Fast forward to the modern versions of ACT! which come equipped with the ACT! Scheduler.  The ACT! Scheduler is a handy tool that can be set to automate routine ACT database maintenance procedures including re-indexing a database, creating a backup, and even performing a synchronization if you use a remote database.

At Tech Benders we specialize in database maintenance and pride ourselves on the fact that there has never been a database that we haven’t been able to recover.  When ACT! users call us to repair a corrupted ACT! database they generally have three things in common:  they haven’t been doing routine maintenance, they don’t have a recent backup, and they are terrified that they might have lost years’ worth of precious data.  I try my best to alleviate their anxieties, all the while wondering why they never bothered to take advantage of the ACT! Scheduler.

I recommend running routine maintenance once a week and creating a backup on a nightly basis.  Both of these procedures can be automated using the ACT! Scheduler.  Database Maintenance helps to ensure that your database will run at its optimum level.  Nightly backups ensure that your data is safe in the event of database corruption or server failure.

Many ACT! users feels that they are properly protected because their entire system is being backed up on a daily basis.  This may or may not be true; many 3^rd party backup utilities are unable to create a backup of your ACT! database because the data files are “open” in SQL.  My recommendation is to let ACT! create a nightly backup in a location that is in turn part of your system backup.  After all, creating an automatic ACT! backup doesn’t cost you anything so why not make sure you have ample protection?

Should your database start to “act up” (pun intended) we’re always here to help.  After all, I’d rather teach you a few cool new ACT! tricks than have to bail you out of a bad situation!

Currently, customers on any prior version of Sage ACT! are eligible to purchase Sage ACT! at upgrade pricing.  Unfortunately, beginning 6/1, this policy will be discontinued for customers using ACT! by Sage 2005 – 2009 or ACT! versions 6 or earlier.  Customers using ACT! by Sage by Sage 2005 – 2009 will continue to be eligible for upgrade pricing.

What does this mean to you?  Well, if you’re using ACT! by Sage 2005 – 2009 (or an even older version) you’ll want to upgrade now to avoid a rather drastic price increase.  Beginning June 1^st the price of ACT! Premium will increase nearly $200, and ACT! Pro will increase by nearly $70.

While we don’t agree with this new upgrade policy, there’s not much we can do about it.  We will continue to go to bat for each and every one of our customers to make sure they receive the best possible pricing and to try to get you upgrade pricing if at all possible.

If you have any questions about upgrading please let us know.

If you’re not yet confused, let me try harder.  Potential clients will call with questions on “ACT! 8” when they actually need help with “ACT! 2008.” And no, ACT! 8 is not the same thing as ACT! 2008.

Let me try to clear things up a bit.  Once upon a time life was simpler and the very first version of ACT! introduced in 1987 was called “ACT! 1.”  Subsequent versions of ACT! were labeled ACT! 2, ACT! 3, and so on until ACT! 5 when things got a bit complicated.  By this time Symantec owned ACT! and converted to the naming conventions adopted by Microsoft; ACT! 5 was also known as ACT! 2000.   InterACT Commerce repurchased ACT! from Symantec  and rebranded ACT! 5/2000 as ACT! 5/2000 but shipped it out in a totally redesigned box.

ACT! 6 came out in 2002 and remained relatively unchanged for nearly 4 years.  I say relatively because although ACT! 6 didn’t change, the labeling did and ACT! 6 became known as ACT! 2002, 2003 and 2004.  Confused?  So were the folks who had ACT! 6/2002 and upgraded to ACT! 2004 only to find that they had purchased the same product they already had.

Fortunately for the consumer things calmed down a bit, but only a bit.  When Sage Software purchased ACT! in 2004 they were not allowed to use the name “Sage” in the United States because of a naming dispute with another company in Texas.  Therefore, ACT! was officially “owned” by Best Software – at least until Sage prevailed in a court case and could start using the name Sage.  Today ACT! is officially owned by Sage Software.  However, many consumers still think ACT! is a Symantec product although Symantec only owned ACT! for five of its twenty-five years in existence.

I usually tell ACT! users to “add 2” to their ACT! product to find the true version they are using so ACT! 2011 is version 13 and ACT! 2012 is version 14.

Speaking of names, I’m often asked what the name ACT! stands for.  And no, it doesn’t stand for American College Testing, another source of confusion.  Although many people think ACT! stands for Activities, Contacts, and Time, the name originally reflected ACT!’s very first owner, Activity Control Technology.  Rumor has it that the owners later changed the acronym to “Automated Contact Tracking.”

