More and more businesses are incorporating Facebook into their social media portfolio as a communications and  marketing tool, capitalizing on Facebook’s traffic. It’s another point of presence for your business as Facebook Pages are public and search engines will display them in their results, best of all it’s free.

Facebook has Profiles and Pages, Profiles are used by individuals and Pages are for businesses.  One item to note is that you must have a Facebook Profile to create a Page for your business.  My company recently created a new Facebook Page for our business and we wanted to provide some tips to help avoid some of the pitfalls we discovered when we set up our original business Page. 

Creating a Page is easy, log in to Facebook and navigate to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.   You will need to select a category for your Page; “Local business”, “Brand, product, or organization” or “Artist, band or public figure”.  The selection you make here will determine what information about your business you will be able to display on the Info Tab of your Facebook Page.  When we created our first Page we chose “local business”. This selection has the limitation of only being able to display Website and Parking options for the Detailed Info on the Page’s Info Tab.  Once you make your category selection you cannot change it and why we chose to create a new business Page, this time selecting the “Brand, product, or organization” category.  With this selection we are able to display our Website, Company Overview, Mission, and Products details on the Page’s Info Tab – allowing you to enter a lot more information and searchable content.

Another important item is your Page Name. Unless you are a well known brand, you will want to use your company name and include a description of your products or services, for example ours is “ACTPLATINUM.com – ACT! by Sage CRM Consulting, Training and Software Sales”.  By doing this your Page will display on the Facebook search results for any of the words used in your Page Name.  Once you have at least 25 people “Like” your Page, you will be able to create a custom username to easily access your Facebook presence – for example ours is www.facebook.com/ACTPLATINUM.

Check the box stating you are the official representative and click the Create Official Page button – you have just created the Facebook Page for your business.  Now let everyone know.

The next step should be promoting your company’s Facebook Page and start interacting with your visitors.  Some ideas to generate interest are to offer a special deal, a contest or better yet something of value for free. 

“Like” us on Facebook  and you will receive a free Lookup Bad Email Addresses Utility for ACT! 2010 and ACT! 2009.  With more and more companies using e-mail marketing and with the introduction of ACT!’s new E-marketing feature powered by Swiftpage E-mail the email address field in your database is very important. This is a great tool to quickly clean up the email address field for ACT!.  Be sure to share your experience in using the utility with other ACT! users on our Facebook Page!

I love sports and I’m a sucker for Cinderella stories so I was pretty excited to see that Butler made it all the way to the NCAA Basketball Championship final this week.  After all, if my beloved Gators couldn’t be there I was glad to see that my dad’s alma mater was represented.  Maybe I’m prejudiced, but it seemed to me that most of the country was rooting for Butler.  Most of us like to cheer for the underdog and since many folks had never even heard of Butler until the Final Four they were indeed the underdogs against #1 Ranked Duke.

 Like it or not, unless you’re working for one of the Fortune 500 companies you too are an underdog when it comes to your business.  It’s an uphill battle to get your name to stand out against the competition.  Compounding the problem is some scary information that I read years ago that still reverberates.  It takes an average of 12 touches to convert a prospect into a customer.  And, 50% of sales people give up after the first effort; 90% give up after the second.

Wow!  With the odds so highly stacked against us it’s tempting to wave the white flag and admit defeat.  But like Butler, or Jimmy Conners who came back from a 1-6, 1-6 deficit to win Wimbledon in 1987, you have to focus on what you can do and not on what the other guy is doing.

 Here’s a few coaching tips that apply to both sports and, more importantly, your business.

1.  Act like a hero.  Think of the frustrations you’ve had when contacting large companies (don’t get me started on Comcast!) and then do the opposite when interacting with your customers and prospects.
2. Out-distance your competition.  I always said that if the other guy only tries to reach someone twice, I’d try to reach them three times.  If it takes twelve attempts to win a new customer then make those twelve attempts.
3. Use the proper equipment.  I doubt that Conners could have won Wimbledon with a broken racquet or holes in his tennis shoes.  If you’re going to resort to e-marketing use an ESP (e-mail service provider) to track your results.  And by all means use an effective database tool to help you focus on the correct audience.
4. If you can’t be bigger, be smarter.  Was it me or did the Butler guys look a heck of a lot smaller than the Duke players?  The fact that they almost won gives testament to the believe that brains can conquer brawn. 
5. Don’t think meat, just pitch.  In case you didn’t catch it, that’s a reference to what Kevin Costner told Tim Robbins in the baseball classic, Bull Durham.  He was trying to get “Nuke” to stop over-thinking everything and trust his mentor.  Trust your coach or, if you don’t have one and you’re struggling, hire a great coach or consultant to help you out.  It works for major class athletes and it will work for you.

