Thanks to Nigel Botterill’s Entrepreneurs Circle, I’ve made a change to my working day and all because of this phrase,

“ today ain’t over until tomorrow’s planned”

So at the end of every working day, I list all the tasks I’ll be working on the next day. It’s surprising how your brain comes up with ideas over night as you sleep on those difficult tasks.

That’s the theory. Now here’s the practice:

• Click on the ACT Scratchpad icon (ACT 2012 only) on the desktop
• Make a list of the jobs for tomorrow.
• Mark items as complete or delete items
• Send Scratchpad items to Sage ACT if you want to create an ACT activity in your database

Check out our ACT training videos for more ACT Tips and Tricks

Yes its important to focus on your website SEO but don’t forget to look at boosting traffic to your website from other sources like YouTube.

Last time we looked at uploading videos to your YouTube Channel. Now its time to plan your YouTube Title, Description and Tags to enhance your brand and make sure you appear in organic searhes for keywords associated with your business.

YouTube Titles

Use key words or phrases to explain the video content and repeat that word. e.g Universal Search ACT 2012- Find Important Data with Universal Search

YouTube Descriptions

Always include a link in the front of the description back to your website, followed by a carefully crafted paragraph around your key words or phrases e.g. www.betteractnow.com videos- In this video Elene Marsden explains how to use the ACT 2012 Universal Search so that you can find that one thing you need in an instant. See how Universal Search will search your contacts, groups, companies, opportunities, notes, history—even attachments. Fine tune your search when you filter by dates. And once your search results are displayed, double-click on the item of interest and go straight to that particular field or attachment. Discover how Universal Search wildcards help you to refine your searches in this short betterACTnow video.

YouTube Tags

Finally for tags, repeat your key words or phrases. Choose 10-15 phrases and if you have phrases with more than one word, make sure you enclose them in double quotes e.g. Marketing “universal search” “software tutorial” “act 2012″ “act wild cards”   ” ACT Computer Software” “search act contacts” “seach act opportunities” ” search act attachments” “sage act trainining”

More ACT 2012 training videos available from betterACTnow

1. Add all contacts to your database. Be a useful resource and help others to connect.

2. Segment your database into groups- use the ID/Status field to categorise contacts into customers, prospects and suppliers

3. Add new customers to drip marketing campaigns as soon as they make their first purchase

4. Invite every new contact to connect with you on LinkedIn using the Web Info tab.

5. Run regular checks on all open opportunities and follow up with an email or phone call

I’ve just started using video testimonials as part of my new marketing strategy. I use a Flip camera which I bought from Amazon. I’m so pleased with the High Definition picture and the amazing sound quality it produces.

I showed my video testimonials to my Sage ACT account manager and he thought they were very professional!

And all I did was point and record!

Follow these steps to get your videos on YouTube

• Record your video using a Flip camera
• Plug your Flip camera into your computer
• Choose the Create a video button
• Save this .mp4 video onto your computer
• Go to www.youtube.com
• Set up an account if you don’t have one
• Select Upload and Upload video
• Add a title, description, tags and select a category
• Save your changes

Your video is now live. If you want to share your video, click the share button to reveal the URL link that you can copy and add to your emails, website and blog.

Next time I’ll show you how to optimise your  videos so that they can be found on the web.
Here’s one of our betterACTnow video testimonials from Allan Scott. You can find more on our YouTube channel

We’d really appreciate your feedback, leave us a comment

PS New ACT 2012 training videos from betterACTnow available now!

If you spend hours writing engaging, relevant messages for your customers and prospects, you’re missing out if you don’t also spend time planning to follow up.

Most email service providers give you reports on who’s opened and clicked links in your emails.

If you use ACT E-marketing by Swiftpage you’ll also get Call Lists of hot prospects to make your follow-ups easy.

