Avoid These 5 Common Pitfalls When Automating Your CRM, Sales, and Marketing Here at Patricia Egen Consulting (PEC), we not only provide you with the best in Act! CRM solutions, but we also equip you with the knowledge to maximize their utilization. Today, we'll highlight some frequent mistakes businesses make when embarking on automation for CRM, sales, and marketing. By arming yourself with this understanding, you can sidestep these pitfalls on your journey to streamlined business operations

In Today's World, Data is Everything   Data loss can be a devastating event for any business. One of our recent clients experienced this when their hard drive suddenly failed, leaving them without access to their Act! database. As they attempted to recover their data, they discovered that the only available backup was over two years old. This situation highlights the importance of regularly backing up your Act! database and implementing a robust backup strategy. In this blog post, we will

Is your Act! database teeming with duplicate records and outdated information?  When you send a mailing, do you have to spend time cleaning up addresses?  Do you have high bounce rates on marketing emails? If so, you are not alone.  Below are the most compelling reasons to clean up your Act! database. Accurate information: A clean CRM database ensures that customer information is accurate, up-to-date, and complete. This can help businesses make informed decisions and provide

If you've worked with Egen Consulting in the past, you probably have one or two icons on your menubar that are not standard icons.  I particularly like to add the "refresh" icon and the "synchronize now" icon to my clients' menubar to save them a few mouse clicks.  Check out the step-by-step tutorial in this video to see how you can add YOUR most commonly used menu items to your menubar and get back some click time!

  'Tis the season to send greetings and good wishes! If you have a digital database, like Act!, this is where the time and effort you put into keeping your Act! database up-to-date really pays off! Here are 3 options: 1. Use Act! Marketing Automation (AMA) - a Basic version is part of every Act! subscription. Act! Marketing Automation is an email marketing service that enables you to send beautiful, personalized emails with colorful images, links, and tracking capability. All you need

Did you know that you can view a Google map to a contact's address from within Act!? This feature has been part of Act! for a while now, but when I show it to clients they often aren't aware of its existence.    The icon shows up on the small icon toolbar with the blue background on the Contact Detail screen.  It looks like the Google map pin (teardrop-shaped marker icon). Clicking that opens a direct link to the contact's address in Google Maps. From there you can get

When I think of marketing automation, I immediately think of a mechanism that will market to my contacts without my intervention. If you have an Act! subscription, you have a basic level of Act! Marketing Automation that allows you to create and send emails. However, if you subscribe to the "Complete" or "Advanced" tier of Act! Marketing Automation you have access to a powerful, automatic e-marketing engine.  What do I mean by "automatic"?  Well, for me this means that if I add a

Why Consider Writing Plain Text Sales Emails? In studies online, it was found through A/B testing that the more images in an email the fewer open and click rates the message had. It's not surprising if you consider that we typically receive so many marketing emails with images that we (or at least I) delete a large majority without reading more than the subject line and sender. However, when I receive a personalized email with mainly text, I'm much more likely to read through it because it