 Let the games begin!

My company is a member of several local chambers of commerce and there seems to be a chamber sponsored networking event every day. Since time and money are limited resources we have to be selective in the events to participate in.  As a B-to-B business, we find that the chamber’s annual tradeshows to be the best investment in that they have high attendance and lots of business owners.  Exhibiting in a trade show is an excellent opportunity for our company to gain exposure and connect with decision makers to generate new business.  

Through trial and error we’ve learned that a successful trade show takes lots and lots of preparation.  Using ACT! helps us in organizing our trade show activities and marketing the event to our Customers and Prospects.  We make sure to engage our contacts before, during and after any event.
 
Before the Show – Generate the BUZZ
A trade show is a great way to introduce a new product or service, or to demonstrate how existing products or services will benefit an attendee’s business.  Invitations are sent to our contacts encouraging them to attend the event, we always provide show-only promotions as a thank you.  We create a custom Drip Marketing campaign to provide information about the show using our ACT! program and incorporate a variety of communication methods.
 
 -> Create Custom Letter, Postcard and/or E-mail Templates and personalize the invitations and announcements
 -> Send ACT E-marketing and track the interest level (opens & clicks) of the recipients with the built in reporting feature
 -> Make Phone Calls either from a list from ACT! or a Call List created from an ACT E-Marketing and personally invite our contacts to the show
 -> Social Media Updates post announcements on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other channels
 
During the Show - Build Your Database
We draw attendees to our booth by having a live demonstration of ACT! software in action.  Our WOW factor is showing  that ACT! is more than just a place to keep your contacts, it can help you understand your business and solve business problems.  I love to have engaging conversations and share information, I will make it a point to jot down a short comment on what idea, problem or question was the topic of conversation so I can respond to any opportunities.  Knowing that everyone likes to win a prize we incorporate a business card drawing for free software and no-one walks away empty handed as we provide free 30 day trials and other helpful materials as reminders of our business, products and services.  

After the Show – FOLLOW-UP
We always feel great after a show; meet lots of people, have dynamic conversations and receive all of that positive feedback.  However, the show isn’t a success unless we dedicate time to immediately follow-up.  First we take all of those business cards gathered at the show and use ScanIT to import the contacts into our database – what a time saver!  Next is generating the BUZZ after the show by placing phone calls and sending Letter, Postcard and/or Emails to those who attended and those who couldn’t attend the show.  Based on interest level we place the contact in one of our post-show drip marketing campaigns to send reminders of how we can help their business.  Follow-up is a must and an ongoing process for relationship building.

So go showcase your business at your chamber’s next trade show, get involved in your local community. If you’re new to trade show marketing, as ACT! Marketing Experts and Swiftpage Gold Drip Marketing Certified Consultant we can help you with generating your BUZZ.  If you can’t exhibit then attend, we would love you to come to our next tradeshow - stop by and say hello.  You may even catch us sending twitter updates while at the show!

A few years back I worked with a large cruise line company.  Although the cruise line spared no expensive when it came to onboard amenities, the CEO flatly refused to spend money on an ESP (e-mail service provider) to help send out his e-marketing campaign to his very large user base.  Within a very short period of time, he managed to get his entire company domain black-listed to the point where he could no longer send messages to even his own family members.

Once your e-mail address –or worse yet – your company’s domain – becomes black listed it can take you months or years to get the problem rectified.  And, even if you don’t get blacklisted, most spam filters will eat your message for lunch if you don’t follow a few e-mail best practices.

