Ya’ Think?

Even though I’m an ACT! Certified Consultant, I get that you can’t do everything you need to do effectively just in ACT! alone. A case in point: I strongly recommend to NOT use ACT! to manage email marketing campaigns and to use Swiftpage Email instead. We recommend Swiftpage rather than Constant Contact because it has a tight integration with ACT! and Constant Contact, regrettably, does not.

Naturally, we email from ACT! (using Outlook integration) for our regular emails at On the verge and, as a result, maintain a history of our communications. ACT! is great at that. But, considering the the time and effort it takes to create a campaign and the potential revenue and relationships it can drive to your company, it’s reasonable to expect much more than a mere history entry for your effort. For starters, wouldn’t you like to know if your email was even received?

Does your email go here?

Many people are unware that most email providers throttle the number of emails you can send at one time (the number can be as low as 20 or 25). Unless you’ve convinced your ISP ahead of time that you are not an evil spammer your campaign emails might not make it past their filters. In which case your domain address might get blacklisted. You keep sending emails, and they keep going nowhere. After the resources applied to a campaign, the last thing I’d want is for that effort to get launched into a marketing black  hole.

However, using Swiftpage Email, we can illuminate our marketing efforts. To justify marketing effort and expense, you must know:

• Was the email opened? (The template or subject was compelling)
• Did recipients click on a hyperlink in the content? (We communicated something of interest)
• Was it opened more than once? (Significant interest)
• Was it forwarded to a colleague? (Extreme interest)
• Who opted out?
• Which emails were undeliverable?

Swiftpage nicely integrates with ACT! (and other CRM/contact managers). Using your contact manager you can send single html or plain text mailings to individuals or send up to 1,000 per day to Contact, Group, or Company lookups. Email is sent via the Swiftpage server which is managed to protect against Spamming violations.

Mailing via Swiftpage provides reports on open, click-through and forwarded results. Now your sales team can focus their follow-up efforts on the prospects most likely to take action! This level of business intelligence shines a light on your campaign helping to refine your message and target your audience.

Swiftpage is affordable for any size business. Prices start at free and go to $59.95 per month for email-only accounts (we’ll look at drip marketing next time).  Price levels include a daily preset quantity of emails ( up to 1000 per day) and send limits can be increased for a tiny additional fee.

Alas, nothing is perfect: although building email templates is easy once you get the hang of it, the Swiftpage template editor is kludgy and confusing. Fortunately the folks at SPE recognize this and an improved interface is in Beta at this writing.

In Part Five, I’ll discuss Drip Marketing Campaigns from ACT! as a way to nurture leads and grow your business.

Recently I’ve been thinking about a simple test that customers should take before starting a CRM project. Our test? True or False, indicate if you agree with any of the following four scenarios:

• You’re travelling from Boston to Milwaukee and intend to get there as quickly as possible. You decide that going online to book a flight or get driving directions takes too much time, so you just start driving.
• You’re building a house. Because architects are expensive, you buy the materials for your builder and tell her you want four bedrooms and two and a half baths; she’ll figure out the rest.
• You’d like to fly from New York to San Diego in less than an hour, confident that the laws of physics can be conquered by your travel agent.
• You want to increase topline revenues by 25%. You buy ACT! contact management software and suddenly your sales close rate improves.

Obviously, in each of these cases, you immediately knew that the correct answer is false. Nonetheless, I can’t tell you how many otherwise rational and intelligent customers appear to approach their CRM projects thinking that:

• keeping the project budget a secret means the project will cost less
• project planning wastes time and costs more money
• do-overs are as time- and cost-effective as having a defined scope before beginning
• the project scope and the time it takes to implement the project have no relationship
• magic happens when software is installed.

I can be as impatient and inclined towards taking a shortcut as anyone, so I understand the tempation of let’s just get started. I also understand that the above approach is costly, unrealistic, ridden with pitfalls, and has failure written all over it. If you agree, congratulations: you’re ready to proceed with your CRM project.

Here is the truism I want to convey: A CRM project done well is an investment; if done poorly it is a non-recoverable expense. The return on investment grows – or shrinks – in direct proportion to the planning, project management, and resources incorporated into the project.  Bottom Line?  A successful project results when the customer and the consultant understand that the cost of the project is not  a zero-sum gain, that the customer should expect to make a profit on the fees paid, and that all parties are equal contributors and stakeholders in obtaining a successful result.