4 Steps to Follow-up

1. Send out your email campaign as normal. I use ACT and ACT Emarketing from Swiftpage
2. Create a Call List ( Swiftpage Pro and Team Accounts only) from your campaign report window
3. Give your Call List a name using the Save This Call List button
4. You can add actions to this Call List direct from your browser or use the Call List inside ACT  to manage your Follow Ups

Note: Call list actions are automatically added to the contact’s History Tab

ACT Call Lists

1.  In ACT, select  the ACT E-marketing tab
2. Click the Call List section. If you have more than one Call List, use the Drop Down list to select the one you want to use
3. Select the Lookup button and choose Hot, Warm or Mild contacts and those with Action or with No Action or all contacts.
4. Click Group button to add these contacts to an ACT group
5. Add results of phone calls and follow-ups using the Edit ACTION button

 Learn how to be successful with ACT Emarketing here

Its tough isn’t it? You thought your email message was interesting, engaging and relevant and they still opt out.
All good email service providers include opt-out links, Swiftpage’s links show on the bottom of each email. 
If you try to send an email to this address it will be automatically suppressed by Swiftpage but I also like to update my contacts record in my ACT database to show these Opt Outs

Here’s a quick way to complete a batch update of contacts who have opted out.

1. Go to the Marketing Results Tab in ACT, select the Email Marketing History and Search (top right button)
2. Select All Email Campaigns and choose Opt Outs
3. Select Copy to Clipboard (nothing seems to happen, don’t worry)
4. Close this dialog box
5. From the Lookup Menu in ACT choose, Keyword Search
6. In the Search For box, paste or  CONTROL V and Find Now

You’ll have a look up of contacts that you can now Globally Edit. I use a field called Opt Outs and update the field to show Do not Email.

One of my lovely readers recently asked how I’d managed to add video to my email messages.
It really is easy to do just follow these simple steps
1. Go to YouTube and select the video you want to embed
2. Use a technique to grab the YouTube screen image. I use Office 2010 Screen Clipping, or you can get a free tool called SnagIT or simply click Print Screen on your keyboard to capture your image and crop to size
3. Select your image and add the YouTube link as a hyperlink. (you’ll find the link underneath the YouTube video when you select the Share button)
I use ACT Emarketing to send my emails and adding hyperlinks is easy, get our Free Report to find out how. Or if you use Outlook, right click over the image and select the hyperlink command.
That really is all there is to it, an easy visual way to share YouTube videos with your contacts.

Go check our Facebook page for more useful tips.

Capture your Contacts in Seconds

If you want to copy contact details from a website or from any electronic document, I recommend Broadlook’s Contact Capture. Its free to use:

1.  Select the text 
2. Hold down the CNTRL and press C twice 
3. Chose where you want the data transferred to.

This is my favorite way to add new contacts to ACT! Lots more useful ACT tips here

As we spring into summer, we’ll be adding plenty of useful stuff to our Facebook Page
Click below to like us!

Create Enticing Subject Lines

I like to send out regular emails using ACT Emarketing once every 3 weeks. The 2 things that take the most time to organise are the subject lines and the test sends. Here’s some tips to help you prepare your email blasts. 

Subject Line Tips

How To headlines offer the promise of solid information, sound advice and solutions to problems, eg How to Turn a Simple Party into a Royal Ball.
If you’re ever stuck for a subject line, type How To…. and see what comes up. 

Other attention grabbing words include: why, sale, quick, easy, bargain, last chance, guarantee, results, proven and sale.  Extract from ‘The Copy Writers Handbook’ by Robert Bly 

Sparkly Gem

I store all my subject lines in a Word Document. If I need to send that message again, I can open Word and find the Subject Line I used.  You can also use this document file to collect  subject lines from emails you’ve received from others.  

Testing Tips

I always spend time running last minute checks before I hit the SEND button. 

• Are my links working?
• Are my images good quality?
• Does the text flow around my pictures?
• Do I have a call to action somewhere in my message?
• Does my layout look attractive?
• Have I proof read my message, at least 3 times? It’s those small words that can be missed so easily.

