IntroductionIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:03 | Hi! My name is Karen
Fredricks and I am the author of
| | 00:06 | ACT! 2010 Essential Training by lynda.com.
| | 00:10 | I am an ACT! fanatic.
| | 00:11 | I use it to organize and grow my business.
| | 00:14 | I use it to organize my social life.
| | 00:16 | I even use it to organize my family.
| | 00:18 | I can't wait to show you
some of ACT!'s cool features.
| | 00:21 | I'll show you how to use the notes
and calendar alarms to jog your memory.
| | 00:25 | I'll demonstrate the e-marketing
features to increase your sales.
| | 00:29 | I'll even highlight the social
networking links to reach out to your
| | 00:33 | most valuable contacts.
| | 00:35 | I know that ACT! will help
organize and grow your business.
| | 00:38 | ACT! has been around for over 20 years,
and I've been using it nearly that long,
| | 00:42 | to help maintain the chaos in my life.
| | 00:45 | It's time to get your act
together, so let's get started with
| | 00:47 | ACT! 2010 Essential Training.
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| What ACT! does| 00:00 | So what the heck is ACT!
and who needs to use it?
| | 00:03 | You might think of ACT! as a
Swiss army knife of software.
| | 00:07 | It's an address book that comes
with over 50 predefined fields to house
| | 00:11 | everything from addresses and phone
numbers, to web sites and email addresses.
| | 00:15 | And should you need to include blood
type and shoe size, it's easy to add
| | 00:19 | new fields as well.
| | 00:21 | ACT! is a notebook that helps you to
track everything from the size of your big
| | 00:25 | customer's last order, and the gripes
your prospect had with their last vendor,
| | 00:29 | to birthdays and personal interest.
| | 00:32 | ACT! is a calendar, complete with alarms,
color coding, and email invitations.
| | 00:38 | ACT! is an administrative assistant who
will keep you organized and efficient by
| | 00:42 | automating routine tasks like letter writing.
| | 00:46 | ACT! is a marketing company that will
help you to reach out to tens, hundreds, or
| | 00:50 | even thousands of your prospects.
| | 00:52 | ACT! is a financial planner that will
help you manage your sales pipeline.
| | 00:56 | So what kind of people should be using ACT!?
| | 00:58 | The disorganized person, who is
running around town with yellow stickies
| | 01:02 | clinging to his forehead.
| | 01:03 | The overworked person, who has too much
to do and too little time to do it in.
| | 01:08 | Sales people who need to have an
effective process to increase their sales.
| | 01:12 | The sales manager who wants to know
exactly what his sales force is up to.
| | 01:16 | And the business owner who wants to know
exactly what his whole company is up to.
| | 01:20 | ACT! is perfect for new
businesses who want to go larger.
| | 01:24 | Larger corporations who
want to become more organized.
| | 01:27 | And any business that wants to be more
efficient, productive, and therefore more profitable.
| | 01:32 | So what are you waiting for?
| | 01:33 | It's time to get your act together.
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| Knowing the five ACT! flavors| 00:00 | The first step before using ACT!
| | 00:02 | is purchasing ACT!, and like a kid in
an ice cream shop you might get a bit
| | 00:06 | confused about the various flavors.
| | 00:09 | Let's start out with the
plain old vanilla version of ACT!
| | 00:12 | called, quite simply, ACT!.
| | 00:15 | It's got all the features that
you need to run your business.
| | 00:16 | In fact, all of the features that
I cover in this training course are
| | 00:20 | also included in ACT!.
| | 00:22 | You can even run ACT! over a network, so that
several members of your organization can all share the
| | 00:27 | same information, but each user will
need to buy their own separate copy.
| | 00:32 | The only limitation of ACT!
| | 00:33 | is that only ten people can
share the database, so ACT!
| | 00:36 | isn't suitable for larger companies.
| | 00:38 | ACT! Premium adds functionality aimed
at larger, more mobile organizations.
| | 00:44 | ACT! Premium can handle up to 30 users.
| | 00:47 | It also contains some workgroup features,
including the ability to limit access
| | 00:51 | to specific contacts and fields
according to their user permissions.
| | 00:55 | ACT! Premium also offers expanded
synchronization options for organizations that need
| | 01:01 | to receive information
from their remote employees.
| | 01:05 | ACT! Premium for Web is
the web-based version of ACT!.
| | 01:09 | You can either pay someone to host your ACT!
| | 01:11 | database for you, or you can host your
database yourself on your own Web server.
| | 01:16 | Either way, your users will be able to
access ACT! by firing up the web browser.
| | 01:21 | You can even play mix-and-
match with ACT! Premium and ACT!
| | 01:25 | Premium for Web if some of your
employees toil away at the office headquarters
| | 01:29 | and others work from remote exotic locations.
| | 01:32 | ACT! Corporate Edition is the icing on
the cake, the topping on the ice cream,
| | 01:37 | the cherry on the sundae.
| | 01:38 | Quite simply, the Corporate
Edition bundles ACT! Premium and ACT!
| | 01:43 | Premium for Web together, so that all
users have access to both the desktop and
| | 01:47 | Web versions of ACT! Premium.
| | 01:50 | You are basically getting two sets of
software for nearly the price of one.
| | 01:53 | ACT! Corporate works particularly well for
busy executives and sales folks, who both
| | 01:58 | work in an office and
travel here, there, and yon.
| | 02:02 | No ice cream parlor would be
completed without a gut-buster.
| | 02:06 | In this case it's ACT!
Corporate Edition with SQL 2008.
| | 02:09 | Gosh, even the name sounds big.
| | 02:13 | Although this version doesn't do more than
the other Premium and Corporate Editions,
| | 02:17 | it can handle a lot more.
| | 02:19 | For example, if your database grows in
size to nearly 100,000 contacts, or you
| | 02:25 | have 50-100 users banging away in your
database, you will find that SQL 2008
| | 02:30 | will give you the extra power you need.
| | 02:33 | The nice thing about the ACT! family of products is that you
are sure to find the one that fits your business perfectly.
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| Setting up a demo database| 00:00 | ACT! is a database program, which
means it contains a collection of records.
| | 00:05 | Each record contains a lot of
information about a specific contact.
| | 00:09 | Eventually, you will be building your
own database from scratch, but for the
| | 00:13 | time being we are going to use the
Demo database that automatically installed
| | 00:16 | when you installed ACT! on your computer.
| | 00:19 | The Demo database is a great place
for us to practice developing our ACT! skills,
| | 00:23 | without the risk of making
a mess out of our actual database.
| | 00:27 | To find that database, we will go up to
File, and we will click on Open Database.
| | 00:31 | ACT! will automatically default to this
path, the My Documents, within My Documents,
| | 00:37 | ACT,within ACT, ACT for 12 Windows within ACT!
| | 00:41 | for 12 Windows, Databases.
| | 00:42 | Whew! Once we get there, you will be
able to see the ACT2010Demo, which you
| | 00:48 | will click on and open.
| | 00:50 | If you are prompted to login, you will
type in the Username as Chris Huffman,
| | 01:01 | and leave the password blank.
| | 01:03 | You will know you are at the right
place because you will be able to see ACTDemo
| | 01:08 | up in the title bar.
| | 01:09 | If you close your database
accidentally, you will be able to get back to it
| | 01:13 | again by clicking File, and choosing
ACT2010 Demo from the Quick Access List.
| | 01:20 | Each time we finish a movie, we will
be reverting our database back to its
| | 01:23 | original state, so you don't have to
worry about following the movies in
| | 01:27 | any particular order.
| | 01:28 | You can catch up with us wherever you want.
| | 01:30 | Remember, as you follow along with the
lynda.com lessons, you will want to be sure
| | 01:35 | you are using the ACTDemo database.
| | 01:37 | If you are not positive that you are
in the current database, take a peak at
| | 01:41 | ACT!'s title bar to make sure that it says Demo.
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1. Getting Your ACT! TogetherLearning a few database concepts| 00:01 | For many of you, ACT! is the first time
you have ventured into a database program.
| | 00:05 | You will find it helpful to understand the
basic components that make up the database.
| | 00:09 | A database is a collection of records.
| | 00:12 | In our case the name of
our database is ACT2010Demo.
| | 00:16 | Now, your database will probably contain the
name of the company that you are working with.
| | 00:22 | We have within a database a number of records.
| | 00:26 | In this case we have 199
records in our database.
| | 00:30 | That's what we're
by this number indicator here.
| | 00:34 | Each record is basically a contact.
| | 00:37 | Now, the Contact record is
divided into individual fields.
| | 00:41 | For example, we have a field that
holds the name and the company, and even a
| | 00:47 | number of phone numbers.
| | 00:48 | Now, if you need to add more fields,
it's easy to add new fields to ACT!.
| | 00:54 | Some of the fields that you see are
actually grayed out, like the fields down
| | 00:59 | here on the right-hand corner. These
are the fields that are called system fields,
| | 01:02 | and these are the fields
that ACT! fills in automatically.
| | 01:07 | In addition, we can click on
some of the additional tabs.
| | 01:10 | For example, if I click on Personal
Info, you see additional fields to store
| | 01:16 | information, like home
address and different phone numbers.
| | 01:19 | Now, a database is
comprised of a number of tables.
| | 01:23 | I am going over here to the navigation
bar and you see some of the other tables.
| | 01:28 | We have Groups, where you can take a group of
contacts and group them together. We have Companies.
| | 01:34 | If you want to keep information on
an account or company level instead of
| | 01:39 | an individual level.
| | 01:40 | We have Calendars, which are
basically tables of our activities.
| | 01:45 | We have Opportunities, which
are tables that will hold all our
| | 01:49 | sales opportunities.
| | 01:51 | We also have tables that
you can see from the tabs.
| | 01:55 | For example, if I click on the
Activities tab, I am seeing a list or a table of
| | 02:02 | all my Activities that are
associated with this current contact record.
| | 02:07 | If I click on the Documents, I will see
documents that I have stored that again
| | 02:12 | relate to this contact record.
| | 02:13 | ACT! can organize virtually
all aspects of your business.
| | 02:18 | Although it's not imperative
that you master the database jargon,
| | 02:22 | understanding the basic components of
a database will ultimately help you to
| | 02:26 | build a better database.
| | 02:27 | You will be able to match the various aspects
of your business with the various ACT! functions.
| | 02:33 | After all, the goal here is to mold ACT!
| | 02:36 | to your way of doing business
and not the other way around.
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| Navigating through ACT!| 00:00 | Learning ACT! is like driving
a new car at night in the rain.
| | 00:04 | Panic sets in momentarily as
you try to find the right button.
| | 00:07 | However, once you have
driven that car or used ACT!
| | 00:10 | for a while, all those buttons
will begin to feel like second nature.
| | 00:13 | When we first open up ACT!,
you end up at the Welcome screen.
| | 00:17 | Now, the Welcome screen will allow you
to look up contact information and also
| | 00:22 | suggest some Related Tasks, and those
tasks are based on your user permissions.
| | 00:26 | For example, if you are an administrator
of the database, the Related Tasks will
| | 00:30 | be different than if you are just
a standard user of the database.
| | 00:33 | You will also notice in the body
of the Welcome page links to lots of
| | 00:37 | different things, including some how to areas.
For example, How Do I create a Mailing List.
| | 00:42 | It will even have links to some
outside Internet resources, including how to
| | 00:48 | join an ACT! user group
that might be located near you.
| | 00:51 | You will also have the Navigation
Bar, which takes you to some of the
| | 00:55 | other areas in ACT!.
| | 00:56 | Now one of those areas we like to go
to first is going to be the Contacts.
| | 01:01 | Once you get to the Contacts,
a couple of things to notice.
| | 01:04 | First of all, in your title
bar it should say ACT! by Sage.
| | 01:08 | If it says something different, like
Solitaire, you have probably wandered into
| | 01:12 | the wrong program and you will want
to close it and open up ACT! again.
| | 01:15 | You will also want to make sure you
are in the ACT2010Demo database, because
| | 01:19 | that's the one we are using for these exercises.
| | 01:22 | Now, when we first start off, you
are going to be in what's called the My
| | 01:26 | Contact record, and for the duration of
these exercises your name will be Chris
| | 01:31 | Huffman, because he is the
My Record of this database.
| | 01:35 | If you want to scroll through the
records of the database, you can do so by
| | 01:39 | advancing to the Next Contact, to the
Previous Contact, or going all the way to
| | 01:45 | the First Contact, or the End Contact,
by using those record counter buttons.
| | 01:51 | You can also use the Navigation Bar at
any time to get to other areas of ACT!.
| | 01:56 | And once you are in other areas, like
the Companies, you have a choice between
| | 02:00 | the Detail View, which is going to give
you all the details about one record, or
| | 02:04 | the List View, which will give
you a list of all your records.
| | 02:08 | If you get lost, a good way to find
your way back home is to look at the
| | 02:12 | Navigation Bar, and you will know
whichever records you are in will be
| | 02:15 | highlighted in green, and whatever view
you are in will be highlighted in blue.
| | 02:20 | In addition, every Detail
View has a corresponding layout.
| | 02:24 | Now, we are going to be using the basic
layouts that come out of the ACT! box.
| | 02:28 | If you happen to stumble into the wrong layout.
| | 02:31 | For example, the ACT Demo, and things
look a little strange, you would want to
| | 02:35 | click that arrow and go back to
the Basic Layout. Now, each ACT! record
| | 02:41 | comes equipped with a series of tabs
that runs across the middle of the screen.
| | 02:45 | In ACT! we can rename those tabs or
change the order of tabs or move them.
| | 02:51 | Certain tabs are system tabs, such as
Activities, Opportunities, and Histories,
| | 02:55 | and although we can't rename them,
we can remove them permanently.
| | 02:58 | We also have some big, easy buttons
at the top of the screen, which as the
| | 03:03 | name implies, are quick, easy ways to
get to some of the more common tasks
| | 03:08 | that we have in ACT!.
| | 03:09 | In addition, we have a set of menus,
and from time to time we will be
| | 03:13 | accessing those menus.
| | 03:15 | When all else fails, you
might try a right-click.
| | 03:18 | For example, if I am trying to figure
out how to delete an Activity, I might
| | 03:23 | select it and do a right-click, and
sure enough, the menu comes up with the
| | 03:28 | ability to Erase an Activity.
| | 03:30 | One of the other things that we can do in ACT!
| | 03:33 | is to change the columns.
| | 03:35 | For example, I can sort by a column,
by clicking on the column head, or I can
| | 03:40 | make a column bigger or smaller by
putting my mouse on the border, holding down
| | 03:45 | my left button, and making it
larger or making it smaller again.
| | 03:49 | The more you use ACT!, the more
familiar with it you will start to feel.
| | 03:53 | Feel free to try out the various icons
and menu items and see where they take
| | 03:57 | you, and if you get lost
along the way, don't worry.
| | 04:01 | ACT! is throwing you lots of
hints every step of the way.
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| Using the Setup Assistant| 00:01 | We all have to start somewhere.
| | 00:02 | If you are lucky enough to
have inherited an existing ACT!
| | 00:05 | database and had someone set it up for you,
you don't need to run the Setup Assistant.
| | 00:09 | However, if you are starting from
scratch, or if you want to change some of the
| | 00:13 | basic settings, the Assistant will get
you up and running in no time at all.
| | 00:18 | Now, there are two ways that you
can access that Setup Assistant.
| | 00:21 | The first is when you initially installed ACT!
| | 00:25 | you were given a prompt that asked
you if you would like to run that Setup
| | 00:28 | Assistant, and if you said no, and now
you are kicking yourself, because you
| | 00:31 | want to get back to it, the other way
you can get to it is to go up to the
| | 00:35 | Help menu and click Setup Assistant,
and we get this nice opening Welcome to
| | 00:41 | the Setup Assistant. We click Next.
| | 00:45 | The first screen of the Setup Assistant
Wizard is going to ask us if we want to
| | 00:49 | create a database or
convert an existing database.
| | 00:53 | So again, if you already have your
database in place, you could just hit Next,
| | 00:57 | or if you want to create a new
database, you can click on Create Database.
| | 01:02 | So I am going to click Create Database,
and the New Database window opens up.
| | 01:07 | The first thing it asks me
for is the name of my database.
| | 01:10 | So I might call this the Lynda Database.
| | 01:14 | And if I wanted to use two words,
the only thing that's a little tricky is I
| | 01:17 | can't use spaces, so I might put an
underscore and call my database that. Lynda_Com.
| | 01:23 | By default, ACT! likes to bury your database
away in the deep mires of your computer.
| | 01:32 | Let's hit this Browse button.
| | 01:34 | It puts it into the my Documents
area, in a sub-folder called ACT, in a
| | 01:39 | sub-folder called ACT for Windows 12,
and in a sub-folder called Databases.
| | 01:44 | And yup, that's kind of a long
path, but that is the default.
| | 01:47 | And if you would like to put it in a
different location, feel free to choose
| | 01:51 | a different folder.
| | 01:52 | It's going to ask you what
Currency you are using, because ACT!
| | 01:56 | is multinational, and you can share
your database with folks in any other
| | 02:01 | country that have different currencies.
| | 02:03 | Now, we will want to know your name,
so it's a good idea to type one in here.
| | 02:07 | Passwords are optional.
| | 02:09 | In fact, if you are new to ACT!, it's
better to leave that Password field blank,
| | 02:13 | then to fill it in and
later forget your password.
| | 02:17 | When you are given a login screen, it
will prompt you for password, and if you
| | 02:21 | don't have one, again you leave it blank.
| | 02:23 | Now, I am going to the next
window of our Setup Assistant.
| | 02:27 | And this is where we can
pick our e-mail options.
| | 02:30 | And probably most of you are using
Microsoft Outlook, so I am going to show you
| | 02:35 | the Microsoft Outlook option.
| | 02:36 | So I am giving it a check and clicking Next.
| | 02:40 | And the first thing that ACT! is
going to want to do is make sure that
| | 02:46 | my ACT! database is accessible through Outlook.
| | 02:49 | So I am going to click the
Add button, and like magic
| | 02:52 | ACT! has already been able to
read my current database.
| | 02:57 | It knows I am in ACT2010 database, and that
my name is Chris Huffman. How smart is that!
| | 03:01 | So I click OK, and then I click Next.
| | 03:05 | Now, this window asks what
e-mail editor I would like to use.
| | 03:09 | Again, most of us use Outlook.
| | 03:11 | We could also use the ACT! E-mail Editor if we wanted
to, but since we are already familiar with Outlook,
| | 03:16 | probably a better choice.
| | 03:18 | This means that when I click on
an e-mail address in ACT!, lo and
| | 03:22 | behold, Outlook will open.
| | 03:24 | Now, I am going to click Next.
| | 03:26 | When we create an e-mail that we start
in ACT!, even though it's using Outlook,
| | 03:31 | we can create a History, and
here are our History options.
| | 03:35 | We can create a History that's going to
have the subject and message of our e-mail.
| | 03:41 | We can opt to do nothing.
| | 03:42 | We can opt to have the e-mail subject only.
| | 03:46 | Or we can opt to actually have a little
file mail as an attachment of each e-mail.
| | 03:52 | Now, that's not a great
choice to use all the time.
| | 03:55 | And these choices, by the
way, are default choices.
| | 03:58 | So as you go in and create your e-mail,
you can flip between one and the other.
| | 04:02 | So normally I have mine set to E-mail
subject and message, but occasionally I
| | 04:08 | will flip this over to None, so I don't
record a history, or just E-mail subject
| | 04:13 | only, if I don't really need to
see the whole body of the e-mail.
| | 04:16 | So I am going to choose the recommended choice,
E-mail subject and message, and click Next.
| | 04:22 | Now, there is a lot of cool tricks that ACT!
| | 04:25 | and Outlook perform together.
| | 04:27 | In this case if I have a history of an
incoming e-mail, I can have that recorded to ACT! as well.
| | 04:35 | And again, I have those same choices
that I had before, to record either the
| | 04:39 | subject only, or the subject as an attachment.
| | 04:42 | So I am going to choose subject and
message, which is the recommended choice.
| | 04:47 | I also have a Quick Attach feature,
which means when a new e-mail message comes in
| | 04:52 | and that contact is not in my ACT! database,
| | 04:55 | I can have a new
contact formed automatically.
| | 04:59 | I like to base it on the
From area of my e-mail massages.
| | 05:05 | We can send e-mail invitations using ACT!.
| | 05:08 | So those folks out there
who might not be using ACT!
| | 05:11 | can receive an Outlook invitation
that they are used to receiving.
| | 05:15 | We can also create an ACT! activity
| | 05:18 | when you accept an Outlook
invitation, so that another activity will be
| | 05:23 | scheduled automatically in your ACT! database.
| | 05:26 | Now, we could also
integrate our Calendar with ACT!.
| | 05:31 | So if you have been using Outlook and
have all your activities already scheduled
| | 05:35 | in there, you can bring them
automatically over to ACT!.
| | 05:38 | I click the Next button, and our last step
in the Setup Wizard is our word processor.
| | 05:45 | Now, we have two choices here. We can
either use Microsoft Word or we can use
| | 05:50 | the ACT! word processor.
| | 05:52 | Again, most of us are already
familiar with Word, so when we create our
| | 05:56 | templates and our other documents
in ACT!, we will probably want to use
| | 06:01 | Microsoft Word, because after all that's
the word processor that we are familiar with.
| | 06:06 | So I click Next, and we are finished with
the Setup Wizard, and so I can click Finish.
| | 06:12 | You can return to the
Setup Wizard anytime you want.
| | 06:14 | It's a great way to double check your
Microsoft Office settings or to create
| | 06:19 | a new database.
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2. Putting Your Database to WorkAdding new contact records| 00:00 | Adding a new contact to an ACT!
database is a simple process.
| | 00:03 | The rule of thumb is to add as
much information as possible.
| | 00:06 | And to make sure that the information
is added in a consistent manner now so
| | 00:10 | that you'll be able to
find the record again later.
| | 00:13 | Well, there is a number of ways
that we can add a new contact.
| | 00:18 | We can hit the New button on the big
easy buttons, or we can go up to Contacts
| | 00:23 | and click on New Contact or if you are a
keyboarder we can even click the Insert
| | 00:28 | button on our keyboard.
| | 00:30 | Anyway that you choose- now in this
case I am just going click on New Contact-
| | 00:34 | you're going to notice
there are two things happening.
| | 00:37 | One our record count went from 199 to
200, and two, we have a brand-new blank
| | 00:44 | empty Contact record.
| | 00:46 | That's important to realize that every
time you hit that New Contact button
| | 00:51 | ACT! will do exactly as you asked it to
and create a new contact record. Because
| | 00:55 | if we continue to click that New
button, we are going to continue to get a
| | 01:00 | lot of blank records.
| | 01:01 | And at the end of the day, or the end of
the month, you might find yourself with
| | 01:04 | a lots of blanks, and not
quite sure how you got to them.
| | 01:08 | If you do hit that New button by
accident, just simply go up to Contacts,
| | 01:13 | hit Delete Contacts, and again hit the
Delete Contact button, and then finally click
| | 01:19 | Yes to get rid of that extra
contact so we are back to 200 contacts.
| | 01:23 | It's pretty easy to add new contacts to ACT!.
| | 01:26 | I am going to go show you a couple of tricks
that might make your life a little bit easier.
| | 01:30 | We are going to start with a contact
name and I am going to go create somebody
| | 01:33 | by the name of Mary Smith. Seems easy.
| | 01:36 | I am going to go hit my Tab button.
| | 01:38 | Wait a minute. I didn't type
anything in that Salutation field.
| | 01:41 | That appeared magically, and
Salutation by the way is the field that appears
| | 01:47 | after the word Dear in a letter.
| | 01:49 | So if I were to write a letter
to marry it would say Dear Mary.
| | 01:53 | And of course you can
always change that if you want,
| | 01:56 | if you are little bit
formal, and type in Ms. Smith.
| | 01:59 | Now let's get an idea of some other names.
| | 02:01 | I am going to make this a little bit different.
| | 02:05 | Click up here and I am going to go
change Mary's name to Mary Elen. Now ACT!
| | 02:11 | may get a little confused, and
when I move down to the next field,
| | 02:14 | this Contact Name window
opens up, and ACT! says,
| | 02:17 | 'wait a minute, I didn't quite get that.'
| | 02:19 | Okay, the first name is Mary, does that
mean the middle name is Elen? I said no.
| | 02:25 | I am going to hit this
dropdown for the First name.
| | 02:28 | I am going to go hit the dropdown for the
Middle name and choose the blank and click OK.
| | 02:35 | And again the contact name looks as
same up here, but you can see ACT!
| | 02:40 | recognized a different Salutation.
| | 02:42 | Now sometimes I might have a hispanic
Mary, and her name might be Mary Elen
| | 02:48 | Garcia Smith. Same rule applies.
| | 02:52 | When I go down to the next field this
contact window will open up, and I have
| | 02:56 | to kind of train ACT! in what I want.
| | 02:58 | So I am going to say
Mary Elen is the First name.
| | 03:01 | The middle name again if I scroll up to the
top is blank and the last name is Garcia Smith.
| | 03:09 | This is important when you are
alphabetizing names, because now Mary will appear
| | 03:14 | with the Gs as opposed to the Ss.
| | 03:18 | Now sometimes you want to have your
prefixes in here. And feel free.
| | 03:23 | ACT! is very smart.
| | 03:24 | So you can type in a Dr. or Mrs. or Ms.
| | 03:28 | and ACT! knows most people do not name
their kids with the name like Dr. or Mr. or Ms.
| | 03:34 | So they will not try to add
that into the basic name fields.
| | 03:39 | Now sometimes people like to
use commas, and that's fine.
| | 03:44 | So I might type in something
like Smith, Mary. And again ACT!
| | 03:50 | is so smart that it knows that Smith is
the last name and Mary is the first name.
| | 03:56 | However, normally you want to avoid commas.
| | 04:00 | For example if Mary's name was
Mary Smith and she happened to have a
| | 04:06 | title after her,
| | 04:09 | ACT! might not know what that title means
and again it's going pop-open saying wait,
| | 04:14 | it's her last name. And it just got a little
bit confused there and I would have to go back
| | 04:18 | and say well, the first
name is Mary, there is no middle name.
| | 04:21 | The last name is Smith,
and that ACLU is a title.