As our pal Bill Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?”

“Hey Karen, I know you push ACT! E-Marketing.  I use MailChimp and I’m pretty happy with it.  Tell me why you think I should switch to ACT! E-Marketing.”

“Well Mr. Customer, I love the fact that I can send out an E-blast based on my current ACT! Lookup or to the contents of one of my groups.  A history of the E-blast will be automatically created on each contact’s record.  Once sent, I can create a Lookup to find which contacts opted-out or bounced, and update their records with a few keystrokes.  I can even create a call list in ACT! of the contacts that showed the biggest response to my E-blast.”

“Sold.  Setup an ACT! E-Marketing account for me.”

“Oh, and I forgot to tell you.  You can create all kinds of surveys using ACT! E-Marketing.  Check out this link on my website:  http://www.swiftpageemail.com/TechBenders.Kfredricks/SurveyUsersGroup/Survey.aspx.  You notice that it starts with ‘swiftpageemail.’  I get notification when someone fills in that form on my website and can then automatically add their contact information to my ACT! database.”

I thought I had done a great job of convincing my client to move to ACT! E-Marketing until I received an e-mail from him later that evening.  He had 25,000 contacts in MailChimp and thought it would be less expensive to do an initial mailing to weed out his opt-outs and bounces before moving to ACT! E-marketing; MailChimp charges him $.01 per e-mail so it would cost him $250 to do his mailing.

We did a bit of comparison shopping and found that sending 25,000 contact via ACT! E-Marketing would cost $150, a savings of $100.  We then analyzed his database and decided that it would make more sense to market to specific segments of his ACT! database.  He decided to use his ID/Status field and contact his clients one day and his prospects the next. This meant that he would only be sending out 12,000 emails at a time which would only require an $85 account. Needless to say, he decided to switch to ACT! E-Marketing.

Within minutes I had set my client up with an account, and he was ready to e-blast away.  Click here if you’d like to set up your own account or send me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to help you.

I received an e-mail this week from a long ACT! user who was complaining about everything from the confusing naming conventions for ACT! software to the fact that his old ACT! wouldn’t do any “new tricks” but that the “new” ACT! wouldn’t run on his “old” computers.

I for one could not return to the “old” ACT! software because I would miss the “new” features too darn much.  My two most favorite features – Groups and Opportunities – were features that I advised my clients against using in ACT! 6 because of their limited functionality.  Other favorite “new” features include the great integration between ACT! and Outlook, Relationships, and the Web Info tab which were only added within the last several years.

There is always something of a “chicken and an egg” effect between hardware and software.  The powerful new tools that are added to software require power new hardware.   In turn, you can’t really utilize powerful new hardware until you use it with new software.  So how does this effect ACT!?  Well, if you want to use ACT! just as a glorified Rolodex you can use your old clunker of a machine with an old version of ACT!.  But if you want to enter the 21^st Century and take advantage of those “newfangled features” such as e-marketing and social networking you’ll need to have updated software and hardware.

As far as naming conventions are concerned, I don’t think anyone realized back in the 80’s how dependent we would become on technology or how rapidly technology would change.  In ACT!’s case, the first four versions were titled ACT! 1, 2, 3 and 4 because that was the way software was named back then.  Some of you old fogies might remember Word Perfect 5.1 or even Microsoft Word versions 1-5.

By the mid 90’s Microsoft decided to name their products based on the year of their release and many other software developers followed suit.  ACT! 6 became known as ACT! 2002, 2003 or 2004 depending on the year of creation.

In 2005 ACT! moved to a yearly release cycle which made those original version numbers a bit easier to understand.  The trick is to simply add “2” to the official ACT! title to find the version number so ACT! 2012 is also ACT! 14.  And yes, if a user gives ACT! a nickname such as referring to ACT! 2009 as “9” it can get a bit confusing!

As far as ACT!’s future is concerned, it’s hard to predict.  ACT! was the first true contact manager and paved the way for many other competing products.  Ironically, much of the new functionality added to ACT! each year is either copied by these competitors or was already there.  However, ACT! is the only software in the CRM segment that has a 25 year long track record and has been around twice as long as any of its competition.

Happy Birthday, ACT!.  Here’s to another 25 years of continued success!

People often tell me that “they could write a book.”  I often ask these would-be authors how long it takes them to write a well-constructed, clear and concise business letter; the answer is usually “hours.”  I then point out that if they want to write a 250 page book they need to multiply those hours by 250.

