There are three basic steps:

1. Create your marketing plan.
2. Apply your plan to one or more contacts.
3. Deliver the marketing -- send the emails and print the letters or postcards.

Read on, please...

Manage Marketing Plans

This is the core of the tool. Create as many plans as you desire, for a wide variety of uses. They can consist of emails, letters (anything you can design using Microsoft Word templates or HTML email templates), plus ACT! calls, meetings, and todo's. You can have as many steps in each plan as you want, for as long in the future as you think is necessary. We'd recommend not scheduling more than 3-5 years in advance, depending on your business type, just to keep maintenance of that data at a minimum.

Emails and Letters

You can include steps in your plan that will send out emails and letters. The emails need to use Outlook 2000 or later and the letters must use Word 2000 or later.

You can create templates using either Word or an HTML editor such as FrontPage. Insert merge codes to combine data from ACT! into the body of the template to highly customize and personalize the message.

Enter a Subject for the email or Regarding for the letters and the pinpoint Marketing tool will enter a history in ACT! showing what was sent and on what date. You can assign the step to another user in your ACT! database to delegate the tasks to your staff.

Calls, Meetings, and ToDo's

This is where the marketing process turns ACT! into a money making machine. Schedule any combination of ACT! activities and assign them to various people on your staff. When applied to contacts, they show up in ACT!'s task list and calendars just like they were scheduled in ACT!. You have the same options as if they were entered in ACT! also.

To use this as a sales process tool, include the Step number and you'll see where you are in the cycle; or include the Date in the Regarding field to sort your task list to see the oldest items first.

You can schedule X days starting from a Start Date, or -X away from a Target Date. You can also schedule by weeks, months, or years. If you have a highly defined process to implement, specify a day of the week or month; or even the first Monday of each month, for example.

Apply Plan to Contacts

Use the Lookup feature (like in ACT!) to select contacts, then apply the plan to them. Or, use ACT!'s advanced queries to select them and create a group, then apply the plan to the entire group in pinpoint Marketing tool. This gives you a powerful way to target subsets of your ACT! database, or apply plans to individuals based on where they are in the sales or fulfilment process.

Deliver Marketing Activities

Click on a calendar to see all the emails and letters to be sent out that day, then choose to send one or all at once. Emails are sent to your Outlook outbox and letters are sent to your default printer for your PC. ACT!'s History is updated to show which template was sent to which contacts, giving you a chronology of all the marketing activities that each person has received. You will need Outlook 2000 and Word 2000, or higher, to make this work.

ACT! 6 Tip

How to navigate the calendars using only keystrokes in the Schedule Activity dialog

• With the cursor in the Date field:

  Keystroke	What it does to the date
  =	Adds one day
  -	Subtracts one day
  +	Adds one month
  _	Subtracts one month

   

• With the Mini-Calendar visible in the Date field:

  Keystroke	What it does to the date
  Page Up	Subtracts one month
  Page Down	Adds one month
  Shift+Page Up	Subtracts one year
  Shift+Page Down	Adds one year

   

• With the cursor in the Time field:

  Keystroke	What it does to the time
  =	Adds one hour
  -	Subtracts one hour
  +	Adds one minute
  _	Subtracts one minute

   

• In any field with a drop-down, Alt+Down Arrow opens the drop-down for that field. Once open, you can navigate the drop-down with the cursor keys.

  Keystroke	What it does
  Alt+Down arrow	Opens the drop-down


NOTE:
Many of these same keystrokes will also work in date fields in the contact record.

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ACT! 7 Tip

Word Tip

Track Word Count as You Work
If you need to know how many words are in your document, there's a very easy way to do it in Word. Instead of clicking Word Count on the Tools menu each time you want a recount, use the new the Word Count toolbar. On the View menu, point to Toolbars and click Word Count. Then click Recount to update the count any time you want. You can also choose to see the current number of characters, lines, pages, and paragraphs.

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Excel Tip

Rotating Text

One way to relieve worksheet crowding is to rotate your column labels so they read up, down, or vertically. Of course, because those rotation commands are buried deep in your Format Cells dialogue box, they aren't particularly accessible. Add them to the Format toolbar, as follows:

1. Choose Tools + Customize.

2. Click the Commands tab.

3. Under Categories, choose Format.

4. Under Commands, find the Vertical Text button and drag it into place on your Formatting toolbar.

5. Repeat Step 4 to drag the Rotate Text Up, Rotate Text Down, and, if desired, Angle Text Upward and Angle Text Downward buttons to the Formatting toolbar.

6. Click Close.

Now, whenever you want to angle or rotate text, just select the cell(s) and click the appropriate button.

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