| | 04:26 | One other situation that might
occur is when I only have one name.
| | 04:31 | For example maybe all I have is Mary.
| | 04:34 | Now you and I both know that Mary is
her first name, but unfortunately ACT!
| | 04:38 | isn't quite as smart as we are in this case.
| | 04:40 | So when I go back to those three
dots, which is called an ellipses.
| | 04:43 | When I click on that, again I can force
the name window to open and you see ACT!
| | 04:49 | assumed that Mary was the
last name. Bad assumption!
| | 04:52 | So I am going to go hit this
dropdown and change Mary to the first name,
| | 04:57 | and then change the last name to a blank, so
that I have corrected ACT!'s silly mistake.
| | 05:04 | Most of the fields are
pretty self-explanatory,
| | 05:08 | but ACT! tries to help you along the way.
| | 05:10 | For example, with the phone numbers.
| | 05:12 | I am going to go click here on the Phone
field and type in a number and although
| | 05:17 | you didn't see my fingers on my keyboard,
I can assure you that I do not put in
| | 05:21 | those parenthesis or that dash.
| | 05:23 | ACT! did it for me automatically.
| | 05:25 | So that the phone numbers will be
entered in a consistent, easy to read manner.
| | 05:31 | Now some other ways ACT! that helps us.
| | 05:32 | When I determine what city
Mary is in, I can type in the first couple
| | 05:37 | of letters, and ACT!
should auto-complete the city.
| | 05:40 | For example, if Mary is in Boston,
I might type in a B and get Bakersfield, and
| | 05:45 | then O and get Boise, and
finally an S and get to Boston.
| | 05:49 | Now I confess to you that I have a
little trouble with those M states, and
| | 05:54 | ACT! has provided me with a nice set
of training wheels for the states.
| | 05:58 | So I am going to type in
an m and gee, I can't remember.
| | 05:59 | It's Massachusetts. Is that MA or MS?
| | 06:04 | I get little confused, so when I
hit this dropdown you could see my
| | 06:08 | training wheels here.
| | 06:09 | And I can see that oh
Massachusetts is the MA and Maryland is the MD.
| | 06:14 | Okay, I want this to be Massachusetts.
| | 06:16 | Just wants to ensure that I always
get those right initials for the state.
| | 06:20 | Now there are a couple other
fields I want to point out to you.
| | 06:23 | One of them is the ID/Status.
| | 06:26 | This is the ID/Status.
| | 06:28 | The ID/Status is the
category that a contact belongs to.
| | 06:31 | I am going to go hit the dropdown
field and you notice that Mary might be a
| | 06:36 | Consultant or a Contractor.
| | 06:38 | She might even be a friend.
| | 06:39 | So I can pick the categories that she
belongs to. In this case I am going to
| | 06:44 | say that Mary is both a Friend and a
Customer, and this way I have categorized Mary,
| | 06:51 | so then I will be able to find her,
and all my other customers with one easy click.
| | 06:57 | We also have this Referred By field and
this is a great field if you are paying
| | 07:01 | for any type of marketing efforts.
| | 07:03 | For example if you are paying for Yellow
Page advertisement, you'll want to know
| | 07:07 | how many customers you are
actually getting from that ad.
| | 07:11 | So I highly recommend finding
out where a customer comes from.
| | 07:15 | So in this case I will say Phone Book,
because there is a great report that
| | 07:19 | comes out of the ACT! box that will show
all these source of referrals together.
| | 07:26 | We also have a number of system fields.
| | 07:29 | You know these grey fields down here.
| | 07:31 | Now ACT! keeps its eye open
and it knows what you are doing.
| | 07:33 | It knows if you've been naughty,
it knows if you have been nice.
| | 07:36 | And I go over here for
example to the Contact Access tab.
| | 07:41 | You notice that it has put in the
Create Date and the Record Creator field, so
| | 07:47 | that I know who has added this
contact and on what date they have done it.
| | 07:52 | As you continue to add new records to
your database, you want to strive to make
| | 07:55 | your entries as consistent as possible.
| | 07:58 | After all no one wants to add hundreds
of contacts and find out later that they
| | 08:02 | were all added incorrectly.
| | 08:04 | With a little bit of effort you'll be
able to achieve the maximum effectiveness
| | 08:08 | with your database down the road.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying an existing ACT! record| 00:00 | A database is a true work in progress.
| | 00:02 | As you continue to build it you'll
discover more-and-more ways to use the data.
| | 00:06 | Perhaps you start adding a certain type
of contact that requires new category,
| | 00:11 | or maybe you start collecting email
addresses and need to add them to your
| | 00:14 | existing contact records.
| | 00:15 | You might even find that some of
your information is just plain old, or
| | 00:19 | incorrect, and you need to remove the
contact entirely from your database. Not a problem!
| | 00:24 | First thing that we are going to do
is change some contact information.
| | 00:28 | So we'll need to find a contact.
| | 00:29 | I am going to do a Lookup on
my old friend Nick Charles.
| | 00:34 | So we'll lookup by Last Name
and type in Charles and click OK.
| | 00:39 | And I have made a little mistake.
He doesn't live on a street; he is at an avenue.
| | 00:43 | So I am going to go click at the end of
Street, backspace over it and just make my change.
| | 00:50 | You can do that with any of the ACT! fields.
| | 00:53 | However the e-mail is little bit
trickier, because if I were to click on the
| | 00:57 | e-mail address, Outlook would open
and I would be ready to send an email.
| | 01:02 | But that's not what I want to do.
| | 01:03 | So what I am going to do instead is
do a right-click on his email address
| | 01:08 | and choose Edit E-mail.
| | 01:11 | At this point I can click anywhere on
his e-mail address and make my change.
| | 01:17 | One of the changes I like to make
is to customize my dropdown list.
| | 01:21 | If you are the administrator, you can
change the permissions so that your users
| | 01:26 | cannot change the dropdown list.
| | 01:28 | But out of the box you'll be able to make
changes to any dropdown list that you want.
| | 01:33 | So if we are going to go to ID/Status, hit
the dropdown, and choose Edit List Values.
| | 01:38 | Now the first thing I might want to
do is to delete those items that don't
| | 01:44 | pertain to my business.
| | 01:45 | And I could do that by
clicking them, and clicking Delete.
| | 01:50 | If I want to get rid of several
categories at a time and the little trick is to
| | 01:54 | hold down the Ctrl key on my keyboard,
select the categories that I want to get
| | 01:59 | rid off and click Delete to
get rid of them all in one shot.
| | 02:04 | Now another thing that I might
want to do is change an existing item.
| | 02:09 | So I can do that very
simply by double-clicking it.
| | 02:13 | And treat it just like I
would any other word processor.
| | 02:16 | So in this case I am going to Backspace
over Friend, and change it to Personal.
| | 02:23 | One other change that I can
make is to add new categories.
| | 02:27 | I keep track of all my
tennis buddies in my ACT! database,
| | 02:30 | so I am going to go
click on Add and type in Tennis Buddy.
| | 02:37 | When I am done with all the
changes I click OK to save them.
| | 02:40 | One of the other changes I like to
make to a contact record is to add
| | 02:46 | secondary contacts.
| | 02:47 | Now a secondary contact is not anyone
that you would send a mail-merge to.
| | 02:52 | But they are people you need to have
the name of at the touch of a button.
| | 02:56 | For example, I call Nick on a regular
basis and I could never remember the name
| | 03:01 | of that sweet administrative
assistant who answers the phone every time.
| | 03:04 | So I am going to put it
in here, so I won't forget.
| | 03:07 | So I go to the Secondary Contacts tab,
and click on New Secondary Contact.
| | 03:13 | The only information I have
to fill in is the contact name.
| | 03:17 | So I am going to go type in her name,
Suzy, so that I don't forget it the
| | 03:22 | next time I call Nick.
| | 03:23 | I am going to go put in her title, and click OK.
| | 03:29 | Now the next time I call Nick, Suzy's name
will be right there at the tip of my tongue.
| | 03:35 | In addition, should Suzy get promoted
to a higher position I can click the
| | 03:39 | Promote button and Suzy will now
become her very own contact and no longer be a
| | 03:45 | secondary contact next to Nick's name.
| | 03:48 | Once in a while we need to delete a
contact and my rule of thumb is to keep
| | 03:53 | contacts in my database as long as necessary.
| | 03:57 | It's better to keep them
than to delete them by mistake.
| | 04:00 | But if I am absolutely certain that
Nick Charles and I will no longer be doing
| | 04:04 | business together, I can go up to
Contacts and click on Delete Contact.
| | 04:09 | ACT! will ask me, are you really
sure you want to delete that contact?
| | 04:15 | And I can click on Delete Contact.
| | 04:18 | ACT! is so determined to prevent
me from making a serious mistake,
| | 04:22 | it's going to say 'okay, let's get this straight.'
| | 04:24 | 'You definitely want to delete Nick
Charles from Continental Detective Agency?'
| | 04:29 | If I click Yes, as the note says, the
action cannot be undone and Nick Charles
| | 04:35 | will be permanently removed from my database.
| | 04:39 | Now one word of caution. Be very
careful when you have created a lookup and you
| | 04:44 | go to delete a contact.
| | 04:45 | I am going to create lookup on my all prospects.
| | 04:48 | So I am going to type
Prospect into the box and click OK.
| | 04:55 | And I have got my 100 prospects.
| | 04:57 | Now I want to delete Nick Charles.
| | 05:00 | So again, I go up to
Contacts and I go to Delete Contact.
| | 05:05 | This time I am given the option,
do I want to delete the lookup?
| | 05:08 | Well, if I accidentally hit that,
| | 05:11 | ACT! is going to ask me, what? Are you crazy?
| | 05:13 | Do you really want to delete
100 contacts in this lookup?
| | 05:18 | And again, I better hit No,
or I might have a big problem.
| | 05:22 | Contacts change and you have to
change your database accordingly.
| | 05:26 | In the old days you grabbed that bottle of
White Out and started attacking your Rolodex cards.
| | 05:31 | With ACT!, the procedure is just
as easy, but a whole lot neater.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking up contact information| 00:00 | In ACT! things are looking up. Literally.
| | 00:03 | You might already be familiar with the
term query, which is computer-ese for
| | 00:07 | finding information.
| | 00:09 | In ACT! it's called a Lookup, as in
I need to lookup that guy's phone number.
| | 00:13 | There is a number of ways to create a
lookup, and we are going to start by
| | 00:15 | going to the Lookup menu.
| | 00:17 | So I click on Lookup, you notice
at the top I have couple of choices.
| | 00:21 | I can go to My Record, which would take
me to my own record, if I only needed to
| | 00:26 | change my personal information.
| | 00:28 | We are going to start down here at this
next section, which is the most common
| | 00:33 | lookups that you'll probably perform in ACT!.
| | 00:36 | We can lookup by a Contact Name, or by a
Company, or by a First Name or even a Last Name.
| | 00:42 | Now what I am going to do is lookup by ID/
Status because I want to find all my customers.
| | 00:49 | So I am going to click on ID/Status,
fill in Customer in the box and click OK.
| | 00:58 | I am now looking at 64 of my
customers as opposed to my entire database.
| | 01:05 | Now sometimes I might want to
narrow a lookup a little bit.
| | 01:10 | I might not want to see all my customers.
| | 01:12 | I might want to just focus
in on my customers in Arizona.
| | 01:16 | So this time I am going to go to
Lookup and I am going to select State.
| | 01:22 | And I want to make sure that we are
going to see all the Lookup options.
| | 01:27 | So if we are not seeing them, hit these
double down pointing arrows so that
| | 01:32 | we are seeing a few more options.
| | 01:33 | So again, I am going to look for
everybody in the state of Arizona, but
| | 01:40 | this time I am not just going to
click OK because that would replace my lookup.
| | 01:44 | Instead of seeing the 64 customers,
I would be seeing just those folks in Arizona.
| | 01:50 | But I want to see the
customers that are in Arizona.
| | 01:53 | So I am going to hit this dropdown and
choose Narrow Lookup, and then click OK.
| | 02:00 | Now I am seeing only those nine folks that
are both customers and located in Arizona.
| | 02:08 | And just in case you don't trust me,
I am going to go back to the Detail View and
| | 02:11 | you'll notice every one of them is a
customer with the ID/Status Customer and
| | 02:17 | every one is in the state of Arizona.
| | 02:23 | Now sometimes I want to go back to my
previous lookup, and I could go back
| | 02:27 | to lookup customers.
| | 02:29 | If I go back to Lookup you notice that
we have Previous and I am going to go
| | 02:35 | back to the ID/Status Customer.
| | 02:38 | This helps if you are ever
interrupted in the middle of a Lookup.
| | 02:41 | This time we are going to do
something little bit different.
| | 02:43 | I want to find all my customers
and add them to all my prospects.
| | 02:49 | So I am going to click on Lookup and
again I am going to go to ID/Status
| | 02:52 | and type in Prospect.
| | 02:55 | This time for the current lookup
I am going to add to the Lookup.
| | 03:01 | So I'll be looking at my 64 customers
plus all the prospects in my database.
| | 03:07 | So I click on OK and I am seeing 164 people
that are all either prospects or customers.
| | 03:16 | Now if I get scared and I think I have
lost some contacts, another lookup that I
| | 03:20 | can do is to go Lookup and go to All
Contacts. That will restore my database so
| | 03:26 | that I see all contact records.
| | 03:28 | Now sometimes you are looking for a
field that is not in your Lookup menu.
| | 03:34 | For example, go back here to the Detail View.
| | 03:38 | I might want to be seeing all my
contacts referred to me from a web search.
| | 03:43 | So I might go up here to Lookup and
I have the choice of Other Fields.
| | 03:50 | Unfortunately, when I try to find that
Referred By field, I do something called
| | 03:56 | dropdown slip and slide. I might have a
little trouble finding it, ah, there he is.
| | 04:01 | But I've got an easier way to do this.
| | 04:04 | Instead, you might go to the field, do a
right-click, and choose Lookup Referred By.
| | 04:13 | And you notice that
field comes up automatically.
| | 04:17 | Now I can type in my Search Engine and
click OK and there is the five people
| | 04:24 | who've all come into my
database from the search engines.
| | 04:27 | And again, you can create a query on
virtually any field in your database with
| | 04:34 | a simple right-click.
| | 04:35 | Once you have mastered the Lookup you want
to use this as a stepping stone to other ACT! functions.
| | 04:41 | For example you probably wouldn't want to send
the mail out to every contact in your database.
| | 04:46 | Instead you'll create a lookup of your
prospects and then create a mail-merge.
| | 04:50 | Likewise, for your reports. For example
before running the source of referrals report,
| | 04:54 | you want to create a
lookup for only those contacts that have
| | 04:57 | information in the Referred By field.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using additional contact lookups| 00:00 | On the surface ACT! seems like
a very simple program, and it is.
| | 00:04 | However, if you start to use ACT! more-and-more,
| | 00:07 | you'll want to continue
to expand on your knowledge.
| | 00:09 | One of the areas you'll want to
experiment with are the lookups.
| | 00:12 | We've got a couple of unique lookups.
| | 00:16 | For example, let's say we
want to do an email blast.
| | 00:18 | Well, the one thing we need
is to have an e-mail address.
| | 00:21 | We might want to find all those
contacts who are missing an email address.
| | 00:25 | So what I am going to do in this case
is either a right-click on the E-mail
| | 00:29 | address and choose Lookup E-mail, or
alternatively I could go to my Lookup menu
| | 00:36 | and choose E-mail Address.
| | 00:38 | This time what I am going to do is change
that Starts With item to Does Not Contain Data.
| | 00:46 | What this will do is give me a lookup of all
the records that are missing E-mail addresses.
| | 00:52 | So I am going to click on OK and yikes,
94 people on my database are missing e-mail.
| | 00:58 | And again, I can double-check that by
scrolling to my database and you'll
| | 01:03 | notice all of these contacts
are missing e-mail addresses.
| | 01:07 | Now if I am ready to send my E-blast I
might want to do an opposite lookup and
| | 01:12 | just find those contacts
that have e-mail addresses.
| | 01:16 | So this time I am going to go up to
Lookup and choose E-mail, or I can do a
| | 01:21 | right-click on the e-mail address.
| | 01:24 | This time I am going to look for all
those items that contain data, and click
| | 01:31 | OK, and here is the 105 folks
that do have e-mail addresses.
| | 01:37 | Again, I can test that by looking in
everyone and they should all have something
| | 01:43 | in that e-mail address.
| | 01:44 | Now one of the things I love about ACT!
| | 01:47 | are these system fields.
| | 01:49 | These system fields fill in
automatically as my contact information changes.
| | 01:54 | I am particularly interested in this Edit Date.
| | 01:57 | So I am going to do a lookup on the Edit Date.
| | 02:00 | So I can again either to do a right-
click on the Edit Date or do a lookup on
| | 02:04 | the other field and find that Edit Date.
| | 02:06 | I am going to choose Edit Date and I am
going to look for any edit date that is
| | 02:14 | Older Than and I am going to fill
in 365 days and click OK. And ACT!
| | 02:23 | very nicely presented me with the
two people in my database who I haven't
| | 02:26 | reached in the last year.
| | 02:28 | Now we can do a number of lookups.
| | 02:31 | If I go to the Lookup menu you can see
that I can do lookups on Group fields, or
| | 02:35 | Company fields, or even Opportunity fields.
| | 02:38 | So in this case I am going to look for
everybody who has purchased or thought
| | 02:43 | about purchasing a specific product.
| | 02:45 | So I am going to go down here to
Product and I am going to type in service
| | 02:51 | contract and click OK.
| | 02:53 | I am now seeing 179 opportunities that
all included a service product and just
| | 03:02 | in case you are lost you could tell
by looking at the Navbar that I am now
| | 03:06 | looking at the
Opportunities and I am in the List View.
| | 03:10 | Now I am going to flip back over to the
Contacts and show you another lookup,
| | 03:16 | which is one of my favorites.
| | 03:17 | It's called the Lookup by Example.
| | 03:19 | Let's say for example that I want to
find all clients in the State of Arizona.
| | 03:25 | I am going to go up to Lookup and
this time I am going to choose By Example.
| | 03:29 | And one thing that's a little annoying is
there is no Maximize button on this window.
| | 03:34 | So I've to do it the old-fashioned way,
and put my mouse on the edges and drag
| | 03:39 | it out a little bit, so I can see all my fields.
| | 03:41 | And this might look slightly familiar,
because this looks exactly like my
| | 03:46 | basic layout screen.
| | 03:47 | Now what I am going to do is look for
all my Customers in the State of Arizona,
| | 03:56 | and click on Search and then click OK,
and I have now found the nine people
| | 04:02 | that are all customers located in Arizona.
| | 04:05 | And again, I could scroll through here
and see that there are all in Arizona.
| | 04:08 | They all include customer.
| | 04:11 | One final lookup is a lookup I
like to call the Senior Moment Lookup.
| | 04:16 | Let's say for example you are speaking
with someone and you are talking to them
| | 04:20 | about the Chamber of Commerce.
| | 04:22 | Now Monday comes along and you can't
remember the name, in fact you can't
| | 04:26 | remember the company name, but all
you can remember is that one piece of
| | 04:30 | information- Chamber of Commerce.
| | 04:33 | So what we can do is go up to
Lookup, and we can do a Keyword Search.
| | 04:37 | A Keyword Search will
allow us to scour our database.
| | 04:43 | And we could scour through the
Activities, Opportunities, History, Notes,
| | 04:48 | Fields, or even the Relationships tab.
| | 04:50 | So I am going to search
for chamber of commerce.
| | 04:56 | Now I am reasonably sure that this is
just in the Notes, and if I want to speed
| | 04:59 | this lookup up a little bit, I could
remove the checkmarks from the other areas.
| | 05:04 | And I am going to click Find Now.
| | 05:07 | ACT! is going to scour through my database
looking for Chamber of Commerce, and
| | 05:12 | it's found one record.
| | 05:14 | So I am going to click on Create Lookup,
and sure enough if I go over to the Notes,
| | 05:19 | yup, that's a person I was
talking to about the Chamber of Commerce.
| | 05:24 | Remember lookups are the stepping
stone to other ACT! activities.
| | 05:28 | So you want to experiment with lookups until
you find the ones that work the best for you.
| | 05:33 | You might create lookups and system
dates to make sure that you are staying in
| | 05:36 | touch with your contacts, and use a
lookup by example to help target specific
| | 05:41 | portions of your database
for your marketing efforts.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Using ACT! to Improve Your MemoryCreating an ACT! note| 00:00 | We all like to feel that people
are really listening to us and
| | 00:03 | understanding their needs.
| | 00:04 | Nowhere is this more
critical than in the business world.
| | 00:07 | By taking notes in the conversations
you have with your contacts and adding
| | 00:10 | into ACT!, you'll be able to remember
what everyone said to you, even if you
| | 00:15 | have a lousy memory.
| | 00:16 | Okay, each contact record
has its own list of notes.
| | 00:20 | There is a couple of things we can do
with the notes and I find the notes by
| | 00:24 | clicking on the Notes tab.
| | 00:26 | We can sort the notes by date, by
clicking on Date so that I see the oldest
| | 00:31 | notes first or I can sort it
so I see the newest notes first.
| | 00:35 | If I need to, I can expand these
columns by putting my mouse on the dividing
| | 00:41 | line and making it a little bit bigger
and if a note is too big for me to see in
| | 00:46 | the note area, when I click on it, I am
going to see the entirety of the note in
| | 00:51 | the right-hand preview pane.
| | 00:52 | So we are going to start by adding a
new note for our friend Lance Parker.
| | 00:57 | So I am going to go to the last contact of
my database and here we have Lance Parker.
| | 01:02 | To create a new note, I click the
Insert New Note icon, which you'll notice
| | 01:08 | right here on the top of the Note section.
| | 01:10 | So I give it a click and the
Notes area opens up. Now ACT!
| | 01:14 | makes this very easy for me.
| | 01:16 | It's already associated this
note with the contact, Lance Parker.
| | 01:21 | It's given a date and the time stamp.
| | 01:24 | So all I have to do is fill in the note.
| | 01:27 | Now the really important thing about
notes is too use them to jog your memory.
| | 01:33 | So I am going to put in a
few details about Lance.
| | 01:36 | For example, Lance knows that
certain products are back-ordered.
| | 01:41 | But he wants to make it abundantly
clear that he only wants to order in the
| | 01:48 | white product when it comes in.
| | 01:50 | Now what's nice about the note, when
I click OK, it's that any user in my
| | 01:56 | organization will know at a
glance who put in that note.
| | 02:00 | In this case, you'll see that this
note was put in by Chris Huffman and
| | 02:04 | again, if a different person had
put in a note, their name would
| | 02:07 | automatically appear there.
| | 02:08 | Now the nice thing about notes is
that we can change them at will.
| | 02:13 | So I am going to open up Lance's
note by giving it a double-click.
| | 02:17 | And at this point, I can change the note
if I want and some of the ways that I'd
| | 02:21 | like to change a note or to create a
note initially is by adding certain
| | 02:26 | attributes to the fonts.
| | 02:27 | So in this case, I want to make it
abundantly clear that Lance is only
| | 02:31 | interested in the white product, so
I am going to highlight that word white.
| | 02:35 | First thing I am going to do is change
it to red, so that it really stands out.
| | 02:41 | In addition to that, I am going to bold
the word and underline it and for good
| | 02:45 | measure, I am even going to make the
font quite a bit bigger and I click OK.
| | 02:51 | Now anybody that looks at that note
will know that Lance is indeed only
| | 02:55 | interested in the white product.
| | 02:58 | It makes it very easy to be able to go back
and see exactly what Lance is interested in.
| | 03:04 | I can also delete a note by
highlighting it, right-clicking on the note and
| | 03:09 | clicking on Delete selected.
| | 03:12 | Now if you're in the administrator of
the database and you want to make sure
| | 03:15 | that other people in your organization can't
go back and change a note, that's easy to do.
| | 03:21 | We take a trip up to the Tools menu,
and I click it and I choose Preferences
| | 03:28 | and at the Preferences, I remove this
checkmark that says Allow Notes Editing, and click OK.
| | 03:36 | Now that means in the future, if
anybody tries to edit the note, they give it a
| | 03:40 | double-click, they can see the
note but they can't change it.
| | 03:44 | In the same way, they won't
be able to delete that note.
| | 03:47 | With so many things going on in your
life, it's hard to keep track of them all.
| | 03:52 | If your desk looks like a disaster
area and you find yourself misplacing an
| | 03:55 | important information, you
want to start using ACT! Notes.
| | 03:59 | Using ACT! Notes, you'll be able to find
important information in a heartbeat.
| | 04:03 | You'll also look like a hero to your
customers and prospects where you can
| | 04:07 | parrot back their important information.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a history| 00:00 | ACT! automatically creates
histories of various ACT! events
| | 00:03 | and logs them onto the History tab.
| | 00:06 | The nice thing about histories is that
they can easily be counted and tracked.
| | 00:10 | For example, the history summary class
of report will count all the calls and
| | 00:14 | meetings that you've had
with a specific contact.
| | 00:17 | Okay, we take a look at the histories
by clicking on the History tab,
| | 00:22 | not surprising, and we are going to start
by looking at the Histories that are
| | 00:25 | created on our own individual record.
| | 00:28 | So in this case, we are Chris
Huffman and I want to look at some of the
| | 00:32 | histories that I might find on my own tab.
| | 00:34 | So I am going to sort these by
result by clicking on the Result column.
| | 00:40 | Let's take a look at some of the
histories that have been created on my record.
| | 00:45 | First off, we're seeing calls that were
completed and you'll notice any of the
| | 00:48 | calls that were completed,
we automatically have a date, a time, the fact that
| | 00:53 | the call was completed, and a little
bit of information about the call as well
| | 00:59 | as the fact that I made the call.
| | 01:01 | Now let's scroll down a little bit.