However, as hard as the actual writing is, by far the hardest part of writing a book is getting started.  I was recently contacted by Jim Kukral who was in the process of writing a book about writing a book.  In his book he first gets you motivated about writing a book and what the benefits can be to your career or business.  He then gives you some tips and strategies on how to publish your book and use it to create publicity.  He actually used me as an example as you can see in the following excerpt:

Karen Fredricks has used her books to become an instant authority in her field.

“I’ve written 13 books, 11 For Dummies books and two “cookbooks” (technology books), and created training videos for Lynda.com,” said Karen. “The royalties have been nice, but being able to leverage the books into a successful consulting career has been even nicer.”

How does she do it exactly?

“All the books include my e-mail address and contact information. I have links back to my website which provides me with a nice stream of prospects. When I come up against competition, or make a sales call to a large prospect, I plop down a copy of my book and tell them they can go with a lesser known competitor or with me, the expert.”

If you’re interested in writing your own book you might first want to take a look at Jim’s book.

Unfortunately I see this exact same scenario over and over again.  Traditional ACT! users love to set alarms, only to ignore them.  When I suggest that perhaps there is a better way to automate their process for making routine follow-ups, they look at me as if I’ve asked them to chop off one of their arms.

One of the best ways to save yourself a bunch of time is to automate routine follow-ups by creating Dynamic Groups.  Dynamic Groups are based on a query of the data that is contained in the fields of your database;  when the data in your database changes the contents of your Group changes as well as if my magic.  For example, you might create a group to find all of the customers that you haven’t called or met with in the last 30 days or to find all the open Opportunities that have not had any activity for the last 2 weeks.  Any contacts meeting these conditions will automatically appear in the Dynamic Group; when the contact information changes the name will automatically disappear from the group.

Once an ACT! user sees the value of using Dynamic Groups the sky is the limit.  Here are some of the Dynamic Groups that I typically suggest for my clients:

• Find all of your new contacts that are missing key pieces of information.  For example, the group might be populated with contacts that are missing the ID/Status field or an e-mail address, or who have no marketing preference indicated.
• If you do frequent mailings to people in specific geographic areas you might want to create a group of all contacts within a certain zip code range; I showed you how to create that query in a previous blog article.
• If you offer service contracts you might want to find all the contacts whose contracts are expiring in a given month or year.
• In previous posts  I’ve talked about the importance of segmenting your database to improve the effectiveness of your e-marketing campaigns.  You might create a group that finds all your customers in the United States who purchase white widgets but have never purchased pink ones.

Intrigued?  In my next article I’ll give you tips for creating the queries that run your dynamic groups.

In your business, what loyal customer wants to find out that new customers are eligible for hefty discounts or that the item they paid full price for yesterday is now on sale?   With your ACT! database you can easily and effectively send the right message to the right people.

Although targeting portions of your database can be done in most any CRM product, I use ACT! and rely on one of its best features – dynamic groups – to get the job done. Here’s how you can use ACT to create an effective ACT E-Marketing plan:

• Decide what segments you want to target.  Maybe you want to reach just your customers, or just the folks who are in the hospitality industry.  Or maybe you want to be really specific and reach out to the customers in the hospitality industry who are located in New York State.  Remember, the more specific your target, the better the results.
• Build those fields into your ACT! database.  For the best results create several small fields rather than one large one.  For example, if you want to classify your prospects and customers as Gold, Silver and Bronze you’ll want to add a new field called “Rating” with those choices in the drop-down list rather than trying to squeeze that information into the existing ID/Status field.
• Create dynamic groups based on the contents of those fields.  The dynamic groups can be based on very specific queries of several fields and will pinpoint your desired segments.  As an example, one of my groups consists of contacts with an e-mail address who have opted into my mailings, are located in Florida and use an outdated version of ACT!.
• Send your ACT! E-marketing piece to one of your groups.

Segmenting is the most important and probably the hardest part of your e-marketing campaign.   Unfortunately a lot of  new database users dive in head first and start entering a lot of contact information without giving much thought as to the various segments of your business.  This may result in the need to give your database a bit of cleaning down the road if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your e-marketing campaigns.  I do have a number of ways to help you organize the chaos of your database; if you need some help getting started drop me a line.

Note:  My two previous blog articles  discussed the templates you need to include in your arsenal and a few tips for writing your actual message.

