Friday, July 16, 2010

Hoover your leads into ACT! 2011

One of the interesting new features with ACT! 2011 is Sage Business Info Services.

This is basically the ability of your database to reach out and connect with other sources of information or other applications on the Web. If you are familiar with Swiftpage/ACT! e-marketing then you are already aware of a 'connected service'.

Whilst these connected services or as Sage will be calling them, Sage Business Info Services, are a way for Sage to generate additional revenue, they are very useful and effective services to have at your disposal if you are an ACT! user.

One of the Sage Business Info Services that Sage are promoting with the release of ACT! 2011 is a connection with Hoovers. Many Australian businesses are probably not very familiar with Hoovers but they are essential a data or list broker.

By having a connection to Hoovers, you should be able to do a search for a list of businesses that you would like to add to your database and with a few clicks, import those contacts straight into ACT!. Having had to deal with List Brokers on behalf of clients in the past, this looks like a much faster, easier and hopefully more economical way of adding contacts to your database.

The good news for Australian ACT! users is that it seems that Hoovers has a large amount of Australian Company information available. According to Sage we can expect to see 650,000 records to choose from. Sounds promising.

To see a great explanation of how this concept of Hoovering leads into ACT! 2011 I'll leave it to our good friend Napkin Mike to demonstrate to you.

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