Then another interesting thing we see on
| | 01:06 | our own records is the fact that any
contact that we delete will automatically
| | 01:11 | have a history created.
| | 01:13 | So in this case, I'm going to see that
I deleted a contact on April 24th.
| | 01:19 | That was at 5:35 AM and I know exactly
the name of that contact that was deleted.
| | 01:26 | And if there is other members of your
organization using ACT!, any contacts
| | 01:29 | that they delete will also have a history
automatically appear on their own History tab.
| | 01:35 | Now when we look at our other contacts,
we'll see slightly different types of
| | 01:41 | histories that have been recorded.
| | 01:44 | So I am going to take a trip over to
Lance Parker's contact record and see the
| | 01:49 | type of histories that are recorded for him.
| | 01:52 | So again, I am going to sort this by Result.
| | 01:55 | Again we have a history if anytime a
call was completed to Lance, along with the
| | 02:01 | date and time and even
who created that phone call.
| | 02:06 | I am also seeing any emails that were
sent to Lance, and again the important
| | 02:10 | part is not only I am seeing the body
of the email but I'm also able to see who
| | 02:16 | actually sent that email.
| | 02:18 | If I scroll down here a bit,
| | 02:21 | I can also see opportunity information.
| | 02:24 | So anytime I create a new opportunity,
it would be recorded forever on the
| | 02:29 | History tab of Lance's record.
| | 02:32 | In addition, as their opportunity
progresses through the sales pipeline, I'll be
| | 02:37 | able to see exactly when
those progressions occurred.
| | 02:40 | Now one of the nice things about ACT!
| | 02:42 | is the ability to tie field
information into a history.
| | 02:47 | Let's scroll back up at the top here.
| | 02:49 | I am going to sort this by Date.
| | 02:55 | What we can do is make a change to an
ID/Status field, which is one of those
| | 02:59 | fields that automatically creates history.
| | 03:02 | And then I am going to decide, you know,
Lance is such a great customer, he is
| | 03:06 | more than a customer. He is also a friend.
| | 03:08 | I am going to hit the dropdown and
add Friend to his ID/Status field.
| | 03:14 | Now watch what happens when I
go back and look in my History.
| | 03:19 | I see a history that the field was
changed from Customer to Customer and Friend
| | 03:25 | and it gives me the date
and the time of that change.
| | 03:29 | Sometimes, you'll want to manually create
histories and that's an easy thing to do as well.
| | 03:35 | For example, I might want a history
of every time that Lance called me,
| | 03:41 | not just when I called him.
| | 03:42 | Well, I can do that by going up to the
Contact screen and clicking New History
| | 03:48 | or alternatively, I can hold down the
Ctrl key on my keyboard and hit the letter H.
| | 03:54 | So I click on New History and the
History window comes up and I can record any
| | 04:00 | type of history I want and again,
it's automatically going to appear with the
| | 04:05 | correct date and time and my name.
| | 04:08 | So I might say all right, I received a
follow-up call from Lance. If I want
| | 04:14 | I could enter in more details down here
and I can say, well, he was very pleased
| | 04:22 | with the white product that he received.
| | 04:24 | Then I click OK and again that history
is going to appear with all the other
| | 04:33 | histories that I've created.
| | 04:37 | Now, lot of people say that you can't
change history, with ACT! that's not true.
| | 04:42 | We can change a history by selecting
it, doing a right-click, and selecting
| | 04:47 | Delete Selected or we can give it a
double-click and we can change the history.
| | 04:52 | Now if you are at the administrator of
the database and you want to make sure
| | 04:57 | that no one in your organization can go
back and change histories, we'll take a
| | 05:01 | trip up to the Tools menu, give it a
click, go down to the Preferences and
| | 05:08 | remove the checkmark next to the
Allow History Editing Option and Click OK.
| | 05:15 | At that point, if I try to edit that
history or remove it, I won't be able to.
| | 05:21 | Kind of like a little safety mechanism.
| | 05:24 | ACT's ability to automatically create
histories is a great way to log important
| | 05:28 | information pertaining to a contact.
Because histories are automatically stamped
| | 05:33 | with the time, date and creator,
| | 05:35 | it's easy to see a chronology of
all your interactions with a contact.
| | 05:40 | Once you start relying on ACT!
| | 05:42 | rather than on your memory for the
little things, you'll have more time to focus
| | 05:46 | on the bigger picture.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scheduling an activity| 00:00 | I like to think of an ACT! Calendar
| | 00:02 | as a more traditional calendar
on steroids. In most programs,
| | 00:05 | you schedule an appointment.
| | 00:07 | In ACT! your appointment and other activities
are actually linked to specific content
| | 00:12 | records that mean you'll be able to
both view a traditional calendar to see all
| | 00:16 | your activities or look at a specific
contact to see only the activities that
| | 00:22 | pertain to that contact.
| | 00:24 | The first thing we need when
scheduling an activity is a Contact.
| | 00:27 | So I am going to go to my old friend
Lance Parker who I know is the last
| | 00:31 | contact in by database.
| | 00:33 | Typically I am talking to Lance and I
need to schedule a follow-up. Now ACT!
| | 00:37 | makes this very easy to schedule calls,
meetings and to-dos because we see them
| | 00:41 | right up there on the big easy buttons.
| | 00:43 | So we are going to start with a call.
| | 00:46 | Because I am speaking with Lance and I want
to make sure that I call him back next week.
| | 00:51 | So we know the Activity Type already says Call.
| | 00:54 | Now you will also notice that the Date
and Time defaulted to right as of this moment,
| | 01:00 | but I want to call back Lance next week.
| | 01:03 | So I hit the dropdown and
change it to next Wednesday.
| | 01:08 | Now the starting time for this
phone call, we have two options.
| | 01:12 | I might say okay I am going call him
at 10 o'clock next week or alternatively,
| | 01:17 | sometimes calls don't have to
be scheduled at a specific time.
| | 01:22 | So I might hit this drop down and
click on Timeless to mean it doesn't really
| | 01:27 | matter when I call him next week,
but I got to make sure I call him.
| | 01:30 | Now the duration is kind of optional.
If you like, if it is going to be a
| | 01:35 | short phone call, you can keep it at 10
minutes or switch it over to 5 minutes.
| | 01:39 | However sometimes you have a longer call
amd of course you can make it 45 minutes.
| | 01:43 | Now, what if we wanted to schedule
called for 90 minutes? We might have to
| | 01:49 | explain to Lance, "gee, I would really
like to schedule 90 minutes with you,"
| | 01:54 | "but I am going to have to talk fast because my
software won't let me scheduled a 90 minute call."
| | 01:58 | But that's all right
because ACT! is pretty smart.
| | 02:01 | So what I can do is simply
change this 45 to 90 and ACT!
| | 02:06 | will be able to keep up with up with
that change and know exactly what I mean.
| | 02:10 | Now I have got this Send invitation e-
mail option and if I would like to send
| | 02:14 | Lance an Outlook invitation
about the call I can check that.
| | 02:18 | I also have some Regarding and this
is going remind me want the call is about.
| | 02:24 | Now ACT! creates a specific dropdown list
for each activity type. If you want to
| | 02:30 | change those out of the box activity
types you simply click the dropdown and
| | 02:35 | click on Edit List Values.
| | 02:37 | My favorite call is the follow-up.
| | 02:39 | So what I would like to do is type in
the first couple of letters and let ACT!
| | 02:44 | to the rest of the heavy lifting.
| | 02:45 | Now if I want to expand on that, I
simply click the end of follow up and explain
| | 02:50 | what this follow-up is regarding.
| | 02:55 | Optionally I can change the priority.
| | 02:58 | I have a choice of five. High,
Medium-High, Medium, Medium-Low and Low.
| | 03:02 | Now Medium-High and Medium-Low can
either be removed so that you only have a
| | 03:07 | choice of three or you can edit them
slightly. For example you might want to
| | 03:11 | change Medium-High to Really-Really
important and Medium-Low to Not so much.
| | 03:18 | Optionally, you can have an alarm ring
before it event and once you are ready
| | 03:22 | to go we click on OK.
| | 03:24 | Now, we will be able to view that
activity, as you see down here, directly from
| | 03:30 | Lance's activity tab and we will also
be able to see it from variety of other places
| | 03:35 | including our Calendar and Task List.
| | 03:38 | Scheduling it to do works basically
the same way as a call, again I click on
| | 03:43 | To-Do and this time activity type
defaulted To-Do. I can change make date and
| | 03:50 | normally the time default to Timeless
because most to-dos aren't associated
| | 03:56 | with a specific time.
| | 03:57 | Now you will notice that the Regarding
dropdown gives you different set of values.
| | 04:02 | For example we have things like
Prepare Quote and Check Delivery Status.
| | 04:07 | Now, if none of these pertain to your
business remember that you can click Edit
| | 04:10 | List Values and change that list so that
they make more sense for your business.
| | 04:16 | So in this case we might be saying
that we are going to assemble those
| | 04:20 | catalogs for Lance.
| | 04:21 | Again, we have a few optional things we
can change. For example I could send an
| | 04:25 | invitation, which I probably want to do
for a to-do. I can change the priority.
| | 04:31 | I can even color code it if I want and
I can optionally set an alarm and one of
| | 04:38 | the things I really like about ACT!
| | 04:40 | is that I can even schedule
activities for other users in my database.
| | 04:45 | Talk about passing the buck!
| | 04:46 | So if is something that I don't want to
do I can pass it right along by clicking
| | 04:51 | on the Schedule For button, clicking
on the dropdown, and choosing another
| | 04:56 | unsuspecting member of my staff who
will now be carrying out the work for me.
| | 05:00 | Now this activity will appear on
that other user's task list and on their
| | 05:07 | calendar and I click OK and
now I have scheduled the to-do.
| | 05:12 | The final thing that you might want to
schedule is a meeting and when I schedule
| | 05:15 | meetings, I would like to do it slightly
differently. For me it makes more sense
| | 05:20 | to access my calendars first
before scheduling an appointment.
| | 05:24 | So what I would like to do is click on
Calendar icon from my navigation bar and
| | 05:30 | when I click on the Calendar
I have a choice of Calendar Types.
| | 05:33 | For example I can click on a Daily
Calendar, Work Week Calendar, which just
| | 05:39 | shows Monday to Friday, a Weekly Calendar, which
includes Saturday, and Sunday or Monthly Calendar.
| | 05:46 | Now my calendar of choice is
the Work Week Calendar and ACT!
| | 05:50 | is pretty smart because over a period
of time it's going to understand your
| | 05:55 | preference and if you prefer to work
on the Work Week Calendar, the next time
| | 05:59 | you click that Calendar icon it's
automatically going to default to the Work Week Calendar.
| | 06:04 | So I might look at my Calendar and say,
"you know that lunch appointment I think
| | 06:09 | that would work on Wednesday."
| | 06:11 | So what I can do is double-click the
appropriate time period and again ACT!
| | 06:15 | knows since I am starting this activity
from my Calendar, chances are pretty good
| | 06:20 | that I want to schedule a meeting
and again I can change either my ending
| | 06:24 | time or change the duration and then
ending time will change automatically for me.
| | 06:29 | I can opt to Send an invitation e-
mail and I can put under Regarding.
| | 06:37 | In this case it's a lunch meeting.
Optionally, I can change my priority, change
| | 06:44 | the color and set an alarm.
| | 06:46 | Now this one I'm not going to
set an alarm for because I want to make
| | 06:49 | sure that I get out of the office
in plenty of time to get to Lance.
| | 06:54 | At that point I can click on OK.
| | 06:58 | And you notice that an Outlook
invitation opened up, addressed to Lance. I could
| | 07:04 | change whatever information I need to
change and click Send and what this is
| | 07:08 | going to do is add that
activity to my Outlook Calendar.
| | 07:12 | It will also give Lance the
opportunity to add it to his Outlook Calendar
| | 07:17 | automatically should he not have Act!.
| | 07:19 | Now sometimes things change and I might
need to reschedule an appointment and ACT!
| | 07:26 | makes that very easy to do.
| | 07:28 | One thing I could do is expand that
activity if I need to use a little bit more time.
| | 07:34 | So I can put my mouse on the bottom
of the activity until I see that double
| | 07:39 | pointed arrow, hold down my left mouse
button, drag down a little bit to make that
| | 07:45 | activity a little bit longer or
if Lance calls me up and says,
| | 07:49 | "oh! I'm so sorry I have to be rescheduled,
could we do this on Thursday?" I could
| | 07:53 | put my mouse on the left border of
the activity and just drag it to another
| | 07:59 | time or another date.
| | 08:00 | Finally, sometimes when I am
scheduling and activity, I am not scheduling it
| | 08:06 | with the current contact that I am looking at.
| | 08:08 | For example I might be speaking with
Lance and all of sudden I need to schedule
| | 08:13 | an activity with another contact in my
database or maybe someone who is not in
| | 08:17 | my database and ACT!
has that covered as well.
| | 08:21 | So let's say I need to schedule a lunch
appointment with someone who is not in my database.
| | 08:27 | I could simply get rid of Lance's name, click
the Contacts button and choose New Contact.
| | 08:37 | At that point I could type in the
new person's name, any other pertinent
| | 08:43 | information that I might
have, and I am set to go.
| | 08:50 | Other options that I might want to use
is maybe I am speaking with Lance but
| | 08:55 | I need to schedule this with
somebody else in my database. Again I can
| | 08:59 | highlight whatever name is showing in the
Schedule List and just start to type another name.
| | 09:05 | Alternatively, if I prefer, I can hit
the dropdown and simply start typing the last
| | 09:11 | name or the contact that I'm
looking for and substitute that name.
| | 09:20 | A final scenario would occur if I want
to schedule this activity with someone
| | 09:25 | who is not in my database at all and
probably doesn't need to be in my database.
| | 09:30 | For example I might have a meeting with
my child's 3rd grade teacher and I need
| | 09:34 | to beware of that appointment but I
don't want to add her name to my database.
| | 09:38 | In that case I can click on Contacts
and I would schedule with my own record,
| | 09:44 | which would still preserve this
activity in my Calendars and on my own contact
| | 09:49 | record but would not
associate it with another contact.
| | 09:52 | Once you have scheduled an activity
you will be able to see it from a variety
| | 09:57 | of locations including the Task List,
the Contacts activity tab and the various
| | 10:01 | ACT! Calendars.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing the task at hand| 00:00 | Once you have scheduled an activity
and want to find it again, you'll find Act!
| | 00:04 | will provide you with numerous places
to find your activity thus ensuring that
| | 00:08 | you don't miss any
important meetings or deadlines.
| | 00:11 | Now probably the first place that you
will find reminder of your activities is
| | 00:14 | through the Alarm window that
pops up when you first open it.
| | 00:17 | This will show you any
activities for which you set an alarm.
| | 00:21 | Now there is couple of
options that you have here.
| | 00:24 | One that you might not want to use it to
clear the alarm because that will clear
| | 00:28 | the alarm but not the activity, which
might get a little confusing in the future
| | 00:33 | because you still have to
take care of that activity.
| | 00:35 | Of course you can clear the
activity if you have already completed it.
| | 00:39 | You can also reschedule by clicking the
Reschedule button and the activity will
| | 00:43 | open and you can change the time.
| | 00:44 | You can also click on Go To which will
take you to the record of the activity.
| | 00:50 | Now my favorite is to click the
Select All button ,which will select all
| | 00:54 | activities, click on Snooze and like the
morning alarm clock I can snooze for any
| | 01:00 | time period that I want.
| | 01:01 | Now, the next place that you might want
to look for to see a schedule activity
| | 01:06 | is on the Activities tab and the
Activities tab will show you all the scheduled
| | 01:11 | activities that you have
for any of your contacts.
| | 01:14 | In addition you can filter the
activities that you see on that tab. For example,
| | 01:20 | you could go over to Options and choose
Show Cleared activities and now you are
| | 01:25 | going to see both the activities that
you have not yet completed and the ones
| | 01:30 | that you have already completed and you
will notice my completed activities all
| | 01:33 | have a line through them.
| | 01:37 | One of my favorite places to go to,
to find all of my activities for all
| | 01:41 | Contacts is my task list, I click on
task list in my Navigation Bar and now I am
| | 01:47 | seeing a task list of all my activities.
| | 01:50 | Sometimes it just is overwhelming to
see all those activities in one place.
| | 01:54 | So very often I would like to filter
that task list and there is a number of
| | 01:58 | ways that I can filter.
| | 02:00 | First of all I can filter by dates and
a lot of us like to filter so that we are
| | 02:04 | just seeing today and future activities.
| | 02:07 | One word of caution. If you filter
your activities, make sure that you unfilter
| | 02:12 | to them, so that you won't miss
some of those activities that you were
| | 02:15 | supposed to do in the past.
| | 02:17 | Another way that I very often filter
my activities is by activity type.
[00:02:265.96]
For example I might just want to have a
list of all my meetings that are scheduled.
| | 02:30 | So an easy way to do that is to click
on None and then just select Meeting and
| | 02:36 | then put one click in the middle of
the Task List and now my Task List is
| | 02:39 | filtered down to just show my meetings.
| | 02:41 | Now of course, when I want to unfilter,
I click the down arrow and choose All.
| | 02:48 | Another way that I filter
my Task List is by priority.
| | 02:51 | For example, I might only have time to
take care of my really high priority events.
| | 02:57 | So in that case again I hit the
dropdown arrow, choose None, click on High and
| | 03:03 | then click in the middle of my Task
List and again I am now looking at just my
| | 03:08 | high priority items.
| | 03:10 | Finally, I might want to filter my tasks
by user or see the activities that have
| | 03:18 | been assigned to another user.
| | 03:20 | If that's the case, I click and select
Users, click on the name of the user I
| | 03:24 | want to see, and unclick my name,
click OK, and now I am just seeing all the
| | 03:30 | activities that were scheduled for Alison.
| | 03:36 | If I want I can actually see the task lists
for more than one user or for all my users.
| | 03:45 | The final place to access my
activities is through the calendars.
| | 03:48 | So I can click the Calendar button on
my Navigation Bar and I could see my
| | 03:53 | activities and my Monthly Calendar, my
Weekly Calendar, my Work Week Calendar or
| | 03:58 | on my Daily Calendar.
| | 04:00 | All the Calendars also include
something called the Recap List which appears on
| | 04:05 | the right-hand side of the calendar.
| | 04:07 | The Recap list will let you select a
different date or you can even scroll to a
| | 04:12 | different month and it will also show
just those activities for the given day.
| | 04:19 | So for example, if I am looking at that
21st, I am just seeing those activities
| | 04:24 | for that specific date.
| | 04:26 | I find myself using the Work Week
Calendar to view my schedule and checking the
| | 04:30 | Task List to see what my employees are up to.
| | 04:33 | You might feel more comfortable by
having alarms up here in front of you.
| | 04:36 | Because there are so many options
available for viewing your activities, you'll want
| | 04:40 | to experiment a bit and find the
method that works the best for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Clearing activities| 00:00 | Creating an activity is
only half the fun. In the ACT! world
| | 00:03 | the other half comes from
clearing the activity so that ACT!
| | 00:07 | has a chance to create an
automatic history of the event.
| | 00:10 | Clearing histories now means that you are
going to be able to report on them later.
| | 00:14 | It also allows you make a distinction
between activities that you still have to
| | 00:18 | complete and those that
you have already completed.
| | 00:21 | There is a number of places where we
can clear an activity. We can do it from
| | 00:26 | the alarms, we can do it from any of
the calendars, we can do it from our task
| | 00:30 | list or even from the Contacts Activity tab.
| | 00:33 | Now we are going to start with the
Alarms and if I want to clear an activity
| | 00:36 | I could just simply click on Clear
Activity and my Clear Activity window opens
| | 00:42 | and I click OK and I am finished, but
let's look at a few other ways that we
| | 00:47 | can clear activities.
| | 00:48 | Now my favorite way is to go the
Task List and for the purposes of this
| | 00:53 | exercise, we are going to filter
those dates down to Today and Future.
| | 00:58 | And let's look at the way
ACT! clears activities.
| | 01:01 | We are going to start by clearing a To-
Do and I can tell my To-Do activities
| | 01:05 | because we are seeing the
finger with the string around it.
| | 01:08 | So I could just click this check box
and that will clear the activity, but I am
| | 01:13 | going to go to Ben's record,
so I could show you a few things.
| | 01:16 | You will notice the Edit date is last
May. I am going to got to the Activities tab,
| | 01:22 | find that activity, and give it a check.
| | 01:26 | Now when the Clear Activity window
opens up we are going to acknowledge that yes,
| | 01:31 | this activity was cleared.
| | 01:32 | It's done and I am going to click OK.
| | 01:35 | And you notice that the Edit Date
updated with today's date. In addition if I were
| | 01:41 | to look in the history I would see a
history of that task as haven't been done.
| | 01:47 | Look at how we turn to the Task List and
this time we are going to clear a phone call,
| | 01:52 | because they work slightly differently.
| | 01:54 | I am going to start with Dr. Brock
| | 01:57 | and again I am going to click on his
name so that I can get to his Contact record.
| | 02:02 | So I am going to return to Activities
tab and here is my call and I am going to
| | 02:08 | click it, but again with the phone call
I have a couple of more options that I
| | 02:12 | do with the To-Do. In this case I am
going to say that I attempted to make the call,
| | 02:19 | but nobody answered
and I am going to click OK.
| | 02:22 | Now you notice this time the Call
Attempt and the Edit Date updated and again
| | 02:28 | we can use an information to query on our
database to find all the people that we
| | 02:32 | have tried to reach but were
able to actually make contact with.
| | 02:35 | This time I am going to go to the task list
and I am going to find another phone call
| | 02:40 | to our friend Kristi.
| | 02:43 | Now I am going to click on the Kristi's
contact record and we are going to say
| | 02:48 | that this time we were able to reach Kristi.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to click on the Phone
Call and say that the call was completed and
| | 02:56 | click OK and you notice that the Call
Reach and the Edit Date all updated and
| | 03:03 | again the history of the event is
going to appear on the History tab.
| | 03:07 | Finally, we are going to go to the Task
List and we are going to clear a meeting.
| | 03:12 | So I am going to go over here to
Melissa Pearce and we are going to clear
| | 03:18 | this meeting and watch what's going to happen
to again the Meeting field and the Edit field.
| | 03:25 | Clear the meeting, the meeting was held and OK.
| | 03:28 | And you notice that it all
update with the appropriate dates.
| | 03:32 | Sometimes when we are clearing
activities the activity doesn't actually happen.
| | 03:37 | For example Melissa might
call and cancel her appointment.
| | 03:42 | Some of us might be tempted to simply
change the date of the actual activity,
| | 03:47 | but I prefer it to do it different
way. I might go to the Meeting and say
| | 03:51 | instead of being Held the meeting was Not Held.
| | 03:54 | So I will have a record of all the
times that Melissa has canceled out on me.
| | 03:59 | In addition, I hit the Follow Up button
and schedule another meeting for the future.
| | 04:05 | I can also use that Follow Up
button to schedule other activities
| | 04:09 | including To-Dos because maybe I
might want to create a follow for that
| | 04:14 | activity and schedule a To-Do.
| | 04:16 | For example if you cancel the meeting
I might want to indicate why she canceled
| | 04:21 | that meeting and indicate it on my
Regarding area to make sure that I give her
| | 04:25 | a proper followup.
| | 04:26 | When I click OK I will create that new
activity and I want to click OK again.
| | 04:32 | It will show that the meeting was Not Held.
| | 04:35 | Clearing an activity is just as
important as creating one in the first place
| | 04:39 | and the activity history is necessary
if you want to use lookups to find the folks
| | 04:44 | who you have contacted or failed to contact.
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|
|
4. Reporting on Your ProgressWorking with dashboards| 00:00 | As your ACT! database begins to fill with
your data, you'll find it helpful to be able to
| | 00:04 | analyze that data, particularly if more
than one person is using the database.
| | 00:09 | The ACT! dashboards provide you with a
quick and easy way to view your data.
| | 00:12 | You might want to think of them
as a scoreboard for your business.
| | 00:15 | Now we get to the dashboards by clicking
the Dashboard area in the Navigation Bar.
| | 00:20 | There are several dashboards in ACT!
| | 00:24 | and each dashboard is
comprised of a number of components.
| | 00:28 | The first dashboard that
we are looking is the ACT!
| | 00:30 | Default Dashboard, which you see
consists of six separate components.
| | 00:35 | Other dashboards include the Activities
Dashboard, which will give you an idea
| | 00:40 | of the activities of either a single
user or all users in your database.
| | 00:46 | The Administrative Dashboard, which will
give you a list of all the users in your
| | 00:50 | database including when they've logged
into the database and when they've logged off,
| | 00:55 | and if you have remote synchronization
users, you'll also be able to see when
| | 00:59 | they've logged in and out of your database.
| | 01:02 | We also have a Contact database,
which is going to give you a list of your
| | 01:06 | recently created contacts, as well
as your recently edited contacts.
| | 01:11 | It's also going to give you a breakdown by
history type of all your latest activities.
| | 01:18 | Perhaps the most popular of the
dashboard is the Opportunities Dashboard, which
| | 01:23 | is going to give you a pipeline
of your latest sales opportunities.
| | 01:28 | Now the database administrator can
create more dashboards or change the default
| | 01:33 | settings of your dashboards.
| | 01:35 | For example, the administrator might
want to create a separate dashboard
| | 01:40 | for each of the sales people containing
component that are specific to that salesperson.
| | 01:45 | One of the things that I like about the
dashboards is that we can drill in on information.
| | 01:51 | For example, as I run my mouse over
the various parts of this component,
| | 01:56 | I am getting the breakdown of
what that component contains.
| | 02:00 | In addition, I can double-click to
drill down on specific information.
| | 02:05 | So in this case I've gone to the
Detail View of that opportunity.
| | 02:10 | Now the other thing we can do with
dashboards is to change the filters.
| | 02:15 | For example, I am currently looking at this
Opportunity Pipeline for the Current Month.
| | 02:20 | By clicking the Filter button, I can
change Current Month to All Dates. Click OK.
| | 02:28 | I am now seeing a totally different pipeline.
| | 02:32 | In the same manner, I might want to
just see a pipeline for certain ticket
| | 02:37 | items, so I am going to click on Filter
and I am going to change the Total area,
| | 02:42 | so that I am looking for opportunities
of over $12,000, and click OK, and again
| | 02:50 | my pipeline has changed.
| | 02:52 | Using and filtering the dashboards on a
regular basis ensures that you'll always
| | 02:56 | know what's going on in your
business, and you'll be able to find that
| | 02:59 | information literally at the click of a button.
| | 03:02 | And if you don't like the information
you see in the dashboard, you'll be able
| | 03:06 | to change your business
strategies before you lose the game.
