CRM Blog

Are you already familiar with Pay-Per-Click on google? How about Facebook? Check out Facebook’s official stats and get ready to start targeting 400 Million users.

Pay-Per-Click can be one of the fastest and most effective ways to drive business and drive traffic. But how difficult is it? Here are the 3 basic steps – and it can be done in less than 15 minutes!

• Create a Design.  Click here to begin designing. Choose to either drive traffic to your Facebook page or to another web URL. Just add a title, image, and some information.
• Select your Target Audience. In this second step, you will be able to choose your key words as well as how contacts are associated (or NOT) with a particular event, page, application or group. You can target based on relationship status as well as gender, location and even age. Facebook will then provide you with an estimated target audience (e.g. 150,000 FB users) – all based on the parameters you selected.
• Campaigns and Pricing. Lastly, you simply need to give your campaign a name and enter the maximum amount you want to spend each day on advertising (i.e. your Daily Budget). All that’s left to do is select how often you want your ad to run. This is probably the least flexible part of Facebook’s system – but it still gets the job done!

Once your campaign is approved by Facebook, you are off to the races! Congrats on those new leads! And don’t forget to check the stats each day so that you can adjust future campaigns accordingly.

Who loves freeware? I do! I found a freeware tool called DVDVideoSoft. And it’s not one of those “Free Trials” that turns into a $30 purchase. Here are the top 3 ways I use DVDVideoSoft:

1. Free Video to Flash Converter - I have been uploading quite a few videos to YouTube. But I often run into uploading errors. And don’t forget, size matters. Converting an MPG file to FLASH reduces the size by at least a factor of 3. And no more YouTube errors.
2. Free Video Dub – For a quick and dirty video splicer, this one is about the easiest thing on the market. Just mark the sections you want to keep and hit Go! It creates a new file and uses your naming logic.
3. Free DVD Video Converter – If you are looking for a free and easy way to convert your DVD into MPG format so that you can view it on your PC or iPhone, this is the tool for you. I tried several others, but this one works well and doesn’t cost a thing.

Do you ever find yourself looking for great teaching/training material? Sometimes google offers me too much information. And it is very difficult to weed through it all to flesh out the essential points.

But why reinvent the wheel! There are so many great PowerPoint presentations already out there. Do you want to create a class on “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”? Don’t waste your time typing it all up! Just use these tools to locate the existing presentations on that topic. Then download and tweak. And don’t foget to give credit to your source!

So here are my top PowerPoint tools:

1. SlideShare – This is my favorite PPT search tool. The selection is fantastic. One fun tidbit is that these PowerPoints are very easily embedded into a blog or website! Obviously they are also downloadable.
2. SlideFinder - The selection on SlideFinder is a bit limited, but the results are downloadable PPT files. One bonus is the ability to search by University!
3. iSpring Converter – This free tool allows you to convert PPT files into Flash, while retaining all of the effects. How cool is that! This means you can now easily upload your PowerPoints to YouTube!

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Whenever I conduct ACT training classes, I find that the Contact List View provides some of the best value to my clients. So here are my 6 Tips to getting the most out of the Contact List View in ACT!

1. Turn on Grid Lines – no more scanning through a white field of data. Adjust your Colors and Fonts Preferences (under Tools – Preferences) and give your eyes some assistance.
2. Customize Columns – Right Click and Customize Columns to see just the data you want to see, nothing more and nothing less. But rest assured, the only view you’re customizing is your own. Every computer has manages this separately.
3. Use Windows Shortcuts – Did you know holding down Ctrl allows you to tag and untag various contacts in the list? And holding down shift allows you to select a range of contacts in the list? Don’t believe me? Try it now. I’ll wait.
4. Lookup/Omit Selected – Now that you’ve tagged the contacts you like, you can narrow it down to just what is highlighted (Lookup Selected) or discard them from your lookup (Omit Selected). Sometimes this is much quicker than doing advanced lookups.
5. Work the Column Headers – Click on a column header to sort by that column. Click on it again to reverse the sort. You can do this for any column that’s viewed.
6. Export to Excel – Your list looks perfect. You’ve sorted, tagged, omitted, included all the data you want. Now what? One button does a quick Export to Excel of everything in this view to share with others, print, or do more advanced functions in Excel. Worried about data security? This permission can be controlled on a per user level. Ask us about it.

Like these training tips? Want to know more? Check out our ACT! training opportunities to best meet your needs.

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Are you using Notes to track your day to day correspondence with your contacts?
Are you on ACT! 2005 or newer?
If yes to both, may I ask WHY?

Maybe you upgraded from ACT 6 and didn’t realize you now have a Notes tab AND a History tab. Or perhaps you use Notes because it’s the default tab on the layout. Or maybe you just think, “Let me make a Note of that.”

Whatever your reason, you’re wrong.

Yup. WRONG.

Here’s 5 reasons to use ACT! Histories instead of Notes when tracking contact communication:

1. Drop Downs – How many times have you had to type “Left message…” or “Met with…”? Too many! In Histories, ACT! gives you fields to track the Type as well as the Result, saving you Time and Effort while producing better data. (I’m all about the laziness, erm, effectiveness).
2. Follow-Up – Most correspondence has a next step to keep the ball rolling. If you are just putting in a Note, you lose out on the chance to schedule your Follow Up call / to-do / etc. Sure you could do it after you hit ok, but chances are you’ll be interrupted before you get a chance to and then you’ll forget. (more on getting distracted at work here).
3. Email Integration – Provided you’ve setup your Email correctly, your Outlook emails will automatically record on the History tab (way up there on the Laziness / Effectiveness scale). So why check two tabs for a running log of the relationship when ACT! has set it up to use one? Also, when you clear your tasks on your ACT! calendar, do you know where the record goes that you completed the task? You, you guessed it. History!
4. Reportability – I think I made the word up, but it doesn’t make it less true. Those drop downs from point 1 work to your advantage when trying to report on user productivity. ACT! has a few built in reports, but I really like Topline Dashboard – you can group / filter / sort / count your History by type / result / regarding / duration / user – you get the picture. Contact us for your free trial.
5. Effective Notes – “Wait. I thought I wasn’t supposed to use Notes?” Notes is a great place to store miscellaneous account information (personal tastes, login info, etc.). This time stamps it, so can serve more useful than just a general Memo field. And now that you’ve cleared out all your Histories, this important info isn’t buried in the back and forth communication!

So maybe WRONG isn’t the right word. Perhaps misguided suits you better. So Ctrl+H away (that’s the keyboard shortcut for record History) and enjoy your additional time and peace of mind.

Care to comment?

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