Posted by Bob Walton on Thu, Apr 29, 2010 @ 07:40 AM
With BigContacts, you have always been able create custom Email and Letter Templates that would merge standard (core) contact information into the body of either template type.
We have recently expanded this customization to include custom fields. You can now merge data from any custom field that you have created in our system. This new feature allows you to deliver a look of even greater personalization as you communicate with your clients and prospects, thus enhancing the overall value of the conversation you are creating with these templates.
Here is a view of where you will find the Email and Letter Template section within our system. We provide tips and techniques for you within each section.
Any custom data field may be used by encasing it in {{ and }}. For example, if your custom field were 'Article Published', you would enter {{Article Published}} . Make sure to enter it exactly as you have it in the system, including any spacing and capitals.
Don't let automated emails and letters make your company look canned and impersonal. Create the custom fields that you need in BigContacts to track key information for your business. Then deliver this information automatically and effortlessly through these templates.
For more information on how to use this new feature or any other aspect of BigContacts, please feel free to join us for one of our live daily webinars.
These are 30 minute webinars hosted by one of our CRM Specialists. The lines are open for your questions. Not only will you get the answers you are looking for, but you will see how it is done within our system right there on your computer screen!
Posted by Bob Walton on Tue, Feb 23, 2010 @ 04:06 PM
Our subscribers frequently ask us about what they can do to further increase the speed of BigContacts and other web based applications they use on a regular basis.
Based on these inquiries we put together a Web Performance Page on our website. This page will give you tips for tuning your browser to deliver a better experience for you while in BigContacts or surfing some other area of the web.
There are a variety of situations that can exist to create a slower web connection.
- The web browser you are using is slow and/or may have plug-ins that are causing issues.
- Your modem or router is experiencing trouble and may need to be reset.
- Your local internet connection can intermittently run slow.
- There could be an internet connection issue somewhere between you and our servers.
- Our application/ server could be temporarily experiencing unusually heavy loads.
One or more of these tips can improve your web experience:
- Upgrade your Browser
We support 4 major browsers, including: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome. You can decide how fast you would like to surf the web by reviewing the browser performance comparisons on this new web page.
- Reset your router and modem
A browser is the engine that drives your performance on the web. We encourage you to take a moment to make sure it is tuned so that it will perform better for you.
You won't believe the extra "mileage" you can get out of a day with a properly tuned browser.
Posted by Bob Walton on Thu, Feb 18, 2010 @ 07:20 AM
Best Practices Webinars for Web based CRM Software
At BigContacts, we're committed to making a real difference for you in your business. It's our mission to ensure that you get the most out of this easy-to-use, yet capable Web Based CRM Software. Think of us as your technology partner - dedicated to your success.
With the right tools and proper guidance, Web Based (CRM) Contact Management Software can provide measurable results in your business. Whether you're just considering this software for the first time, or have used it for years, we now offer a FREE Webinar series that can help you turn Web Based CRM Software into a true asset for your business.
Register Now and Get More Value for your Business
Whether you're just considering Web Based (CRM) Contact Management Software for the first time, or have used it for years, our webinar series can help you turn this software into a true asset for your Business.
Webinars are hosted daily.
Posted by Bob Walton on Sun, Dec 27, 2009 @ 12:07 PM
Before investing in Contact Management Software or Small Business CRM, you need to have all the facts. Most systems today come full of "bells and whistles" that are touted as essential to helping you in your business.
The reality is that many of these features may rarely get used if at all. On the other hand there may be certain features that are critical to your business. This investment requires a methodical approach to ensure that you make the right choice. Don't make your decision based solely on price or on features.
Consider what's important to you before making a quick decision.
- What are the minimum requirements for you business today?
- What are your growth plans and will this system allow you to grow without a significant $ investment?
- Is it easy-to-use; allowing you to get off to a quick start with all of your employees using it?
If you experience any trouble viewing this example of research, Click Here for a full size image of these tables. 
If you would like a comparison to any other Small Business CRM or Contact Management Software, Contact Us at 1-888-286-6578. We will do the detailed research and provide you with an objective and detailed report.
Posted by Bob Walton on Tue, Dec 15, 2009 @ 02:02 PM
We've
all heard the expression "Garbage in - Garbage Out". Often abbreviated
as GIGO, this is a famous computer axiom meaning that if invalid data
is entered into a system, the resulting output will also be invalid.
At BigContacts
we are committed to your success. We can help you save a lot of time
and money in the long run by ensuring you get things right from the
start. We have trained and certified a team of Small Business CRM
Consultants that have the expertise, track record, and commitment to
ensure your success in implementing our web based CRM software within your business.