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| Running reports| 00:00 | Once you've added information into
ACT!, the next step is to be able to look at
| | 00:04 | it in an organized fashion.
| | 00:05 | With over 60 reports to choose from,
you are sure to find report that will give
| | 00:09 | you the exact information you are looking for.
| | 00:11 | All of the reports can be easily filtered.
| | 00:14 | In addition when combining the power of
a lookup with a report, you will be able
| | 00:18 | to zoom into the information that you need.
| | 00:20 | Now there is a couple of places to find
reports. Probably the easiest one is to
| | 00:24 | go up to the Reports menu.
| | 00:26 | Now the Reports menu is nice
because it helps to organize reports.
| | 00:29 | Everything in the top half of the menu
refers to Contact Reports, then we can
| | 00:35 | some Group Reports, some Company Reports,
and finally from Opportunity Reports.
| | 00:40 | One big word of caution, however.
Not all reports appear on this menu.
| | 00:45 | For example, if I go into Other
Contact Reports, I notice that there is a
| | 00:50 | Birthday List and a Fax List report that
don't appear on any of those Report menus.
| | 00:56 | Now sometime before I run a
report I want to sort my data.
| | 00:59 | For example, I might want to run a list of
the phone numbers of all of my customers.
| | 01:05 | So the first thing that I do is create a
lookup by going up here to Lookup and
| | 01:09 | choosing ID/Status and
changing that ID/Status to Customer.
| | 01:16 | Once I get a list of all 64 of my
customers in List View, I want to sort it, but
| | 01:21 | unfortunately I can only sort by one
value and I would like to see those names
| | 01:26 | alphabetically by company, and
then by last name of the contact.
| | 01:31 | So, I am going to go over here to Edit
and click on Sort and I am going to sort
| | 01:36 | on Company and then by Contact.
| | 01:41 | So that all my contacts are now sorted
alphabetically by last name within company.
| | 01:47 | To run a report, I go up to
Report and choose Phone List.
| | 01:51 | Now this is a very basic report.
I don't have a lot of choices.
| | 01:54 | So what I am going to do is run
a preview of the current lookup.
| | 01:57 | Now some of my other options that I do
have is I can create this report as a PDF
| | 02:02 | if I want it to someone who doesn't have ACT!.
| | 02:05 | Or I can actually e-mail this report
which will open up an e-mail message with
| | 02:10 | the report attached as a PDF file.
| | 02:13 | But for now I am just going to
preview the report and click OK.
| | 02:16 | Now once the report opens I can maximize
so I could see a little bit better, and
| | 02:22 | I also have Zoom-in tool which will
allow me to zoom in on that information to
| | 02:28 | see it a little bit better.
| | 02:29 | When I am ready to print I click the Print icon.
| | 02:32 | Now some of the reports work a
little bit better if we filtered down the
| | 02:36 | information first by creating a lookup.
| | 02:39 | For example, I might want to create a
Notes/History Classic Report that will
| | 02:44 | show all the times I
have contacted my customers.
| | 02:47 | So again I might start off by
doing a Lookup by ID/Status of all my
| | 02:52 | customers and clicking OK.
| | 02:54 | Now once I am armed with those 64
customers, I am ready to run that report.
| | 02:58 | So I go up to Reports. This time I am
going to run a History Summary Classic Report.
| | 03:03 | Again I had the same options of Preview
or PDF file or E-mail, but I also have
| | 03:11 | another tab that says History, because
I can determine what date range I would
| | 03:16 | like to show in my report.
| | 03:18 | So I might be interested to know every
time I have contacted any of my customers.
| | 03:24 | So I am changing this to All.
| | 03:25 | If I prefer, I can create a custom date
range by clicking on Custom and showing
| | 03:31 | an opening or beginning date and
ending date and then clicking OK.
| | 03:35 | I click on OK and again the report appears.
| | 03:41 | Now one of the buttons-- let's zoom in
a little bit so we can see this better.
| | 03:46 | You see that I have this report list all
the times I have tried to call someone,
| | 03:51 | every time I have actually called
someone or the meetings that have been held
| | 03:54 | and the letters that have been sent.
| | 03:56 | Now if you like to zoom into the last
page of this report, you can click the
| | 04:00 | Last Page icon and you notice on the
last page of the report it actually gives
| | 04:06 | you a count of all those activities.
| | 04:10 | One of my favorite reports is the
Pipeline Report, and again I go up to Reports
| | 04:15 | go to Opportunity and
choose the Pipeline Report.
| | 04:18 | Now, different reports
give you different options.
| | 04:22 | In this case I can filter down my
opportunities by Open, Won, Lost or Inactive
| | 04:27 | opportunities, but I am going to look
at the report for all many opportunities.
| | 04:31 | Again I can choose a date range.
| | 04:34 | In this case I will choose All, or I
can create that custom date range by
| | 04:38 | indicating the beginning
date and the ending date.
| | 04:41 | I click on OK and we will maximize it,
and I am seeing this reports that sorts
| | 04:48 | my opportunities according to Stage.
| | 04:50 | Now once you've had a chance to
look at all the reports, there will be
| | 04:55 | certain reports that will easily
become your favorites and you want to be
| | 04:58 | able to back to them easily.
| | 05:00 | Now if you click on the Reports icon on
the Navigation Bar, you will see we have
| | 05:05 | Report list and this list is comprehensive
and does include all of the ACT! reports.
| | 05:10 | What you want to do is take your
favorite reports. For example, we might want to
| | 05:14 | take that Phone List that we looked at.
You put a check mark in the box and that
| | 05:21 | will immediately move it up
into your Favorite Reports.
| | 05:24 | Again any of your reports that you like
just simply click and you will be able
| | 05:29 | to find them again very easily, and if
you happen to put a report up there that
| | 05:33 | you decide you don't like, remove the
checkmark and it will easily disappear
| | 05:37 | from those favorites.
| | 05:38 | You want to take a peek
at each of the ACT! reports
| | 05:41 | so that you can decide which
ones will be the most useful for you.
| | 05:44 | Then once you have honed in on your
favorites, you want to add them to the
| | 05:47 | Favorite Reports area so that you
will know where to find them again.
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| Customizing a list view| 00:00 | ACT! comes with a whole bunch of reports
and dashboards that are designed to help you
| | 00:04 | analyze the contents of your database.
| | 00:06 | Sometimes, however, you need a list
of contacts or records that meet a
| | 00:09 | specific criterion.
| | 00:11 | For example, you might want a list
of your hot prospects in Miami to send
| | 00:14 | to your sales manager.
| | 00:15 | Learning how to customize the various
list views is a quick and easy way to
| | 00:19 | create a mini report.
| | 00:21 | We are going to start by creating a Lookup.
| | 00:23 | So I am going to go up here to Lookup
and I am going to use the By Example to
| | 00:27 | find everybody in the state of
California who has the ID/Status of prospect.
| | 00:34 | I click on Search and then click OK and ACT!
is going to take me to the Contact List.
| | 00:41 | Now I can sort by simply clicking on a
column heading, so that in this case I am
| | 00:46 | sorted alphabetically by last name.
| | 00:49 | However, if I want to sort on more
than one field, I can go up to Edit, choose
| | 00:54 | Sort and click on Company, because
maybe I would like to have this sorted first
| | 00:58 | by company, and then by
Contact, and then I click OK.
| | 01:03 | Now at this point I might be ready to
print, but there are a couple of other
| | 01:07 | tricks that I have up my sleeves.
| | 01:09 | One of them is to change
the order of the columns.
| | 01:12 | For example, I'd like to have the
Title up here right after the Contact name.
| | 01:18 | I can hold down my left mouse button and
drag Title right here to the right of Contact.
| | 01:24 | Another trick that I have is to put my
mouse right on the division to the right
| | 01:28 | of anyone of the field headers, hold
down my left button, and make that column
| | 01:33 | bigger if I need to have a little
bit of more room in that column.
| | 01:38 | Now perhaps my favorite trick is to
add new fields to this view and I can do
| | 01:44 | that simply by doing a right-click in
the middle of my Contact List and choosing
| | 01:49 | Customize Columns or by going up here at
Options and choosing Customize Columns.
| | 01:54 | Now the way this works is all my
available fields that I have in my database
| | 01:59 | appear on the left-hand side and the
columns that I am currently using in my
| | 02:03 | contact list are showing on the right-hand side.
| | 02:06 | Now if I want to remove a column from
view, I simply click it and hit that
| | 02:11 | single pointing left arrow.
| | 02:13 | Now don't worry if you make mistake
and click those double arrows, remove all
| | 02:19 | the fields, because you can always
click the Reset button to restore ACT!
| | 02:23 | to the way it was when it came out of the box.
| | 02:25 | But again I am going to remove a
couple of these fields by clicking them and
| | 02:29 | hitting that single pointing left
arrow, but I would like to add E-mail
| | 02:34 | Address to this list.
| | 02:35 | So I am going to click on the E-mail field
and click the single pointing right arrow.
| | 02:40 | Now if I want to change the position of
this field, I can either drag it back to
| | 02:46 | its right position, like I did before.
| | 02:48 | In this case, I am going to click I am
going to click on it and move it up, or I
| | 02:52 | get it to just the spot I want.
| | 02:54 | I am going to move that Title
back up there too, and then click OK.
| | 02:57 | Now once I have done that again I can change
my columns, make them just the size I like.
| | 03:05 | Once I am happy with it, here is the best part.
| | 03:08 | You are going to see a button up at
the top of the List View that says Export
| | 03:12 | Current List to Excel.
| | 03:14 | I give it a click and in a matter of
seconds Excel is going to open with the
| | 03:19 | content of my List View.
| | 03:21 | At this point, I can print, do a
different type of sort, or send this off to
| | 03:24 | someone who might not be
fortunate enough to have ACT!
| | 03:28 | If you don't have Excel or you would
like to print this in another way, ACT!
| | 03:32 | provides you with a way to do that as well.
| | 03:34 | What you can do is go over to File
and click on Quick Print Current Window.
| | 03:40 | When I choose Quick Print Current Window,
don't have a lot of options here, but
| | 03:44 | one of my options is to print this in
Landscape Mode, so I can make sure all my
| | 03:48 | information fits on a piece of paper,
and I also have the option of shrinking
| | 03:54 | down my information so it will fit
to one page, and then I click OK.
| | 04:00 | Here you can see the
content of that quick print.
| | 04:02 | By using the functionality of a Lookup,
tweaking the resulting List View, and
| | 04:07 | the running the Quick Report or Excel,
you can print virtually any segment of
| | 04:12 | your database and have it populate
with exactly the information you need.
| | 04:16 | Best of all, the process can be done
entirely on the fly and doesn't require a
| | 04:20 | lot of advanced programming skills.
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|
|
5. Merging Information into a DocumentUnderstanding the mail merge| 00:01 | The Mail Merge is one of ACT!'s
most time-saving features.
| | 00:04 | You take a contact or list of contacts,
combine with a template, you end up with
| | 00:08 | a customized document that can be
mailed or e-mailed in a matter of minutes.
| | 00:12 | Now there are three necessary
things to create a mail merge.
| | 00:16 | The first is a Contact Record like the
one we see here for Chris Huffman that's
| | 00:20 | completely filled out with all his
information, his name, his address, his phone numbers.
| | 00:25 | The second thing that we need is a
template, and we find our templates by going
| | 00:30 | up to the Write menu and out of the box,
| | 00:32 | ACT! comes with another number of templates.
| | 00:35 | The third thing we need is a program
like ACT! to mix the two together.
| | 00:39 | Now the first thing that we are going
to do is to select our word processor and
| | 00:44 | we do that by going up to the Tools
menu and heading down to the Preferences,
| | 00:48 | and then we are going to
click on the Communication tab.
| | 00:51 | ACT! gives us a choice of two word processors.
| | 00:55 | The one is to use Microsoft Word, which
is for most of us our favorite option,
| | 00:59 | because we are already familiar
with Word and all its functionality.
| | 01:03 | But if for some reason, you don't own
Word or you don't prefer used Word, you
| | 01:07 | can also select the ACT! word processor.
| | 01:10 | Now it's important to note
that the people that use the ACT!
| | 01:13 | word processor won't be able to access
the Microsoft Word templates and vice versa.
| | 01:18 | So you want to make sure that
everybody in your organization is using the
| | 01:22 | same word processor.
| | 01:24 | Now you might want to spend
a little time exploring the
| | 01:27 | out-of-the-box templates.
| | 01:28 | You do that by going up to Write
menu, clicking at Other Document (from
| | 01:32 | template) and you will see a list of all
the templates that come out of the ACT! box.
| | 01:37 | Now I am going to open up the Sales Fulfillment
- Thank You letter by giving it a double-click.
| | 01:42 | ACT! is going to merge
that information into Word.
| | 01:45 | I am just going to maximize it and
you can see that all of Chris Huffman's
| | 01:50 | information automatically
merged into the body of my template.
| | 01:57 | Now I can also create my own templates
which we are going to be learning later
| | 02:02 | in this chapter by going up to Write
and either creating a New Letter/E-mail
| | 02:07 | Template or editing an existing template.
| | 02:11 | You could send out a single repetitive
letter to one contact at a time or create
| | 02:15 | a marketing piece that will reach
hundreds of recipients whether you use the
| | 02:19 | merge to send out a Thank You letter
every time you close a deal or send a
| | 02:24 | marketing campaign to make sure that
you have lots of big deals in the future,
| | 02:27 | ACT!'s Mail Merge will save you lots of time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a template| 00:00 | Whether you routinely send the same
letter or E-mail out over-and-over again, or
| | 00:05 | you want to do a one-time
mailing to hundreds of your ACT! contacts,
| | 00:07 | creating a template will
speed you to through the process.
| | 00:11 | We start by going up to Write menu.
| | 00:13 | You notice that there is a line that divides
the top-half of this menu from the bottom-half.
| | 00:18 | The top-half refers to
opening up existing templates.
| | 00:22 | The bottom-half is the way that you either
create a new template, or edit an existing one.
| | 00:28 | I am going to show you first how
easily we can send a letter off to someone.
| | 00:33 | So I am going to go to my friend Lance
Parker, who is the last contact in my database.
| | 00:37 | Let me go up here to Write, and we
are going to send Lance a letter by
| | 00:42 | clicking on Letter.
| | 00:43 | ACT! merges that
information into a Word template.
| | 00:46 | I am going to maximize this.
| | 00:48 | Now letter template is a great way to send
a spur of the moment letter off to Lance.
| | 00:54 | And you know what?
| | 00:55 | it has already filled in Lance's
information at the top-half of the letter.
| | 00:59 | It's put my information on
the bottom-half of the letter.
| | 01:02 | And all I need to do is plot my cursor
down in the body of the letter and start
| | 01:07 | typing, and I am ready to go.
| | 01:15 | Now that worked pretty well, but we want
to create our own templates from scratch.
| | 01:20 | There is an easy way to do it and a hard way.
| | 01:22 | We are going to start with the hard way
which is the way a lot of folks kind of
| | 01:26 | stumble into it to begin with, and
that's to go here to the Write menu and
| | 01:30 | create New Letter or E-mail Template.
| | 01:33 | And when I do that, Word opens up,
and you notice something new.
| | 01:37 | I have all these ACT!
| | 01:38 | Mail Merge fields that have appeared
and a lot of people like to close those to
| | 01:43 | get them out of the way.
| | 01:44 | You notice I just kind of move them out
of my way, lot of people close them by
| | 01:47 | accident, should that happen?
| | 01:49 | You can go back up to the
Add-Ins tab, click on ACT!
| | 01:54 | and click Show Field List and back they come.
| | 01:57 | Now if I wanted to create a brand new
letter from scratch, I would have to place
| | 02:01 | the appropriate ACT! fields
into the body of my letter.
| | 02:04 | So, for example, if I want to start off
by having my contact's name and address
| | 02:09 | information appear, I'd have to start
by putting my cursor at the top of my
| | 02:13 | letter, finding that
Contact field, and adding it.
| | 02:15 | Now that you have to drop down a line,
find the Company field and add it.
| | 02:20 | Of course, I then have to drop down
another line and I'd have to add the Address
| | 02:25 | and the City, the State, then it would
take me a while to build that template.
| | 02:29 | But I've mentioned before that I have
an easier way to show you how to do this.
| | 02:32 | So we are going to close this template,
and what I'd like to do instead is to
| | 02:38 | edit an existing template and my
favorite template to edit is that Letter
| | 02:43 | template that I showed you a minute ago.
| | 02:45 | So I am going to go up to Write, and
we are going to Edit a Template and I am
| | 02:50 | going to select the Letter template.
| | 02:55 | And once again, Word opens and once
again I am seeing my Mail Merge Fields, but
| | 03:00 | this time, we see that ACT!
| | 03:01 | has already placed a lot of the fields
at the top of the template and certain
| | 03:05 | fields at the bottom.
| | 03:06 | At the top, I am seeing all
of my contact's information.
| | 03:10 | I am going to be seeing his name,
his company name, his address, his
| | 03:14 | city/state and zip.
| | 03:15 | I am even going to have this letter
addressed to his name, because this
| | 03:19 | Salutation field is going
to populate in this letter.
| | 03:23 | On the bottom, you are seeing some of these
fields that have the word My in front of it.
| | 03:27 | That's because these all
come from the My Record contact.
| | 03:31 | So if I wanted to change this, for
example, I wanted my Fax number to appear
| | 03:35 | here, I would simply put my cursor
where I want that Fax number to go, in this
| | 03:39 | case, I'll have to add a space, over
here where I look the Mail Merge Fields, I
| | 03:44 | actually want to have one of
My Record field show up there.
| | 03:47 | So I scroll down and I find the Fax
Phone, give it a click, and Add it.
| | 03:53 | That's how easy it is to add
a new field into a template.
| | 03:56 | Now you might want to populate
other fields in the body of a letter.
| | 04:00 | Now I'll give you a little secret, if
you already have existing documents, feel
| | 04:05 | free to copy those documents and
paste them right into this letter.
| | 04:08 | But for now, I am going to be
writing a brand new Thank You letter.
| | 04:11 | And if I like, I can actually include
specific information for my contact in the
| | 04:24 | body of the letter itself.
| | 04:25 | So in this case, I am going to say
something like this, I am sure that, and now
| | 04:31 | I want to insert the name of their
company into the body of the letter.
| | 04:35 | So again, I need to change the field
type from My Record back to Contact.
| | 04:40 | I am going to find the name of their
company, click Add, and again supply the
| | 04:45 | proper spacing, I am sure that the name of
your company, and that's all there is to it.
| | 04:52 | Now in order to save the template, I
go up here, and I click on Save As, I
| | 04:58 | can name this template anything that
I want, but I don't want to call it
| | 05:02 | Letter because that would overwrite the
existing blank letter that comes out of the ACT! box
| | 05:07 | and I might want to use that again
later on down the road to create more templates.
| | 05:11 | So I am going to give this is a fancy
name like, Thank you letter, and save it
| | 05:19 | and close out of Word.
| | 05:20 | Now the next time I want to write
Lance a thank you letter, or any of my
| | 05:25 | contacts, I go up to Write, go onto
Other Documents (from template), and again
| | 05:29 | you'll notice that's on the top-half of
that line, scroll down, there it is my
| | 05:36 | Thank you letter, open it up, and sure
enough, Lance will now receive my thank
| | 05:43 | you letter with his information at the
top, my information in the bottom and
| | 05:47 | some of his information in
the body of the template.
| | 05:50 | The nice part about creating that
document template is that although they only
| | 05:54 | take a few minutes to create, they can
save you hours of time in the future.
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| Performing a merge| 00:00 | Once you have created your
document templates the hard part is over.
| | 00:03 | You can now sit back, relax, and
easily send out a letter to one specific
| | 00:07 | contact or a large mailing
at the click of a button.
| | 00:12 | You can transmit the merge of your snail
mail, e-mail or even send it out as a fax.
| | 00:16 | We are going to start off by
sending Lance Parker a letter.
| | 00:21 | So we are going to start off by looking
up Lance's contact, I am going to lookup
| | 00:25 | Last Name, we are going to type in
Parker, and I see that all his contact
| | 00:32 | information is in there, his address,
his city, state because I am going to need
| | 00:36 | to have that information
in the body of my letter.
| | 00:39 | I am going to go up to right, I am
going to go to Other Document (from
| | 00:42 | template), I am going to choose my
template, in this case we are going to use
| | 00:47 | the Presentation - Follow - Up, and I
can either double-click it or click it
| | 00:51 | once and click on Open, it's going to
merge into Word, maximize it so we can see
| | 00:57 | here and here is the letter with the
Lance's information merged into it.
| | 01:01 | Now comes the fun part.
| | 01:02 | I can print this letter and
when I print the letter ACT!
| | 01:05 | is going to ask me if I would optionally
like to create a history of that letter.
| | 01:09 | So I am going to go up click the Office
button and click on Print and when I opt
| | 01:15 | to print this letter the
History window is going to appear.
| | 01:19 | Let's look at some of these options.
| | 01:21 | The first one means, yes, I want to
record a history, and now I can actually say
| | 01:27 | what the history is?
| | 01:28 | And by the way the history will say
Letter sent, but I can say that this is
| | 01:32 | about the thank you letter.
| | 01:35 | I can also optionally select if I want
to save this letter as a file and attach
| | 01:41 | that file to the Contact record or I can
opt not to record history at all, and I
| | 01:47 | can also opt to include an
envelope with this by selecting Yes.
| | 01:51 | Now that was pretty easy to send one
letter to one person and is just about as
| | 02:00 | easy to send that same
letter to a whole bunch of people.
| | 02:03 | I am going to start by creating a lookup.
| | 02:06 | Let's pretend I want to send that
same letter to all of my customers.
| | 02:10 | I am going to go up to Lookup, I am
going to choose ID/Status and I am going to
| | 02:15 | fill in Customer, and click OK, and
now we have 64 people that are going to
| | 02:21 | receive that letter.
| | 02:22 | In order to do that I go up to Write,
click on Mail Merge, and the Mail Merge
| | 02:28 | Wizard springs into action.
| | 02:30 | I click Next, the first question I am asked is,
how would you like to send this Mail Merge?
| | 02:36 | My options are just send it to my Word
processor via E-mail or give directly to my printer.
| | 02:41 | Now I only choose this option if I am
100% sure that both my letter and all my
| | 02:46 | contact information are letter-perfect,
because I don't like to waste any extra trees.
| | 02:51 | E-mail is a good option if you are
sending to less than 50 contacts.
| | 02:55 | It's kind of a slow process because it
is going to be personalizing each letter
| | 03:00 | and it's going to be filling in a
history for each Contact record.
| | 03:04 | If you are sending more than 50 E-
mails at a time you will want to use the
| | 03:07 | E-marketing module in ACT!,
which is covered in another chapter.
| | 03:11 | So for now we are going to choose
the Word processor and click on Next.
| | 03:16 | We click the Browse button and select a
template that we wanted to use, in this
| | 03:21 | case the Presentation - Follow - Up
and click Open, and then we click Next.
| | 03:26 | Now we can send this to the Current
lookup which would be your 64 customers, we
| | 03:31 | could send it to the current Contact
which in this case would be A1 Services
| | 03:35 | which is highlighted in our Contact list.
| | 03:38 | We could send it to All Contacts which
would be every member of our database.
| | 03:42 | We could send it to a Specific
group or to a Specific company.
| | 03:46 | We are going to go ahead and send that
to our Current lookup and click on Next.
| | 03:51 | And Mail Merge is very excited and
tells us that we have completed the ACT!
| | 03:55 | Mail Merge Wizard and wants to
verify if they have everything correct.
| | 03:59 | Okay, that merge is going to the Current
lookup, the Output is going to the Word
| | 04:04 | processor check and the template that
we selected is the 03 presentation, yup,
| | 04:09 | they got it all right, so we click Finish.
| | 04:11 | Now you can sit back and relax,
| | 04:13 | let ACT! do all the work, maybe
go out and get a cup of coffee.
| | 04:17 | In a few seconds Word Springs open,
and you will notice if you look in the
| | 04:21 | bottom left-hand corner that the
document that opened has 64 pages.
| | 04:26 | That's because we had 64 contacts that
are going to receive that letter, and if
| | 04:30 | you scroll through here you will
see that each letter is addressed to a
| | 04:35 | different individual and includes their
name and contact information at the top
| | 04:40 | and references to company
in the body of the template.
| | 04:46 | Now another way that we can create a
Mail Merge is to send out to a specific
| | 04:50 | group or company, we
basically follow the same process.
| | 04:54 | This time we are going to go up to Write
and again we are going to choose Mail Merge.
| | 04:57 | I am going to click next at the
Welcoming screen, and again this is going to our
| | 05:02 | Word processor and we'll click Next,
we are going to select our template by
| | 05:05 | clicking the Browse button, in this case
we are going to choose the Presentation
| | 05:09 | Follow - Up and click Open, click Next again.
| | 05:13 | This time we are going to do things a
little bit differently because we are
| | 05:17 | going to send this out to a selected group.
| | 05:20 | So once we highlight Selected group I
am going to hit this Down Arrow and I'd
| | 05:24 | like to send this out to all the
members of my Networking Breakfast Group.
| | 05:28 | So I am going to select that group, click Next.
| | 05:32 | Once again I get a summary just making
sure that I did everything correctly.
| | 05:36 | So this is going to go out to
my Networking Breakfast Group.
| | 05:39 | It's going to go to the Word
processor and it's going to be the Template 03
| | 05:43 | Presentation follow - up, sounds good to me.
| | 05:45 | So I click Finish, once again ACT!
| | 05:48 | is going to do its thing.
| | 05:49 | It's going to merge all my
contacts into that template.
| | 05:52 | In a couple of seconds Word is going to open.
| | 05:55 | Click on Word and this time you are
seeing that it's going out to eight
| | 05:59 | different people, all the members
of my Breakfast Networking Group.
| | 06:03 | Again I can scroll through the
contacts and you will see each one is getting
| | 06:07 | their own individual letter addressed
to them including information about your
| | 06:11 | company in the body of that letter.
| | 06:13 | Sometimes you are going to notice little
errors in the content of the final product.
| | 06:18 | For example you might see that
Address information might be missing, or you
| | 06:22 | might notice a misspelling in
the body of the letter itself.
| | 06:25 | Just remember that you want to make any
necessary contact changes on the contact
| | 06:30 | record itself, and if you want to go
back and edit your template to fix any of
| | 06:34 | those misspellings, at that point you
can return to the Mail Merge wizard and
| | 06:38 | repeat the Mail Merge over
again in a matter of seconds.