Sparkly Gem

I use a group I’ve created in ACT, called Swiftpage Test which includes my Google, Hotmail and Yahoo email addresses. I send a test message to this group several times to make sure my emails look good in the different browsers. 

I like using Swiftpage E-marketing for so many reasons, the flexibility of the email templates, the reports which tell me who’s reading my emails and clicking on links and of course the data I collect from email blasts is essential for my future marketing campaigns.

You can use Swiftpage to create:

• newsletters
• solo promotions
• invitations
• surveys

If you want a guaranteed way to ensure your message will be delivered to groups of your contacts, I recommend Swiftpage. There are other similar products available but none that integrate so well with ACT!

If you’re not an ACT user, Swiftpage provides a hosted service called Connect which you can use to upload your contacts using a spreadsheet.

If you try to send more than 100 messages in one go using Outlook, you might find your Internet Service Provider blocks these emails as spam and prevents delivery.

If you use an email marketing service like Swiftpage, you won’t have this problem. There’s still no guarantee that your emails won’t end up in the recipients Junk Folder but there are steps you can take to minimise this risk.

 If you haven’t got a Swiftpage account yet, you can sign up for a free 60 day trial

If you’ve got an account and haven’t really started using it, keep reading…..

The first thing you’ll want to do is to create a template. There are plenty of styles to choose from. I would recommend starting with the single column template.

You’ll need to copy your chosen template to your Local Library and then you’re ready to use the Basic Editor to add text and images to your template.

You can add your company logo to the header if you want a newsletter look or if you prefer, add your business graphics to the bottom of your template.

Once you’ve created your template layout, make it Read Only so you can use this layout for your campaigns in the future.

You could create several different types of templates:

• Newsletters
• Standard communications
• Solo promotions
• Plain text messages.

Note: if you do send plain text messages you won’t get reports on open and click rates

Swiftpage Basic Editor Tips

• You can only have 1 image per Swiftpage window, but you can add extra Swiftpage windows.

• You can only have 1 PDF file per Swiftpage window

• Your PDF files must be less than 4MB.

• Always make sure your images have hyperlinks to your website

• Your header logo must be no bigger than 600 pixels wide

• Other images should be no larger than 580 pixels wide, 50 kilobytes in file size, and less than 72 dots per inch in resolution.

• Image file types supported are .jpg, .bmp, .png, and .gif.

Note: If your images are larger than these defaults, Swiftpage will compress the images affecting their quality.

We recommend Sumo Paint, a free program to resize your images.

♦♦ Sparkly Gem ♦♦

Create your template, upload your PDF files and as long as your template does not contain Merge Fields, you can convert this template to a Landing Page with its own unique URL which can be used on Blog Posts and Social Media sites.

Note: Swiftpage only allows you to have 15 active Landing Pages.

Check out our betterACTnow ACT training videos to help you kick start your Email Marketing campaigns

I know its not Spring yet but I’ve already started to clear out my wardrobe.
A good friend, @Mrs_P_creative, has been helping me to decluttter.
First we threw everything onto the bed, then we sorted the clothes into categories, jumpers, tops, jeans etc.
Then I had to choose which clothes I wanted to keep and if I hadn’t worn something for a while, it was sent to the recycle pile.
Here’s the before and after pictures.

I now spend less time searching for something to wear and my local charity shop is delighted with their increased stock levels!
And that’s just the beginning- I’m using this same strategy to work through my Outlook Inbox.

3 Outlook tips to help declutter your Inbox:

• Don’t use your Inbox to manage your emails, move them out quickly
• Follow the 4 Ds of Decision making for each email
  Delete it
  Do it – spend no more than 2 mins per message
  Delegate it
  Defer it
• Create a folder system, using numbers in front of your folder names to create an order that works for you.
• Archive your folders regularly, slimmer mail boxes are easier to search.

