. Why make work for yourself.
• Personalize.  The salutation field in ACT! is designed for this purpose. If using an email template (more on that later) customize it to include the “Salutation” field.  Your message will look much better than a generic “Dear Valued Customer” at the beginning.
• Labels and subjects. If you are mailing your greeting, use the label feature in ACT! (File > Print > Labels) and customize the label. hange the font to italics, or change the font to something less formal than Arial. If using email, create an inviting subject like “Holiday wishes from your team at ABC Company.”
• Record it.  After the work is done and the message is sent, record a history in ACT! that you sent each contact a holiday greeting. OK, you don’t have to do this one at a time. Create a lookup of all the contacts on your list, go to the Contact List view, and hit the CTRL+H keys at the same time. This brings up the Record History box and now record this as Type = Other, Result = Letter Sent, Regarding = Holiday greeting 2011 (or your specific greeting type.)

If you would like any help with getting your holiday greetings out this year, give us a call. We’ll help you get your message out.

PS:  If you are planning on emailing your seasonal greetings, it’s not recommended to send hundreds or thousands of emails from your domain. You need a tool that uses white listed servers. An ideal email marketing solution for ACT! is Swiftpage, which is built into ACT! as Sage Emarketing for ACT!. It is an inexpensive and effective marketing tool for your toolkit. We can help you get set up with a free 60-day trail version that will get you through the holidays.

If you’ve wanted to take advantage of Sage E-Marketing for ACT! (SEMA), powered by Swiftpage, but you have an older version of ACT! that wasn’t support, you are in luck!  SEMA now supports ACT! 2007, ACT! 2008, and ACT! 2009.   Take advantage of this now to start sending e-newsletters, promotions and surveys to your customer and prospect base.

For more information and to download the plugin, head out to http://www.act.com/download/sema/.   If you’re not already a subscriber, you’ll be able totake advantage of a free 60-day trial.  And as always, if you have any questions or need any assistance, don’t hesitate ... [Read more: Sage E-marketing for ACT! now available for older versions of ACT!]]]>

If you’ve wanted to take advantage of Sage E-Marketing for ACT! (SEMA), powered by Swiftpage, but you have an older version of ACT! that wasn’t support, you are in luck!  SEMA now supports ACT! 2007, ACT! 2008, and ACT! 2009.   Take advantage of this now to start sending e-newsletters, promotions and surveys to your customer and prospect base.

For more information and to download the plugin, head out to http://www.act.com/download/sema/.   If you’re not already a subscriber, you’ll be able totake advantage of a free 60-day trial.  And as always, if you have any questions or need any assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us.  As Swiftpage Certified Consultants, we’ve helped many organizations take advantage of email marketing from within their ACT! system.

As is my tradition around New Years, I like to reflect on the past year and think about what’s important in the coming year. Here’s my list of resolutions for the new year (and don’t be surprised if ACT! is mentioned in only a few of them.)

1. As I was thinking about this post, I re-read my resolutions from last year. What surprised me is that they are all relevant as we look into 2011. So my first ... [Read more: Top 10 Business Resolutions for 2011]]]>

As is my tradition around New Years, I like to reflect on the past year and think about what’s important in the coming year. Here’s my list of resolutions for the new year (and don’t be surprised if ACT! is mentioned in only a few of them.)

1. As I was thinking about this post, I re-read my resolutions from last year. What surprised me is that they are all relevant as we look into 2011. So my first resolution is to revisit that blog and apply any suggestions that make sense.

2. Create a plan. Yes, this sounds boring and basic, but in a business climate as unforgiving as this, can you afford not to have a plan? Rather than being a time-waster, a plan can save you time and save money by giving you a context against which to evaluate the relevance of your actions, not to mention help you stay on target.

3. Double down on what worked in 2010.  Whatever paid off last year is worth investing more resources, time and money in for 2011. Ask yourself what promotions got your client’s attention. What was your top-selling service or product and how can we get your clients to buy more? ACT! users, what does your Opportunities Referred By report tell you were your top referral sources in 2010?

4. Experiment with something new. Yes, this may make you anxious and take you outside of your comfort zone, but trying something new may be the best option. And the best new ideas often come from conversations with your clients, suppliers and employees. 