Here’s my short list of suggestions:

1. Scrub your database.  Make sure that you aren’t emailing to e-mail addresses that have bounced in the past or are just plain invalid.  Avoid sending your message to duplicate addresses or generic addresses that start with “info” or “webmaster”.
2. Make sure you’re spam compliant by following the Can-Spam law.  Basically you need to make sure you have procedures in place for users to easily opt-out of future mailings, and include a valid mailing address in your message.
3. Use an ESP (email service provider) that uses a valid form of e-mail authentication.  That basically means that your e-mail blast comes from an authorized source.  These folks spend lots of time – and money – making sure that their emails get through to the folks using the Big Three for their e-mail (Yahoo, AOL and Google).
4. Time the frequency of your mailings; sending out a monthly newsletter is much more appealing than sending out a daily special pricing offer.  Target your mailings so that you are not sending your message to folks who have absolutely no interest in your products.  
5. Make sure you know the difference between plain text and HTML e-mails.  If you want to include graphics in your e-mail blast you’ll need an HTML editor or risk having your message show up as a jumbled mess.
6. Avoid common spam triggers like exclamation points, red lettering and words like “sale.”   

If you’re new to the world of e-marketing you’ll want to consult with an expert for a while.   They’ll be able to help you master the process and avoid some serious blunders.

Karen Fredricks
blog@techbenders.com
www.techbenders.com

It’s been a while since I created a blog article. Part of the reason is I’ve been traveling a lot and business is very good this year.  The other reason is I’ve been under the weather with this awful upper respiratory thing that is spreading across the country.  I was so distraught this week over the issues I had simply trying to find a doctor to see me that I said, in a Twitter update, that I wish I could write about the apathy seen in the medical profession in my business blog.

Julie Bestry, an amazing lady and Twitter goddess (@ProfOrganizer), saw my post and responded with this: “Sure you can…how apathy in business owners sends clients to their competition…and they DO have competition.  Doctors and the rest of the healthcare idustry still make a good starter anecdote. And good bedside manner = good customer care. You’ve got a whole metaphor!”

By George, she was right.  And that’s the theme of this blog – “How do you ensure you don’t suffer from business apathy.”

Here’s what started me down this path.  I don’t visit the doctor often because I usually don’t need to.  That’s not a bad thing except when you really need one. Over the last five years, four doctors I have seen have either left the medical profession or moved away.  Ok, that’s cool, but the offices should still have my records, right? Wrong.  I spent over 5 hours calling around to various doctor offices, including, first off, the office named as my primary care physician.  They couldn’t find my records.  We’re sorry, they say, but since your original doctor has left, you are a new patient and we’re not scheduling new patients until May.  This is March – I could be dead by May.  No amount of cajoling on my part convinced the less-than-pleasant receptionists to help me out.  After four phone calls with equal results, I was near tears, which is not something I normally do, and decided to visit the Urgent Care facility.

I really didn’t want to go this route.  The price of medical insurance is high for a lot of reasons, but one is because they have to cover the people who have to spend more money going to emergency rooms or urgent care facilities for exactly the same reason I ended up in one.

Continuing on with this  saga,  I enter the Urgent Care offices and the receptionist there treated me with even more disdain than the people I chatted with earlier via phone. Is there a school for “how to be completely apathetic and non-caring in 5 easy lessons.”  Is this happening because doctors feel they are indispensable and we have no choice but to take this kind of apathetic abuse.

This led me to the idea of what would happen to businesses today if they  responded in kind.  Take this hypothetical example.  “Hello, I am a new client in the area and I’ve interested in your services.  May I come in today”…. “No, we’re sorry, we are not seeing new clients for at least a month.  Please call back then.”  How long do you think that business would be alive and viable if that was the way they operated.

If the receptionist in your office reacts the same as the ones I dealt with today, what will the rest of the experience be with your company?  Probably the same.  If the bedside manner of the company – whether it’s the person greeting the clients or answering the phone or your sales team – does not reflect the true image of your company, then you are lost before you  even start.

Companies spend a lot of money on sales and marketing, drip campaigns, email blitzes, etc.  But, if the result of all that external work ends up at the desk of the I-don’t-care-about-you receptionist or on the phone with a sales person suffering from a similar disorder, you have just wasted a lot of money.  Before investing in all that effort, you need to make sure your home front is in good working order.  Are your employees motivated?  Are they empowered to give quality service?  Are they rewarded if they do? Do you, as the business owner, project the kind of attitude you want represented throughout your organization?  Is your bedside manner equal to what you would expect from a doctor you visit?  Think about it.  Step outside of your space and imagine what it would be like to be sitting in front of you.  Would you like what you see and hear.   Try to imagine walking up to your office for the first time.  Does it invite people to return?  If the only way people reach you is via phone, the same thing applies.  Do they get a real person or an auto caller with 15 steps before you realize you can hit zero and by-pass the “helpful” choices which in reality cause many people to hang up before even talking to a human.

