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Maximizer Tips &
Tricks
Automated campaigns
The
automated campaign in Maximizer Enterprise can send to either
e-mail or fax recipients. We suggest using an e-mail to fax
service for a fax campaign to make it faster than using a normal
fax modem.
In both
cases, you begin with a template. This is set up once you have
clicked on Marketing and
then on the
Campaign icon to open up the campaign window. Place your
mouse pointer in the window and click the right button to access
the menu. Choose Add Automated Campaign template.
Now you are presented with a step by
step set of windows to guide you through creating the template.
In the first window, Click on Add and give your template
a name. The first time you use this function, you will create a
unique template, thereafter, you can use that same template to
be the basis of new ones. You can also give the template a
description, then click OK.
Then click Next to move to the Campaign Activities
windows. Again, click Add, choose either e-mail
or Fax. The next window will be titled according to the
choice you made. Here I will go through the e-mail activity.
Give the activity a name, description and E-mail subject. You
also need to give it a Start Time and Delay Start
(if required). The Landing Page URL will be the page
that links directly onto your website for recipients to gain
more information. Next you need to select the Message Body
File. Click on this button and you are now able to find the
existing HTML file that you may have created in FrontPage™ or
actually create the message body in Maximizer's editor. What is
the difference?
The HTML file does not enable you to merge information from
your Maximizer database without programming support. The
Maximizer Editor does allow for merging of information, however
font support is limited. We have found Word HTML documents to
be clumsy and larger than FrontPage™'s, but merges can be done.
The choice is yours and depends on the effects that you want.
Creating the document in Maximizer's editor means that you
have all of the usual UDFs available and you can do a really
focussed document. We use this solution for marketing mail
shots, whereas this newsletter is done in FrontPage™.
Once you have created and saved your document, it will appear
in the Message Body Library window from where you went to
create it. If the document already existed, then you will have
clicked on Import and found it on your server. Now click
on OK to bring it into the Activity window. To
put in the sender's information, click on the Email Addresses
tab. Here you put in the information for the sender and the
address to reply to, as well as the cc and bcc recipients.
Attachments can be added as well on the last tab. When you are
complete, click on OK.
The activity will now show in the activity window - note that
you can have multiple activities for a campaign if you require.
Click Next. This brings you to the Save window
and gives you the option to create a campaign from the template.
For now, just click on Finish.
The second part of the Automated Campaign is the list of
recipients. To set this up, return to your address book and
decide on the User Defined Field (UDF) that you wish to use for
this list. For instance, we use the UDF newsletter, which is a
table with two options, Subscribe and Unsubscribe
to decide who receives the newsletter. Once you have the UDF
set up and have indicated which people (Contacts)
qualify, then you need to do a Search for them. Click on
Search | All Fields and find the UDF, tick it and click
the appropriate choice. Click OK and make sure that
Contacts and Individuals are selected. Click on Catalog
and create a new catalog entry with the campaign name as its
title - this means that you can update the search in future.
Click OK twice to begin the search. Once it is
completed, select all the entries, check that they all have
email addresses, select them (EXCLUDING ANY THAT DO NOT) and
save them as a Favourite List with the campaign name as
the list name.
Return to the Campaign and select Add Automated Campaign
by right clicking. You now have two choices Fixed Date
or Ongoing. If you have multiple activities in your
template, it will be the latter, otherwise stay with the
former. Click Next. Choose the template that you want
to use in the campaign, put in a budget figure and expected
revenue and click Next. Now you are to choose whom to
send the campaign to - select your Favourite list and click
Next. Give the campaign a start date and click Next.
You now have the option to validate your email addresses before
clicking on Finish.
Note - it is important to leave Maximizer open to run
the campaign!
Customer Service
Good Customer Service is the
challenge of every business. You only have to visit
www.hellopeter.com to
realise how this challenge is a bar too high for many SA
businesses - not every time, but you are only as good as your
last customer service call!
Maximizer
Enterprise assists in addressing this problem through the
built-in Customer Service module. There are two aspects to it -
the incident capture and the knowledge base. The incident
capture, which is the Customer Service area, enables a responder
to the incoming call, e-mail, fax or angry customer coming into
the premises, to log the call with all appropriate details.
Depending on your business, serial numbers can be logged;
equipment types; everything right down to the problem category.
The case is
then assigned to a responsible person for action or sent to the
appropriate case owner for assignation. Completion dates can be
set and this date will generate an e-mail to the owner of the
case and the person responsible for solving it warning them that
it is still outstanding. This notification happens the day
before!