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| Creating labels| 00:00 | Although sending e-mail is becoming more
and more popular, many of us still rely
| | 00:04 | on good old-fashioned snail mail.
| | 00:07 | Of course, we can still manually address
envelopes and packages by hand, or we can use ACT!
| | 00:11 | to speed up the process by
creating labels directly in ACT!.
| | 00:15 | The first thing that you are going to
need before creating a set of labels is to
| | 00:18 | get a set of contacts.
| | 00:19 | So in this case, we are going to
pretend that we are sending a marketing
| | 00:22 | piece to our prospects.
| | 00:24 | So I am going to start up by
clicking Lookup, going down to ID/Status,
| | 00:29 | and typing in Prospect.
| | 00:31 | I click OK, now we have exactly 100
prospects that we are going to mail to.
| | 00:36 | The next thing you need to
do is to sort your contacts.
| | 00:40 | You might want them to be
sorted alphabetically by ZIP Code.
| | 00:43 | If that's the case, you are going to
click on ZIP Code and poof, they are
| | 00:47 | automatically sorted according to ZIP Code.
| | 00:49 | Maybe you'd prefer to
have these sorted by Company.
| | 00:52 | So again, we click on the Company
field header and they are sorted
| | 00:56 | alphabetically by Company.
| | 00:58 | Now what happens if you want to have these
sorted in a number of different ways?
| | 01:02 | Well, ACT! can help you with that as well.
| | 01:04 | We go up to the Edit menu and we choose Sort.
| | 01:08 | Now the Sort will let us
sort by three different fields.
| | 01:12 | If I might want to sort
alphabetically by Company and then by Contact, so I
| | 01:16 | choose Contact and then finally by Zip,
so I can hit the dropdown scroll way
| | 01:23 | down, find ZIP Code and click OK.
| | 01:27 | Now whatever order my Contact list
has sorted on that's the order that my
| | 01:31 | labels will appear.
| | 01:32 | So now I am ready to print those labels.
| | 01:34 | I go up to File, in most programs when
I click on Print, the next thing I hear
| | 01:40 | is a sound of paper right into my printer.
| | 01:42 | Not so with ACT! When I click on
Print I am treated to a number of
| | 01:47 | printout type options.
| | 01:49 | You can see that I can print
address books, or calendars, or labels.
| | 01:54 | So in this case I am
going to choose Labels.
| | 01:57 | ACT! includes just about every
size label you can imagine.
| | 02:01 | My favorite is the 5160.
| | 02:04 | It's a common label that appears with
3 columns and 10 rows or a total of 30
| | 02:09 | labels on a page, probably the most
common labels that most of us use.
| | 02:13 | So I am going to pick the
Avery 5160 and click Print.
| | 02:18 | At this point our Define Filters window opens.
| | 02:21 | There are a couple of things I can change here.
| | 02:23 | First off, I'd like to see a preview,
so I leave the Report Output to Preview,
| | 02:28 | so I can look at the labels before I
print them to make sure they are good.
| | 02:31 | Now I could send these labels to the
Current Contact or to All Contacts, but I
| | 02:36 | am going to leave it
highlighted on Current Lookup.
| | 02:40 | Say I want this to go out
to my group of 100 prospects.
| | 02:43 | Now if I am trying to save a million
dollars I may go up here to Position,
| | 02:48 | because it might have happened that
the last time I printed labels, I didn't
| | 02:51 | use the entire sheet.
| | 02:52 | And now I am left with a partial
sheet of labels that I want to use.
| | 02:56 | So I might say you know what?
| | 02:58 | I want you to start on Row 3, Column 2, so
I can use up that existing sheet of labels.
| | 03:05 | At that point I click OK, I am going to
maximize this so you can see a little bit better.
| | 03:11 | If you want to zoom in, we have the
Zoom tool on the Toolbar, so you can click
| | 03:15 | that, click on your label, so you can
see better, and I now have 100 labels at
| | 03:21 | the click of a button.
| | 03:23 | ACT! comes with just about every
size of label you can think of.
| | 03:26 | So you can print a shipping label to
mail a single package or printout thousands
| | 03:30 | of professional labels in seconds to
make short work of a snail mail campaign.
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| Emailing contacts| 00:00 | You're probably already using
Outlook to manage your email.
| | 00:03 | Fortunately for you,
| | 00:04 | ACT! is very tightly integrated with Outlook.
| | 00:06 | There are a number of ways that
you can send an email using ACT!.
| | 00:10 | No matter what method you use,
they'll all work directly with Outlook, and
| | 00:14 | you'll have a number of options as
to whether or not you want to record a
| | 00:17 | history of that email back into ACT!.
| | 00:19 | We're going to start by sending a
single email to a single person.
| | 00:23 | So we're going to go to
our friend, Lance Parker.
| | 00:25 | Now I happen to know he's the
last contact in our database.
| | 00:28 | So I'm going to click on Go to Last Contact,
and here we are at Lance Parker's record.
| | 00:34 | In order to send him an email, I'd like
to make sure first that Outlook is open.
| | 00:39 | It will make this process go much faster.
| | 00:42 | So, what I'm going to do now is take my
cursor down to the email, and you notice
| | 00:46 | that my cursor turns momentarily into a hand.
| | 00:49 | Now, if their hand disappears, you've
kind of missed your window of opportunity.
| | 00:52 | So what you're going to want to do is
click back on this field, and then take
| | 00:56 | your cursor back down and make sure
you click in that email address, while it
| | 00:59 | still looks like a hand.
| | 01:01 | Now something opened up here, and
this has nothing to do with ACT!.
| | 01:04 | This is actually Outlook.
| | 01:06 | So this is your Outlook message, which
is already addressed to Lance Parker.
| | 01:11 | What I need to do is fill in the subject,
fill in the body, and you're ready to
| | 01:22 | send your email as you normally would.
| | 01:25 | Now if you want to change your
signature, you can change that by going up to
| | 01:29 | your Insert menu, just like you
would for any other Outlook message.
| | 01:32 | But we do have a couple of
other options available to us.
| | 01:36 | Go up here to the Add-Ins tab, and
you'll notice that we have this ACT!
| | 01:40 | History area, and if you hit this
dropdown, you'll see the various options.
| | 01:45 | Now we set these options when we went
through either the Setup Assistant or when
| | 01:50 | you changed your email settings.
| | 01:53 | Most of us like to have the email
subject and message, record into history.
| | 01:57 | Well, you can also decide that you don't
want to record a history of this event,
| | 02:02 | or you want to record the email
subject only, or that you'd like to save this
| | 02:06 | email as an attachment, and have
it attached to the contact record.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to keep it on the
recommended choice, which is E-mail subject and
| | 02:14 | message, and click Send.
| | 02:16 | Now this email sends exactly like any
other Outlook email, with one exception.
| | 02:22 | If I take a look at Lance's History tab,
I'll see a record that that email was
| | 02:27 | sent including the date, the
time, and the body of that email.
| | 02:31 | That worked pretty well, but maybe
I'd like to send one of my templates to
| | 02:37 | Lance, just as easy.
| | 02:39 | In this example, I'm going to go up to
the Write menu, and I'm going to choose
| | 02:44 | E-mail Message (from template).
| | 02:47 | I'm going to pick the
Presentation - Follow - Up, and click Open.
| | 02:52 | Once again, my Outlook message is
going to open, but this time it's going to
| | 02:56 | have the contents of my template.
| | 02:59 | Once again, all I need to do is add
in the subject, optionally, change my
| | 03:04 | History options, and click Send.
| | 03:07 | Once again, a history of that email
will be saved on Lance's History tab.
| | 03:13 | One other trick that I have is I might
want to send an on the spot email to a
| | 03:18 | group of my contacts.
| | 03:20 | Now if I had a template, I could
go up and use the Mail Merge Wizard.
| | 03:24 | But in this case, it's just going to
be a spontaneous email, so I'm going to
| | 03:28 | take a trip over to the
Groups, on the Navigation tab.
| | 03:31 | Then I'm going to pick my
Networking Breakfast Group.
| | 03:34 | I'm going to do a right-click on
that group, and click on Create Lookup.
| | 03:39 | That's going to give me a lookup of all
eight members of my Breakfast Networking Group.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to select them all by clicking
Tag All, I am going to do a right-click
| | 03:50 | in the middle of that group
and choose Write, and E-mail.
| | 03:54 | Once again, Outlook opens and you'll
notice the email address of all the members
| | 03:59 | of my networking group
have appeared in the To area.
| | 04:02 | Once again, I can type in my subject,
fill in the body, optionally change my
| | 04:13 | History options and click Send. If you use ACT!
| | 04:18 | in Outlook, you can get by
in the best of both worlds.
| | 04:21 | You'll be able to continue using
Outlook as your email client and automatically
| | 04:25 | record those results into ACT!.
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| Integrating with Outlook| 00:00 | Most ACT! users take advantage of ACT!'s
ability to send email through ACT! using Outlook.
| | 00:06 | However, many ACT! users
| | 00:07 | don't realize that they can also
associate an incoming email in Outlook with ACT!.
| | 00:13 | We're going to take a trip over to
Outlook, and you notice that I have a new
| | 00:17 | message that came in.
| | 00:18 | You might also notice that I have a
couple of new icons that have appeared at
| | 00:22 | the top of Outlook when I installed ACT!.
| | 00:24 | One of those icons says create an ACT! contact.
| | 00:28 | So, if receive an email from a new contact
that you're pretty sure is not in your ACT! database,
| | 00:35 | simply click that icon,
and the New Contact window opens up.
| | 00:40 | At this point, you can type in the
name of the company, any other information
| | 00:47 | you might have, and you notice that
the contact's name and the email address
| | 00:54 | already appeared
automatically from the email itself.
| | 00:58 | Click OK, and that contact is
automatically saved into ACT!.
| | 01:03 | One another way you can do the same
process is if you open up the email and
| | 01:08 | click on the Add-Ins tab, you notice
that you have the same options, and one of
| | 01:13 | those is to create an ACT! contact.
| | 01:16 | One of the things that I like to do is
automatically associate an incoming email
| | 01:22 | with an existing ACT! contact.
| | 01:24 | I want to create a history.
| | 01:26 | So what I can do is once I know
that the contact is in my ACT!
| | 01:31 | database, simply go up and
click the Quick Attach button.
| | 01:36 | Quick Attach is automatically going to
create a history of the incoming email
| | 01:41 | to an existing ACT! contact.
| | 01:43 | I click OK, and that
history has now been created.
| | 01:48 | A final thing that I very often do is
once I get a new contact into my database
| | 01:53 | or I receive an email from an existing
contact, I want to make sure that I don't
| | 01:58 | forget to follow up
with that contact.
| | 02:01 | Well, ACT! includes an Activity icon
on the Outlook bar, so I click that.
| | 02:07 | Because ACT! is able to associate my
incoming email with an existing ACT!
| | 02:12 | contact record, I'm able to create an activity.
| | 02:16 | So, of course, I can change
this from Meeting to Call or To-Do.
| | 02:20 | I could change the date, I can change
the time that's already associated with
| | 02:23 | the current contact.
| | 02:25 | All I need to do is change my Regarding
and click OK, and I've now scheduled an
| | 02:31 | activity to that contact.
| | 02:33 | Now, once I go back to ACT!, I want
to find that new contact record,
| | 02:38 | and ACT! has an easy way to do that.
| | 02:40 | I can do a lookup for all
contacts that were created today.
| | 02:43 | So I go to Lookup, choose Other Fields,
and search on the field, Create Date.
| | 02:49 | ACT! automatically defaults to looking
for contacts that were created today, and I
| | 02:55 | click OK, and here's my new contact record.
| | 02:57 | At that point, I might want to fill
in more information, including the
| | 03:01 | ID/Status, but if I take a look at the
Activities tab, I see that activity that
| | 03:07 | I created is already there.
| | 03:09 | If I look at the History tab, you see
that incoming email has already been
| | 03:14 | attached to that contact record.
| | 03:17 | By combining the power of the
Outlook Email Client with the efficiency of
| | 03:21 | ACT!, you'll be able to track your
incoming email and assure that nothing will
| | 03:26 | fall through the cracks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Developing an E-Marketing CampaignIntroduction to ACT! e-marketing| 00:00 | You're probably already somewhat
familiar with the concept of a Mail Merge and
| | 00:04 | you know what an e-mail is.
| | 00:06 | ACT!'s new eMarketing Module
combines the ease of an ACT!
| | 00:09 | Merge with the power of
an Email Service Provider.
| | 00:12 | So what exactly is an Email Service Provider?
| | 00:15 | An Email Service Provider or ESP is an
outside service that helps manage some of
| | 00:21 | the more problematic parts of an eBlast.
| | 00:23 | They make sure that your emails are spam
compliant and that your email won't get
| | 00:28 | blocked by the larger service
providers such as AOL, Yahoo! and Comcast.
| | 00:34 | They automatically suppress sending to
duplicate email addresses and to folks
| | 00:38 | who've previously opted out of your list.
| | 00:40 | ACT! provides you with a free limited ESP
account which you can continue to use as is
| | 00:47 | or upgrade at anytime.
| | 00:49 | An ESP also offers many additional benefits.
| | 00:53 | They send your email from their own
email servers which means you don't have
| | 00:57 | to worry about sending limitations imposed
on you by your own Internet Service Provider.
| | 01:03 | You can upload your graphics to the ESP
so that creating an HTML, email becomes
| | 01:09 | a relatively simple task.
| | 01:11 | You can send your eBlast to a look
up or group of your ACT! contacts.
| | 01:16 | You can even time when or how often you
would like your emails to be sent based
| | 01:21 | on the value of a specific field.
| | 01:24 | Sending out your eBlast is only the
beginning of the eMarketing process.
| | 01:28 | Once sent, you can direct response to
your email campaign directly from within ACT!.
| | 01:33 | You'll be able to run searches for those
who opened and those who ignored your email.
| | 01:39 | You'll be able to see what parts of
your email they found the most interesting
| | 01:44 | and you'll be able to focus in on
the folks who show the most interest in
| | 01:48 | buying new product.
| | 01:49 | As if all of this wasn't enough, ACT!'s
ESP will allow you to create web forms
| | 01:54 | that your contacts can
fill in from your website.
| | 01:56 | That information will
automatically appear in ACT!.
| | 02:00 | You can even create a web-based survey
and have the ESP track and compiled results.
| | 02:05 | We're going to go ahead and create a
free account that you could use with the
| | 02:09 | lynda.com exercises.
| | 02:10 | You'll also be able to continue to use
this account with your own database or
| | 02:14 | upgrade it to a larger account.
| | 02:16 | We are going to do this.
| | 02:18 | We're going to change the My Record information.
| | 02:20 | The Swiftpage is going to be
using to create your account.
| | 02:25 | I am going to just start by
changing the Contact name.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to highlight Chris
Huffman and type in my own name.
| | 02:31 | Now, changing the company
name is a little bit trickier.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to click that ellipses and
unlink this name from the Company record
| | 02:41 | and type in my own Company name.
| | 02:43 | The other thing that you want
to change is your email address.
| | 02:52 | If you do a right-click on the E-mail
field and click Edit E-mail, you can
| | 02:57 | delete that e-mail address and type in your own.
| | 03:00 | And you have made all the changes, go
ahead and click on View, and Refresh just
| | 03:06 | to make sure all those
changes are in your database.
| | 03:09 | Now, we can go up to Write and click on
ACT!E-marketing and choose E-mail Marketing.
| | 03:15 | You are going to see a disclaimer that
says the ESP is actually run by a company
| | 03:19 | by the name of Swiftpage and
click OK to the disclaimer.
| | 03:23 | If you already have a Swiftpage
account, feel free to type in your
| | 03:27 | existing Account, User ID and
Password and you can skip to the next
| | 03:32 | section of this chapter.
| | 03:34 | If not, click the I need a Swiftpage
Account and click the Submit button.
| | 03:38 | You are going to be prompted
for an Account and a User ID.
| | 03:43 | I would like to make my User ID
my first initial and my last name.
| | 03:48 | You'll also be prompted for your
password for both the account and for the
| | 03:54 | person who is logging into that account.
| | 03:57 | Make sure your password has at least
six letters and is not the same as you use
| | 04:01 | your ID and click Next to continue.
| | 04:11 | Verify that all your information is
accurate and if not, feel free to change it.
| | 04:16 | Only those fields within
orange asterisk are required.
| | 04:20 | You might want to change the
Time Zone to your actual time zone.
| | 04:25 | The time zone is used to send reports
about your email blast to you and if you
| | 04:32 | would like type in Lynda as a Reseller.
| | 04:35 | We're hoping to be able to provide you with
larger accounts in the future and click Submit.
| | 04:41 | At this point, a verification email is
going to be sent to you and you'll want
| | 04:46 | to click on the verification link
and at email to activate your account.
| | 04:50 | You'll also be prompted to add the
fields that would be required by the
| | 04:58 | eMarketing feature into ACT! and
you can click Submit to do that.
| | 05:02 | Whether you take an advantage of a
free eMarketing account to send out HTML
| | 05:07 | emails to small groups of your
contacts or paying for larger accounts and
| | 05:12 | blasting to thousands of people at a
time, you're sure to find that ACT!
| | 05:16 | makes the eMarketing process amazingly easy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an email template| 00:00 | Sending an email that contains
graphics is not as easy as it looks.
| | 00:04 | We've all seen examples of
bad HTML email templates.
| | 00:09 | They might arrive to you missing
graphics or maybe you're seeing big red Xs
| | 00:12 | where the graphic should be or the
email might arrive with lots of attachments
| | 00:17 | and no graphics in the
body of the email. Using ACT!
| | 00:19 | E-marketing, we can create
full-proof HTML templates.
| | 00:24 | We start by going up to
the Write menu, clicking ACT!
| | 00:27 | E-marketing and choosing E-mail Marketing.
| | 00:30 | This opens up the E-marketing window
and we're going to choose Edit Template.
| | 00:35 | We're now taken on a trip out to the
Internet and we see some tools run along
| | 00:41 | the left-hand side of our screen.
| | 00:43 | We're going to start by
looking at the Read Only Library.
| | 00:48 | This is a list of all the templates
that come with your Swiftpage account and
| | 00:53 | you can take any of these
templates and edit them as you want.
| | 00:56 | Now if you'd like to take a look at
these templates, you could select one and
| | 01:01 | click the Preview button or you can
click on Preview All Global Templates and
| | 01:06 | see a snapshot of every template.
| | 01:07 | I'm going to choose the Letterhead 02
with the blue background and click Submit.
| | 01:13 | Now you notice in our tools,
we also have an Active Library.
| | 01:18 | This Active Library is a list of all
the templates that you've already chosen
| | 01:24 | and you've been working with.
| | 01:25 | This is where you would go to
edit any of your existing templates.
| | 01:29 | But for now, we want to edit that new template
that we just took out of the Read Only Library.
| | 01:34 | So I'm going to go to the Template
Library and I'm going to show the current
| | 01:40 | template and that's the
template that we just selected.
| | 01:41 | Now I'm going to go to my Content
Editor, so I can make changes to it.
| | 01:46 | So I'm going to select Text Options and
if you notice when I run my mouse over
| | 01:52 | the screen, my template is actually
divided into a number of sections.
| | 01:57 | And right now, I would like to make some
changes to the text portion of my email.
| | 02:01 | So I'm going to click on
that and click on Edit Text.
| | 02:05 | This is going to open up a
fairly simple word processor.
| | 02:09 | All I need to do is put my cursor in
the body of my email and start to type.
| | 02:15 | So I might want to do something like this.
| | 02:21 | Now this word processor is
tied in to your ACT! database.
| | 02:25 | So I might want to say something like this.
| | 02:29 | I know that we can provide
great products for your company.
| | 02:37 | But instead of saying your company, I'd
like to personalize this with the name
| | 02:41 | of the recipient of this email.
| | 02:42 | So if I go up here to the Mail Merge
fields, I see all of my ACT! fields.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to just scroll down here and
find the Company field and insert it into
| | 02:53 | the body of my letter, so
that my email is personalized.
| | 02:56 | Other things that I might want to do is
create a hyperlink back to my website.
| | 03:01 | This will allow me to count the number of
times that my recipients access that link.
| | 03:06 | So by type something like this, I
want to create a hyperlink from the
| | 03:15 | words, visit my website.
| | 03:17 | So I highlight them, I click the
Link icon and I type in the URL of my
| | 03:24 | company and click OK.
| | 03:28 | Now another type of hyperlink I can
create is one that will email directly to me.
| | 03:34 | So I might do something along the lines of this.
| | 03:43 | And again, I highlight the words in
question, go to my Link and this time I'm
| | 03:49 | going to be creating an E-mail link.
| | 03:52 | Now I can type in my address, even
propose a message for my subject and click OK.
| | 04:05 | When I'm done with the body of my
template, I can either click the Check
| | 04:10 | Spelling button or just submit it.
| | 04:11 | Now you can see that the changes
instantly appear in my template.
| | 04:15 | And if you want to check out
those links, just click one.
| | 04:19 | In this case, you notice that my email
message is opened, already addressed with
| | 04:23 | the proper subject line.
| | 04:25 | I can also add graphics to my templates,
and again, I'm going to return to the
| | 04:30 | Top menu and this time I'm
going to choose Image Options.
| | 04:34 | I'm going to select the box where I
want to insert a graphic and click on
| | 04:40 | Add/Replace an Image.
| | 04:42 | From here, I would browse out to my graphic.
| | 04:46 | Decide if I want this graphic to appear
at the Left, the Top, the Bottom or in
| | 04:51 | the Right part of that box and hit Submit.
| | 04:53 | As you become more and more familiar
with the basic elements of the E-marketing
| | 04:57 | designer, feel free to experiment a bit
more with some of the other pre-designed
| | 05:01 | templates or continue to
edit the one you started with.
| | 05:04 | Either way, the E-marketing module
will let you avoid the pitfalls of
| | 05:08 | HTML email.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sending an e-blast| 00:00 | The E-Marketing module is meant to
both send HTML email and to track the
| | 00:04 | results of the submission.
| | 00:07 | Once you've created an HTML template,
you can send it to any portion of your
| | 00:10 | database at the click of a button.
| | 00:12 | You can then sit back, relax and
wait for the results of your campaign.
| | 00:16 | You might want to start by creating a
lookup of the folks that are supposed to
| | 00:20 | be receiving your email.
| | 00:21 | So in this case, I'm going to
create a lookup of all my customers.
| | 00:25 | So I go up to Lookup, choose ID/Status
and then choose Customer and click OK.
| | 00:31 | So I'm going to be sending
this email blast out to 64 people.
| | 00:35 | My next step is to go up
to Write and choose ACT!
| | 00:38 | E-marketing and select E-mail Marketing.
| | 00:41 | This opens up my ACT! E-marketing window and I'm
on the E-mail tab, which is exactly where I want to be.
| | 00:47 | Now I can send this email out to my
current look up or I could send it to
| | 00:53 | All Contacts or I can even select a
group of contacts or I can send this out
| | 00:59 | to a specific company.
| | 01:00 | But I'm going to send this
out to my current look up.
| | 01:03 | Now down here where it says E-mail
Template, this is where I can select the
| | 01:07 | template that I want to be sending.
| | 01:09 | And if I am not sure what that template
looks like, I can hit Preview Template
| | 01:13 | to take a look at it.
| | 01:14 | If I want to select a different template,
I simply click on the Select Template
| | 01:18 | button and choose a different template.
| | 01:21 | Next, I'm going to type in an E-mail Subject.
| | 01:24 | So for this case, I'm going
to type in my subject line.
| | 01:35 | And if I chosen to include a personal
message in my template, this is where I
| | 01:39 | could personalize my message further.
| | 01:41 | Now I've got a couple of options down here.
| | 01:44 | Send Now will instantly send that eBlast out.
| | 01:48 | Schedule Send will allow me
to send it at a later date.
| | 01:52 | Send As will allow me to send this email on
the behalf of another person in my organization.
| | 01:58 | I happen to like the Schedule Send
option because I find that there are certain
| | 02:02 | times that are the best times to send email.
| | 02:05 | For example, I'd like to send my
email blast on Tuesday afternoons.
| | 02:09 | So I'm going to click on Schedule Send and I'm
going to schedule this eBlast for next Monday.
| | 02:15 | And I'm going to choose to send it at 3
o' clock in the afternoon and I've just
| | 02:19 | scheduled that send.
| | 02:20 | I'm now going to be given a list of
all the recipients of that email and I'm
| | 02:26 | also asked to verify the subject, the
template and the time that I'm going to
| | 02:31 | send this and even what account and user this
email is being sent from. If I'd like, ACT!
| | 02:37 | will automatically create a history of
every email that is sent on the Activity
| | 02:42 | tab of each contact.
| | 02:45 | However, if I want to personalize that
history a little bit, I could put in a
| | 02:50 | further description here and
click Yes when I'm ready to send.
| | 02:57 | The basic account that comes with ACT!
| | 02:59 | will allow you to transmit
up to 50 emails at a time.
| | 03:02 | However, once you feel comfortable
with the process, you can upgrade your
| | 03:05 | account and send out your blast
to as many people as you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Analyzing the results of an e-marketing campaign| 00:00 | One of the biggest differences
between a Mail Merge and a true e-marketing
| | 00:03 | campaign is the ability to track results.
| | 00:06 | You'll be able to see who opened
and who didn't open your email.
| | 00:10 | You'll be able to track opt-outs and
bounces, and there are a number of ways in
| | 00:14 | which you can access this
information directly from within ACT!.
| | 00:17 | Okay, we're going to start by opening
up our Emarketing piece, so we're going
| | 00:21 | to Write, choose ACT! E-marketing
and then choose E-mail Marketing.
| | 00:26 | This opens up the E-marketing window.
| | 00:28 | Now we're going to go over to the Results tab.
| | 00:30 | Now if you've recently sent out a
campaign, you'll be prompted to write the
| | 00:36 | results back into ACT!.
