I didn’t know I could do that with ACT! Part 4 – Email marketing

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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?

Drip Marketing Black Hole

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.

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