We are confident that, if implemented correctly, our platform will help
you:
• Strengthen existing Client Relationships
• For every customer who bothers to complain, there are 26 others who remain silent.
• It costs about 5 times as much to attract a new customer as it costs to keep the ones you have.
• Increase Sales through a more targeted system
• You can increase your total sales (on average) by 15-20% with more targeted and efficient sales practices.
• Reduce costs through more a streamlined operation
• You can reduce general operating expenses by 5-10% by implementing a system to help you better manage your work flows.
Read More>>>
Give a call at 1-888-286-6578 to learn more about this program and how we can help you in your business.
Posted by Bob Walton on Mon, Nov 23, 2009 @ 09:04 AM
At BigContacts we offer a number of reporting options to help you extract meaningful information from the system to help you better manage your business. We are constantly striving to improve what we offer, and encourage our subscribers to give us feedback on what you are looking for in an online contact management (CRM) system. The more feedback we get in a certain area the higher the priority we give to that request.
Based on this feedback, we have just enhanced our "Recent Activity" report. If you're not familiar with this report - it gives you the ability to take the pulse of your business. You can select any or all users in your company to review what they had done over a given period of time. This activity is displayed in chronological order and allows you to review what someone has accomplished for the past 1, 3 or 7 days. You can see virtually everything that has occurred in managing client relationships over a given period. You can view calls made, notes written, emails sent, meetings scheduled, tasks completed, new sales opportunities created, and much more.
The report was a great start, but was still limited in what it delivered. You could only view the activity in chronological order and we limited the time-frame that you could review. We have re-named the report to "Activity Manager" and have added much more flexibility in how you can review activity within your business.
• Select the user you wish to review
• Select the format in which you wish to have the activity displayed
(By date, By Activity Type, By User)
• Select the date range that you wish to view this activity
In addition to all this added flexibility in how you view the activity, we now provide a summary with a "number count" of each activity for that time period. This is great for judging activity levels with sales reps, or even customer service reps. How many calls did someone make in a given period? How many appointments did they schedule? How many tasks were completed? How many new sales opportunities have they identified? and much more...
We hope that this new report will give you more insight and a better pulse on what is going on in your business on a day-to-day basis. For questions, comments or feedback, please email us at support@bigcontacts.com.
Posted by Bob Walton on Fri, Sep 18, 2009 @ 09:18 AM
At Big Contacts we offer a number of options for sending emails to your clients and prospects.
1) You can send and receive emails directly from our system without changing email providers.
2) You can easily filter a list of your contacts to send a group email.
3) You can create email templates complete with standard AND custom merge fields.
4) You can create automated email campaigns to deliver a message to clients and prospects.
Our system will store all of these methods/ modes of email directly in each contact record to make it very easy to track the entire history for each client or prospect.
That's the good news. The challenge, in the past, has been that (being a web based application) it was difficult for our users to simply copy and paste text into an email or email template and properly format all the text to the same font, etc. With this new text editor, you now have the option of pasting in plain text or pasting directly from a Word document.
We have just released one of the latest Email Text Editors on the market today and we hope you will like it.
Here is a preview of that the new toolbar looks like and how you can use it. We encourage you to get in there and click around to discover all of its great new functionality. The editor is so new, that we have yet to create the user guide. This will be coming in the near future, but we hope you will find this new toolbar and its functionality so intuitive that the user guide is not needed.
The Toolbar is the area in email editor where you can activate most of the editor features. Each button in the toolbar access a different function. There are simple functions for basic text formatting and more advanced features like creation of links and tables.
To use the buttons in the toolbar you must move your mouse pointer over the button. The button will highlight and a message with the information about the button function will appear. Click on the button to execute its function. With more experience you will have full control over all email editor features and you won't have to read the description of the buttons. You will just use them intuitively.
Besides the toolbars buttons there are also toolbar combos (drop down boxes). The combos are the white areas with a little arrow on its side. They can be easily accessed by clicking on the white area or the little arrow. Once clicked the menu will expand so you can choose from one of its available options. To execute one of them, simply click on it.
Special Note: We have had many requests from our users to improve the spell checking capability for emails. You asked for it, so here it is. Note above in the toolbar we have highlighted two functions.
The spell check button highlighted in green will allow you to spell check on your command.
The spell check button highlighted in light blue will allow you to enable "SCAYT" (Spell Check As You Type). This is a great feature as you will get instant feedback as you are creating your email document.
