Here's a list of 5 add-ons to pimp your ride with ACT! in 2010
1. ACT! E-Marketing (formerly known as Swiftpage). Yes, like Puff Daddy changing his name to P-Diddy, Swiftpage is now ACT! E-Marketing for users of ACT! 2010. It's the same great program though will all the same great features for marketing your business.
Sure, it can broadcast an email to thousands of people on your email subscribers list and tell you who clicked on what - all email marketing service providers do that. The cool thing with ACT! E-Marketing is that it downloads that info back into ACT!. Want to know who un-subscribed, look 'em up and delete 'em (nah, don't do that but you could do it easy if you wanted). Want to know who clicked on the links the most so you can schedule some calls for your sales team to ring the hot leads? Look 'em up - easy as. Getting the data from these email broadcasts back into ACT! will save you a lot of time in managing your lists but also create a lot of opportunity to take advantage of the information the reports provide.
There are a heap of other features to sink your teeth into too. I'd especially recommend that you set your website enquiry form to automatically download enquiries into ACT! - no more double entry - yay! Also, and this is the big one, drip marketing. Just broadcasting an email to a list is a bit 2009. With drip marketing, you can build a series of emails into a campaign and have them delivered automatically over time. Great for event promotion, new product releases, client education and lead nurturing campaigns.
2. The Durkin Toolkit. If you have ACT! and you are using another spreadsheet or database to manage information that relates to your contacts, this is for you. This isn't just any old add-on that adds a bit of functionality to ACT!, this is a development platform that will allow you to customise ACT! to the needs of your business. If you want to track Jobs, Items, Machinery, Investments, Support tickets, Products, just about anything you can think of, it's all possible.
3. QwikQuote. If you've tried the 'Create Quote' feature that is in ACT! and found it a bit limiting, then this ones for you. If you or your sales team find it time consuming to generate quotes then this is for you too. In a nutshell QwikQuote will create a quote at the click of a button, auto number it. You select the items to add and at the click of the next button, it will save it, attach it to your history, create an opportunity, schedule a follow up for the opportunity, convert your quote to a PDF and attach it to an email.
Now every quote that's done in your business has an opportunity in ACT, those dashboards will start coming in handy now! Every one of your opportunities will have a follow up call scheduled against it, that's got to lead to more business in 2010.
4. Handheld Contact (HHC). You have a mobile phone and you want it to sync to your ACT! database and you want it to happen automatically and you don't want to come back to the office and connect a cable? OK, if you have a blackberry or Windows mobile device, HHC is the ticket. If you have an iPhone though it's coming soon(ish).
5. ACT! to MYOB Accounting Link. In Oz, there is only one accounting program. Well there are quite a few, but for most it's MYOB. After many, many years of waiting, we have an accounting link between ACT! and MYOB we are happy to support. If you are tired of having to enter every new client into MYOB you can save time and do it at the click of a button. Also, if you'd like to see a clients sales history from inside of ACT, it can do that too. If you are using Quickbooks here in Australia, there are 2 links from 2 different vendors due for release in 2010. Stay tuned for more on this.
So there you have it. 5 ways you can improve the value that ACT! brings to your business in 2010.
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