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Useful Custom Templates And Groups

Two Timesaving Tools For More Timely And Professional

Follow-Up Communications

The strength of your sales team lies in

its ability to make a personal connection

when speaking with prospects

and customers. You can increase the effectiveness

of your sales calls and telemarketing

campaigns with prompt written followup

correspondence, either by mail or e-mail.

By quickly following up on the initial phone

or in-person contact, you show the customer

or prospect that you appreciate their interest.

It also gives you an opportunity to reinforce

your message and put your product or service

information in their hands.

In this article, we will show how you can

have a professional follow-up message ready

to go whenever it is needed, using Custom

Templates. We also will show how setting up

Groups within ACT! by Sage allows you to

send your message to a targeted group of customers

or prospects.

Custom Templates

Custom templates allow you to make the

follow-up process fast and effective for your

sales team. When you take the time up front

to create templates for follow-up letters and

e-mail messages, you save time while maintaining

a consistent and professional look to

your organization’s correspondence. And by

saving your sales team time you allow them to

get to the next sales visit or phone call faster.

Here we provide step-by-step instructions for

creating custom templates. You can use custom

templates either to follow up on a specific

sales call, or to send a follow-up e-mail

message to a group of prospects or customers

who indicated interest.

Create several templates so that your team

can select the one most appropriate to the situation.

Here are the steps:

1. Choose Write, Edit Template from the

ACT! menu.

2. Select a template from the list that is

closest in style to what you need and click

Open.

3. From the menu, select File, Save As. Enter

a new descriptive name for the template,

and click Save. Do this before you edit the

template to avoid accidentally overwriting

the basic template.

4. Create the content for the letter or e-mail

message or copy and paste content from

past communications that you found to be

effective.

5. Insert place holders for fields to

personalize each letter or e-mail. Position

your cursor at the place in the document

where you want to insert the field. Then

select the field to insert from the Add Mail

Merge Fields dialog box and click Add.

6. Save and close the file.

You now are ready to merge the template

with any Group or Contact in your database

as follows:

1. With the selected Contact(s) open, choose

Write, E-mail Message (from template) or

Write, Other Document (from template).

2. Select the template and click Open.

3. Add comments if desired and click Send

for an e-mail or Print for a letter.

Using Groups For Mail Merges

Another way to use custom templates is to

send them to an entire Group of contacts that

meet your specified criteria. In this example,

we create a Group of contacts identified as

customers, who also have e-mail addresses.

1. Click on the Groups icon at the left to go

to Group Detail view.

2. Click the New Group icon on the toolbar.

3. Enter a name for the Group.

4. Click the Add/Remove Contacts button

on the Contacts tab.

5. Click the Edit Criteria button in the Add/

Remove Contacts dialog. This will open

the Group Criteria dialog box (see Zoom

In image).

6. Click the Field Name drop-down and

select ID/Status. For the Operator,

select Contains. In the Value area, select

Customer. Click Add to list. For the

second row of the query, select the E-mail

field and choose the Operator of Contains

Data. Click Add to list.

7. Click Preview to check your results so far.

If it looks correct, then click OK to save

the query criteria for the group.

8. Click OK once again to save the group.

Creating a dynamic group by defining

Group criteria will help you keep your

Groups up to date. Any new Contact with an

ID/Status of Customer with an e-mail is automatically

added to the Group.

Please call us with your questions about

using Groups or Custom Templates.

Setting Activities As Private in ACT! by Sage

If you rely on ACT! by Sage to manage

your day, it makes sense to include your

personal as well as your work-related activities.

When everything is in one place, it is

easier to stay on top of your schedule and

avoid conflicts.

But, what if your meeting or appointment

is of a personal or confidential nature?

Or perhaps you just want to block out some

uninterrupted time to work on a big project?

If you are using ACT! in a multi-user

environment, with others sharing the database,

other users can view the activities you

have scheduled. How can you stay on top of

your day while still protecting your private

information?

Private Activities

For personal or confidential activities, you

can designate them as Private. While scheduling

an activity, simply click the Private check

box at the bottom of the dialog box. Activities

marked private will display in your Task List

and Calendar view just like any other activity,

with the addition of a padlock icon displayed

to the side.

Activities designated as private will not

display in other users’ Task Lists. However,

if someone wants to schedule an activity that

includes you, the Calendar will show that you

are not available at that time. The time will

be blocked and labeled with the word Private

next to your name.

Once an activity has been labeled private,

it carries that status with it throughout the

system. So when the activity is completed and

is moved into History, it will remain private.

ACT! Premium Extras

ACT! by Sage Premium allows you to

assign Limited Access to a Contact, and

select the users who have the right to view the

Contact record and associated activities.

Remember, private activities are only private

if you are in a multi-user environment,

and each user logs in to the database with a

unique user logon. Let us know if you have

any questions, we are here to help.

Contact Alan Lee at  www.etechsys.com

© Copyright 2004–2010 Tango Marketing, LLC. www.tango-marketing.com All Rights Reserved. This newsletter and its content have been registered with the United States Copyright Office. This content is licensed by Tango Marketing LLC and can be distributed by licensee until 09/30/2010 at which time the licensee must cease distribution and use of this content unless permission in writing is obtained from Tango Marketing LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited. The capabilities, system requirements and/or compatibility with third-party products described herein are subject to change without notice. Sage, the Sage logos, ACT!, and the Sage