Act! Premium v25 is here.
The three main pillars in this release are Richer insights, Better Communication, and Enhanced usability.
RICHER INSIGHTS
Act! v25 introduces an advanced dashboard builder to Act! Insight, which allows users to quickly create custom analytics dashboards to visualize more of their data, gain meaningful insights, and react quickly to changing business conditions.
Better communication
Extend your reach and stay top of mind with prospects and customers with SMS4Act!. SMS4Act! allows users to send ad-hoc text messages without needing to create a full-fledged marketing campaign. Text messages can be sent for virtually any occasion, personalized, and saved as templates for future use.
Enhanced usability
Act! v25 includes several Act! Marketing Automation and Act! Companion enhancements to improve performance and usability, including new campaign dashboard options, suppression list filters, campaign list sorting, mobile app accessibility, opportunity filtering, and more.
Act! v25
- Act! Insights Advanced Dashboard Builder
- Custom table improvements provide faster, more reliable list views, and new reporting functionality
- Integrated SMS Messaging
- Act! Marketing Automation Enhancements
- Act! Companion Enhancements
- Big fixes (including a schema change)
Act! Insight Advanced Dashboard Builder
Features
- Advanced querying allows for multiple sets of criteria
- Create new dashboards based on contact, opportunity, company, and group data
- Pull in associated field data
- Configure grouping and add additional criteria as needed
Actionable insights are vital to business success. Act! v25 introduces an advanced dashboard builder to Act! Insight, which allows you to quickly create more granular, custom analytics dashboards so you can visualize more of your data, gain more meaningful insights, and react quickly to changing business conditions.
Benefits
- Quickly create new analytics dashboards
- Get granular by creating visualizations for previously unsupported data
- Gain more meaningful insights
- React quickly to changing business conditions
SMS Text Messaging
Text messaging is an affordable and efficient way to reach customers and prospects alike. With open rates more than 4x greater than traditional email (98% vs 22%), it’s effective as well, allowing even the smallest businesses to compete with much larger competition.
While text messaging is currently available as part of Act! Marketing Automation for US customers, SMS4Act! Allows Act! users to send ad-hoc text messages globally without having to build a full-fledged marketing campaign. All sends and replies are automatically tracked for reference and follow-up.
Features
- Send ad-hoc text messages without the need to create a marketing campaign
- Send to individuals or groups
- Automatically track sends and replies in contact history records
- Create text message templates and personalize with individual contact information
- Send text messages for appointments, order updates, shipping status, event reminders, promotions, and more
Benefits
● Affordable, efficient and effective
● High open rates compared to email (98% vs 22%)
● Avoid designing labor intensive emails in exchange for personalized text messages
● Track sends and replies for follow-up and reference
Act! Marketing Automation Enhancements
Act! Marketing Automation has something for businesses large and small, from basic outbound marketing tools to dynamic campaign automation, response-driven sales activity creation, and much more.
As part of Act! Premium Desktop v25, we’ve made Act! Marketing Automation more intuitive and user-friendly for all users. Improvements include an enhanced campaign dashboard, new suppression list filters, additional date formats for mail merge, and improved list sorting. Click to expand the illustration below.
Campaign Dashboard Enhancements
To improve overall usability, a new “Properties” dropdown menu is now available with options to “Jump to Campaign”, “Jump to Campaign Dashboard”, and “Export all Email Campaigns”.
- Jump to Campaign – Allows users to access to email campaign editor to quickly make content or design changes.
- Jump to Campaign Dashboard – Allows users quick access to the campaign dashboard to view more granular data around campaign success.
- Export all Email Campaigns – Quickly exports campaign data to .csv which is sent directly to the users email
Email Suppression List filter
To make it easier for Act! Marketing Automation users to zero in on the right data, we’ve added three new filters for suppression “Reason”, “Status” and by date
- Suppression reasons include things like bounces, spam filters, unsubscribes, and blocked.
- Suppression status includes things like active or inactive
Additional Mail Merge Date Formats
The mail merge functionality is a time-saving option to personalize outbound marketing content. In locales or industries where the 24-hour time format is preferred, users can now select this option on the fly or set it as the default option within the Account Properties settings
New Email Template Sorting
To make it easier for users to find email templates, we’ve improved load time performance and introduced four new sorting options. Users can now sort by:
- Template Name Ascending
- Template Name Descending
- Last Edit Data Ascending
- Last Edit Date Descending
Act! Companion Mobile App Enhancements
Available for iPhone®, iPad®, and Android™, The Act! Companion mobile app keeps users connected to their Act! database from anywhere. To improve the overall mobile app experience for all Act! users, we’ve made a number of enhancements to the login experience, opportunity filtering, and Act! proximity search. Click to expand the illustration below.
Accessibility
We’ve made it easier for users to quickly access the mobile app with the option to “Remember Username”. A new blue background helps improve text readability.
Opportunity Filtering
Act! Mobile app users can quickly review opportunities by status with new filtering, search for opportunities by opportunity name, and which filters have been applied.
Proximity Search
Act! Proximity Search performance and stability has been improved to easily find contacts in a given radius. When zooming in and out, users can easily adjust the search radius. Users center search location will now persist when navigating away and then back to the search.
Additional Act! Companion mobile app improvements
- Company name visible in opportunity list view
- For contact records with more than one phone number, users will be prompted to select which to dial.
- Google Maps address autocomplete
- Return all records when the search field is left blank
- Favorites page styling updates
- Clicking save multiple times does not create multiple histories
- A timestamp is not automatically added for timeless activities
- UK date format displays correctly
- Improved German translation quality
- See all associated activities in the contact detail view
- View and Manage “Hot Leads” from a single page
- Improved scrolling experience
- Phone extensions now appear in the contact record
- Record Manager added to opportunity detailed view
- Act! API out-of-date notification
- Creating an activity and assigning to contact automatically associates with company
Act! v25 is only available for subscription offerings of Act! software. All Act! subscribers are obligated to receive v25. It is available for download on June 8, 2023. Act! Cloud subscribers can expect to receive Act! v25 in the August 2023 timeframe. Anyone using addons will want to confirm with their addon vendors if their software is compatible with v25. Also check Act! v25 System Requirements before upgrading.
