Course Curriculum

How to Turn Prospects into Customers with Act

10sections
24lectures
7h 16mtotal

What you’ll learn

  • Identify your target audience and segment your database with dynamic groups

  • Design letters, emails and labels templates for your marketing communications

  • Send mass e-shots, manage results and schedule follow-ups

  • Create Swiftpage web forms to grow your lists on Social Media sites and your own website

  • Track your business referrals and analyse your sales figures

  • Create sequential drip marketing campaigns to go out at set intervals to targeted groups

01

Get Started with Act

4 lectures • 1hr 8min

  • The Key Steps To Getting The Best From Your Database

    Work through the 12 Key Steps to Get the Best From Your Database

    2:17

  • The Fundamentals of Act

    To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. In this 60 minute video you'll learn how to set up a database and work with contacts to add notes, histories and activities. You'll see how important fields like the ID Status field and the Referred By field can help you divide up your contacts into useful segments for more effective marketing. You'll be able to practice looking up information in your database and spend time planning key business events using calendars and tasks. I'll demonstrate sending invitation emails and describe how to build relationships with your contacts using the Web Info Tab and Social Updates . You'll use dashboards to get an overall picture of how your business is performing. And you'll be able to search your database for important data using the Universal Search betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    1:03:25

  • Database Consistency, the secret to keeping your data tidy

    Make sure you enter data correctly into your Act! database. Remember, Good Data In = Good Data Out!

    1:00

  • Course Action Plan

    To help with your training , print out this Action Plan so that you can set targets with specific completion dates Use one plan for the entire course or one plan for each section betterACTnow helping you get your Act together.

    1:00
02

Customize Your Database for Your Business

2 lectures • 37min

  • Create New Fields and Design Your Layouts

    Create New Fields and Design Your Layouts To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. You'll want to customize your database, especially if you're planning marketing campaigns to targeted groups of contacts. You'll add new fields, calculated date and number fields, create drop down boxes, add yes/no fields, currency and annual events field types. You'll see how to modify the screen layout when these new fields have been added to your database. If you've created lots of new fields you may need to add a new tab, so we'll also show you how to create new tabs and reset your tab stops to ensure the field entry order is correct. betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    24:45

  • Understand Field Types and Properties

    Read through this betterACTnow course guide to understand field types, properties and layouts

    12:00
03

Learn How to Segment Your Database for Marketing

2 lectures • 36min

  • Tips and Tricks to Look Up Contacts and Create Groups

    Tips and Tricks to Create Contacts and Groups To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. The key to successful marketing is being able to segment your contacts into groups. Once you know all the different ways you can Look Up your contacts, you can add them to groups and send targeted messages to your contacts. Extracting information from your database is essential if you plan to work with specific groups of contacts. You'll practice all the different ways to look up information in Act! from Keyword searches to Advanced Queries. You'll practice creating new groups using both static and dynamic membership rules and see how selected contacts can be added to these groups to enable you to manage your database more effectively. And you'll see how easy it is to schedule tasks and add histories to multiple contacts once you have your contacts in groups. Finally you'll use the Universal Search plus Wild Cards to find essential business data.

    27:47

  • The Difference Between Static and Dynamic Groups

    Read through the betterACTnow Course Guide to understand the difference between Static and Dynamic Groups

    8:00
04

Design Letters, Emails and Label Templates

2 lectures • 26min

  • Personalize All Your Marketing Communications

    To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. You'll see how to save time by writing and saving personalized letters and emails to send to single and multiple contacts using mail merge. You'll also learn how to produce labels stamped with your company logo. You'll learn how to add Act! history and attach documents to the contact's record when your letters are ready to print. You'll learn how to create email templates to send out to multiple contacts and check that your Outlook Email Preferences are set correctly. Follow ups are important, so you'll practice scheduling activities to enable you to keep in regular touch with your contacts. betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    19:10

  • Mail Merge Steps and Keyboard Shortcuts

    Read betterACTnow course guide to learn how to complete mail merge in ACT. PDF also contains Microsoft Word shortcuts

