Inbound Marketing Certified Professional

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Avoid Excel Overkill!

Excel OverkillI once observed a VP of a very large corporation build from scratch, in Excel, a “sophisticated”  tool that would allow remote users to enter data in a centrally located Excel file.  It was full of gizmo’s like macros and sophisticated formulas.  In total effort, over several  months, he spent about 6 weeks Continue reading Avoid Excel Overkill!

Tags: 3rd-party product, ACT!, Business, CRM, CRM, estimate, estimating, Excel, Integrated Quoting, Productivity, Productivity, Quote, QuoteWerks, Quoting, Reporting

Drivesafe.ly reads your emails

Here’s a brilliant little app: Drivesafe.ly: a mobile application that reads text (SMS) messages and emails to you and automatically responds to the sender.  Resist the temptation to read emails or text while driving and stay safe.

It only takes a few minutes to download and configure. And it’s got a really spiffy icon.

Continue reading “Drivesafe.ly reads your emails”]

I didn’t know I could do that with ACT! Part 5 – Drip Marketing

As we all get stretched thinner to do more, the objective  is for technology to free human beings to be creative, productive, and effective.  Spending time and effort on tasks that can be automated is a poor use of intellect, is far more costly, and provides none of those benefits. Here’s what I like about Swiftpage Email Drip Marketing:

A sequence of targeted messages delivered to contacts at the right time
An auto-responder provides instant feedback to the recipient when survey information is completed
Campaign results are written back the contact … [Continue reading "I didn’t know I could do that with ACT! Part 5 – Drip Marketing"]

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

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 … [Continue reading "I didn’t know I could do that with ACT! Part 4 – Email marketing"]

I didn’t know I could do that with ACT! Part 1- Quoting

QuoteWerks integrates seamlessly not only with ACT!, but also with Microsoft Business Contact Manager, Goldmine, salesforce.com, Maximizer, SalesLogix, and otther CRM/contact manager applications. … [Continue reading "I didn’t know I could do that with ACT! Part 1- Quoting"]