GoldMine has the ability to send HTML email messages, which allows more sophisticated text formatting, such as selected fonts, colors and styles as well as inserted image files.

Even though GoldMine has the ability to send HTML emails, its not necessarily the best option for creating HTML emails. In order to create truly eye catching HTML email campaigns try using an HTML authoring tool such as: Dreamweaver, FrontPage, or 1st Page 2000 just to name a few. An HTML authoring tool will enable a person with the right skills to create truly amazing HTML emails.

Once you have your email created in the HTML authoring tool of your choice simply copy and paste the HTML source code into a GoldMine Email Template and save it in the Document Management Center.

You’re now ready to test your email campaign. Test your email by sending a draft of the email to your GoldMine email account or any email account will do. Make sure the formatting is correct and that all links and image files are working properly. If you need to make changes do so in the HTML editor and then paste the new code into the GoldMine Email Template in the Document Management Center, over writing the old code. Once you’re satisfied with the results you’re now ready to send the email to your target audience.

First Direct Corp has proven experience with creating effective HTML email marketing campaigns and other promotional messages. For more information on Creating Eye Catching HTML Email Campaigns contact us.

Thanks to the new GoldMine Plus for Accounting QuickBooks link, a construction subcontractor can now quickly and easily check the associated GoldMine contact’s accounts receivable, past invoices and credit balance while they have their customer on the phone.

The new link integrates GoldMine BCM or FrontOffice Sales and Marketing with QuickBooks Pro and provides extremely beneficial features for an extremely economical cost. (The link is made by the makers of GoldMine, FrontRange Solutions USA Inc. and is available from your GoldMine Solutions Partner.)

Recently I wrote a paper called “How to Use Reporting to Grow and Manage a Business”.  It has a powerful message and one that needs to get out there more.  So, I want to mention some of the key points of the paper and direct you to a link where you can download and read the full story. 

Reporting can empower an organization to make smarter, more informed decisions.  Reporting can reveal, reward and punish behavior.  Reporting can stir positive competition and motivate constructive efforts.  Simply put, reporting can help you to succeed.  With all the good things reporting can do, you’d expect there to be a lot more of it in today’s database-driven world!

I’m not taking anything away from gut instinct.  Yet, as I see it, reporting is extremely under used. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Managers don’t know how to use reports and what to report on
• Managers lack the abilities and resources to design and write reports
• The data does exist to report on, so no one writes the report, so no one collects the data, and you end up with a kind of circular problem which only perpetuates both problems.

Like anything that’s not getting done and needs to, the solution begins by recognizing there is a problem.  Just recognizing the need for better reporting is a big move in the right direction!  From there, with some investment of time and resources, this is certainly one area of your business where you can expect meaningful improvements in a relatively short amount of time.  Over time, you can build a portfolio of valuable reports that help all areas and aspects of your organization.

Looking for a place to start?  Why don’t you start by reading my article “How to Use Reporting to Grow and Manage a Business”.  After that, I invite you to take another step … if you’d like, give me a call and let’s talk about your organization’s reporting needs!

In addition, as a GoldMine user, I highly recommend you entertain a personal demonstration of the following popular report writing solutions for GoldMine:  MasterMine, Stonefield Query and Crystal Reports. And, don’t overlook this lesser known tool for creating real-time HTML reports that can be viewed in the GM+Views window – DbNetGrid.  Contact First Direct Corp. for further information or to arrange a personal demonstration.

This sales scenario happens just about every day. So, here’s a trick that will save you time and ensure timelier sales follow up! First I’ll describe the problem situation …

You speak to a prospect or customer and as a result, for whatever reason, you need to follow up with them some specific period of time into the future. You don’t want to forget, so you schedule a reminder call or action for the appropriate point in your calendar and you put useful notes in your activity so you can reference them in your next conversation.