There are so many new features available to you now. We encourage you to look around, try it out, and send us emails with any questions or feedback you might have to support@bigcontacts.com
Posted by Bob Walton on Fri, Sep 18, 2009 @ 09:01 AM
One our primary goals as a software service provider is deliver a very intuitive, easy-to-use application for our subscribers. One way we accomplish this is through the concept of our "Contact Dashboard" .
We are one of the few Contact Management (CRM) companies that presents all of your contact history in a very organized manner on a single screen. Putting all of this information on a single screen makes it that much easier to manage your client and prospect relationships as you have everything you need at your fingertips.
Having said that, we realize that all of this information on a single screen can create limitations in other areas. You have told us that you would like a larger, more detailed view of the calendar. The calendar view has been limited to a width of about one-third of the right hand side of your screen. This was done in order to accommodate all the other information we are presenting to you on this dashboard.
We are at the very beginning stages of designing/developing our next generation platform - "Big Contacts 2.0". In the process of this development, we will begin to present you with new and improved designs within the system. This Friday we will release a few small, but helpful enhancements to the calendar.
Expandable Calendar View
From the Contact Dashboard, you will click to expand the calendar folder as you have always done, but you will now notice a new link in the upper left hand corner called (full screen calendar). This link will allow you to expand the calendar to a full screen view.
One of the biggest benefits to this expanded view is that you will now be able to see details of your meetings and your team members' meetings when in the "31" of "31 Group" views.
After you are finished working in your calendar, simply click on the same link in the upper left hand corner (restore calendar) and you are now back to the normal dashboard view to continue working on your clients and prospects.
Meeting Reminders
Another requested enhancement to our calendar is meeting reminders. With this release you will now have meeting reminders available to you.
Each user on the system will determine whether or not they want the meeting reminder activated - based on how they personally prefer to handle their meetings. The user will determine three things in their setup:
* Do they want the meeting reminder feature on or off?
* How far in advance do they wish to have the system begin reminding them?
* Do they want the reminders to repeat?
(The system can be set to as little as 5 minutes to as long as 120 minutes in advance.)
After these settings are determined, the calendar will "default" to this configuration for every meeting that is scheduled, UNLESS you choose otherwise. When scheduling a meeting you will have the option to adjust any of these three settings.
For example, you may NOT want a reminder for certain meetings. Or you may want to be reminded further in advance for one meeting or another. And finally, you may not want to get a repeating reminder for a certain meeting.
(Please note: repeating reminders can be stopped at any time by clicking on "dismiss" in the upper right hand corner of the reminder itself.)
PLEASE NOTE: As we design the 2.0 platform, we want your continued feedback. On the "Contacts" tab in the left hand column under the tools section, we have a "Send Feedback" link. We need constructive insights from subscribers like yourself in order to make this the best Contact Management (CRM) platform in the industry! Please send your suggestions and ideas and we will work hard to implement ideas all that appear to add value to our broader subscriber base.
______________________________________________________
Stay tuned for more great things to come!
Posted by Bob Walton on Tue, Jul 28, 2009 @ 05:47 PM
BigContacts offers seamless integration with VerticalResponse to deliver a suite of award winning marketing tools. (On-demand e-mail marketing, online survey and direct mail solutions)
VerticalResponse now integrates with the free Google Analytics service to help you further understand how your recipients are responding to your email campaigns and how they interact with your website. Google Analytics is a free service, as is VR’s new integration.
If you're already using Google Analytics to track your website visitors and search campaigns, you know how powerful the information you see can be. Now you can activate Google Analytics for VerticalResponse email campaigns, right from within your account profile, so you can gain insight into where people are going on your site after clicking links in your email message.
Don't have a Google Analytics Account?
Get a FREE Google Analytics Account. Google Analytics is a free online service that lets you track where your visitors come from and the pages they visit on your site. Learning more about visitors' behavior shows where you can make changes or streamline conversion processes on your website to gain more from your site traffic.
You'll be able to see that your site visitors came from a specific email campaign. It's never been easier to track ROI right back to the campaigns you send.
Instant Benefits
- Track email campaigns as another traffic source to your website
- Determine whcih products or services grab customers' attention
- Send follow up campaigns to target people with a tempting offer
- Boost conversion rates by tweaking your purchase process
- Compare email marketing campaigns with other advertising efforts
Getting Started
It's easy to set it up and get started. Visit the "profile" section of your VerticalResponse account, and activate your domain in the new Google Analytics Section.
Download the User Guide and get started!