| | 00:38 | What this will do is update all the
histories that were created when you
| | 00:42 | originally sent the E-campaign
with the current status.
| | 00:47 | So you'll be able to find who opted out
and who bounced and maybe who clicked on
| | 00:51 | your e-mail five times.
| | 00:53 | At that point, you'll want to go over
to the Reports, and normally, you'll be
| | 00:57 | able to select the campaign that
you recently sent and view the report.
| | 01:03 | But for purposes of these exercises, we're
going to go over here to the Sample Reports.
| | 01:07 | I'm going to maximize this window so
we could see it a little bit better.
| | 01:10 | Now you notice that there are
several categories that we can see.
| | 01:15 | We can see who we submitted the email
to and who we actually sent the email
| | 01:21 | to, and the difference.
| | 01:23 | So you might be wondering, well, how
come, I had 41 folks that I sent this to,
| | 01:28 | but only 32 of them actually got sent.
| | 01:31 | So we might want to
investigate these 9 unsent emails.
| | 01:34 | So I can click on the Unsent button over
here on the right and I now have a list
| | 01:40 | of the 9 email addresses that the
email campaign did not go out to.
| | 01:45 | Typically, the reason is that either
the person has given an opt-out for my
| | 01:49 | database, or because the email address
is actually a duplicate email, because
| | 01:55 | Swiftpage will suppress the
sending of duplicate email.
| | 01:59 | So I've two people who go in
by that same email address.
| | 02:01 | For example, you might have two
people in your database that both use the
| | 02:05 | info@abccompany email, but only
one of them will receive the email.
| | 02:10 | So I'm going to hit the Back button,
and a few other things that you might be
| | 02:14 | interested is viewing who bounced or
who maybe bounced out of this email, or in
| | 02:20 | this case, how about let's look at
who clicked on our various links.
| | 02:25 | So I'm going to click on the Clicks by
Link button, and you can see that I had
| | 02:29 | two links in the body of my template.
| | 02:31 | Now below that we're seeing the
number of people that clicked on each link.
| | 02:37 | So in this case, you see two people
clicked on the one link and four people
| | 02:41 | clicked on the other link,
and I get their email addresses.
| | 02:45 | Of course, if I'd like to have a CSV copy
emailed to me, all I have to do is click Send.
| | 02:50 | Now those results are really nice, but I can
also view results directly from within ACT!.
| | 02:57 | For example, I might want a list of
everybody whose email bounced so that I can
| | 03:01 | call them and verify their email address.
| | 03:04 | I can access that information
from within ACT by clicking on the
| | 03:08 | Marketing Results tab.
| | 03:09 | At that point, what you're going to do
is click on the E-marketing History item
| | 03:14 | and then click Search.
| | 03:17 | Now you can see that we have a dropdown
window which will let us search for our
| | 03:21 | Unopens, our Opt-outs, our Invalids,
our Bounced and our Duplicates.
| | 03:25 | So in this case, I'm going to
look for all those Bounced emails.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to copy this
information to the Clipboard.
| | 03:31 | Now at that point, I'm going to go to
my Lookup menu, go to Keyword Search, and
| | 03:38 | paste in that information.
| | 03:40 | When I click Find, I'll be given
a lookup of all the contacts whose
| | 03:46 | email addresses bounced.
| | 03:48 | With ACT!'s E-marketing module,
you'll be able to find out who's really
| | 03:51 | interested in your products and
services and who never opened your email, and
| | 03:55 | who never even received your email.
| | 03:57 | You might even experiment by sending
different templates to different portions
| | 04:01 | of your database, so that you can
measure the effectiveness of each one.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a survey | 00:00 | The E-marketing module contains
the ability to create surveys.
| | 00:03 | A survey is an easy way to pull
your contacts for the preferences.
| | 00:07 | For example, you might be looking for
some feedback on that new Magento widget
| | 00:10 | you recently launched, or to see if
people are more likely to attend a seminar
| | 00:14 | on a Thursday rather than on a Tuesday.
| | 00:16 | We start by going up to the
Write menu and choosing ACT!
| | 00:20 | E-marketing, and from there
we're going down to Survey/Web Forms.
| | 00:25 | This opens up the ACT! E-marketing
window and the Surveys tab.
| | 00:29 | From there we click on Survey Editor.
| | 00:31 | From the Survey Editor, we're going to
start by going over to Survey Management,
| | 00:37 | and we can either change our current
survey to another one, rename the existing
| | 00:42 | survey or create a new survey.
| | 00:44 | So we're going to create a
new survey. So I click on New.
| | 00:47 | I'm going to give that survey a name,
and to make life easy, we can actually
| | 00:52 | copy questions from an existing survey.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to choose Sample and click Submit.
| | 00:58 | So I'm here, we're going to
go to the Survey Designer.
| | 01:02 | So I click on Survey
Design at the top of my screen.
| | 01:05 | Probably, the first thing we want to
do is add a couple of more questions.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to add a question.
| | 01:12 | The question I'm going to ask
is going to be simple, yes/no.
| | 01:20 | So I'm going to indicate that the answer
should come in the form of a Yes or a No.
| | 01:24 | Let's scroll down to the bottom
of this window and click on Submit.
| | 01:28 | Now at this point I might want to
preview my survey, so I can click on Preview.
| | 01:34 | Here you see exactly what that survey is
going to look like with the various questions.
| | 01:39 | Now if we're not happy with
what it looks like, we want to hit Edit.
| | 01:42 | When I click on Edit, I'm seeing all
the questions that I've added, and I have
| | 01:47 | the ability to edit any of those questions.
| | 01:50 | To delete any of the questions, make
those questions a required field or
| | 01:55 | actually hide that question if I
don't want it to be shown right now.
| | 01:59 | I could also take a question and I can
move it up or move it down, if I want
| | 02:04 | to change the order of my questions, but
for now, I'm going to add another question.
| | 02:07 | How did you like the Webinar?
| | 02:14 | This time I'm going to
give them a multiple choice.
| | 02:18 | Again, I scroll down at
the bottom and click Submit.
| | 02:22 | This time I'm going to be
prompted for my choices.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to give choices like,
It was great!, So-So, or Not so much.
| | 02:37 | Again, I'm going to scroll down and Submit.
| | 02:41 | Then I'm going to go back
to either Preview or to Edit.
| | 02:45 | You're going to continue to build your
survey until you're happy with the results.
| | 02:50 | At this point, you're going to
go to your Survey Result Options.
| | 02:54 | You can control what happens
when people take your survey.
| | 02:57 | You can opt to have an Autoresponder
sending an e-mail acknowledgment when
| | 03:01 | someone fills out your form.
| | 03:03 | You can make the survey part of your
drip marketing campaign, so that will
| | 03:07 | automatically send that survey
out to people that are in your drip
| | 03:10 | marketing campaign.
| | 03:12 | We can also create a Survey Landing
Page and determine where folks are going to
| | 03:16 | end up once I've completed the survey.
| | 03:18 | Once you've set your Survey Result
Options, you're ready to send that survey
| | 03:24 | and get some response.
| | 03:25 | So if I click on the Survey Responses,
you can see that once the responses
| | 03:30 | start rolling in, I can opt to have the results
sent to me in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.
| | 03:37 | So I give it my email address and ask
if I'd like to just see the Summary Data
| | 03:42 | or the Detail Data, or Both, and click Submit.
| | 03:45 | If I go to compile, the Summary Data
will give me a compilation of all the
| | 03:50 | results and the Detail will give me
the individual results of each recipient.
| | 03:55 | Once you get familiar with surveys, you'll
find that you can use them in a variety of ways.
| | 04:00 | I use mine to gauge the success of my Webinars.
| | 04:03 | You might use yours to see how well
your customers like your new product line,
| | 04:06 | or to pull them for their
opinions about your upcoming conferences.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a web form| 00:00 | A lot of us have forms on a website
that we are hoping our prospects will fill out
| | 00:03 | and thus provide us with new and/or
updated contact information. Well, guess what?
| | 00:09 | You can create these forms in ACT!,
stick them on your website and have the
| | 00:12 | information automatically appear in ACT!
| | 00:14 | with a click of a button.
| | 00:16 | We're going to start by going up
to the Write menu selecting ACT!
| | 00:19 | E-marketing and then selecting
Survey/Web Forms. When the ACT!
| | 00:25 | E-marketing window opens, we're going to
click on the Survey Editor and from the
| | 00:30 | Survey Editor we're going to
click on Survey Management.
| | 00:33 | And since we're creating a brand-new
webform, I'm going to click on New, we're
| | 00:38 | going to give that survey a name and
to make life easy, we're going to copy
| | 00:44 | questions from an existing web form.
| | 00:47 | So I'm going to hit this dropdown
and actually use the Long form of the
| | 00:51 | ListBuilder and click on Submit.
| | 00:54 | And once I've created that new survey,
I'm going to want to tweak it a bit.
| | 00:57 | So I'm going to go over to the
Survey Design and give that a click.
| | 01:02 | Now at this point, I can start adding
some new questions, but I'm going to take
| | 01:06 | a look at that survey
first to see what it came with.
| | 01:08 | So I'm going to click on Edit, we're now
seeing a list of all the questions, and
| | 01:13 | you could see that I can Edit an
existing question, Delete one, make it a
| | 01:18 | Required question, even
Hide that question temporarily.
| | 01:22 | I can have the questions appear Side by Side
and I can also change the order of a question.
| | 01:28 | So I might want to say well you know,
I don't really need to have a Title,
| | 01:31 | so I'm going to Delete it, but I'd like to
take that Fax number and move it up a bit.
| | 01:37 | Now you've also seen when we've our ACT!
| | 01:41 | Fields, we can actually link all of
these fields back to an ACT! Field.
| | 01:46 | So when someone fills out the Web
form that information automatically fill
| | 01:50 | automatically flow into our database.
| | 01:51 | I'm going to go and start
adding a couple new questions.
| | 01:54 | So I'm going to click on Add New Question.
| | 01:56 | The first question I want to
know is, What is your date of Birth?
| | 01:59 | It doesn't really matter what question
type I pick because we're going to be
| | 02:08 | linking this question to an ACT! Field.
| | 02:11 | So let's scroll down and click Submit.
| | 02:14 | I'm going to ask one more question and
that is do they have any comments that
| | 02:19 | they would like to share with me.
| | 02:20 | It doesn't matter what type
did I choose for this question.
| | 02:24 | And I'll just scroll down and click on Submit.
| | 02:27 | So once I've added all my questions
and made sure that they are in the order
| | 02:31 | that I want, I am ready to go
over to the Survey Results Options.
| | 02:35 | And when I go to the Survey Results
Options, I can indicate whether I'd like
| | 02:39 | an automatic email sent when someone
fills out my web form, whether I want to
| | 02:44 | make this part of my Drip Marketing
campaigns and whether this is a List
| | 02:47 | Builder, which is designed to add new
contacts to my database, or this is a
| | 02:52 | List Updater, which is designed to
update existing contacts, in which case
| | 02:58 | the due information scours on my database to
make sure that I don't duplicate my contacts.
| | 03:04 | Once I've given all of my Survey Result
Options, I click the Submit button and
| | 03:09 | this takes me to the next step of my
web form design and that is to map all the
| | 03:14 | survey questions to the
appropriate ACT! database field.
| | 03:18 | You could see all those fields that
came out of the box are already mapped, but
| | 03:21 | I want to be able to map those
two new questions that I added.
| | 03:26 | What is your date of Birth and Comments.
| | 03:28 | So I'm going to hit this dropdown.
| | 03:30 | I'm going to find the Birth Date field,
so the information on that web form
| | 03:36 | for Date of Birth is going to flow into my
database and end up in the Birth Date field.
| | 03:40 | Comments are a little bit different.
| | 03:43 | I'd like that to appear in
the Note section of my database.
| | 03:46 | So I'm going to click on
the dropdown and choose Note.
| | 03:49 | So any comments that they write will
automatically appear as a note in my ACT! database.
| | 03:55 | Once you've created your Web form,
you're ready to either post it on your
| | 03:59 | website or email it out to
your prospects and clients.
| | 04:02 | Every time someone fills out that web
form, you'll receive an email letting you
| | 04:06 | know that someone has filled it out.
| | 04:08 | At that point, you can go into the
E-marketing module, go to the Results tab and
| | 04:13 | those results will automatically
be added to your Act! database.
| | 04:17 | The versatility of creating a web form and
getting that information directly into ACT!
| | 04:22 | is a feature you'll
certainly want to take advantage of.
| | 04:25 | It will not only save you a lots of
time, but will keep your data up to date.
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| Creating a drip marketing campaign| 00:00 | If you're like most of us, there are
just not enough hours in a day to accomplish
| | 00:03 | everything we need to do.
| | 00:05 | We tend to jump from fire to fire,
overlooking some of the details along the way.
| | 00:09 | Wouldn't it be nice if you could
schedule a campaign of your prospects and
| | 00:13 | continue to mail to them every quarter,
or should they become a customer send
| | 00:18 | them a thank you note?
| | 00:19 | A little bit of planning and ACT!'s Drip
Marketing module can help you do just that.
| | 00:23 | We're going to make the assumption
that you've already created the templates,
| | 00:26 | because you've taken a
previous section in this chapter.
| | 00:29 | So we're going to dive right
into the Drip Marketing Campaign.
| | 00:31 | I'm going to click on Write, go to ACT!
| | 00:33 | E-marketing and choose Drip Marketing Campaign.
| | 00:37 | Now if you get this error
message, don't worry. Just click OK.
| | 00:43 | And we get to our Drip Marketing Campaign tab.
| | 00:46 | From here we're going to click on
Campaign Manager and at the Campaign Manager,
| | 00:54 | we can either create a new campaign
from scratch or copy an existing one.
| | 00:59 | I'm going to be a little bit lazy and
copy an existing one, because I know I can
| | 01:03 | edit it to make it my own.
| | 01:05 | I'm going to click on Copy Campaign
and a little word of warning, if you're
| | 01:09 | using the standard account that comes with ACT!.
| | 01:13 | You won't be able to use all of these
campaigns, but you'll be able to use the
| | 01:18 | ones that are marked free.
| | 01:19 | So I'm going to start by using the
Sample Product X Education Series, which
| | 01:25 | obviously says that it's free.
| | 01:26 | Now your Global campaigns are
the ones that come out of the box.
| | 01:30 | Your Local campaigns are the
ones that you've edited and created.
| | 01:34 | So the next time we go in here you'll be
able to copy one of your own campaigns.
| | 01:38 | I'm going to give this campaign a name
by just adding Lynda to the front of it.
| | 01:44 | This Description is optional and
if there are several members in my
| | 01:47 | organization that might be sending
campaigns, I'm going to pick the name of the
| | 01:51 | sender that this is going as.
| | 01:52 | I also need to select the Source of
my data, which in this case, I hit the
| | 01:57 | dropdown list and choose ACT!.
| | 02:01 | Now, I can just copy the campaign or
I can copy and change the campaign.
| | 02:04 | So I'm going to click on Copy and Edit,
and the New Campaign is going to be
| | 02:10 | created and I am now at
the Campaign Edit screen.
| | 02:12 | If I want to see all the stages and
they are listed along here on the right, I
| | 02:17 | can hit this Expand All button
and see the detail for each stage.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to Collapse and instead, I'm
going to just open the first stage by
| | 02:26 | clicking these double pointing down arrows.
| | 02:29 | Now I'd like to make some little
changes to this stage, so I'm going to click
| | 02:33 | on the Edit button.
| | 02:34 | Now the Edit button has a couple of choices.
| | 02:38 | The first is to give the
Stage information a Name.
| | 02:41 | I very often name my stages Step 1,
Step 2, or in this case they name the
| | 02:47 | Stage Introduction.
| | 02:49 | The next step is to determine what
you want that first Email to look like.
| | 02:54 | So you supply a Subject and then you
pick the Template, and again, you can pick
| | 03:00 | any of your templates.
| | 03:01 | If you're not sure that you've chosen
the right one, you can always click the
| | 03:05 | Preview button and see exactly
what that template looks like.
| | 03:09 | The next section asks when we
want to start that campaign?
| | 03:15 | And you notice it says Send on, 1 day.
| | 03:17 | So 1 day after I start the campaign
this first email is going to go out.
| | 03:22 | And you notice other stages, they will go
off after 14 days, after 30 days, and so on.
| | 03:28 | So if this was a Newsletter Campaign,
you might set these at intervals of 90
| | 03:32 | days, so that your email goes out every quarter.
| | 03:36 | And on this first stage it's going to go to,
All Contacts in my Drip Marketing List.
| | 03:41 | We'll be seeing how to get
those contacts there in a minute.
| | 03:43 | So I am done with making the
changes to this stage, I Save the stage.
| | 03:47 | Now what if I want to go on to the
second stage of my campaign, again, I click
| | 03:52 | those double pointing arrows and I click Edit.
| | 03:55 | Now the second and subsequent
stages have few different choices.
| | 03:59 | Again, I've given a Name and I choose
my Email Subject and I can determine what
| | 04:05 | Template I want to send.
| | 04:08 | And of course, I determine how many
days after the start of campaign, I'd
| | 04:11 | like to send this one.
| | 04:12 | What if I scroll down here, I see a few
extra choices, because I can continue to
| | 04:17 | send this to everyone in my Drip
Marketing List or I can send it to specifically
| | 04:23 | to Contacts from previous Email stages
or either Opened and Not clicked or maybe
| | 04:29 | Clicked on Link, or not
opened, my previous email.
| | 04:33 | And I can also determine where I want
them to come from, and as I progress down
| | 04:38 | to my stages, I could say if someone
still hasn't opened that email by the third
| | 04:42 | stage, I want them to receive this fourth stage.
| | 04:47 | When I am done with all my changes, I
click on Save Stage, and if I want to
| | 04:51 | create a new stage I can click on this Email
and create a brand-new stage to my campaign.
| | 04:58 | You will notice some of these options
are grayed out because they don't come as
| | 05:01 | part of your free account.
| | 05:02 | If you do upgrade your account, you'll
be able to add stages including sending
| | 05:06 | Postcards and Letters.
| | 05:08 | Once you've completed creating your
campaign, you'll click on Campaign Manager
| | 05:14 | and you notice that we now have
our campaign listed with the Status.
| | 05:18 | And if you're not quite sure what that
status means, you might want to Show the
| | 05:21 | Legend, which means -- Campaign is in
Build Mode, because we're still working at it.
| | 05:28 | So at this point we can Launch the
campaign but we're still not finished.
| | 05:32 | Now I'm going to close out of the Drip
Marketing Campaign window and return to
| | 05:40 | it again by going to Write > ACT!
| | 05:41 | E-marketing > Drip Marketing Campaign.
| | 05:46 | This time, when I go to the Drip
Marketing Campaign, I am seeing my campaign
| | 05:50 | listed and I am now seeing a button
that will allow me to sync my contacts from
| | 05:55 | my database into this marketing piece.
| | 05:57 | So I'm going to click on the Sync
Contacts and I'm going to Sync to one of the
| | 06:03 | groups in my database.
| | 06:05 | If I click Next, and here you're going
to see all the groups in my database.
| | 06:11 | I'm going to go down to the group
of my USA Customers and Click Next.
| | 06:19 | Those contacts are now going to be
inserted into my Drip Marketing Campaign, as
| | 06:24 | you can see here I've added 41 people.
| | 06:28 | And I'm going to Finish that Sync.
| | 06:32 | Now if I returned to my Campaign Manager,
you see that all systems are a go and
| | 06:40 | I am ready to start.
| | 06:41 | Although, scheduling the Drip Marketing
Campaign isn't hard, taking the time to plan one is.
| | 06:46 | Taking the time now to create some
templates and plan your strategy will result
| | 06:51 | in a better organized campaign
and a much lower level of stress.
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|
|
7. Using the Web to Build Your DatabaseNavigating in the Web Info tab| 00:00 | Your ACT! database contains lots of
information about your various contacts.
| | 00:04 | However, you might be missing a piece of
information like a phone number or an address.
| | 00:09 | You could use the Web to find that
information or you might try using Act!'s
| | 00:12 | new Web Info tab that pulls ACT!
| | 00:15 | Contact Information directly into
some of the most popular websites.
| | 00:19 | Okay, we are going to find that Web
Info tab with all the other tabs, and there
| | 00:24 | it is the Web Info and I Click it.
| | 00:26 | Now the first thing you notice is that
the Contact's web site is appearing in
| | 00:31 | the tab area of Act!.
| | 00:33 | Now if I'm not happy with that size, I
can click be Increase Tab Size button.
| | 00:38 | It will now take up a lot
more real estate in Act!.
| | 00:41 | But I think that size is a little bit
too big, I can click on Decrease Tab Size
| | 00:47 | and take it back to its original size.
| | 00:49 | If I am not happy with either of those
sizes, I can always put my mouse on that
| | 00:54 | divider between the top-half of the ACT! screen
| | 00:56 | and the bottom-half, hold down
my left mouse button and drag it up to
| | 01:01 | just the size I am happy with.
| | 01:05 | Another option is to Click
on the Open Browser button.
| | 01:09 | When I Click on Open Browser, my browser,
in this case, Internet Explorer opens
| | 01:16 | and it's already opened
to the contact's website.
| | 01:22 | You notice that I have some typical
browser buttons that appear at the top of
| | 01:26 | this tab, for example, I have a Back
button, if I want to go back to previous
| | 01:31 | site that I visited.
| | 01:33 | I also have a Refresh button, in case I
need to refresh the information that I
| | 01:37 | am seeing on the screen.
| | 01:38 | I also have a Stop button just in
case, the website is not opening.
| | 01:43 | I also have a nice Copy Link button.
| | 01:47 | This button will copy the URL of the current
website that I am seeing into my Clipboard.
| | 01:53 | Say for example, I found a great area
of my customer's website, I might want
| | 01:59 | to click on Copy Link and paste this into
a Note so I can go back and find it again.
| | 02:04 | Combining ACT! information with popular social
networking and websites, makes finding
| | 02:10 | additional information
about your contacts a snap.
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| Using the Web Info tab to research your contacts| 00:00 | We are all used to doing
research on the Internet.
| | 00:03 | ACT! takes the concept one step further
by automatically inserting our existing
| | 00:07 | information into web searches.
| | 00:09 | We could use the links in the Web
Info tab to gather more information about
| | 00:13 | contact and to build better relationships.
| | 00:16 | All right, we are going to start by
getting a little information about Chris Huffman.
| | 00:20 | So we turn to the Web
Info tab and give it a Click.
| | 00:24 | Now, the first thing that we
are seeing is Chris's website.
| | 00:28 | Now of course, it's a great place for
us to find out more information about,
| | 00:32 | maybe, the Solutions or the
Services that they provide.
| | 00:35 | In addition, we can do things like go
to the Google News Search and News search
| | 00:41 | is going to search through Google and
find any articles about this company.
| | 00:47 | We can also go to Google Search which
will look through Google and find any
| | 00:51 | articles about the current contact
itself, in this case Chris Huffman.
| | 00:56 | Finally, we might want to go Yahoo!
| | 00:59 | Person Search and find out what
Yahoo is saying about that person.
| | 01:07 | Now I would like to use the Web Info tab to
build relationships with my current contacts.
| | 01:14 | One of the ways I can do that
is by looking at the Weather.
| | 01:21 | I might be on the phone with Chris
and want to point out oh, while I am in
| | 01:25 | Florida, and it looks like you've got
50 degrees there in New York, or I can
| | 01:29 | really rub it in and say I am so sorry
about that mountainous snow that due to
| | 01:34 | come your way in another few hours.
| | 01:36 | We could also go into Yahoo Local Info
and find information about the area that
| | 01:44 | your contact resides in. In addition,
| | 01:48 | ACT! comes with a number of social networks.
For example, I can go to the Facebook link,
| | 01:54 | and see if Chris is a member of Facebook.
| | 02:00 | And I can click on Chris's record and
send invitation so that now we are joined
| | 02:05 | together on Facebook.
| | 02:06 | The same holds true for Plaxo and for
LinkedIn and again if you have an account
| | 02:14 | and they have an account, it's very
easy for you to send them an invitation and
| | 02:19 | join in without ever having to leave Act!.
| | 02:21 | And one of my favorite applications
for that Web Info tab is the ability to
| | 02:28 | get driving directions. So what ACT!
| | 02:31 | will do is create direction from your
location to your contact's location.
| | 02:37 | So I need to go see my friend Andy
Federici today and I need directions.
| | 02:43 | So I am going to do a Lookup by his
Last Name and get to Andy's contact record.
| | 02:51 | Once I am there, I am going to
click on Google Driving Directions.
| | 02:56 | And about as quickly as I can click,
Google has already come up with the
| | 02:59 | directions and I am going to increase
this a bit so we can see it better, and
| | 03:03 | you see that we have directions from my
location to Andy's location, including
| | 03:11 | the mileage and how long it's
going to take me to get there.
| | 03:16 | One other usage of the Web Info tab is
to build your database by scouring the
| | 03:22 | Internet for piece of
information that might be missing.
| | 03:25 | We are going to pretend that we
have a new contact in our database.
| | 03:29 | so I am going up to Contacts and hit in
New Contact and I don't know whole lot
| | 03:34 | about this guy, all I know is his name
is Joe Johnson and I think his company
| | 03:43 | has something to do with surf shops.
| | 03:47 | I am not quite sure what the name is,
but one piece of valuable information I do
| | 03:51 | have is his website.
| | 03:53 | Now I am cheating and I am just
going to paste in his website.
| | 03:58 | But once I have that, I can easily click
on the Contact's Website link, and here
| | 04:05 | I am at his website.
| | 04:07 | So the first thing I am going to do is
Copy the name of his company, and Paste
| | 04:16 | it into my database so that I
have an accurate Company name.
| | 04:21 | Now sometimes when I scour the website,
I will see something like the Contact
| | 04:26 | tab and sure enough, I have now found
his mailing address, and his phone number
| | 04:32 | and again all I have to do is Copy that
information, and Paste it into my ACT! database.
| | 04:42 | In this case, I even found his
e-mail address. By combining ACT!
| | 04:51 | with the web, the possibilities are
endless and as more and more of you contacts
| | 04:56 | start to use the various networking
sites, you will find that soon or later you
| | 05:00 | will be able to find all
the information you need.