What’s wrong with this situation? Nothing, except that the day you scheduled your timed follow-up activity for is so cluttered with other sales activities that you might overlook it. And, alarming it does no good because you’ve got so many other alarms that they are all falling on deaf ears. So what’s the solution?

The solution is to schedule your follow up as an email so that will go out automatically on the exact date and time you want it to. In other words, I write the actual email when I’m finishing the previous activity, while the comments of my prospect/customer are fresh in my mind, and so that they will resonate even better with my recipient. Here’s an example to show you how it works:

My prospect tells me they have a meeting scheduled for next week Tuesday morning to discuss my offer/product. They say that I should check back in that afternoon. I write my email with words that take advantage of the influence of “commitment and consistency,” (read Robert Cialdani’s book Influence – the Modern Psychology of Persuasion), by saying I’m checking back per their request … and I ask in my message how the meeting went and if they’re ready to speak with me or if they need more time. My message is timely and relevant!

The beauty is that I didn’t have to worry about making or missing my call! My follow up was taken care of automatically, leaving me to push off my “manual” follow up for another week or two. It’s a beautiful thing! But how do you do that with GoldMine you ask?

It’s easy to pre-write emails that go out automatically using a tool called – EmailRush™ by Z-Firm. With EmailRush I simply schedule an “Other Action,” which is just like scheduling a call, and I write my email in the “Notes” of the scheduled activity. Those notes become the body of my email and they’re inserted into a custom HTML email template so it looks great!

You can find dozens of common situations when scheduling emails to go out automatically will work for you. (e.g. event reminders, appointment reminders, expiration notices, etc.) With EmailRush™ I can also leverage the “group scheduling” feature in GoldMine to write a reminder that will go out to a filter/group or tagged list of records.

CRM is supposed to be a “productivity tool,” and it is, if you learn to use techniques like this one. Here a CRM power-user has a competitive advantage because, as we have all heard, “Sales is a contact sport!”

A name, address and phone are not enough for marketing and sales purposes.  And, most of what’s missing belongs in fields, rather than notes.  But for too many organizations the challenge to do much better gets the better of them!

Your organization’s house file, its database of prospects and customers, is one of its most valuable assets.  It can be much more valuable if you give it the attention and effort to improve and maintain it!

Say for example that you market to other businesses. A simple analysis of your firm’s database may reveal many significant issues with your house database including but not limited to:

• Inaccurate and Out-of-Date Information – Incomplete and incorrect company and contact information is too common.  To make matters worse, B2B contact information changes approximately every 2 years.  Therefore, on average, contact information is likely to be out of date if it hasn’t been verified within two years.

• Lack of Complete Contact Information – Missing details regarding contacts themselves such as titles, phone extensions, emails, faxes, merge codes that differentiate contacts based on whether they are decision makers, influencers, and other roles that you must target in your sales and marketing processes.

• Missing Target Data – Facts that are used to segment your database in order to target campaigns, analyze the market, qualify the prospect, etc. are lacking. This may be demographic information or specific facts about their operation and needs.

• Major Milestones – Failure to record key dates and other details that should have been recorded along the way in the relationship, e.g. creation dates, start, end, and renewal dates, approval dates, etc.

• Transactional Data – Information on purchases, returns, credit information, etc. that can be useful for sales, marketing and service purposes.

There are a variety of reasons why organizations fail to have this information in their database.  Beginning with – they never thought about doing so – all the way up to people who don’t enter the information as instructed to.

The solution begins here …

Albeit you may have some technical hurdles to overcome, but for the most part there are enough ways to store the information.  Usually, I find the problem has less to do with technology and more to do with best practices.  However, if you fail to put enough forethought into your needs and uses for the information, you can expect poor results with capturing data. 

The real problem begins and ends here …

Assuming you’ve got a properly designed database, then it’s a matter of adding to and maintaining it.  Here’s where it gets especially difficult because you have people involved — people who have to be trained, and reminded again and again to ask for and enter the right information. 