(This technique really does work, and will help you manage your business more effectively. More information here)

♦ Sparkly Gem ♦

Did you know that you can synchronise your ACT activities with Outlook and set up regular scheduled updates?
This is very handy for those people who use mobile devices that sync with Outlook and not ACT.
Check out this video to see how synchronisation works.

More ACT training videos here

Feel Good by Filtering, Sorting & Tidying Up Your ACT Contacts in List View

The List View in ACT! is a great way to see how tidy your database is.     

Tidy Up with the Global Editor

  Use this view to check data is in the right place.    

For example- are your City/State fields under the correct column headings?     

I often see Postcodes/Zipcodes in the County/State fields. This kind of inaccurate data input will not bring you the results you want.
      

♦ Shiny Gem ♦

There’s a global editor tool that enables you to move data from one field to another.   

Be careful when using this tool -always take a backup of your database first.    

• Go to Edit on the ACT! Menu
• Swap Field….

Use List View to select multiple contacts and add to Groups: 

•  the SHIFT button selects contiguous records
• the CONTROL button lets you select non- contiguous records

With your contacts highlighted, select Create Group of Contacts from the Related Tasks Pane. You’ll be creating static groups which won’t update automatically but this is a great way to quickly create a group.

Send Email to Selected Contacts From List View

I often send a quick email to contacts from List View.    

• Select all your contacts – CONTROL +A
• Click the Email Button.

 If you don’t want everyone to see each other’s addresses, drag the email addresses onto the BCC line on your Outlook message window.   

 More betteractnow ACT videos can be found on our website www.betteractnow.com/videos.php

Databases and diaries are essential to businesses. Without them how could you keep track of those contacts, prospects and customers and get reminders to follow up people who aren’t ready to buy from you yet?        

 The first thing I do when I get to my office, is open ACT! and check My Task List.  My Task List is filtered to show Todays tasks so I get a great overview of the day ahead. I also look at uncompleted tasks from yesterday and reschedule them for another day.       

♦ Shiny Gem ♦

  Did you know you can set your activities to roll over to the next day? Go to Tools:       

• Preferences, Calendar and Scheduling
• Scheduling Preferences
• Set your calls to Automatically Roll over to Today

 New Year – New Strategy For 2011

 I’ve always recorded my appointments and calls but now I use my calendar to plan my complete working day. I’ve created a new ACTIVITY Type in ACT! called “Working On Business” and used a star icon.    

Here’s how my Thursday looks       

♦ Shiny Gem ♦

During my “Working On Business” times, I divert my phones, shut down Outlook and use an hourglass. I bought this little beauty several years ago- all polished up now and proving to be an essential part of my business. When I use my hour glass, I stay focused on the task until its finished.      

Essential to My Business

 Remember To……

Clear your activities once you’ve completed them. Cleared activities will provide you with full tracking history. And if you like running Reports, the History Summary Classic report displays how many meetings, calls, tasks you’ve completed.     If you’d like to find out how to add your own ACTIVITY types to ACT, check out our youtube video.     

 How to Create your Own Activity Types   

 More betteractnow ACT videos can be found on our website www.betteractnow.com/videos.php     

How the 3 Peaks challenge could help your business

In less than 3 weeks, I’m taking part in the 3 Peaks Challenge, to climb to the top of the 3 highest mountains in the UK, Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon in just 24 hours.

It’s going to be an incredibly tough challenge because of external factors like weather conditions and traffic jams.

As I make final preparation for the big day, pack the right kit, strengthen the right muscles and develop my winning mindset, it occurs to me that much of my preparation is also relevant for business.