Julie was right.  This did turn out to be a good topic for a business blog.  The message is this – make sure your company bedside manner keeps the clients returning.  Then, give them a lollipop and send them on their way, happy and satisfied with the results.

Drip marketing is not something I just talk about, it’s the primary marketing strategy I’ve integrated into my business for the past 6 years.

(I’ve actually relied on drip marketing for more than 20 years, but it’s only been recently that drip marketing automation software has scaled to desktop use for SMBs, small sales teams and consultants. Cost is no longer a barrier to entry; for under a few hundred dollars a month, any size company can compete digitally for more business with drip marketing automation.)

I’d like to share one of my personal drip marketing success stories with you. It’s a great example of why it’s so important to implement a drip marketing strategy sooner rather than later. 

About a year ago, my company received a referral for a new ACT! database prospect. Initially our marketing manager, Golda Cohen, talked with him, and then sent him a proposal for our services.

Proposal Follow-Up Drip Marketing Campaign

Immediately he was added to our proposal follow-up drip marketing campaign to educate him about all of our other services that he had not yet asked about. 

Of course, Golda continued to follow up on this sales opportunity personally. And now that he was a high-priority prospect, he also received e-mails from us inviting him to our live events.

I don’t remember if this sale took longer or shorter to close than normal, but we did finally get the order. Golda then scheduled an installation date for our Senior Consultant and a different day for database marketing training with me.

Our client’s ACT! database was installed without a hitch (we love when this happens), and now it was time for training. Several months had passed since our client first entered our sales pipeline, and throughout his journey with us, all the way up to his day of training, I never once had a conversation with him.

On the day of training, I showed up at our new customer’s office and waited for him while he finished a phone call. Then he appeared and exclaimed to me…

(The Big Reveal)

“Lori–are you ‘“THE Database Diva? I’ve been reading your stuff, and
I was really looking forward to meeting you!”

Frankly, he caught me completely off guard! I was looking forward to meeting him, too, of course. But he was really looking forward to meeting me! In fact, he already felt like we knew each other, even though we’d never said as much as a “hello” to each other.

That’s because for months, he had been absorbing everything we sent him about our sales process, our implementation team, our quick-start tips and our case studies. He was now an informed customer who was eager to taste his own success. So we got down to business and had a great training day.

The proposal follow-up drip marketing campaign is one of 7 Must-Have Drip Marketing Campaigns I believe every sales organization needs to differentiate itself from the competition. More important, these drip campaigns reduce the risk factor all prospects inherently feel while going through their buying process. The customer knows he must make a decision to buy or not to buy. But that doesn’t mean he enjoys the decision making process. If anything, he’s looking for reasons to eliminate you from his short list to make his selection that much easier.

As I reflected on it later that evening, I realized…

Wouldn’t it be great if every new business relationship started out just like this one–with a customer who was this thrilled and delighted to be doing business with us?

Drip Marketing, The Secret Sauce

Having a well thought through proposal follow-up campaign, in this case, was a critical factor in closing this sale and giving our customer an overwhelming number of reasons to validate his wise decision to select us as his vendor.

Yes, it took me several hours to think through the sequence of messages I wanted to include in my drip marketing campaign. And, yes, then I had to write all the messages.

And I wasn’t satisfied that this was a perfect drip campaign. I wanted to include more information than I had room for. (I only wanted the campaign to last about as long as my typical sales cycle.) But “done is better than perfect.” And my one-time investment of thought and copywriting continues to reap goodwill and smarter clients and prospects as I add them to this same drip campaign.

Drip Marketing’s 85/15 Ratio

A successful drip marketing campaign is 85% strategy and only 15% technology. That’s why they’re so hard to execute. Most companies starting out with drip marketing get this equation all wrong.

One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make is thinking their marketing automation software gives them an unrestricted license to blast the same promotion 24/7. Boring! And ineffective.

Marketers know intuitively this approach won’t work. Yet they don’t know what to do instead. (That’s why I created my 30-day DripMarketingCamp.) They end up missing out on a special opportunity to help prospects fall in love with them via long-term education (and entertinment). We all know that an educated customer makes better buying decisions. It’s also a lot more fun to work with more engaged customers who want to work towards a common goal of building a solid business releationship.

