Customer Success | Arboriculture

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Nancy Neustaeter

Owner and Business Manager

Canada is home to an estimated 318 billion trees, so forests are big business in the country.

Within that, arboriculture – the management of trees in public spaces – is something of a niche industry, but it still requires growing numbers of professionals to be trained by companies like Arboriculture Canada.

And with a wide range of training on offer, it’s important to keep track of who has taken which courses and when, as company owner and business manager, Nancy Neustaeter explains.

“We started out using a different CRM to store customer information, but because of the poor support and customer service we were getting, we decided to switch to Act!, which was set up for us by Act! Channel Partner Keystroke, who still work with us.”

It’s hard for me to envision what it would be like if we weren’t using Act!

Greatly improved productivity with Act!

“Now, every time we interact with someone, we enter that into Act!. And once people are in our database, we can track them and what training we’ve provided to their companies over the years.”

“It’s hard for me to envision what it would be like if we weren’t using Act! as it’s certainly made the office much more efficient. We’re probably 60 to 70 per cent more productive than if we were using an Excel spreadsheet.”

”Keystroke also integrated Act! with a piece of thirdparty software – TopLine Dash – which gives us a real-time dashboard that displays all the company’s courses by category and date.”

“That gives us a really clear picture,” says Nancy, “and helps us keep track of who’s been through our training.”

This isn’t only valuable information for Arboriculture Canada, but also for the companies that use their services to train personnel.

“When 300 or 400 of their people could have taken our training, it’s easy for them to lose track of who’s qualified on what course. But we’re able to pull out that information from Act! very quickly and give them a full report, which helps them plan their future training needs,” says Nancy. “Being able to do this is also good for us because it’s effectively marketing our services to these customers.”

Act! is perfect seasonal marketing

Since the arboriculture industry is highly seasonal in Canada, it’s important to market relevant courses at the right time, or you can waste a lot of time and money.

So, about twice a year in spring and fall, Nancy goes into marketing mode, to let potential customers know when courses are running.

“We do about four email pushes over three months, generally scheduled three to four weeks apart. So if our courses start in March, I’m sending out emails at the beginning of December,” says Nancy. “That’s when I’ll set up templates to promote each course in different geographical regions and then just let Act! run those campaigns automatically with emails scheduled to go out either at specific intervals or in response to a particular trigger.”

“I would say I’m probably reaching about 10,000 inboxes each time I do a campaign, and I’ll probably do about 10 campaigns a year. But as my customers are more likely to be out working in the field than sitting in front of a computer, I try to minimize how many I send out,” says Nancy, “so using Act! Marketing Automation is a seamless way of making sure we reach our customers, but without annoying them with too many emails.”

“We also have corporate partners for whom we run educational events and do some marketing campaigns for them using our database of customers in Act! to reach their target market,” says Nancy.

All of which, with Act!’s help, keeps this seasonal business evergreen.

We’re able to pull out that information from Act! very quickly and give them a full report, which helps them plan their future training needs.

Key Takeaways

Act! is a key player when it comes to productivity at Arboriculture Canada, as it’s made the office 60 to 70 per cent more efficient.
Nancy creates set up and forget campaigns using Act! Marketing Automation that require little of her attention and which are very targeted and responsive so as not to bombard her database of customers with too many marketing messages.
Nancy reaches about 10,000 inboxes each time she runs a campaign and usually runs about 10 campaigns a year, all of which are managed through Act! Marketing Automation.
Nancy makes use of Act!’s ability to work with third-party applications to create a real-time dashboard that gives her a clear picture of all the courses the company provides.

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