6 Email workflows that you can set up NOW with your Act! Marketing Automation "Complete" account

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 contact to my Act! database and/or to a group (or maybe I'm super automated and use dynamic groups) almost like magic that contact is sent an email to make them feel welcome. Then, after a few weeks or months, that contact is sent another email to keep my company's name in their inbox so that when an opportunity arises, I am top-of-mind as a resource for them to reach out to. This can continue on for several touches, but if the contact ever decides they want to leave my list, they are automatically removed.

If this sounds appealing to you, here are 6 workflows that can help you to save time and keep YOUR company in the minds of your prospects and clients:

1. Give new clients a warm welcome by setting up a series of welcome emails when they convert to a paying client. This can be triggered on an opportunity status change, a contact field change or by manually adding the contact to a group. This is an excellent way to kick off your new relationship on a positive note and keep clients engaged after the sale.
2. Re-engage inactive contacts by sending out an exclusive offer or coupon to get them buying from you again. This can be done with a dynamic group by filtering based on the last email open date, last meeting date, last opportunity close date and many others - or the contact can be manually added to a group. If you're wondering about these dynamic groups I keep mentioning, check out THIS ARTICLE where I share more about what dynamic groups are and how to set them up.
3. Set up an event notification workflow for your next in-person event or online webinar. For example, create a workflow that delivers important information registrants should know leading up to the event, such as hotel accommodations and agenda information for live events, or webinar log-in information for online events. When the event ends, send an email that gives attendees online access to session slides and continues to nurture them with additional content or promotions for future events.
4. Create an upsell workflow to get existing customers to upgrade or purchase new products and services from you based on what they've already purchased. If you're using opportunities in Act! to track your sales, you can set up a dynamic group (again!) to pull in contacts that have purchased certain products. If you aren't using opportunities, another way to do this dynamically is to use a contact field to record what products the contact has purchased from you.
5. Send out NPS surveys to find out how your company is perceived by your customers. According to QuestionPro.com, "A Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey consists of a single question that measures the likelihood of your customers referring your business to their others. It is an indicator of customer experience, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty. The responses of the NPS survey are used to generate a score ranging from -100 to 100. The NPS score is used to classify customers and help businesses improve their experience." With AMA you can set up a simple landing page that includes that one NPS question and writes the result back into your Act! database on the contact record. How cool is that?
6. If you have clients who purchase on a schedule - maybe they have a service contract with regular maintenance calls - you can add them to a campaign (via a group) that sends a reminder email every x days based on when they were added to the group or monthly/quarterly on a specific date. If you're using opportunities you can automatically trigger this when the opportunity for a specific product/service is closed.

I hope this article has given you some new ideas on how you can use Act! Marketing Automation to save time by sending out automated emails without any human intervention, generate new sales, and take the pulse of your clients' dedication to your company and brand.

Oh, and if you're wondering if you can do this with the "free" or "Select" versions of Act! Marketing Automation the answer is...yes, to a point. One of the features my examples rely on is the Automatic Campaign List sync. What this does is synchronize contacts in your Act! groups with the Act! Marketing Automation servers on a regular basis (you set the schedule). If you don't have this feature you will need to manually sync your campaigns in order to get the same functionality.

If you need help implementing these workflows or just need a little training on Act! or AMA, reach out to us for a consultation today. We've been Act! experts for 25+ years and have helped thousands use and customize Act! and Act! add-on programs to take their businesses to the next level.