One of my clients recently sent me a one of his proposed e-marketing templates for my review.  He had spent quite a bit of time developing his message and was understandably quite proud of it.  What he had in mind was for me to review it, make a few suggestions and fix any typos I might find.  He was no doubt expecting a few words of praise, or, at the very least, a large smiley face.  What he got was a totally reworked piece that bore little resemblance to his original chef-d’oeuvre; I did, however, refrain from placing a large red “F” at the top.

As an author I’ve been critiqued by some of the best editors in the world and I know the process.  It’s not unusual for the early drafts of my books to return to me in the form of road kill.  As the daily recipient of dozens of pieces of spam I know which messages will make their way through – and which messages will take a permanent place in the Spam Folder.

My rule of thumb for writing a marketing piece is to pretend that I am writing to one of my buddies with a bit of friendly advice.  You might want to think about the following parts of your message before sending out your next blast:

1.        Subject line:  This is absolutely the most important part of your message because it will determine whether or not your e-mail is opened.  Take a look at your own Inbox and determine which message you opened and which you immediately marked as Spam.

2.       Length:  Do you have time to read a two page message from a stranger, or someone you barely know?  After you write your piece go back and remove any unnecessary verbiage. Keep you sentences brief and to the point.

3.       Tone:  Keep it simple and friendly.  Period.  Don’t lecture.  Don’t sell and/or come across like a carnival vendor. 

4.       Formatting:  If your message is clear you don’t need to resort to bold, underlined and red formatting, and avoid using ALL CAPS.  This type of formatting will make readers think you are shouting at them and will cause spam filters to gobble up your messages and spit out the pieces.

5.       Bullet points:  Yes, pithy little statements neatly arranged with bullets can be effective – but only if they are done extremely well.  In my client’s case his bullets had no symmetry; some started with sentences, others with verbs, some focused on his product and others on the customer. 

6.       Blatant sales pitches:  Granted, some of your product pricing might include a manufacturer’s discount or rebate that you’ll want to share with your recipients.  My client, however, offered a “3 day only” offer for his services knowing full well that he’d offer the same “deal” at any time.

7.       Closing:  This one should be simple.  Do you normally sign your emails with your own name or just that of your company? 

Put yourself in the shoes of your recipient, keep your message simple and you’ll find that writing great marketing pieces is easier than you think!

 Karen Fredricks
blog@techbenders.com
www.techbenders.com

This is Part 2 of my article outlining a get-started drip-marketing checklist. You can read Part 1 here. 

Like any complex, overwhelming task, launching your first drip marketing campaign is easier if you break down big concepts into discreet, do-able action items. Here’s the second half of the checklist.

5. Set up your campaign in your drip marketing automation content editor. If you don’t yet have one, I recommend Swiftpage because it’s easy to learn and one of the least expensive (I am a reseller of this program). Create a template for each message you wrote in step 4. Then set up the timing between each stage.  Build in several call-list stages to follow-up with contacts who are most responsive at each stage of  your campaign.

 6. Add the contacts you coded in step 2 and launch the campaign. By the time you complete steps 1-5, this step will seem very anti-climatic because you already went through the entire thought process. However, if you’re a uber-perfectionist, you may want to launch your campaign to yourself first to see how and when it arrives.

7. Analyze the results. There’s no such thing as a “perfect” drip campaign. You can dot all the i’s, cross all the T’s, and strategize till the cows come home, but you still won’t be intuitive enough to know what your contacts will think or how they’ll behave after receiving your messages. If you engineer a feedback loop into your messages, you’ll get questions or suggestions that may make you rethink your drip strategy. The campaign reports are also valuable for showing you disconnects in your thought process.  Don’t be afraid to incorporate direct and indirect feedback. Tweak everything – messages, stages, sequencing.

Once you’ve launched your first live drip marketing campaign, you’ll see how much easier it is to build and integrate the next one (and the next one, and the next one) until all your business’ black holes are plugged up.

Most businesses don’t communicate with their customer base enough, so they miss sales because of their inability to “clone” their salespeople. So it’s not hard to see the benefits of adding drip marketing to your marketing plan, which automates the follow-up process and identifies the *hot* prospects from the ones who are only “half-baked.”

The roadblock to implementing is the execution. Drip marketing is inherently overwhelming, with its multiple steps, if/then processes and prolific copywriting requirements. It can morph into a never-ending project.

Can, but doesn’t have to.