    7:00
05

Act Email Marketing Uncovered

2 lectures • 1hr 26min

  • Design and Send E-shots and Most Importantly Check Who's Opening Your Emails

    To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. You can use this Act! E-marketing course to help you create professional templates to send out to targeted groups of your contacts. You'll see how to add Global Templates to your local library and modify templates by adding extra Swift windows, including adding text, images and PDF files. We'll cover sending email blasts to groups of contacts and how to analyze the results using the Email Marketing Reports. We'll add Social Sharing buttons to your messages and post templates to Social Media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Finally we'll demonstrate how to bring the results of your campaign back into your Act! database and see how the results are displayed on the Marketing Results tab. betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    44:14

  • Act Email Marketing Manual

    This 42 page Act Email Marketing Guide explains how to use the Basic and Advanced Swiftpage Editor to create compelling emails

    42:00
06

Drip Marketing - How To Set Up Automated Marketing Emails

3 lectures • 43min

  • Types of Marketing Campaigns and When to Use Them

    To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. In this training video you'll study the Anchor , Calendar and Duration types of Drip Marketing Campaigns. Using the Campaign Manager , you'll create a campaign and add stages and email templates to it. You'll launch a campaign and then add contacts to the campaign from ACT. You'll use dynamic groups to synchronize contacts to our campaigns. You'll also move contacts in and out of campaigns and transfer them between campaigns. Finally you'll look at how Call Lists and Drip Marketing Reports are valuable tools for helping you to build future marketing campaigns betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    25:46

  • 7 Stage Sample Drip Marketing Campaign for Prospects

    Email [email protected] if you'd like an editable Word version of this document.

    15:00

  • Blueprint for Creating Your Own New Customer Campaigns

    Find out why you need a new customer automated campaign sequence and get ideas of what to include in your emails

    2:00
07

Grow Your Lists with Web Forms

2 lectures • 34min

  • Build Forms To Use on Your Website or Social Media Channels

    To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. In this training video, you'll learn how to use surveys to increase the number of contacts in your database. You'll find out how you can add web forms to your website and design surveys to collect useful visitor information. You'll discover different types of questions and demonstrate how to personalize your surveys with background pages. You'll see how to design effective landing pages for your visitors once they've filled out your surveys. You'll use List Builder surveys to add new contact information straight into your ACT database and List Updaters to update contact records with your contacts most up-to-date details betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    25:38

  • Step by Step Guide to Embed Your Form on a Website or Blog

    Read this betterACTnow course guide for instructions on how to Embed Swiftpage Forms on your Website

    8:00
08

Opportunities, Pipelines and Resutls

2 lectures • 34min

  • Add Referrals, Track Your Opportunites and Measure Business Growth

    To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. On this training video you'll look at setting up opportunities in Act! tracking their progress and closing them. You'll see the different ways to display your opportunities using filters, graphs and pipeline reports. If you want to analyze your sales opportunities in more detail, you'll export opportunities to Excel and add formulas, pivot tables and charts to gain a deeper understanding of your sales figures. betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    27:42

  • Opportunity Management and the Quote Template

    Read this betterACTnow course guide to learn how to manage opportunities and design business quotes

    6:00
09

Act Faster Act Smarter

2 lectures • 57min

  • Backing Up and Customizing Your Database

    To get the best results from this video, have your Act database open at the same time as you watch this video. You can pause the video at any time and try things our for yourself. On this training video you'll increase your productivity by learning how to Import Excel records into Act! quickly. We show you how to make Check and Repair run automatically and how to take Backups of your database using the Act! Scheduler. You'll practice customizing your own activity types and series and set up Smart Tasks to automate your work flow processes. You'll add your own shortcuts to menus and toolbars and add your favorite websites to the Web Info tab. You'll set up automatic synchronization with your Google and or Microsoft Outlook account betterACTnow helping you get your Act! together!

    46:53

  • How to Work With Smart Tasks

    Read this betterACTnow guide to learn how to use Smart Tasks in Act

    10:00
10

Get Value From Purchased Lists

3 lectures • 17min

  • How To Import Contacts into Act

    How to import lists of contacts into Act Follow the steps in this video to import your purchased lists or LinkedIn contacts into Act

    7:00

  • Step By Step Guide to Importing

    Read this step by step betterACTnow course guide to understand how to import contacts from Excel into Act

    8:00

  • Manipulating Text Formats in Excel Prior to Imports

    1:47