Last post I discussed how ACT! 2010 integrates with various social media technologies. For part 3, I’ll be discussing the third marketed feature coined as “Generate Actionable Demand with End-to-End E-marketing”. If you look at the features in ACT! 2010, you won’t see one referenced by that name, so what do they mean by End-to-End marketing? ACT! 2010 has a new feature built-in called ACT! E-Marketing. The official website for this new feature is http://www.act.com/products/businessservices/emarketing/.

It used to be that ACT! was unable to send out HTML e-mail messages (the fancy graphical e-mails you’ve seen from others). In the current times, marketing through e-mail is becoming a much bigger feature. It allows companies to dramatically cut down on their marketing costs. To fit this need many online newsletter programs became available. One such program actually integrated itself directly inside ACT! to allow users to send HTML e-mails. This program was made by Swiftpage. Since then they’ve turned this program into a full-featured mail house even including the option to perform marketing campaigns. Additionally, Sage has now partnered with them and they’ve rebranded the offering for ACT! as “ACT! E-Marketing”. The bulk of the requests we’ve had from our clients have been related to e-mail marketing so today we’ll focus on that area, just don’t forget that ACT! E-marketing offers a lot more than just e-mail marketing. You can see more on the other features by visiting the link above.

Let me guess, you’re like most users and aren’t a programmer? When I mention the acronym HTML, you don’t know what that is? That’s been the biggest problem for most users. Graphical e-mails are typically made in HTML which would mean you’d have to be a programmer or some sort of web designer to understand it and to create nice looking e-mails through it. Now I’m not suggesting we’re getting rid of HTML, we’re not. The ACT! E-marketing feature however, includes a template designer allowing you to create nice graphical e-mails all without having to touch a line of programming (or understand it for that matter). So that’s the first step, in order to send any e-mail out, you have to create the e-mail first. ACT! E-marketing has the following options for creating e-mails:

1. Create the template yourself through their easy to use designer
2. Have the template created by your marketing person (or consultant) and import it
3. Hire it out to Bright Peak (a company that specializes in making templates for ACT! E-Marketing)

So great, now you’ve got a template created (or imported), how do you go about sending this? Oh, and you’d like to send it only to a specific group of individuals inside your ACT! database. No probem, ACT! E-marketing builds itself inside ACT! so you can easily send the e-mail from inside ACT! and can choose to send it to one of your existing ACT! groups!

Not only does it send out the e-mails for you, but it will create a history entry under each of the contacts with the date it was sent, subject and title of the template you sent to them. This way, months later you can look back on this and find out whether or not this contact was sent that particular e-mail.

One of the other features I like about ACT! E-marketing is that it records who has opened your e-mail messages and whether or not they clicked on any of the links inside the e-mail. This allows you to view the results of the different e-mails you’ve sent to see such metrics as what was your “open ratio”. This can be handy to determine which e-mails tend to have better open ratios and which subject lines catch peoples attention.

Included in the reports is the ability to see how many people opened your e-mail more than one.

One of the other issues that typically come up when marketing through e-mail is dealing with bounced messages. ACT! E-marketing also has reports that show you which messages bounced back and what the reason was for their return.

In summary, ACT! 2010 has taken one of my favourite e-mailing applications (Swiftpage Email) and made it part of the product for your use. While the feature does require paying a monthly fee, I think you’ll find the benefits of the feature far outway the costs. I have yet to see another mass e-mailing/drip marketing application integrate itself as tightly as Sage has done it with ACT! E-Marketing. It’s yet another winning feature in my books!

If you’d like to learn more about the new ACT! E-marketing feature click here for more information. Otherwise, join me next post as I discuss the fourth feature of ACT! 2010 coined as “Tailor Opportunities to Fit Your Selling Model”.

Last post I discussed the new design of the ACT! 2010 product. Continuing on with my review, this post I’ll be discussing the next advertised feature which is “Take Advantage of Leading-edge Social Media Technology”.

The purpose of “Social Media Technology” at least from the ACT! product’s standpoint is to allow users to interact with Social Media more easily. Many users have complained that they have a database full of contact names and yet they still have to go outside of ACT! to search for details on LinkedIn and Twitter. It would be much easier if ACT! had the integration built right in. Well the wait is over with the new Web Info tab.  ACT! 2010 now incorporates direct integration with many of the Social Media sites out-of-the-box and allows for users to also add their own sites. The Web Info tab takes content from the contact you’re looking at and feeds it through to a website for searching. Rather than having to go to LinkedIn and search for a contact, ACT! automatically searches the LinkedIn website for you and brings up the results for the contact you’re on. If the contact you’re on has a LinkedIn profile, then it should be displayed in the results for you to simply click on to get more information.