I’ve compiled a 7-point checklist to help you overcome your roadblock. The checklist works if you don’t skip ahead or jump around the list. To complete your first successful drip marketing campaign, you don’t move to the next step until you’ve completed the first–even if a single step takes a month to complete. This checklist is the process I teach in my DripMarketingCamp, and I’m sharing the process with you to remove some of its mystery.

This post contains checklist steps 1-4. In my next post I cover checklist steps 5-7.

Drip Marketing Step-by-Step

1. Pick one “trigger event” in your business where  you have the worst follow up. (It’s probably on my list of the “7 must-have drip marketing campaigns.”) Plug up that black hole first. It may be hard to focus on only one campaign. It may feel like that one “blends” into another one you struggle with. If you can’t decide which one to start with because they’re each problem areas for you, no worries. Just pick one. Eventually you’ll complete them all.
2. Define your target audience for this campaign. This will be a lot easier now that you’ve focused on your starter campaign. Code the contacts in your database that qualify to receive this drip campaign, so you have an easy way to group them. (This is called list segmentation, which is the first step in having more meaningful conversations with your contacts.)
3. Determine which messages you want to send, and the sequence you want to send them in. The easiest way to do this is to select a contact you actually know from the target list. Where is this person in your sales process? What does he or she need to know at this stage of your relationship in order to take the next step with you? What “call to action” is appropriate: Asking them to join a webinar? Read a white paper? Offering a special promotion? Join a demo?  What’s the next logical step you want them to take with you? Plot it out. Now that you know who you’re engaging and what you want to say to them, you’ll know how to space out the messages. Is one a day too frequent? One message a week? Following up on a proposal has a different pace than following up on a website lead. Knowing who you’re focused on in a drip marketing campaign makes sequencing a common-sense decision.
4. Write each message, including a subject line for each email message in the drip. Hot tip: Revisit the history of your last 5 big sales. Research what you did to move them through the sales process, in the order you did it. Check your email “sent” folder for message ideas. That’s a rich ”library” of information you tend to repeat with each of your contacts, and these messages typically have a logical progression to them. Won’t it be nice to have a relevant templated response for all future prospects in your pipeline?

I’ll share the second part of this drip marketing campaign checklist in my next post. In the meantime, feel free to ask me a question about drip marketing or share your ideas for your own drip marketing campaigns.

As a Customer Relationship Management Consultant who provides software solutions using ACT!, Sage CRM and SalesLogix, I compete with Salesforce.com.  While I think their solution can be a good fit for company’s with limited capital, those that lack a network infrastructure or IT support or have disparate workers, what I find disappointing is they disparage the competition rather than focusing on their strengths.  I have heard many of the negative and/or erroneous statements they make from prospects as well as read the competitive emails they send to prospects.  Call me old school, but that’s not the way I sell. 

So how and why does ACT! 2010 software compete with Salesforce.com?

Pricing
First let’s look at the Salesforce.com editions that compete with ACT!

Contact Manager Edition – priced at $9 per person per month. Supports a maximum of 2 users. Provides contact and lead management, and integration with Outlook / Google Mail. 
Group Edition – priced at $35 per person per month. Supports a maximum of 5 users. Provides same capabilities as Contact Manager plus opportunity management, Google Ad Words integration and basic case
management.
Professional Edition – Priced at $65 per person per month. No limit on the number users. Similar capabilities to Group Edition plus extended marketing and customer service capabilities, as well as analytical dashboards.

ACT by Sage 2010 – Priced at $199 per person with optional annual ACT! Platinum Care subscription for free annual upgrades at $59 per person.   Limited to 10 users.  Has same features as the Premium and Corporate editions except for the following licenses or features:  no ACT! for Web license, Dashboard views by team, enhanced remote synchronization services, activity reports by user,  secured contacts, notes, history and opportunities and no field level,  group and company record security.
ACT by Sage 2010 Premium – Priced at $369 per person with optional annual ACT! Platinum Care subscription for free annual upgrades at $114 per person.   Generally limited to 30 users.  Has same features as the  Corporate editions except for the lack of ACT! for Web licenses.
ACT by Sage 2010 Corporate - The SQL Express edition is priced at $399 per person with optional annual ACT! Platinum Care subscription for free annual upgrades at $114 per person and is generally limited to 30 users.   The SQL Server 2008 edition is priced at $479 per person with optional annual ACT! Platinum Care subscription for free annual upgrades at $164 per person and is scalable to 100’s of users.  The Corporate edition is our most scalable solution.