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| Creating new web links| 00:00 | By now you've had a chance to discover
the great Web Links that already appear
| | 00:03 | on the Web Info tab.
| | 00:05 | However, new sites appear all the time
and you might want to take advantage of
| | 00:09 | those or there might be
internal sites that you access.
| | 00:13 | Not a problem with ACT!.
| | 00:15 | It's easy to create new Web Links
or tweak the ones you already have.
| | 00:17 | We're going to start by accessing the
Web Info tab, by giving it a click, you
| | 00:24 | can see the list of links over on
the left hand side and at the top it says
| | 00:28 | Edit Links, we're going to give the Edit click.
| | 00:30 | Now, the first thing we can do is
delete a link, so let's say you don't
| | 00:34 | believe in Facebook.
| | 00:36 | You could click on Facebook, click Delete
and if you click Yes, that link will disappear.
| | 00:42 | We can also edit an existing link.
| | 00:46 | For example when we use the Google Search,
it searches for the current Contact Name.
| | 00:55 | Maybe we prefer to have it
search for the current Company Name.
| | 00:59 | So, what I'm going to do is click on Edit Links.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to go to that Google
Search and click on Advanced Edit.
| | 01:07 | Now you notice I have the ACT Field
Name up here and I'm going to delete that.
| | 01:13 | On the right-hand side, I
have a list of all my ACT fields.
| | 01:18 | So, I'm going to find Company, click on
that and click Add and now it's going to
| | 01:25 | be searching by the Company
as opposed to the Contact name.
| | 01:30 | I click OK and I've built
that into my list of Web Links.
| | 01:35 | If I want to create a brand
new link, I click on Add button.
| | 01:39 | Now this link is going to be to Twitter
but I'm going to do a bit of research first.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to go out of the Web and go to
Twitter and I'm going to create a Search.
| | 01:58 | Now it doesn't matter what Twitter comes
up with, because what I'm searching for
| | 02:04 | is actually the URL.
| | 02:06 | So, I'm going to highlight that URL and copy it.
| | 02:10 | Armed with that Information and I am
going to head back to ACT, I'm going to go
| | 02:14 | on the URL section for
Twitter and paste in my results.
| | 02:20 | I'm almost there but I don't want this
information, I want to have my Contacts
| | 02:28 | Name appear on this Twitter link.
| | 02:30 | So, I'm going to highlight Blissno5,
click on Advanced Edit and highlight the
| | 02:39 | information that I don't need, choose
Contact from my list of Contact Fields
| | 02:45 | over here in the right hand side and click Add.
| | 02:49 | So now Twitter is going to be searching
for my current Contact's Name, in this
| | 02:53 | case Chris Huffman, I click on OK and
OK once again and you can see that the
| | 03:00 | Twitter link has now been added to my
list of Web Links and is next to Bonus
| | 03:07 | it's even been put in alphabetical order.
| | 03:10 | By unleashing the power of the Web Info
links, you'll be able to keep ahead of
| | 03:13 | the curve when it comes to be
researching your Contacts on the Internet and as
| | 03:17 | new sites appear or existing ones
disappear, you'll be able to add the new site
| | 03:22 | or edit the old ones.
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|
|
8. Working with Sales OpportunitiesIntroduction to opportunities| 00:00 | In the ACT! world an opportunity
typically means that you have the potential to
| | 00:04 | sell someone a product or service.
| | 00:07 | This feature works particularly well
for the larger organizations that might
| | 00:10 | have lots of folks selling their widgets.
| | 00:13 | If you don't sell a service or widget,
you might use the opportunity area to
| | 00:17 | help you track serial
numbers or support incidents.
| | 00:20 | I have even had clients use the
opportunities to help them track projects.
| | 00:24 | We're going to start by taking a peek
at both the Opportunity List and in an
| | 00:29 | individual opportunity, so that
you can navigate through the maze.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to start by looking at an
individual contact record and you know as we
| | 00:37 | do have an Opportunities tab.
| | 00:39 | If I want to create a new Opportunity
for Chris, I'll be simply clicking on the
| | 00:43 | New Opportunity button but for now
we're going to head over to the navigation
| | 00:47 | bar, right-click on Opportunities and
this is going to take me to the List View
| | 00:53 | of all my opportunities.
| | 00:55 | Now once I'm in the List View, I can return
to a specific Opportunity in a couple of ways.
| | 01:02 | I can double-click anywhere on any
line of this Opportunity to open up that
| | 01:07 | specific opportunity, anywhere
that is except on their name.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to double-click right
here and this takes me to the specific
| | 01:16 | opportunity and now I'm going to click List
View at the top to get back to my List View.
| | 01:22 | If I want to get specifically to the
person that was associated with that
| | 01:27 | Opportunity, I click on their name and
that takes me to their individual record.
| | 01:33 | At that point I can click the
Opportunities tab and open the Opportunity from there.
| | 01:38 | Now, once I have returned to the List
View, there's a number of things that I
| | 01:43 | can do in this List View.
| | 01:45 | For example I can sort my Opportunities by
date range or I can filter them by Status.
| | 01:53 | I can also just look in the specific
Sales process, for example I might only
| | 01:58 | want to be seeing one individual
process and within that process, I can look
| | 02:03 | at specific Stages.
| | 02:07 | I can also filter my Opportunity list by
a value percentage based on the closing
| | 02:13 | rate, or by a single Dollar amount.
| | 02:16 | I also see a status bar at the bottom
of my opportunities, which will give me a
| | 02:20 | total for all Opportunities
including a Weighted Total.
| | 02:25 | If that weren't enough I can sort my
Opportunities, simply by clicking on any of
| | 02:29 | the column heads and for my final piece
of the action, I can very easily export
| | 02:35 | this information to Excel, at
literally the click of a button.
| | 02:40 | Now in Excel, I can also look at
pivot tables, if I want to be able to see
| | 02:45 | all my sales information
in a more graphical format.
| | 02:49 | Although the Opportunities won't
guarantee that you make a lot of money, they
| | 02:53 | will ensure that you have a better
understanding of your overall Sales process
| | 02:58 | because the Opportunities List offers
so many filtering and sorting options.
| | 03:02 | It's an ideal place to get a real
handle on how your business is doing.
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| Creating opportunities| 00:01 | Each Opportunity you create in ACT!
becomes a part of the entire Sales pipeline.
| | 00:05 | You'll be able to view the Opportunity
by itself, or view it as part of the entire
| | 00:09 | Sales process in the Opportunity list.
| | 00:12 | Now, there's two places that
I can create a New Opportunity.
| | 00:14 | One is to go to the Opportunities
item in the Navigation Bar, go to my List
| | 00:19 | View, do a right-click and
click on New Opportunity.
| | 00:25 | Now this is not my preferred method of
doing this because the Opportunity is not
| | 00:30 | associated with either Contact or a Group.
| | 00:33 | My preferred method is to go to a
specific Contact record, click the Opportunity
| | 00:39 | tab and then click New Opportunity.
| | 00:41 | Now one thing I like to note is once
you pull the trigger and click on New
| | 00:46 | Opportunity, a new opportunity is created.
| | 00:49 | Now I can go to my Contacts tab of this
Opportunity, click on the Contact record
| | 00:55 | and you will notice that
opportunity has already been created.
| | 00:58 | If you want to delete it, just
simply click it, click Add or Remove
| | 01:02 | Opportunities and remove it by
clicking the single left point arrow.
| | 01:08 | But for now, we're going to continue
with creating this New Opportunity.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to double-click it
to get back to my Opportunity.
| | 01:14 | Now I would like to point out that we
have a number of Layouts that we can use
| | 01:19 | for creating an Opportunity and just
like your Contact, Group and Company
| | 01:24 | Records, you could create additional
fields or access other tabs like the
| | 01:29 | Opportunity Info and use your
Field tabs to see additional fields.
| | 01:34 | So, creating an Opportunity we start
with an Opportunity Name and you can either
| | 01:40 | call this opportunity, New
Opportunity or leave it as it is.
| | 01:43 | Some people use that Opportunity Name
for a purchase order number and some
| | 01:48 | people use it to
describe the actual opportunity.
| | 01:50 | We're going to notice some
fields over on the right-hand side.
| | 01:54 | These fields are System Fields and ACT!
will change these fields automatically.
| | 01:59 | For example, we'll automatically
know the Date that this Opportunity was
| | 02:03 | opened and we can know how many days
the opportunity is open because ACT! will
| | 02:09 | take a physical count.
| | 02:10 | When it close the Opportunity, ACT!
will be putting that date in as well.
| | 02:14 | Now, the first thing you want to do with your
Opportunity is to start adding a few products.
| | 02:19 | We do that by clicking on the
Products/Services tab and clicking Add.
| | 02:23 | From here, you'll be able to see a
list of your Products by clicking the
| | 02:28 | dropdown on the Name field
and choosing the product.
| | 02:31 | You can decide what the Quantity is by
just type it in, for most products you've
| | 02:38 | already entered in a Cost of the
product and Price of the product.
| | 02:43 | However if you would like, you can
change them here if this is a special
| | 02:47 | situation and then you click OK and as
you add the Product, ACT! will add the
| | 02:53 | Product total, up here in this Total's field.
| | 02:56 | So, If I add another Product by clicking
on Add, in this case we're going to add
| | 03:01 | a Service Contract and click OK.
| | 03:04 | You notice that ACT! automatically
added that New Product into the Total.
| | 03:08 | Now as we progress through the Sales
pipeline, the probability of closing is
| | 03:14 | going to increase and that in turn
will increase our Weighted Average.
| | 03:18 | So, when I go back into an Opportunity
and what we're going to do is click on
| | 03:25 | the Contacts tab, go back to Chris and I
want to get back to that Opportunity, I
| | 03:30 | can double-click it and just go over to
my Stage and change it to the next stage
| | 03:36 | and you'll see that my Probability
changed and thus my Weighted Total changed.
| | 03:41 | Now, it's very important that
continue to go into this Opportunity and
| | 03:47 | change the Stage, so that you can see how
this Opportunity is progressing in your pipeline.
| | 03:53 | One of the fields that you will want to
change as well is the Estimated Closing Date.
| | 03:59 | This Estimated Closing Date is your
best guess for when this Opportunity is
| | 04:03 | actually going to Close.
| | 04:04 | Again you might need to change that
Closing Date as you progress through
| | 04:10 | the Sales pipeline.
| | 04:11 | When you're ready to close an
Opportunity, you want to click on either
| | 04:15 | Closed-Won or Closed-Lost.
| | 04:16 | If click on Closed and Won, you can see
that we now have an Actual Closing Date.
| | 04:24 | You might also want to go to the
Opportunity Info and type in the reason or pick
| | 04:30 | one from your dropdown list that you
either won or lost that Opportunity because
| | 04:36 | that information goes into some
wonderful Opportunity Reports called the Closed
| | 04:42 | Sales won by Reason and the
Closed Lost Sales by Reason.
| | 04:47 | Opportunites are great way to keep your
finger on the pulse of your business,
| | 04:51 | best of all ACT! will do all those
calculations for you that you can spend
| | 04:54 | your time making money.
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| Modifying the product list| 00:00 | One of the strengths of ACT!
| | 00:02 | is that it is so easy to
customize it to fit your business.
| | 00:05 | The Products list is a great example of this.
| | 00:08 | As your business changes you want
to modify those products in ACT!
| | 00:11 | to reflect the changes.
| | 00:12 | Having your products in ACT!
| | 00:14 | will also make ending
opportunities much easier for you because ACT!
| | 00:17 | will remember how much you typically
charge for a specific product and make sure
| | 00:21 | that your match is correct.
| | 00:22 | And there are two places
that we can add a new product.
| | 00:26 | One is from an existing product.
| | 00:27 | So we are going to go over to the
Opportunities by clicking the Opportunities in the Navbar.
| | 00:33 | We are going to open up an existing
opportunity, in this case for Dr. Brock.
| | 00:37 | So I'll give it a double-click
and I go to the Products tab.
| | 00:41 | Now let's say we want to
give Dr. Brock a discount.
| | 00:45 | One way we can do it is by going
into the Discount area, giving it a
| | 00:49 | double-click and changing that
Discount to 10%, and you could see that Dr.
| | 00:56 | Brock now has 10% discount.
| | 00:58 | That works pretty well, but some
people like to show that product as a
| | 01:03 | separate line item.
| | 01:04 | So we are going to click on the Add
button and we are going to hit the dropdown
| | 01:09 | list next to Name and click on Edit List Values.
| | 01:13 | When the Manage Product List opens,
you can see that I can delete existing
| | 01:17 | products or add a new one.
| | 01:19 | So in this case, I'm going to add a new
one by clicking on Add, and I'm going to
| | 01:23 | add a new product called
Discount, and click on OK.
| | 01:27 | Now if I want to add that product to
this existing opportunity, I'm going to hit
| | 01:33 | the dropdown and I'm going to choose Discount.
| | 01:37 | Now for the Price, it could be a
little tricky here and I'm going to say that
| | 01:41 | the amount is $ -10, and click OK.
| | 01:46 | Now you notice we now see our discount is
a separate line item in our opportunity.
| | 01:52 | Again that's one way I can create new products.
| | 01:56 | The other way I can create my products.
| | 01:58 | If I have administrative privileges is to
go up to Tools and choose Define Fields.
| | 02:04 | From here I can choose Manage product
list from the List Tasks and I give it a
| | 02:09 | click and that same product list window opens.
| | 02:12 | Now I'd like to point out that you
can also import a product list, should
| | 02:17 | you have a list from your existing
accounting software such as QuickBooks or Peachtree.
| | 02:22 | When you import you'll notice that ACT!
| | 02:25 | is looking for a CSV file, and the only
thing that you need to have in that CSV
| | 02:31 | file are four columns.
| | 02:33 | The Name, the Item number,
the Cost, and the price.
| | 02:37 | So I'm going to add a new product here
and I'm going to call this product Analysis.
| | 02:43 | Now the name is the only field that is
required, the others are all optional.
| | 02:48 | So if you don't typically use item
numbers, feel free to leave that blank.
| | 02:53 | Cost will be able to calculate the
gross margin of your sales, and again if you
| | 02:59 | don't have a specific cost for your
item, feel free to leave that blank.
| | 03:03 | Now as far as the price again we can
either put in a price if we typically have
| | 03:08 | a price or we can leave that
blank as well and typing in as we go.
| | 03:13 | For example, if the Analysis is
typically $1500, I might want to add $1500.
| | 03:21 | If I charge only $1200 for Analysis I
can either offer discount or just fill-in
| | 03:27 | $1200 when I use that product.
| | 03:29 | So again I create that product and
click OK, and now I've added that product
| | 03:35 | to my Product list.
| | 03:37 | Making use of products is really
important, because I can do a Lookup and go to
| | 03:43 | Product and search for all the similar products.
| | 03:47 | So I can get an idea of
how all they are selling.
| | 03:49 | Adding a list of products to ACT!
| | 03:52 | ensures that your information would
be entered in a consistent manner.
| | 03:55 | Most importantly you'll be able to have
valuable insight into which products are
| | 03:59 | selling and which aren't, and of
course creating a price list in ACT!
| | 04:03 | means you'll have one sheet of
paper floating around on your desk.
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| Creating sales stages| 00:00 | Typically most of us use the Opportunities
module to keep track of our upcoming sales.
| | 00:05 | However, you can use the sales stages to
track other areas of your business as well.
| | 00:11 | For example, you might use the sales
stages to help you with project management.
| | 00:14 | The first step of building a sales
process involves putting on your thinking cap
| | 00:18 | and jotting down the logical steps you
go through when selling your product or
| | 00:22 | service or tracking a project.
| | 00:23 | Now there are two areas where we can
go to create the opportunity stages.
| | 00:30 | One is to do it from an existing opportunity.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to click on Opportunities
on my Navbar and I'm going to open up an
| | 00:38 | existing opportunity.
| | 00:40 | Now take this half down here a little bit.
| | 00:43 | For purposes of this exercise, I'm
going to flip over to the Basic Opportunity
| | 00:47 | Layout, and you see that I have my
processes and my stage of the process that I
| | 00:53 | am currently in right over here, so
if I click the dropdown arrow next to
| | 00:57 | Process, I have Edit List Values.
| | 01:00 | The Manage Process List window opens
and we have the option of either Create a
| | 01:04 | New Opportunity Process or Edit an
existing one or even deleting one.
| | 01:08 | Now out of the box you are
going to have an Act Sales Process.
| | 01:12 | And the first thing you probably
want to do is to tweak it a little bit.
| | 01:16 | So I am going to choose Edit
Opportunity Process, and by the way you can't
| | 01:20 | delete a process if it's currently
got opportunities associated with it.
| | 01:25 | So once I hit Next, I am looking at
the name, and of course if you want to
| | 01:29 | change the name of that process to your
own name, feel free to highlight it and
| | 01:33 | call it whatever you feel comfortable with.
| | 01:37 | And click on Next, and this is where we
actually see the stages of the sales process.
| | 01:43 | And you'll notice I'm going to expand this
column a little bit so you can see it better.
| | 01:48 | We have the stages that are numbered.
| | 01:50 | This makes it really nice because if I
want to add another stage I can move it
| | 01:55 | up or move it down in this process.
| | 01:58 | So we're going to start by adding a new stage.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to click on Add button, and the
stage I'm going to add is Received Deposit.
| | 02:07 | Now I like to make my stages in the past tense.
| | 02:11 | This tells me everyone who has hit a
milestone and is ready to progress and to
| | 02:16 | the next stage in my pipeline.
| | 02:18 | Now once I've added this Received
Deposit, I think, hmm, I really need to
| | 02:24 | receive that deposit
before I fulfilled that sale.
| | 02:28 | So I going to just click on Move Up and you
could see I have moved its up in my Sales process.
| | 02:33 | Now, we have a probability to detach
to the stages, and this will help you
| | 02:39 | calculate a weighted average based on
the total amount of your opportunity.
| | 02:45 | If I might say well, you know what?
| | 02:47 | when I receive that deposit, I've
got a 90% chance of closing this deal.
| | 02:51 | So I'm going to change that percentage
to 90, and now I might want to change my
| | 02:56 | Sales Fulfillment to 95 because it might
still return that product, but I've got
| | 03:02 | pretty good shot at closing them at
this point, and I click Finish and Close,
| | 03:07 | and now if I want I can now use that stage.
| | 03:11 | Now the other way that I can create a
new sales process is by going up to Tools,
| | 03:17 | clicking on Define Fields and
choosing Manage process list.
| | 03:22 | This time I'm going to make a
new process entirely from scratch.
| | 03:27 | So I'm going to click on
Create New Opportunity Process.
| | 03:30 | This time the process is not going
to be so much about sales but rather
| | 03:34 | about project management.
| | 03:36 | So I'm going to call this the New
Client Process, so I can track my new clients
| | 03:44 | through some critical milestones.
| | 03:47 | I'm going to click on the Next button, and
of course we always have to start somewhere and
| | 03:51 | ACT! has already suggested that we start
with New Stage 1, and I'm going to change
| | 03:56 | that name a little bit and I'm going to
change that to Took measurements because
| | 04:01 | I have to do some
measuring before I can proceed.
| | 04:03 | I am going to add another stage, which
is going to be that I pulled the permits.
| | 04:08 | Because I want to be remembered to do
that and to remind other people in my
| | 04:11 | organization that that's the
next milestone they have to reach.
| | 04:14 | They had other things in my project
such as Scheduled installation, and of
| | 04:21 | course I am going to want to know when
that installation is completed so I can
| | 04:26 | go and get my final payment.
| | 04:28 | Speaking of payments I
forgot to add that deposit.
| | 04:31 | So I'm going to click on Add and make sure
that I track when I've received the deposit.
| | 04:36 | Wait a minute, I'm not going to do my final
installation until I've received the deposit.
| | 04:43 | So I'm going to highlight that item,
click on Move Up and now I'm pretty happy.
| | 04:48 | Now because this is actually a project
that I'm tracking and not a sales process
| | 04:54 | I'm going to leave these
probabilities blank, we are not going to really be
| | 04:56 | dealing with numbers.
| | 04:58 | And when I am happy with my stages, I'll click
Finish, and then Close, and then Close again.
| | 05:04 | Now of course if I ever want to go back to
that process I can always tweak it further.
| | 05:10 | What's nice about creating these
processes is once I have completed them I can
| | 05:15 | go to my List View and now I'm going to
be able to look at my List View and look
| | 05:21 | at people that are in specific parts of
the process, for example when I look at
| | 05:27 | My Sales Process, I'll be able to look
at all the people who are in the Needs
| | 05:33 | Assessment stage or I'll be able to
look at my projects and see all the people
| | 05:38 | that I've just received a deposit for.
| | 05:41 | Building a sales process into ACT!
| | 05:43 | allows you to track a contact's
progression through a predefined set of stages, and
| | 05:48 | you'll be able to easily identify
which contacts in a particular stage have a
| | 05:52 | process that you can make sure that
they progress to all subsequent stages
| | 05:56 | right on schedule.
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| Viewing the opportunity list| 00:01 | Once you have created a few
opportunities, you want to head over to the
| | 00:03 | Opportunities list, so that you can
really analyze your business based on both
| | 00:08 | upcoming opportunities
and previously closed ones.
| | 00:11 | You'll be able to easily target individual
aspects of your business process and "act",
| | 00:17 | pun intended, on them accordingly.
| | 00:18 | We are going to flip over to the
Opportunities list by clicking Opportunities on
| | 00:23 | the Nav bar, and if necessary
make sure you are in the List View.
| | 00:26 | I've got to confess this
is my favorite area of ACT!
| | 00:30 | because there are so many
ways that we can filter it.
| | 00:33 | I am going to start by
filtering down the Date Range.
| | 00:36 | Now I can hit this dropdown and you
notice that I've got all kinds of options.
| | 00:40 | So if want to look at just those
Opportunities for the Current Quarter and give
| | 00:44 | it a click and there I am.
| | 00:46 | If I want to have a Custom Date Range,
I can go to the bottom of this list,
| | 00:51 | click Custom and give my own
unique beginning and ending Date Range.
| | 00:56 | For example, I might want to just look at
the Opportunities from the last six weeks.
| | 01:00 | Speaking of opportunities, this
information pulls in from your
| | 01:05 | individual opportunities.
| | 01:06 | Let's take a look at those.
| | 01:07 | I am going to flip over here to the
Detail View for a minute, and you notice we
| | 01:11 | have an Estimated Closing Date.
| | 01:13 | That's the date that ACT!
| | 01:15 | will use when you filter
down that opportunity list.
| | 01:18 | I am going to flip back to my List View.
| | 01:20 | And once I've made changes, if I want to
reset my opportunity list, I click on Reset.
| | 01:27 | One of the nice things about ACT!
| | 01:29 | it's got this great Status Bar down in
the bottom which gives me a Running Total
| | 01:34 | of the number of
Opportunities that I am currently viewing.
| | 01:37 | Your Weighted Total based on their
probability of closing and the Grand Total.
| | 01:43 | So as I change my filters at the top,
we'll see that that status in the bottom
| | 01:47 | will change as well.
| | 01:48 | So now I'd like to just
look at my Open Opportunities.
| | 01:52 | The way I like to do that is
to click on None so that all the
| | 01:57 | checkmarks disappear and then just
click on Open, and then click in the
| | 02:01 | body of my opportunity list.
| | 02:03 | Now I am only looking at the open
opportunities and again you see that my Status
| | 02:08 | Bar changed accordingly.
| | 02:09 | I am going to click on Reset.
| | 02:11 | This time I want to just look at the
opportunities in one of my processes.
| | 02:15 | So I am going to go over here, maybe I only
want to see who is currently in my sales process.
| | 02:21 | So I click on Sales and again my list
filtered down literally at the click of a button.
| | 02:27 | Next I might want to look at just those
opportunities that are currently been serviced.
| | 02:33 | I click on them, and there again,
I have it at the click of a button.
| | 02:37 | Now anytime I pick one of my
processes I can also determine which stage in
| | 02:42 | the process they are.
| | 02:44 | So I might want to just see the
folks in my sales process that are in
| | 02:49 | the Negotiation stage.
| | 02:51 | And if that was the case, again I click
on None, click on Negotiation and click
| | 02:56 | in the middle of my list.
| | 02:58 | And again now I am just seeing those
folks that are in the Negotiation stage,
| | 03:02 | then trying to move into my
next stage, Commitment to Buy.
| | 03:05 | Anytime I have done a filter I click
the Reset button so I can get back to
| | 03:10 | looking at all of my opportunities.
| | 03:12 | Now sometimes I'd like to look at things
just according to their probability of closing.
| | 03:19 | So what I can do in this case is click
on Greater Than, and I just want to see
| | 03:25 | those people that have better
than a 50% chance of closing.
| | 03:29 | So I am going to put in a 50, click
in the middle of my opportunities list,
| | 03:33 | and again, I am looking at just those people
that I've got a pretty good chance of closing.
| | 03:39 | I can do the same thing for a certain total.
| | 03:43 | For example, I might want to just look
at those opportunities, those big-ticket
| | 03:47 | opportunities that are greater than $12,000.
| | 03:51 | So I type in 12,000, click in the
middle of my Opportunities list and now I am
| | 03:56 | looking at just those big-ticket items.
| | 03:59 | Anytime I want I can click Reset and
get back to my total opportunity list.
| | 04:06 | One of the nice things about ACT!
| | 04:07 | is that I can even
isolate my specific sales folks.
| | 04:12 | So I can click Select Users and right now I
am looking at the information from All users.
| | 04:18 | But if I want to focus in on an
individual salesperson, I just click on Select
| | 04:23 | Users, select the name of the
salesperson and click OK and now I'm just looking
| | 04:28 | at Chris' opportunities.
| | 04:30 | Well, I might want to compare Chris to
someone else so I can click on Select
| | 04:34 | Users and select another name.
| | 04:39 | Finally, one of the nice things I can
do is change the order of the Opportunity
| | 04:44 | list, or add new fields,
or even take-away fields.
| | 04:48 | So this time I'm going to do a
right-click in the middle of my Opportunity list
| | 04:53 | and choose Customize Columns,
because I'd like to see that probability of
| | 04:58 | closing percentage right
there on my Contact List.
| | 05:02 | So the way this works is all the
fields that you see here on the left the
| | 05:05 | field, these represent all the
fields that I have available to me in an
| | 05:10 | opportunity and the fields on the right
are the ones that I am currently seeing
| | 05:14 | on my Opportunity list.
| | 05:15 | So this time I'd like to see that
Probability of Close, so I select it and hit
| | 05:20 | the right pointing arrow.
| | 05:21 | Now if I'd like, I can also move that
up because I'd like to see that right
| | 05:26 | between the Total and the Weighted
Total, so I click on Move Up and click OK.
| | 05:32 | So now I'm able to see the Total, the
Probability of Closing and my Weighted Total.
| | 05:39 | One of the nice things about the
Opportunity list is that I can sort on
| | 05:42 | any field that I want.
| | 05:44 | So if I want to see this Opportunity
list sorted alphabetically by Company,
| | 05:48 | I click on Company.
| | 05:49 | If I want to see it alphabetically
by last name, I click on Contact.
| | 05:54 | Now if I want to see it according to my
biggest deals, first, I could click on
| | 05:58 | Total or reverse that sort order.
| | 06:01 | And now I am seeing my
big ticket items on the top.
| | 06:05 | Once I have customized this Opportunity
list, I might want to set it back to its
| | 06:08 | factory default settings, so I can do a
right-click, Customize Columns and hit
| | 06:14 | Reset, and this sets me back to the way
it was when it came out of the ACT! Box.
| | 06:20 | By now you're probably thinking
there is no end to the usefulness of the
| | 06:23 | Opportunity list, but I have
one more trick up my sleeve.
| | 06:26 | And that is to get all this information
into Excel literally at the click of a button.
| | 06:32 | Now, I love Excel, but I
personally hate to create Pivot Tables.
| | 06:36 | But we are going to see if ACT!
once again has my back on this.
| | 06:40 | So I am going to click this Excel
button which is going to Export this Current
| | 06:44 | List to Excel, and literally at the
click of a button Excel opens, and you
| | 06:50 | notice that my whole Opportunity list has
now been translated automatically into Excel.
| | 06:56 | But wait a minute, what do I notice in
the bottom, Opportunities Pivot Chart.
| | 07:00 | So I am going to give that a click
and close this little window here,
| | 07:05 | and ACT! has automatically created a
comparison of my three top salespeople.
| | 07:11 | And if that's not enough, I can
tweak Excel as I normally would.
| | 07:15 | So if I want, I can go up here to
Change Chart Type, and I think I am going to
| | 07:19 | look at this like a Pie
Chart and how cool is that.
| | 07:24 | The Opportunities list is without a
doubt the most flexible area of ACT!.
| | 07:28 | Once you've mastered it, it will probably
become the first area you'll look at
| | 07:32 | when you fire up ACT!.
| | 07:33 | And should you need to share
this information with a non-ACT! user,
| | 07:37 | sending your information to
Excel takes only the click of a button.