Note: In my last blog article I talked about the three “must have” ACT! E-Marketing templates.  I even offer a special deal to get you those templates so that you can start e-marketing as quickly as possible (provide the link to that post)  Sometimes people send out an e-blast and think they’ve got a message that a Madison Avenue advertising firm would create.  Recently I received a message from one of my clients announcing his brand new website.  He’d done a great job of creating an eye-catching HTML template.  His description of his website was exciting enough to make me want to head over there and check it out.  There was only one problem: he had forgotten to include a link to his site.  Two days later I received a one line e-mail message with the URL of his site; excitement was lost.

When creating an effective message, begin by using  the five basic elements of who, what, when where, and why in your message.  This will allow  you to get past any writer’s block, focus the message, prevent omissions, and serve as a catalyst for making  your message creative.  Let’s break it down: 

• Who:  Quite simply, this is the group of your contacts that the message is being sent to.  The important thing to remember here is that your message should never go out to everyone in your database.  My next blog article will show you ways send to a segment of your database.
• What: You need to clarify what it is you are trying to sell or say.  Are you announcing a new product?  Publicizing a sale?  Then say so!
• When:  Is this time-sensitive offering?  Are you only available during certain hours of the day?  Make sure you clearly state these details.
• Where: Once you’ve enticed your readers to action, where do they go to make their purchase?  If your readers can purchase online did you include the appropriate link? If they need to contact you by phone did you include your telephone number?  You want to make it extremely easy for your readers to act.
• Why: Most of your readers receive hundreds of messages a day.  Why will they bother to read yours?  What makes your announcement compelling?

Answering those five questions will insure that you have included all the necessary details, focus your message, and give you a great starting point for a creative, effective ACT E-Marketing message.

Interested in giving your ACT! E-Marketing a Quick Start?  Drop me a line!

When it comes to marketing there are two elements that I recommend:  ACT! and an ACT! E-Marketing account.  I routinely set up a trial ACT! E-Marketing account for my ACT! clients.  Unfortunately, just like my slide, too many people are afraid to take that initial plunge.  Maybe I’m over-simplifying things a bit (after all, I write Dummies books and software “cookbooks”) but I think I can get your ACT e-marketing efforts off the ground with three simple steps.  This article covers the first of those three steps:  designing your templates.

I’m finding that too often potential marketeers  get  caught up with the design of their ACT e-marketing templates.  They spend way too much time trying to create spiffy, eye-catching holiday templates not realizing that most of those templates are probably just going to end up in someone’s spam filter.

In my opinion, you need three, and only three, ACT e-marketing templates in your arsenal:

• A plain vanilla “text” template
• A fancy HTML designed template that matches your website that includes one area for your message
• A fancy HTML designed template that matches your website that contains two columns for your text

I can almost hear your gasp across the Internet.  What?  Plain text templates?  Why in the world would anyone want to send out black and white e-mail when there’s a whole world of color to choose from?  The answer is simple; most readers using Outlook use the preview panel.  When sifting through their Inbox they read the plain “Hi, John” emails first, and look at the graphical ones later, if at all.  E-mail that arrives in full living color pretty much reeks of advertising and is not given a priority.

So now you’re probably wondering why you should bother with an ACT! E-marketing account if you’re just going to be sending out plain messages.  Don’t let that plain facade fool you; those simple templates pack a lot of punch.  Your plain text template can include hyperlinks to your website, or a link to your e-mail address.  Because the template is part of your e-marketing account, you’ll be able to track data such as your open rate, the people who’ve read your message, and invalid or bounced e-mail addresses.  You will insure that you remain spam compliant in the bargain.  And since you’re using ACT!, you can send off your message at the click of a button and see your results directly in ACT!.

But wait.  I warned you against HTML templates and then recommend that you have a couple.  That’s because it’s nice to a couple of fancy shmancy templates available for non-marketing pieces such as monthly newsletters and pricing sheets that you send out regularly to your tried and true base of contacts that have come to expect these messages.  By matching your templates to your website you’ve created branding for your product in much the same way that you can identify a machine selling your favorite brand of soda from 50 paces away.

By definition a template is editable which means you can use your templates over and over again, saving each new effort with a different name so that eventually you’ll have your own custom library of templates.

I offer an “ACT! E-marketing Quick Start” promotion for those ACT! users who, well, want to take the plunge.  For $150 I’ll design the three templates mentioned earlier and place them directly into your ACT! E-Marketing account.  Add your message and you’ll be ready to go.  Interested?  Send me an e-mail!