So here’s what I’ve learnt from my 3 Peaks training. I hope you’ll find something to help you with your business challenges:

Snowdon Summit

• Decide on your goal (to complete the 3 Peaks Challenge), be very clear about what’s involved and try to write it down. (3 Peaks in 24 hours 5^th-6^th August 2010)
• Start preparing, gathering resources and people who can help you achieve your outcome. ( appointment with foot specialist, advice from the gym regarding best exercises, surgical spirits applied to feet every night)
• Follow advice from that old saying, “How do you eat an elephant?” -“One bite at a time”. (So just start walking, then walk faster, then start climbing up stairs, lots of them)
• Do a trial run, I went to Snowdon 2 weeks ago to see how quickly I could get to the top. If you can’t do this, visualise the challenge in your mind: see, hear and feel your success.
• As each week goes by, do one more thing to move you towards your outcome. (Walk further until 10 miles is easy)
• And finally, keep a focused, positive mindset. If doubts creep in, replace them with positive thoughts. (I can see myself enjoying a refreshing glass of rose and laughing with my team mates as we celebrate our achievements)

And you know what folks say about the journey being as important as the destination. Well it’s certainly been true for me, I’m fitter than I’ve ever been in my life, I’ve had great fun taking part in the Race for Life and Midnight Walk and I’ve met some fantastic like-minded people.

PS. If you’d like to sponsor me visit www.corazonit.com

www.betteractnow.com

Let me know the biggest challenge you’ve faced and how you overcame it.

Are you fed up with stacks of business cards cluttering your desk?

- a constant reminder that you really must get organised.
I use a card scanner to add new contacts into my ACT! database. At a recent Suffolk Business Exhibition where I was exhibiting as a Sage Business Partner, my aim was to reveal how ACT! and a card scanner could help companies manage their new leads effortlessly.

 With ACT! on my laptop, my Dymo Card Scanner plugged in, I demonstrated the whole seamless process from scanning to transferring business card information into ACT!

 At the end of the day I had an extra 75 new businesses in my ACT! database. But it’s not just collecting names, it’s about building relationships with your prospects and for that I use ACT! E-marketing from Swiftpage, another essential business tool.

 I send attractive HTML emails to all my new contacts using Swiftpage. I’ve also created Drip Marketing campaigns so all I need to do is add business contacts to the relevant campaigns.

 If you want to find out how to send email marketing campaigns yourself, preview betterACTnow’s online ACT E-marketing training videos.

 15% off all training videos with this promotional code UB11850

www.betteractnow.com

New Blackberry App

I was searching the crackberry site for new apps for my Blackberry when I discovered the business card reader. It works like this, you take a picture of the business card with your Blackberry and the card information is scanned into your Blackberry contacts.

Another time saving device or another layer of complexity? What do you think?

Ex Dragon’s Den Entrepreneur Doug Richards inspires

Last week I attended Doug Richard’s School for Start Ups Master Class ‘Low Cost Fast Growth Marketing for Growing Businesses’.

In essence the class showed us how to spend time on our marketing without spending lots of money.

Doug’s style is inspirational. Being inspired isn’t enough on its own, you have to take action and implement new ideas.

Here’s a few of the ideas from Doug that I’ve implemented so far and all within just 7 days of the workshop:

Yes, its free!

Remember none of these things cost money!

•  I posted some of my Powerpoint presentations to Slideshare. Get your content in front of people searching for your keywords
• I’ve set up a Tubemogul account so that when I upload videos to the web, Tubemogul sends them to multiple sites at the same time
• I’ve tested posting important tweets to Twitter twice during the day. Doug recommends this technique as followers may not see your tweet the first time. Not sure on this one yet but I haven’t seen a significant change in the numbers unfollowing me.
• I’ve checked out the grade of 2 of my websites www.betteractnow.com and www.corazonit.com using Hubspot, a fantastic resource to help you to optimise your website and increase traffic.

If you get a chance attend one of Doug’s workshops, just go! You won’t be disappointed.

School for StartUps

As my number of contacts grows, it gets harder to remember individuals.  So this is what I do. Every time I add a new contact to ACT! I make sure I add all those extra things we shared: family, ambitions and passions.

My new Sage Insights contacts

When we’re due to meet again, I’ll read those notes and that person comes to life for me. You can be sure that you’ve made that person feel special when you remember them in this way. If like me you value relationships make sure your ACT! notes are working for you.

