Fifth Annual Small Business Summit 2010 - 16 March

September 9, 2009

How Old Software Can Make Social Media A Powerful Tool For Your Business

Facebook. Twitter. Facebook. Twitter.

Are you tired of hearing these words? I am. However, Twitter and Facebook (and LinkedIn) are immensely popular and growing services to connect with others of common interest and keep in touch with your friends and family.

The problem with Facebook and Twitter, for many businesses, is that these tools are not easy to maximize. Just going online and having a Faceboook page or Twitter account is not good enough. You need to know how to use these tools to communicate with customers and find new ones.

One of the oldest software products on the market is ACT! and recently version 2010 was released. Its new social media integration features, that I witnessed first hand, are quite powerful and will enable you to not just "manage your contacts" and find their telephone numbers but see their social media feeds, within the context of their ACT! profile.

Larry Ritter, Senior Vice President & GM of Sage CRM Solutions explained to me that ACT! 2010 helps businesses do three, very important things: know, market and sell better to their customers. All three are so important and enhanced with ACT! integration with social media.

Imagine calling a sales prospect and being able to not only see logs of your emails and phone call notes but also live updates from their world of social media - knowing their interests and latest happenings, while you're on the phone with them, within one program, not several browser tabs.

Social media is all good and wonderful, but if you cannot leverage them in your business, they are useless. ACT! and other tools that take social media, bring them into the context of your contacts and help you sell more is what makes "old software" a powerful blend of "new tools".

See a video demo of this feature below:

Another integrated feature is the use of built in email marketing. A new subscription-based ACT! E-marketing Service provides templates for e-mail design, survey and Web forms for gathering recipient feedback, drip marketing controls for automating campaigns with multiple e-mails, and a marketing results tab for identifying the most qualified prospects to follow up with based on e-mail open and click-through metrics.

There are a lot of great email marketing tools on the market, however, one thing that makes ACT! special is the integration it offers. It enables you to do powerful email marketing within the context of, and/or within the program you use to communicate with on a daily basis.

tags: act! , facebook , linkedin , sage , social media , twitter | 1 comments