Feature Comparison

1. ACT! provides considerable ease-of-use advantages over Salesforce.com when it comes to accomplishing simple tasks such as:

• Lookups
• Searches
• Working with groups
• Mail merges
• Personalization
• Contextual right-clicks
• Pick lists and data quality
• Duplicate checking
• Offline

1. Salesforce.com costs 2.5 times more than ACT! after 3 years  1
2. Despite what they say, software must be installed on your computer to use Salesforce.com with Microsoft Word or Outlook
3. Sending a letter in Salesforce.com takes 17 clicks – in ACT! 2010 it’s a 2 click process
4. Salesforce.com Professional offers limited email broadcasting – only 500 per day per user. With ACT! E-Marketing, you can send up to 100,000 per day 2
5. ACT! offers complete full online and offline access to data
6. ACT! can be installed on a PC, Network, Web, Terminal and/or Citrix Server for whatever type of access you prefer
7. Recent Keystroke Level Modeling (KLM)* testing carried out under lab conditions has revealed that it takes 37% longer on average to complete a range of common user tasks in Salesforce.com compared to ACT! 2010
   REMEMBER:  Usability drives user adoption and ultimately determines the overall success of a CRM project
8. Contact Manager Edition Weaknesses
   •  Limited to 2 users
   •  No offline option
   •  No dashboards, email marketing, list management or opportunity management
9. Group Edition Weaknesses
   •  Limited to 5 users
   •  No offline option
   •  No email marketing or list management
   •  Significant upgrade cost to add a 6th user or more since you have to upgrade to the Professional Edition.  Essentially, you’ll go from $35 per user per month to the $65.00 per user per month—that’s an 86% increase.  
10. Professional Edition Weaknesses
    •  Significant higher Total Cost of Ownership over the lifetime of the system
    •  Offline access is significant extra cost.
    •  Storage allocation is very low for the price

Salesforce.com Gotcha’s
According to research conducted by Sage Software, storage allocations are very storage is extremely expensive ($3000 per additional GB of storage space) and is not available as an option in the Contact Manager Editions.
Offline access is not available in lower editions and is only available at a significant extra cost in the Professional Edition.
The Master Subscription Agreement with Salesforce.com controls customer data access – that’s your data they’re holding!

Here are some other observations:

1. Without express, prior approval from a senior Salesforce.com executive, all subscriptions must be paid in advance for a minimum of 1 year generally, and the average contract term is now 2 or 3 years.
2. They reserve the right to modify its fees and charges and introduce new charges at any time.
3. Companies are deemed to have accepted Salesforce.com’s terms and conditions when they click on the ‘I agree’ button during sign up to a trial subscription.
4. Your contract is automatically renew for the same period again unless the customer expressly notifies Salesforce.com of its intention to discontinue the service.
5. If a you don’t cancel in time, it will be liable for the full cost of the renewed contract.
6. Salesforce.com subscriptions number cannot be reduced in number until the expiry of the contract period.
7. Salesforce.com reserves the right to block a customer’s access to their data in the event of a commercial dispute. 
8. Outside of any dispute, it is generally difficult to get customer data out of Salesforce.com in any meaningful format unless you have the Professional or Enterprise Editions.
9. Apart from the very largest organizations, Salesforce.com customers do not benefit from any service level agreement in relation to the availability of their application. They have no recourse in the event of service outages.

In conclusion:

ACT! is easy to use and provides a simple pricing structure so there are no nasty surprises down the line. Before signing up with Salesforce.com, know what you’re committing to and get it in writing.  ACT! customers benefit from a low total cost of ownership with most paying the equivalent of between $20 and $30 per user per month over the lifetime of the solution.  I am happy to speak with you about how CRM and specifically ACT! can help your business.  Just click here to contact me.

1  Comparison based on 20 users of ACT! 2010 Corporate with annual ACT! Platinum Care software maintenance with $3,000 of implementation services versus Salesforce.com Professional edition as of 8/26/2009.

2  ACT! E-Marketing powered by Swiftpage is a monthly subscription service.  I am a Swiftpage Gold Drip Marketing consultant and help businesses turn their ACT! database in to a money making machine with this software solution.  Monthly pricing is available for review by clicking here.