There’s A Method to My Madness! » Marketing

Use Seasonal Greetings To Give Your Company a Lift

Greg Knapp — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:26:46 +0000

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.

Sage E-marketing for ACT! now available for older versions of ACT!

Marshall Knapp — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:05:51 +0000

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.

Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions For Your Business

Greg Knapp — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:33:16 +0000

In years past, I’ve always focused narrowly on how to get more out of ACT! in the new year. For 2010 I’m going to focus on resolutions to make this new decade your best EVER! OK, so I might include an ACT! tip, but the goal is to reach out and be broader in our perspective and look at how we can improve our businesses. After you read my top ten, please add yours to the list. I wish you a wonderful and prosperous New Year!

1 – Really use the Internet for research and sales prospecting

Many of us have companies we are targeting. Set up Google Alerts for your top 10 prospect companies so you can stay on top of their breaking news. Search LinkedIn for your prospect’s companies and their people. When you find a key contact, send them an InMail message to open a dialog. Search Facebook for your prospect’s fan pages. Don’t forget about Twitter. While you’re setting Google alerts for your prospects, also set them up for you, your company and your key words. I promise you will be amazed what you learn.

2 – Get recognized and get found

Go ahead, Google yourself, then Google your Company. Google your top competitors and their key executives. Google key words for your industry. Are you and your company on the first page of your searches? Are you higher than your competitors? The yellow pages are dead. More and more customers are doing their research on the Internet and you need to make it easy for them to find you. If you would like a little help, take a look at a colleague of mine, Judd Seida. His firm, BizHive, has helped many companies improve their online presence – and their sales!

3 – Get a voice and a blog

OK, this is related to #2, but is worth its own mention. Blogs give you an ability to tell your story. You can have a team approach to blogging and let several people at your company blog to add breadth to your message. A blog on your web site will improve your Search Engine Optimization and raise your visibility. The search engines love fresh content. It’s easy to find things to blog about. Check out Chris Brogan’s blog about blogging every day. If you are ready to take your web site, blog and social media to the next level, then check out The Authority Black Book.

4 – LinkedIn is a waste of a salesperson’s time - NOT!

I saw that headline in a recent email from Salesgravy.com and I flipped! I love the reverse psychology. If you are in sales (and who among us isn’t), LinkedIn provides you with a unique lead generation and business building opportunity. Additionally, LinkedIn is a great way to become recognized as an industry expert and the go-to person in your field of expertise. To learn more about the value of LinkedIn read Paul Castain’s LinkedIn The Right Way and join the Sales Gravy LinkedIn Group.

5 – Seek new ideas and insight

One of my personal goals in 2009 was to identify some interesting bloggers and newsletters to help me stay on top of my game. A few Google searches gave me the results I wanted. The key was making it easy to read this information each week. Here are two tips for that. If you use Outlook 2007, you can add RSS feeds and have your favorite blogs sent to your inbox automatically. Or you can set up Google Reader through your iGoogle page.

6 – Excellent blogs to get you going

Here are a few of my favorite blogs: Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook. Seth Godin’s Seth’s Blog. Chris Brogan Community and Social Media. SalesBlogcast. Modern B2B Marketing. Dorothy Twinney, local creative marketing maven Dot’s Blog.

7 - Get organized and get productive

Can you see the bottom of your desk? Do you waste hours each week looking for key information that you know is within reach? Make 201o the year you get organized. If you can’t get organized yourself, there is professional help available. Alita Bluford of Marlowe & Associates has worked with a number of our clients and gotten amazing results.

8 – Marketing – Part 1 – We have to do it!

Do you have a marketing plan? Want to create one quickly? Check out a brand new tool developed by a colleague, Sandy Barris, called Fast Marketing Plan. If you would like some creative and effective help with your marketing, talk to Dorothy Twinney at Pandora Outside the Box Marketing. Want to send snail mail, then get creative with bumpy mail. Get a free idea book at 3DMailResults.

9 – Marketing – Part 2 – eMarketing

Every company needs to reach out and touch their client base. Tools that make the job easy and get results are critical. For ACT! users there is nothing better than Swiftpage Email. Swiftpage integrates directly into ACT!. No exporting of emails and the results of your email and nurture marketing campaigns come back into ACT! on each contact record.

10 – Leverage the power of ACT! in 2010

Make ACT! your mission critical tool in 2010. Ask yourself a few questions. Do you know how to truly use ACT! to grow your business? Do you have ACT! designed to give you the information that you need? Does everyone who is using ACT! know what their role is with database? What is the one thing can you could improve in ACT! that will give you improved ROI in 2010?