Once the case
is resolved, the how of the resolution has to be entered as well
as how long it took. This information can then be placed in the
Knowledge Base for future reference. This side builds up a
searchable database of documents, which can be used for new
cases. We have used this often to resolve recurring problems,
with a marked decrease in downtime. Customer Service can be set
up to calculate the cost of the job and everything can be copied
and pasted into the invoice on the job's completion.
Hotlists and why they are so useful
Maximizer's Hotlist is a powerful tool that allows you to keep
on top of events that you could otherwise easily forget. You can
use the Hotlist to schedule reminders of important events like
the expiry dates of leases and licences for cars etc.,
anniversaries such as birthdays and weddings, important school
events for your kids, and in business call backs to customers
that you said you would call at a future date, reviews of the
performance of investments or staff, or simply To Do tasks that
you can't get to right now but are important and need completing
at some time. Having your finger on the pulse of your business
and personal life gets you back in control of your future rather
than leaving it to good fortune or chance.
When using Hotlists, however, you will also need to identify
just how many reminders you are prepared to receive because
simply putting every reminder into the Hotlist will generate
such an overload of reminders that you will likely end up
ignoring most of them and losing out on the important ones.
Maximizer's Hotlist also allows you to reschedule a reminder for
a future date, but as with all things in life, if you don't
discipline yourself to tackle the tasks that are less enjoyable
they will carry on being deferred until you become desensitised
to their importance.
Importing records from MS
Outlook
MS Outlook has a limit on how
much data can be exported into a Windows comma delimited file.
Outlook has many more fields than you need in Maximizer, so
delete all the blank ones in Excel first and then do a File |
Save As to make sure that it keeps the *.csv format. Excel will
display a dialog box warning about format loss but you can
safely ignore this. You can then import the edited file into
Maximizer and match the fields with each other.
NB! Import companies and
individuals into Maximizer first and ignore contacts by placing
the Skip field tag by First Name, Last Name etc. Then
Import the contacts into Maximizer as a second import into the
same database so that the contacts are matched to the companies.
Looking at
Opportunities again!
Opportunity Manager is where you work to
follow through with a prospect and turn the opportunity into a
sale. When you have a prospective customer entered into
Maximizer, you drag the contact name up to Opportunity Manager
to start the process. The Opportunity window opens and you now
make some decisions:
- What is your objective?
Is it a new system or
product sale; is it a further sale into the customer; is it
an upgrade? State your intention clearly here.
- What products or services are you selling into the
customer? There should be a drop down list here to
choose from and you can add new fields.
- What Category does the sale fall into? Again
there are choices.
- Description - what is special about this sale?
Flesh it out.
- Fill in the stage the opportunity is at - probably
"Starting" and your Confidence Rating.
- Fill in all the Opportunity details that you can
complete at this time and any other information needed to
complete this window
- Click the User Defined Fields tab and complete
the information requ9ired by your company there.
- Click Sales Plans and note that you are not using
a strategy, so choose Show Activites.
- Click on the More button, and start your
activities around this opportunity.
- Work the opportunity until it is closed!
- Click on the Competitors and Partners tab. Find
the competitors you know you have and put them in with
comments. If you have a partner in the deal, find them as
well.
- The last tab is the Status tab. Here you will
able to put in information on how you won the deal. This
knowledge enables you to do more deals more easily!
Marketing Campaigns in HTML
Maximizer's Campaign Manager uses
two types of documents - HTML and Maximizer's own format. HTML
documents mean that you can use pictures and text formatting,
whereas Maximizer's own text format is very plain. What are the
advantages?
With Maximizer's own text
format, you can use merge fields, whereas HTML does not allow
this unless you have a good HTML programmer to assist you.
However, if you want really good formatting, remembering that
the email will contain the addressee's name in the To: section,
HTML is the way to go.
We recommend using FrontPage or
a similar html editor to produce your document. Pictures,
contained in it, require that you put them on your website with
links to them in the document. The resultant communication
comes onto the recipient's screen beautifully if they are
allowed to access graphics, otherwise they receive the text with
links to your website. This means that more people receive your
quality communication! Where the Maximizer document format seems
to work best is with product introductions. Plain text makes
for easy reading and the merge facility makes it more personal.
Personalise Campaign bulk e-mails
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Bulk
e-mails sent out in a Maximizer Campaign can be
personalised so that each recipient's name appears in
either the subject line or text body of the e-mail
message that they receive. Other Maximizer fields
specific to a particular client can also automatically
be inserted in the subject or text of the e-mails.