This problem has to be met like any management challenge!  Procedures must be planned and documented.  People need training and ongoing reinforcement.  Results have to be measured and the findings used/shared to provide feedback.  Take advantage of techniques that have worked well in other organizations with their databases.

There are rewards for overcoming the challenge …

In conclusion, marketing depends on good data.  Most direct marketing strategies and tactics rely on a database to target and deliver relevant and compelling messages.  Your marketing success begins and ends with your ability to effectively use your database.  The quality of your database and your skillful use of it is as much a key to your success, and a competitive advantage or disadvantage, as any other aspect of your firm.  Even more so!

The GM+ Browser, available in GoldMine 7.0 Corporate Edition is an extension of the popular GM+View functionality that allows you to view information from external sources such as other databases, back office systems as well as internet and intranet websites. The new GM+Browser allows you to add GM+Views to the floating GM+Browser window as well as have up to 9 seperate browser tabs. The potential for extending your GoldMine CRM system with this built in Web Browser is enormous. The need to view, add and update external database information related to your GoldMine contact information is something almost all organizations require, however not all organizations have staff with the neccessary programming skills to implement this feature of GoldMine. Some of these programming skills include but are not limited to: PHP, ASP, MySQL, SQL 2000, JAVA, Visual Basic, VBA, C++, Perl, XML, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Goldmine If you are looking to utilize this feature of GoldMine contact First Direct Corp today and speak with an expert about your needs.

This “Tech Tip” deals with GISMO (Goldmine Integration Services for Microsoft Outlook) which is included with Goldmine Corporate and Premium Editions.

GISMO is an add-in to your Microsoft Outlook email client that offers the following features:

• Link e-mails sent and received in MS Outlook to a Goldmine contact
• Create new contacts in Goldmine and link e-mail messages
• Launch contacts in Goldmine
• Link all messages automatically from a particular e-mail address to the corresponding Goldmine contact
• Access Goldmine contacts via the MS Outlook Address Book

Once the link is installed, while in Outlook, navigate to Tools and then click options. Select the tab labeled “Goldmine link.” (See image #1 to the left) The Goldmine path, Username, Password, and GM Contact set should be checked by your Goldmine administrator. (Documentation on installing the GISMO link and other technical documents can be found at First Direct’s website.)

• In the section “Goldmine Email Center” click “As a completed activity” to file your email into the history of the linked GoldMine record, as well as your filed folders in the GoldMine Email Center. If “As a pending activity” is selected, your email will end up under the pending tab in Goldmine awaiting your completion.
• In the section “Goldmine Auto- linking and Attachments” check “Enable Auto-Linking when sending Email” so that outgoing email to GoldMine Address Book contacts will be copied into the history of the GoldMine Contact Record. Check “Save a copy of outgoing attachments” to store any email attachments also.
• Check “Enable Auto-Linking” when receiving Email” in order to have the option of automatically linking emails to GoldMine Records as they are retrieved into your Outlook inbox.
• Click apply when you’re done!

Now, I’ll explain how to customize the columns in your Outlook inbox so that you can see whether an email is linked or not to a GoldMine Record, and if so, which record. Simply do the following from within your Outlook client.

In your Outlook inbox right click at the top of the column bar on the “From column title” and select “Customize Current View.” The window in Image # 2 to the left should open up and you’ll select the “Fields” button.

Then the “Show Fields” window below will appear. (See Image # 3 to the left ) Select “User-defined fields in Inbox” from the “Select available fields from” drop down list. Choose to add the following fields from the “Available Fields” list: “GM Company,” “GM,” and “GM Filed.”

If you’ve managed to follow these instructions through, then you’ll notice in Outlook that the email exists in GoldMine (checkbox under GM), the Email has been filed in Goldmine, (GM Filed), and the Goldmine company name is now shown in Outlook.

To learn more about the using email with GoldMine, I recommend you consider the following webinar titled “Using the GoldMine Email Center – What You Need to Know!”