The first question you should ask yourself is “how can I tell who really likes us?”  Of course, off the top of your head you probably can name quite a few people with whom you do regular business.  But if you can set up Act! to tell you who is interacting with you and when, then you can get a clearer picture of who your best clients are.

Of course, what you consider your “best client” may vary.  Do you want to thank clients who buy a lot in net purchasing?  Or is it the clients who are consistent return customers?  Or do you have clients who always make contact with you around the holidays?  All of these things can be tracked in Act!.
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Once you decide what your criteria is, you can set up Act! to stratify your clients.  Creating a field called “prospect level” or “client level” gives you a place to track what kind of client you have.  You can then choose a method of tracking them.  You could go with a hierarchical classification, like assigning clients “A” through “D” status, or you can use descriptors, like “frequent customer” or “loyal promoter.”  Once your contacts labelled in this way, it’s easy to run a search for everyone who is an “A level” client or a “frequent customer.”
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From there it’s up to you how you thank your customers.  Whether you want to provide them with free, valuable white papers, send them hand-written thank you notes or do something else, making the effort is a guaranteed way to be sure you’re letting the clients who appreciate you know that the feeling is mutual.

Need help setting up client stratification? Contact us via email at info@kristismith.com or phone (847) 520-0860.

Busy searching for the perfect holiday gifts? This month we're going to reveal how to simplify your search - in your ACT! database at least - and find your contacts faster, and quickly create custom lists of clients, prospects, candidates, etc. You can search by any field in ACT!, either by right-clicking on the field, or clicking on the Lookup menu and selecting the appropriate field. On the left is the name of the field, then the type of search:

Replace Lookup - searches through the entire database, ignoring any previous searches.

Add to Lookup - adds the contacts from this search to contacts found during the last search (useful for looking up all people with a title of President, then adding those with a title of Vice President).

Narrow Lookup - finds only contacts who meet the criteria of this search as well as the criteria for the last search (ie search for all contacts whose ID/Status is Prospect, then narrow the search and find only prospects in the state of Wisconsin).

Want to save the list as a group for future use? Create a new group, then right click on any name in the contact list and select Add Contacts to Group. Click on the Group name - and the list is set for the next time.