Select File|Libraries|Automated
Campaign Templates. If you are adding a new
campaign, click the Add
button and enter a name
and description
for the template. Leave the
Start with a new blank
template option selected unless you would like to
start with a copy of the selected template, in which
case you choose the
Duplicate this existing template option. Click
OK to close the
Add Automated Campaign
Template dialog box and then click
Next in the
Automated Campaign Templates wizard screen. In
the Activities
wizard
page, click the
Add button. Select the type of activity—Email,
Fax, or
Print. To modify
an activity, select it and click the
Properties
button. Enter
the details of the campaign activity in the Add [Email,
Fax, or Print] Activity dialog box: Enter the
name and
description. For
e-mail activities, enter an
E-mail subject at which time you can click on the
ellipsis button to insert a standard merge field into
the subject line of the e-mail. For example, Dear {First_Name?}
will insert the recipient's first name in the subject
line preceded by "Dear". |
Remembering
to follow up the results of appointments!
You
come back to the office and you click the completed box in your
hot list tasks. Now what - well you will be prompted to make a
note to follow up, which you dutifully do. However, you haven't
put in the meeting result. Click on the contact name and drag
it to the Notes Window, this will open a note, into which you
can type your meeting notes. This completes your documentation
on the meeting and you still have the follow up task already
set.
By
using this method, you are keeping clear on your customer's
requirements and ensuring that you also complete the tasks that
are needed to move the sale forward. In Maximizer, your Hot List
is your workflow, in fact it is your business bible, tracking
everything that you have undertaken to do for a customer.
Share your calendar
You can share your calendar in Maximizer, allowing you to collaborate
seamlessly with colleagues or for a manager to view upcoming
appointments and prioritized activities. The calendar allows you to choose daily, weekly or
monthly views, and you can leave it to Maximizer to prompt you about
task deadlines and appointments. The colour-coded multi-user format
makes for easy viewing of different users' calendars at a glance. You can also then print your schedule
to your daytimer. Opening another user’s calendar that has been shared
is done by selecting the user’s name from the Users drop-down list. Both
the selected user’s appointments and your own appointments are
displayed. You can also view the booked time for meeting locations and
resources by choosing the corresponding value in the list.
Using Search to create reports
By using Search > All fields, you
can create and catalogue for future use any number of searches
that give you the reports that you require. The "Catalog"
feature in Search is the one which makes Maximizer simple and
easy to use.
To really harness this power,
create the views that give you the search results laid out on
the screen as you want them, then you just print the column
report.
Maximizer FAQs
How does Maximizer assist me in improving my sales performance?
Maximizer is a powerful tool, which can assist you in staying
in contact with your existing customer base as well as
monitoring your progress with prospects. It is also back up for
your paper diary, should you loose it. Effective use of
Maximizer should take no more than 30 minutes per day of
updating your notes and appointments. When you are following up
on the phone, you are hands-on with the sales process, using the
telephone notes window to take down your customer's remarks and
orders. When a call is completed, you can set a follow up task
with that customer or schedule a meeting.
Maximizer's meeting scheduler can be set to send your
customer an e-mail confirmation of the appointment.
Furthermore, it can also send a reminder closer to the time -
preset by you. This means more appointments are completed with
you sitting in front of your customer.
The User Defined Fields (UDF) and Search can come together to
identify a niche for a new product launch. These two facilities
can also be used to identify what products a customer has
bought; how often they place new orders; what interests they
have; when their birthday is. Thus you have a wide range of
information about any one customer or prospect.
By mining your Maximizer information, you can identify the
type of customer that you relate to best and areas where you
need to take a new approach. Perhaps if they are particularly
worrying, you can go to your manager for assistance in looking
at new ways to operate with them.
Opportunity Manager enables you to follow a structured
approach to your sales cycle. The pipeline report quickly
indicates where from and when business is coming through. This
assists you in managing your budgets.
Most of all, if you work Maximizer well, it will work for you
in a crisis! For instance, if you fall sick, others can support
you by covering for you with clients.
How does Maximizer's Opportunity Manager help me predict my
sales pipeline?
Maximizer's Opportunity Manager is a powerful tool. Even if
you use it at its most basic level, it can assist you in
developing your sales pipeline. By keeping things simple, you
rely on your instinct! Start by dragging your prospect to the
Opportunity icon and dropping them on it to open a new
opportunity. Then fill in all the relevant details - what are
you hoping to sell them; its cost; timeline to close etc.
Knowing what profit your company will make or what your
commission will be, should be your guideline for how much you
are prepared to spend in closing the deal.
Then you can start making phone calls and appointments in
this area, plus follow-up tasks. As you work through towards
closing the customer, use your judgement to update the
Opportunity Analysis on the Basic Information tab. This will
then indicate how sure you are of closing the deal. Weekly, you
can run your pipeline report - Reports | Opportunities |
Pipeline. This will give you and your manager an indication of
the orders flowing into your company.
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