5. Fire your D-grade clients. This may seem radical when you feel like every dollar of revenue is important, but high-maintenance, low-margin clients suck time and resources from more profitable clients. Make a list of your clients (ACT! users had better already have this in place) and then give each of them a grade. Again, with ACT!, ID/Status is a great way to do this (Client-A, Client-B, etc.) For everyone below a C, create a plan to turn them into A’s. By the way, another benefit of this strategy is the discipline of evaluating each client’s potential value to your company and plan a client specific strategy for raising C’s to B’s and B’s to A’s.

6. Get rid of the “Lookie-Loos”. Fill your funnel with prospects that will actually buy from you. Have you been working on prospects that no longer return your calls or e-mails? Remove them from your hot list and put them back into your marketing funnel (ACT! drip marketing, do I hear you calling?) Then, only call on prospects where you know: a) the pain you solve for them, b) their budget, and c) who can me the buying decision. Separating “Lookie-Loos” from the real buyers will increase your sales productivity.

7. Leverage your brand. In 2011 it’s more important than ever to avoid becoming a “me too” brand. It’s time to distill your “secret sauce”–what you bring to your clients that others don’t. Next let’s go back to resolution #5 and figure out the profile of our ideal client. (You are tracking those characteristics in ACT!, aren’t you?) Combine your secret sauce with your target client profile and you are ready to gear your marketing to that niche. 

8. Expand your marketing. Insanity is . . . you know, doing the same thing and expecting different results. Keep in mind that marketing today includes traditional media and social media. Don’t be timid, try a new marketing approach, especially if it makes you stretch. Keep yourself on the growing edge and keep refining your marketing as you find things that work.

9. Expand your network. Even if you’ve embraced LinkedIn and Facebook, face-to-face is still important to close new business and get referrals. Back to ACT! again, take a look at who referred clients to you last year; what clients have relationships with the same vendors? . . . a single coffee or lunch with a “center of influence” or vendor could lead to many new clients. Need some inspiration? Check out John Jantsch’s best selling book The Referral Engine and learn how to turn on the referral faucet.

10. Shift your brain. For resolutions to occur, everything must start with an internal shift of your mindset. Resolve that the glass is once again half full and keep your mind free of self doubt, worry or fear.

Let me know what you think of these ideas as well as other resolutions on your own list for 2011.

Last week I attended a two hour marketing workshop put on by one on my most enjoyable clients. Dorothy Twinney founded her new company Pandora Outside The Box Marketing to help organizations implement creative and effective marketing ideas that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Something that may ring true to many of you.

I took the time to work on my business and took away some great ideas. Dorothy opened the workshop by talking about using yourself as a marketing tool. Duh, how often do we truly think of ourselves as being our best marketing tool? OK, how many of you ... [Read more: Marketing – We Have To Do It, So Enjoy!]]]>

Last week I attended a two hour marketing workshop put on by one on my most enjoyable clients. Dorothy Twinney founded her new company Pandora Outside The Box Marketing to help organizations implement creative and effective marketing ideas that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Something that may ring true to many of you.

I took the time to work on my business and took away some great ideas. Dorothy opened the workshop by talking about using yourself as a marketing tool. Duh, how often do we truly think of ourselves as being our best marketing tool? OK, how many of you have reviewed your 30 second elevator speech recently? We delved into analyzing our audience and our key messages. We covered reaching out to our existing customers. 

Web site analysis and social media topics were blended with traditional marketing concepts. How about planning your blog posts in your marketing plan? Get the picture. Dorothy had an action packed workshop that allowed everyone to take away ideas they could immediately implement in their business. I know my ACT! database will be getting a work out with the ideas I took from the session.

The good news is Dorothy has three more workshops scheduled:
- Detroit Monday, November 9 2:00 – 4:00 $85.00/attendee
- Plymouth Tuesday, November 10 2:00 – 4:00 $85.00/attendee
- Plymouth Tuesday, November 18 2:00 – 4:00 $85.00/attendee
More information is available on Dot’s Blog and by calling 313-259-3458 x124. Mention AspenTech and Dorothy will give you 20% off!  You can beat that.