Open Letter to ACT
To Whom it May Concern,
My name is Keith May and I am a loyal customer of ACT! who has used the service for over 15 years to establish a robust clientele of people connected to my real estate business here in Edmond, Oklahoma. I have found ACT! quite useful for my purposes, and yet I find some areas where the service seems to be lacking what I desire for my business growth needs.
As a real estate agent, I thrive on communication with my clients. Lead capture is the core of my business. One such method of obtaining leads is through email marketing.
The email marketing features offered through emarketing in conjunction with the ACT! Database platform have given me somewhere to begin. I currently have my web marketing assistant and office secretary manually entering contacts in to the service to ensure that each contact is reached out to on their birthday, wedding anniversary, or home closing anniversary.
As you can imagine, this service is useful to me and I wish to keep using it. However, there are at least two key weaknesses with the program that weaken it and slow down my progress of setting up emarketing campaigns for my clients. I have identified these and listed them here for you because, if fixed, these changes would dramatically improve the usability of your CRM service in my eyes above and beyond that of your competitors. Please keep in mind that I have used your service for 15 years in my business and am extremely familiar with its strengths and weaknesses.
Problem 1: No option for reoccurring emails.
As the system is currently setup, there is no option for me to send a contact to an email address that reoccurs every year (e.g. on their birthday). Instead, I must send them an email through the system manually each year. This will cause much delay to my team in the future. Please consider changing this option, as I am sure there are many other current clients who would appreciate this change and find more use for your service as a result.
Problem 2 : No option to send emails to secondary email addresses.
Many of my customers from the last two decades are filed under joint contacts (e.g. “John and Mary Smith” rather than “John Smith” and “Mary Smith”). I have implemented a custom field in ACT! to record secondary email addresses for the email of the spouse, but I cannot send emarketing emails to this address. Please consider adding this option so I can send emarketing campaigns to all of my contacts.
Problem 3: Email tracking on emarketing campaigns is difficult.
I am glad I can track my emails as they are sent out through ACT, but it is troublesome that I can only look at the email it was sent out to after the email has been opened. If the system was changed to allow for better, more informational tracking (e.g. emails sent to my address when an email is sent out show the recipient’s email address), I would be able to better use the program.
If these changes were implemented, I would be thrilled to continue using your service and recommending it to my network of professional contacts.
Sincerely,
Keith May
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