I mentioned earlier that using Smart Tasks is a great way to plug up database cracks. In the previous section you set up a Smart Task to perform a single task. However, you might want to accomplish several things using a Smart Task. For example, you might want to send a customer a thank you letter, follow it up a week later with a phone call, send out a satisfaction survey three months later, and then contact them six month down the road to see if they are ready for reorder. Many traditional ACT! users rely much too heavily on alarms to remember those touch points; unfortunately, if you forget to set an alarm the contact falls through the cracks—and you might lose a sale. In addition, adding so many alarms and activities to your calendar will make using it very cumbersome.
So, what's the solution? Glad you asked! By adding additional steps to a Smart Task you can ensure that your contacts will be contacted as often—or as little—as you want.
It's probably easiest to begin with an existing Smart Task. You can either create a new one, or clone an existing one. For example, you might duplicate the Opportunity A Week from Close Smart Task and change the filtering to find all opportunities that have closed in the last seven days.
Once you have the core Smart Task it's a snap to start adding additional steps. The thing to keep in mind here is that the first step is the one that contains the query; additional steps simply add additional tasks.
- Click Manage Smart Tasks from the Schedule menu. The Manage Smart Tasks dialog window opens. Make sure you are on the Templates tab.
- Select the name of the Smart Task that you wish to modify.
- Click the Add Step button on the second step of the Smart Task. Remember, you see the steps of a Smart Task in the right-hand pane of the Manage Smart Tasks dialog window. You'll see the contextual menu shown in the following screenshot:
- Choose a step option from the contextual menu.
- Click OK to save your changes. You'll return to the Manage Smart Tasks dialog window where you'll see the new step displayed below the original two Smart Task steps.
I like to think of ACT! like a set of building blocks; you can start out with a relatively small structure and expand as the need arises. Once you design a Smart Task, you will undoubtedly think of another step. Or, as your business grows you might introduce new products and/or processes into your business and want to include those in with your existing Smart Tasks. There is no limit to the number of steps that you can include in a Smart Task, although it's probably better to create a Smart Task around a specific part of your day to day operations.
There are five types of steps that you can use in a Smart Task. And, should you be so inclined, you use each step type as many times as you'd like when building a Smart Task:
- Time Delay: This allows you to add spacing between the steps of the Smart Task. The interval can be one of minutes, hours, days, or months.
- Schedule ACT! Activity: Allows you to set up an ACT! activity. You can see what that screen looks like in the figure above.
- Send E-mail: This option lets you compose an email and even include an attachment. An example of the
Send E-mailoption can be found in the following image:
- Send E-marketing E-Mail: This option will send an ACT! E-marketing template. Remember, the e-marketing template must be created prior to including it in a Smart Task step. The following screenshot shows you an example of sending an E-Marketing E-mail:
- Add to Drip Marketing: This is how you can really set your database on auto-pilot. A drip marketing campaign is designed to continuously send out a string of emails. For example, you might have a drip marketing campaign that's designed to send out a newsletter to your customer base every month. By adding this step to the Smart Task you are in essence adding any new customers into the existing newsletter drip marketing campaign.