And the other thing about my ACT! notes…

I keep all the important notes at the top of the pile. How? I set the note create date into the future and because the default sort is always date order, those important notes stay at the top of the list. I use this for passwords, activation keys etc.

Watch my video to see how I do this.

15% off betterACTnow online training videos with this code UB11850

New ACT! Product out now!

Smart Notes for ACT! is an ACT! plugin which lets you add manual notes to contacts records. You can also set up rules so that sticky notes pop on the screen when you apply particular conditions, for example if you have opportunities due to close this month or you have tasks older than 7 days. Multi coloured notes and messages appear within the contacts record. I’ve downloaded the 30 day trial and I like this product.

http://www.smartnotesforact.com//Download.aspx

Anyone else tried it?

If you’re not recording opportunities in ACT you could be throwing your money away.

Be honest, have you ever let an opportunity or referral drift away?

We live such busy lives and the pace is picking up rather than slowing down. With so much going on, it’s not surprising that we may forget those easy follow-up tasks that could affect our profits.

The consequences

So what if you forget the odd follow-up? Business could go to your competitors. You could get a reputation for being unreliable.  Read on to find out how to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

 5 steps to managing your opportunities

1. When you get an opportunity, hot or cold, make sure you add the contact to ACT!
2. Now add the new opportunity
3. Select an estimated Close Date
4. Set the stage in your sales cycle
5. Finally and most importantly, create a follow-up activity ( the call, the email, the meeting) to move this opportunity forward through your pipeline.

Take Control

Use ACT! opportunities effectively and you leave nothing to chance. Get into the routine of opening ACT! tasks at the start of your day. Decide which Opportunity related tasks are due on that day and work through these first. And if you don’t manage to get them done, reschedule them for another day. 

Watch this clip “How to add ACT! opportunities”

 ACT! Opportunities

 15% off all betterACTnow training videos with this code UB11850 www.betteractnow.com

I was on a sales training course many years ago, where the trainer stressed the importance of setting sales targets and celebrating successes. I could see how important knowing your numbers was for any business but it wasn’t until I had added all my opportunities to my ACT! database, created my own sales gauge dashboard that I was able to appreciate the significance of her words.

My favourite quote comes from Zig Ziglar “ A goal properly set, is halfway achieved”

So now I set clear targets, I have a recording system and a graphical way to display my successes. My ACT! Sales Gauge shows me if I’m on target at any time with just the click of a button.

Knowing my numbers has made a huge difference to my business.

Follow these steps to create your own Sales Gauge in ACT!

1. From the Navbar, click Dashboard.
2. Select Edit Current Dashboard or create a new one
3. Create a new Dashboard by clicking New on the global toolbar
4. To add the Sales Gauge component, under Toolbox, click Opportunities.
5. Select the Closed Sales to Date component and drag it to a cell in the layout.
6. In the dialog box, from the Component tasks list, select Display Gauge Chart and set options.
7. Click Next to continue.
8. When done, click finish and close
9. Your Sales Gauge will display all closed won sales
10. Don’t forget the Refresh button to update your dashboard at any time

12 months ago I had 19 followers, now I have 1600-read what’s worked for me

1. Get a Twitter account name that represents your business
2. Create a cool Twitter background. Make one yourself or use a design company like Fuel Creative
3. Sign up to Social Oomph to send automatic messages to people who follow you
4. Add Twitterberry to your Blackberry so you can tweet on the move
5. Set up a Twitpic account to upload your pictures, people love to see what you’re up to
6. If you have a Google account, set up alerts and get notified when any one tweets about you or your business
7. Definitely download Tweetdeck, the only way to manage your Tweets
8. Add Xobni to Outlook so that you can search for people on Twitter and connect straight from Outlook
9. If you’re using ACT! make sure you check the contact’s Web Info tab, if they’re on Twitter start following them
10. Be business-like. Be interesting. Be real.