So how exactly does this work in ACT!? Well let’s walk through an example. I’m looking to do business with Lance Parker who works for Yellow Jersey Bikes. If I open up his contact record and click on the Web Info tab, you can see below that it immediately pulls up his website.

If I’d like to know more about Lance’s personal interests, I can click on the Facebook tab and see more details about him.

I can find driving directions to his location by clicking on the Google Driving Directions link on the side (probably a little too far to drive in this case!).

The Google News Search link will tell me if there’s been any news on the company.

The LinkedIn link will allow me to see more about Lance’s professional details like his role in the company and past experience.

For small talk I can even check out what the weather’s like in his area through the Weather link, a little cool, but still sunny!

So as you can see, I can find out a lot about Lance, his business and more about the area he’s located in just by clicking on a few links. While I could search for this information on my own through in Internet Explorer, these links make the information much easier to access and saves me time!

In summary, does this feature add incredible value for businesses? I’m sure the value gained from these features is somewhat relative depending on how you do business. All in all I think this is an interesting feature that does add value to the average user. It’s a feature that’s been heavily requested and I think it’s a good indicator that Sage Software is listening to its users and is responding to the latest industry trends.

Join me next post as I review the benefits of the new ACT! E-Marketing feature marketed as “Generate Actionable Demand with End-to-end E-Marketing.

ACT! 2010 was released in September 2009.  So far it’s had good reviews from a number of industry analysts.  So aside from all the marketing speak of all the exact new features, what’s the real story behind it?  Why would any business go through the hassle of upgrading?  Let’s be honest, upgrading to most small businesses means capital expenses on the software, “hidden” costs on getting the product installed, and downtime for your staff while the product is installed and configured.  Keeping the costs in mind, there better be a good reason to go through the expense and effort of upgrading! So here’s what the glossy marketing pieces say about what’s been added to ACT! 2010:

• Work Better and Faster with the Easy New Design
• Take Advantage of Leading-edge Social Media Technology
• Generate Actionable Demand with End-to-End E-marketing
• Tailor Opportunities to Fit Your Selling Model
• Gain Insight with New Dashboards and Reports, and Streamlined View

Over the next few weeks I’ll be covering the new features listed above, as well as what I feel are other beneficial new features in the product.  This post I’ll focus on the interface changes.

 Work Better and Faster with the Easy New Design

One of the things you’ll notice immediately once you open ACT! 2010 is that the look and feel is very different than previous versions.  While it’s marketed as making the product easier, a lot of the layout changes and cosmetic changes were to make it look more like the other Sage products.  As an experience ACT! Consultant, my gut reaction is one of panic.  You know, something about the “old dog new tricks” thing coming up.  Yes, it’s completely different and at first you wonder if you clicked on the right icon on your desktop!  However, once you take a look around, you realise yes this is ACT!  and the navigation is actually not that different either, it just looks different.  First off you’ll notice the different colour scheme (of which you can pick either “Sage Green or “Sage Silver”) which, while it may not add functional value, does make you feel like you’re in a new product.

The toolbar icons have been changed to what I like to call “big easy” buttons.  I’ve actually come to like these big icons and I especially like the fact that the History icon is one of them (missed for too many versions of ACT!).  These large icons really stand out and I find myself actually using them!

The next feature may be more for the new users, but I think it’s a great step towards improved adoption.  ACT! has continually won awards for its “ease of use”, however, one of the downsides of having a simple interface is that many of the more advanced features often end up buried.  As a result users simply don’t realise these features exist.  The new “Welcome” screen is a step in the right direction to getting new users more comfortable with features and at least giving a learning center that they can return to for “How to” information.

Overall I think the interface updates in ACT! 2010 are a welcome change!  Inevitably with any software package, when you make a change to the product, you run the risk of disappointing existing users.  I believe the new interface definitely caters to new users allowing them to figure out the product quickly, but at the same time I think the design team did a fine job ensuring that existing users will still be happy.

We’ve got an exciting event coming up next week (November 18th, 2009).  There’s been a lot of hype on ACT! 2010, in fact you may have already received e-mails on it.  It may sound good, and from the screenshots it looks good as well, however, if you’re like me, I like to see product demos.  I like to cut past the glossy marketing slicks, fancy screenshots, and see the product in action.

I’ve got great news! In partnership with Sage, we’ve set up the ACT! Ontario road show.  At this FREE event, you’ll be able to hear directly from ACT! product experts and representatives from the ACT! executive team.

Here’s what you’ll get at this event:

• See the latest version of ACT! - ACT! 2010
• Mingle with other ACT! customers
• Ask questions directly to the ACT! executives
• Ask questions directly to ACT! Certified Consultants (like me!)

If that’s not enough, here’s what else you’ll gain from attending:

• FREE Breakfast!!
• Chance to win more than $2,500 worth of ACT! software

For more information or to register go to the ACT! Ontario Road Show website.