Posted by Bob Walton on Thu, Mar 19, 2009 @ 01:21 PM
Over the past few years, BigContacts has evolved from a Contact Management System (Small Business CRM) into something much more.
We realized that today's top CRM systems were evolving to include elements of Sales Force Automation (SFA), allowing company's to effectively target and manage larger pools of prospects.
But we felt that there was still something missing in this equation. The foundation to any business that ensures things get done are the processes or work-flows that a company establishes. This is true whether your serving existing clients or going after new prospects.
These processes set the stage and ultimately determine the entire flow of activity and level of efficiency within your business. You could go to great links to develop and articulate these processes, but you need a way to effectively keep score. How well are you serving your clients? Where are the weak points in your business? Who’s delivering on the promises you make to your clients and prospects and who’s falling short? Our system incorporates a discipline we've talked about before and that is Business Process Management (BPM). This discipline, coupled with technology can truly help you streamline your operations and ensure that your business operates as efficiently as possible. Feel free to call one our Account Managers if you would like to learn more about this tool. It's included as part of our core service at Big Contacts, you might as well take full advantage! 1-888-286-6578 Ext. 701
Well, this is where we are today, but we feel that our work has just begun. Our mission is to deliver a platform that has all of the essential tools that you need in your business that will make your life easier and put more money in your pocket. It's that simple. Everyday we ask ourselves how we can harness technology to deliver real value to you in your business. Late last year we even surveyed our growing subscriberer base to find out what you felt would make this a better application for your business.
We learned alot from that survey and we have listened! Below is a preview of what we have coming within the next few months. As you will see there are a number of great new features and tools that we hope truly will deliver on our mantra and that is to give you:
More TIME to spend in front of clients and prospects
- More MONEY as a result of satisfied/loyal clients and more targeted selling efforts
- More CONTROL over your business and personal life
What's coming the first half of 2009?
PLEASE NOTE: All system enhancements listed below will be available to you at no additonal charge to our currently low prices.
In March we unveiled our new Client Support Center. We offer several new self-help tools like our new knowledge-base that contains dozens of frequently asked questions, downloads for the system, and dozens of 30 second feature videos that can walk you through a quick overview of how any feature works. We asked ourselves "Why stop there", so we now offer LIVE Chat Support (M-F 9am - 5pm EST) to give you instant feedback to any questions or issues you may have.
Two-way Outlook Synchronization plug-in . This plug-in will be something that a user will download from our site, and you will now be able to keep all contacts, and calendar events synchronized. Any work that you do while offline in Outlook will automatically synchronize to Big Contacts the next time you are back online.
New Marketing Module. This will replace the “Auto-Pilot” tab and create an entire marketing suite for you to use to stay in touch with your clients and to more effortlessly and effectively market to your prospects. This new module will include:
- Our Current Sales Pipeline Drip Marketing Manager
- A New Email Campaign Manager complete with reports and analytics that will integrate directly with our system and feed campaign data directly to each contact record.
- In a future release (later in 2009), weoffer a complete Direct Mail Campaign Manager. You will be able to develop a number of campaigns using any combination of these direct mail pieces (Postcards, Letters, Flyers, Certified Mail, and Booklets)
GREATLY Enhanced Business Contact Record. This new contact record will allow you to create a business contact record and then add as many individual contacts to that contact record as you like. As a matter of fact all communication/ history in that contact record will be organized by individual contact so that you will know who you spoke to, about what and when.
iPhone application, and later this year a Blackberry application will be released on the newly formed Blackberry app store that they are calling "Blackberry App World". These applications will give you true mobile office capabilities. For more information on what you will be able to do through this new application, feel free to give us a call at 1-888-286-6578 Ext. 701.
Enhanced Email Module. Enhancements will include advanced features that will ensure proper identification with email providers to prevent being categorized as a spam, and the ability to reply directly to emails from within the Big Contacts application. All this will allow you to easily maintain all email history within each contact record.
Enhanced Calendar. We will be moving this to its own tab so that we will have plenty of room for enhancements. Enhancements will include better, more detailed calendar views, customizable alerts and alarms, customizable reminders for the prospect and client via email and text message.
Enhanced Reports Module. We will be adding more data fields that can be searched - with the goal being that we have all fields in the database in the reports area where one can search. We already allow you to set up your own Custom reports, and now you will be able to set up a delivery schedule for reports that you wish to periodically generate. These scheduled reports will run in their appropriate intervals and will be directly emailed to your inbox for your review.
As you can see, we are working very hard to deliver the most functional platform in the industry. We hope you find that these latest additions will make a measurable difference in your business.
Here's to a great 2009!