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|
|
9. Grouping Your ContactsWhat is a group?| 00:00 | Like its name implies, a group is a bunch
of contacts that share something in common.
| | 00:04 | You might think of a group as a way
of bookmarking several contact records.
| | 00:09 | Putting contacts into a group makes
them easier to find in the future.
| | 00:12 | You can create a merge to a specific
group, print a set of labels or even run a
| | 00:16 | report based on a group which
makes groups a useful marketing tool.
| | 00:20 | Now, there are a number of places
where you'll find group information.
| | 00:24 | The most common is to click on
Groups from the navigation bar.
| | 00:28 | From here, we can look at the Detail
View, which is going to give us all the
| | 00:31 | information about a specific group or
we can look at the List View which will
| | 00:36 | show us all of our groups
including our subgroups.
| | 00:39 | Now I prefer to hang out in the Detail
View because this also includes a tree
| | 00:45 | structure which will show me
all my groups and subgroups.
| | 00:49 | We also find group information
by looking at a specific contact.
| | 00:54 | In this example, I'm going to look at
our friend Lance Parker and you'll notice
| | 00:58 | that on his Groups/Companies tab, we see
the names of the groups that he belongs to.
| | 01:03 | There are a number of ways to create a
group and I like to give you a word of caution.
| | 01:07 | You probably don't want to create
a group over a single field value.
| | 01:11 | For example, creating a group for all
those members of your database that live
| | 01:15 | in California, it's probably kind of
silly because you can do that easily by
| | 01:19 | creating the lookup by right-clicking
on that field and choosing Lookup State.
| | 01:24 | So let's take a look at our Groups again.
| | 01:26 | And you see that some groups like
Chris's Networking Breakfast Group is what we
| | 01:31 | call a static group.
| | 01:32 | That means we put the members in manually
because the members of this group come and go.
| | 01:39 | Other groups are what we call dynamic groups.
| | 01:42 | For example, our Customers are based on a query.
| | 01:47 | So, as Field values change on the
Contact records, the members of the group will
| | 01:51 | come and go automatically.
| | 01:55 | Groups are very much like companies,
opportunities and contact records.
| | 01:59 | We can create new fields in the group
and we can create tabs with additional
| | 02:04 | fields if we need to.
| | 02:06 | In addition, we have the tab that will
allow us to see the contacts in a group.
| | 02:11 | By clicking it, we can quickly go to
any of the contacts within the group or
| | 02:16 | return back to Groups again.
| | 02:17 | There is no limit to the amount of
groups that you can create and we can
| | 02:21 | actually create up to 15 levels
of subgroups, should we need them.
| | 02:26 | In addition, as individual in your database
can belong to as many groups as they want.
| | 02:32 | Another good usage of Groups is to do
a right-click on a group and click on
| | 02:37 | Create Lookup, which will instantly
take you to all the members of that group.
| | 02:41 | When used correctly,
Groups can be a huge time saver.
| | 02:45 | You'll be able to zoom in immediately
in a specific segment of your database.
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| Creating a group| 00:00 | Many ACT! users rely on a series of
alarms and scheduled activities to make sure
| | 00:04 | they follow up with their contacts.
| | 00:06 | But what happens if you
forget to set an activity?
| | 00:09 | That contact might become
lost forever in your database.
| | 00:12 | Creating a group of contacts is a great
way to ensure that none of your contacts
| | 00:17 | fall through the cracks, particularly
if your groups are based on queries.
| | 00:21 | Okay, so real easy to create a new group.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to do it by clicking
on Groups in the Navigation bar.
| | 00:26 | Then I'm going to do a right-click in
this group area and click on New Group.
| | 00:31 | I'm going to go ahead and call that group Lynda.
| | 00:34 | Now I'm going to click back here in the
list of groups and like magic, Lynda has
| | 00:42 | now appeared
alphabetically in my list of groups.
| | 00:45 | Next, I want to make a subgroup under Lynda
and that's a pretty easy thing to do as well.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to do a right-click, right
on Lynda and do a New Subgroup and I'm
| | 00:56 | going to call this the Lynda Authors.
| | 01:00 | And again, as soon as I click on my list of
groups, it magically appears as a subgroup.
| | 01:05 | And of course, I can
collapse it or expand it if I want.
| | 01:08 | Once in a while, I make a mistake,
and I might say I don't want this to be
| | 01:13 | subgroup, I want it to be it's
very own group, not a problem.
| | 01:16 | I can drag-and-drop my Groups
to get them just the way I want.
| | 01:20 | So this case, I'm going to hold down my
left-mouse button on the Lynda Authors,
| | 01:25 | drag it up to the top and you're
seeing that yellow arrow there.
| | 01:28 | What I do, I'm going to let it go and
ACT! is going to make sure that I do indeed
| | 01:33 | want to move that group.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to respond sure.
| | 01:35 | And you see that Lynda
Authors is now its very own group.
| | 01:39 | Once I decide I need to move
it back, do the same thing.
| | 01:42 | Hold down my left-mouse button, drag
it up to Lynda, wait for that yellow
| | 01:46 | arrow and let it go.
| | 01:48 | Now there are a couple of ways
that we can populate a Group.
| | 01:51 | One is to do it dynamically, which means it's
automatic and the other is to do it statically.
| | 01:57 | I like to create dynamic Groups,
because I know that I don't have to worry
| | 02:01 | about the contents.
| | 02:03 | So, I'm going to make a new group for all of
my customers who are in the state of Arizona.
| | 02:07 | I'm going to do the same thing again.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to do a right-click, click
on New Group and then I am going to call
| | 02:14 | that group Arizona Customers.
| | 02:16 | Now, in order to populate that Group
again, I want to this based on a query.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to click on Add/Remove Contacts.
| | 02:29 | If I want to add contacts to this group
manually, I could click on the Contacts
| | 02:34 | button up at the top, find each of the
contacts and hit my right pointing arrow.
| | 02:39 | Say if you've a lot of work and
besides I don't if any of these people are
| | 02:43 | customers or if they're in Arizona.
| | 02:46 | So, I'm going to go to the Dynamic
members area and click on Edit Criteria.
| | 02:50 | Now, what I need to do is specify the
criteria I'll be using to populate my group.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to start by
choosing a Field Name and let's see.
| | 03:01 | I'm looking for customers, so that's
going to be in the Field ID/Status.
| | 03:04 | So, I'm going to choose ID/Status.
| | 03:08 | And I'm going to use the Operator Equal To.
| | 03:10 | And what I'm looking for is all my customers.
| | 03:13 | Now, they can't really be a member if I
called them clients or customers or big spenders.
| | 03:18 | I could hit this dropdown
list and there it is, Customer.
| | 03:22 | I'm going to add that to my list.
| | 03:24 | As I wanted just those customers in the
state of Arizona, so this time I'm going
| | 03:30 | to choose for my Field Name>State.
| | 03:32 | I'm just scrolling right down here
and these is all listed alphabetically
| | 03:36 | and there is State.
| | 03:37 | And again, I'm going to
use the Operator is Equal To.
| | 03:43 | And of course, the state is the good
old State of Arizona and I'm going to add
| | 03:48 | that to my list and then
click OK and once again click OK.
| | 03:54 | And no sooner did I click OK and I see
that group is automatically populated
| | 03:58 | with all the folks in Arizona.
| | 04:00 | What I love about this is if I add a
new contact or if a contact changes, he
| | 04:06 | will automatically appear in my group.
| | 04:08 | For example, I might go to my good old
friend Lance Parker, who happens to be
| | 04:13 | the last contact in my
database and he just moved.
| | 04:17 | Then I'm going to change him to
Scottsdale, which of course is in the good
| | 04:22 | old State of Arizona.
| | 04:25 | And as soon as I go back to my Groups
and look at those Arizona customers, sure
| | 04:32 | enough Lance Parker is in that group.
| | 04:34 | Now again, I love dynamic groups
because I don't have to do much work, things
| | 04:38 | happen for me automatically, but sometimes
I do need to use a static or manual group.
| | 04:44 | For example, with my Breakfast Group,
people might drop out and other people
| | 04:49 | might join the group.
| | 04:50 | So, in this case, Lance Parker no
longer wants to be a part of the group.
| | 04:55 | I can easily get to Lance's record by
clicking his name from that Contacts tab.
| | 05:01 | At this point, I'm going to
click on the Groups/Companies tab and
| | 05:05 | click Add/Remove Groups.
| | 05:07 | You notice he is in couple of groups.
| | 05:10 | So, I'm going to get him out of that
Networking Breakfast Group by clicking it
| | 05:15 | and then hitting my left
pointing arrow and clicking OK.
| | 05:19 | And he is out of the group.
| | 05:20 | At the same time, my friend
Andy asked to join the group.
| | 05:24 | So I'm going to Lookup Andy's record
and his Last Name happens to be Federici.
| | 05:29 | And I am going to manually
add him to this Breakfast Group.
| | 05:36 | So, I'm going to click on Add/Remove
Groups, I'm going to find that group, hit
| | 05:43 | that right pointing arrow and click OK.
| | 05:47 | Now, I can do double-click on my
Networking Breakfast Group and you notice that
| | 05:52 | Lance's name is gone, but
instead, we do see my friend Andy.
| | 05:56 | If you're working with dynamic groups,
the group content will change as your
| | 05:59 | contact records change.
| | 06:01 | More importantly, it will help prevent
important contacts from falling through
| | 06:05 | the cracks of your database.
| | 06:07 | And now those Static groups
are little harder to maintain.
| | 06:10 | They are a great way of tracking
the members of an organization.
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| Finding your way around in the groups| 00:00 | Once you have created a group or two,
you will start to get a feel for how
| | 00:03 | powerful they really are.
| | 00:05 | There is no question that
groups can make you more efficient.
| | 00:07 | Here is a few ways that
you can use those groups.
| | 00:10 | We are going to start of by looking
at the numbers of our Breakfast Group.
| | 00:14 | Again, I click on the Breakfast
Group, and you can see the members.
| | 00:19 | I can also go in and see any Notes
they might have added, specifically
| | 00:22 | about their group, or any Activities they
have scheduled with any members of their group.
| | 00:26 | Now if I need to see specific
information about one of the contacts, I can
| | 00:31 | quickly click on the link to the
record and if I want to return again, I can
| | 00:35 | double-click on that group to get back.
| | 00:37 | Now sometimes when I am looking at the
information, I'd like to expand that information.
| | 00:42 | In this case, I'd like to see the
mobile phone number, and maybe even the city
| | 00:47 | that these folks belong to.
| | 00:48 | So I can customize this list just like
I can customize any other list in ACT!
| | 00:54 | by doing a right-click and
clicking in Customize Columns.
| | 00:58 | Now the fields you see on the left
represent all the fields that I have in
| | 01:02 | the ACT! database, and ones on the
right are the ones I am currently seeing.
| | 01:07 | So in this case, I am going to scroll
down and find that Mobile Phone field and
| | 01:14 | add it and I am also going to look
for the City that they belong to.
| | 01:18 | I might want to move that Mobile Phone
up, and then I can click on OK and move
| | 01:29 | my fields around a little bit.
| | 01:31 | I am now seeing additional
information about my group contact members.
| | 01:36 | The other things that I can do once I
have created a group is to be able to
| | 01:40 | contact them very quickly.
| | 01:42 | For example, I might want to send a
marketing piece out to all my customers.
| | 01:46 | I might want to do that
via snail mail or via E-mail.
| | 01:49 | Now I can go up to the Write menu,
and I can do a Mail Merge and when I go
| | 01:55 | through the Mail Merge Wizard, it's
going to ask me if I would like to send
| | 02:00 | this to a specific group, and if I
would like to send this to my customers,
| | 02:04 | it's easy for me to find that group, and be
able to send that piece out to all my customers.
| | 02:09 | In the same way, I might want to do an
E-marketing piece to all of my customers.
| | 02:14 | So in this example, I will go up to
the Write menu, go to the E-Marketing and
| | 02:20 | choose E-mail Marketing, and I am
once again given the option of sending my
| | 02:25 | E-marketing piece to a selected
group, in this case, all my customers.
| | 02:36 | I might also decide that I want to send
a spur-of-the-minute E-mail to all the
| | 02:40 | members of the group.
| | 02:41 | So in this case, I might decide
that I want to send an E-mail to remind
| | 02:46 | everybody about the next
meeting of our Breakfast Group.
| | 02:48 | So in that case, I can do a right-click
on the group, and choose Create Lookup
| | 02:53 | to quickly arrive at
everybody in my contact list.
| | 02:57 | Now I can select all the members in
the group, do a right-click, and click on
| | 03:03 | Write and then choose E-mail.
| | 03:06 | My Outlook message will open up with
all the names, I can type in the Subject
| | 03:11 | and my reminder and send it
off in a matter of seconds.
| | 03:15 | Once you have created a group, you
will be able to access them very quickly.
| | 03:20 | You will also be able to contact
them in a number of ways including a
| | 03:24 | spur-of-the-moment E-mail or as
part of the planned E-mail campaign.
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10. Creating Company RecordsWhat is a company?| 00:00 | ACT! is contact centric, which means it
focuses on individuals and the contact records
| | 00:05 | for those individuals.
| | 00:07 | However, sometimes we deal with a
company and might not have information for
| | 00:11 | specific individual or we deal with a
really large account which is comprised of
| | 00:16 | lots of individuals. Not to worry.
| | 00:18 | ACT! gives you the best of both worlds
with its ability to create company records and
| | 00:23 | to link them back to contact records.
| | 00:25 | We can access a company
record in a number of ways.
| | 00:29 | We can click on Companies from the
Navigation bar and here we will see the
| | 00:33 | detail for company or we can go up to
the List View and have a list of all the
| | 00:38 | companies and optionally we can
include the subdivisions as well.
| | 00:41 | Now I prefer to hang out in the
Detail View because not only can I see the
| | 00:45 | detail about one company, I can
also see a list of all my companies.
| | 00:49 | And if I want to see the subdivisions,
I can just simply hit the Plus signs and
| | 00:53 | by the way, we can create up to 15
levels of subdivisions if you are working
| | 00:58 | with a really large company.
| | 00:59 | Now, once we are in the company
record, it looks pretty similar to a
| | 01:03 | Contact record and it is.
| | 01:05 | We can create additional fields just
like we can with the contact record, and we
| | 01:10 | can even create additional
tabs to house those new fields.
| | 01:13 | Now what I'd like to do with my
Company records is to add notes when they are
| | 01:17 | specific to a company as
opposed to an individual.
| | 01:21 | You can even create a new Opportunity
and link it to a company rather than
| | 01:26 | linking it to an individual contact record.
| | 01:29 | Now, once we have contacts linked to
a company, we can get to them pretty
| | 01:33 | easily by simply clicking on their
name which will in-turn, take us to the
| | 01:38 | appropriate contact record.
| | 01:40 | To return again to the company, we
can give it a click and back we go.
| | 01:44 | One of the things that I like to do is
to customize the list so that I can see
| | 01:49 | more information about that company.
| | 01:51 | For example, I might want to be
able to see some account numbers and
| | 01:55 | again that's easy to do.
| | 01:56 | I could do a right-click in the
middle of my Contact list, choose Customize
| | 02:00 | Columns and then I can add any field
that I want, in this case, the Customer ID,
| | 02:06 | by clicking the right
pointing arrow, and clicking OK.
| | 02:09 | So now I am able to see even more
information about all of those contacts.
| | 02:13 | Although, there is no real cure for the
bureaucracy that goes hand-in-hand with large companies,
| | 02:18 | at least ACT! makes dealing with
Corporate America a little bit easier.
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| Creating company records| 00:00 | For years, folks have wrestled with
that age-old question, which comes first,
| | 00:04 | the company or the contact record?
| | 00:06 | In ACT! the answer is easy.
Whichever way it works the best for you.
| | 00:10 | For example, you might want to cross a
contact at a trade show, add it as a contact
| | 00:14 | record and then later create a
record for the company headquarters.
| | 00:17 | Alternatively, you might have a lead for a
large company you want to do business with.
| | 00:21 | In that case, you'd probably add the
company record first and then later start
| | 00:26 | adding in the individuals that work there.
| | 00:28 | We're going to start by
creating a new company record.
| | 00:31 | So we're going to click on Company
from the Navigation bar and to create that
| | 00:35 | new company, I simply do a
right-click and click on New Company.
| | 00:40 | The only thing that I have to add
is the name of the company, any other
| | 00:44 | information is optional, but like your
contact records, the more information you
| | 00:48 | can add, the better.
| | 00:49 | So I'm going to go ahead and put in
the City and the State and I am now the
| | 00:54 | proud owner of a new company record.
| | 00:57 | Now, sometimes I want to create my
company records from existing contacts.
| | 01:01 | So I am going to go over to the Contacts
area, and take a look at the List View.
| | 01:05 | Now before we start, I'd like you to
correct a minor problem that might or might
| | 01:09 | not be present in your demo database.
| | 01:12 | So we are going to up to Tools, we're
going to click on Define Fields and you're
| | 01:16 | going to find a field that says
Customer ID, and you'll be able to identify it
| | 01:20 | by the lock that appears next to it.
| | 01:21 | Give it a double-click, click Next and
get rid of that check-mark next to Link
| | 01:26 | to company field and click
Finish, and then click Close.
| | 01:30 | Now that we have that out of the way,
we can continue with creating a new
| | 01:34 | company from some existing contact records.
| | 01:37 | So I am going to scroll through the
list of my companies and you will notice
| | 01:41 | that any of the companies in blue mean
that we have already created a company
| | 01:45 | record for those Contacts and
associated the contacts with that company.
| | 01:50 | So I am going to scroll down here and
find Duke Industries and I see that I have
| | 01:54 | not yet created a company record for them.
| | 01:57 | So I am going to go ahead and open up one of
those contacts by giving it a double-click.
| | 02:01 | At this point, I can go up to my Contacts
menu and click on Create Company from Contact.
| | 02:07 | And lo and behold there I have the
company that was created and it's already
| | 02:11 | been filled in with all the
information from my Contact record.
| | 02:16 | Now, here is the really fun part.
| | 02:18 | If I want to create some new contacts
that work at that company, I can do it in
| | 02:23 | a click of a button.
| | 02:25 | All I need to do is go up to
Companies and I'm going to click on Create
| | 02:28 | Contact from Company.
| | 02:30 | When I do that, I get a brand new
company record and all I need to do is type in
| | 02:35 | the new name, and that name is
already linked to the company record.
| | 02:43 | Again, when I click on that company record,
I could see the folks that are linked there.
| | 02:47 | But wait a minute.
| | 02:48 | It seems to me there were a lot of
people that were attached to Duke Industries,
| | 02:52 | but I am only seeing two of them.
| | 02:53 | So I am going to take another trip
out to my Contact list, by clicking
| | 02:57 | Contacts in the Navigation bar and
going back to my List View, and I see that
| | 03:03 | I still have a number of people in Duke that
were never attached to their company record.
| | 03:06 | Not a problem.
| | 03:07 | What I will have to do is go into each
of those contact records, I am giving
| | 03:11 | it a double-click and click that ellipses
that appears to the right of the Company name.
| | 03:16 | When I do, ACT! will
| | 03:18 | automatically make the association
between what's already in the Company
| | 03:22 | field and our list of companies.
| | 03:23 | I click on OK and I am ready to go.
| | 03:25 | Now, of course, I can scroll through
my list and do the same for any other
| | 03:29 | members of duke industries.
| | 03:32 | Now, one of the great benefits of a
company record is been able to update all
| | 03:38 | the company records in one time.
| | 03:40 | So I am going to go up to Duke
Industries, and I just found out that they moved
| | 03:44 | from Los Angeles to Ventura.
| | 03:47 | So I am going to get rid of Los Angeles and
going to replace it with Ventura. So far so good.
| | 03:53 | As soon as I try to go anywhere
else in the program like back to my
| | 03:56 | Contact records, ACT! is going to
say wait a minute. You made a change.
| | 04:01 | Would you like to update all the
contacts that are linked to this company with
| | 04:05 | the change you just made, would I?
| | 04:07 | Absolutely! Now, if I click on View Linked
Fields, you've got a list of all the fields
| | 04:12 | that will be updated.
| | 04:13 | In this case you see it
includes the City and the State.
| | 04:16 | So I am going to go ahead and click Yes.
| | 04:20 | Now, let's go back to the company record.
| | 04:22 | When I go down to any of these records,
in this case Stony, you see his record
| | 04:27 | has also been updated to reflect
that change in the company headquarters.
| | 04:31 | As you can see, it doesn't really
matter whether I create the Company record or
| | 04:35 | the Contact record first.
| | 04:37 | The important thing is that the two of
them could be easily linked together and
| | 04:41 | that you will be able to navigate
through the maze of office bureaucracy.
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ConclusionReviewing add-on products| 00:00 | Now that you've discovered
all that ACT! has to offer,
| | 00:02 | you're probably ready to
kick back and enjoy some of that
| | 00:05 | free time that ACT! has created for you.
| | 00:07 | After all, your company is running like
a fine-tuned clock, business is booming
| | 00:12 | and you are feeling very organized.
| | 00:13 | But like most things in life,
even the best things can stand a
| | 00:17 | little improvement.
| | 00:18 | There is a very active
community of ACT! developers,
| | 00:21 | who have created
literally hundreds of solutions to some
| | 00:24 | very typical problems.
| | 00:26 | In fact, I find myself saying that
there is an app for that, just about every
| | 00:30 | time a client adds a new
item to its ACT! wish list,
| | 00:33 | and as is the case with many phone apps,
some of the ACT! apps are actually free.
| | 00:39 | For example, I use QuickBooks to take
care of all my business accounting needs.
| | 00:43 | There is an app for that.
| | 00:44 | In this case, the app
synchronizes my QuickBooks and ACT! data,
| | 00:48 | so that I can avoid the drudgery of
adding information to both places.
| | 00:53 | Like everyone else, I don't leave home
without my phone, and of course, there is
| | 00:57 | an app which synchronizes
all your ACT! information
| | 01:00 | to just about any phone you have
including the iPhones, Pres and
| | 01:04 | Blackberries, and I guarantee that a new
app will be created to fit whatever new
| | 01:09 | phone arrives on the scene.
| | 01:11 | Speaking of phones, Voice Over IP is
all the rage and you guessed it, there is
| | 01:15 | an app that allows me to dial directly from ACT!
| | 01:18 | and for good measure, the app even times
my calls and prompts me to create a history.
| | 01:24 | Perhaps my favorite app is the one
that allows me to highlight the signature
| | 01:27 | block from an incoming email, click a
button and have the information magically
| | 01:32 | appear in it, or when the mountain of
business cards on my desk threatens to
| | 01:37 | topple, I scan them into a card scanner
which in turn sends them over to ACT!,
| | 01:41 | talk about a time saver.
| | 01:43 | You can find a list of my favorite
apps, most of which are free, at my
| | 01:47 | website techbenders.com.
| | 01:49 | You'll also find a lot of the fee-based
apps at the act.com website.
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| Goodbye| 00:00 | Hi! It's Karen.
| | 00:02 | I really hope you've enjoyed the
ACT! 2010 Essential Training course.
| | 00:06 | I hope you're as excited as I
am about all the ways that ACT! can
| | 00:08 | help you be more
productive, efficient and profitable.
| | 00:12 | You'll want to think of ACT!
like a series of building blocks.
| | 00:14 | You'll find that the skills you master in
one area will help you in other areas as well.
| | 00:19 | For example, you follow the same
procedure for adding a new group or company
| | 00:23 | that you do for adding a new contact.
| | 00:25 | I know that in a very short period
of time you'll be a true ACT! fanatic.
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