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Longtime Act! user saves up to 30% on emarketing by switching to Act! Growth Suite

Like many smaller companies in competitive sectors, this Toronto-based firm not only needs to stay on top of potential opportunities but must market itself cost-effectively, both of which it can do better thanks to Act!.

paul elliot headshot

Peter Elliott

MedX Sales Manager

med x brand logo

Set up some 20 years ago, MedX Health makes therapeutic lasers and skin cancer-screening systems that are sold across North America and around the world.

To help them better connect with the dentists, chiropractors and physiotherapists who buy their products, two years ago the company recruited Peter Elliott as Sales Manager and gave him the task of turning Act! into a key component of their business systems.

Having started out with version 2 in 1996, Peter’s something of an old hand when it comes to using the software, so he knows its potential and was therefore keen to take advantage of the new Act! Growth Suite.

Act! improves productivity and customer service

Since introducing Act! at MedX, Peter can see the way it has also improved his own productivity, which is now way higher than it otherwise would be.

“I know some people say they can work effectively using paper-based systems with tickler files,” says Peter, “But they’re cumbersome and time-consuming to manage. With paper systems, there’s no searchability so a lot of important stuff gets forgotten or missed. And I don’t want not to be phoning a prospect back in three months when I said I would. That’s a quick way to lose sales and I don’t want that to happen.”

Also, with customer service now such a key differentiator in every sector, Peter relies on Act! to help resolve potential customer queries.

“Because Act! holds every detail of every deal, that gives me real certainty,” says Peter. “So, if a customer phones with a query about a discount or warranty, for instance, I have the information at my fingertips so I can immediately go through things with them and sort it out.”

Act! helps me see what’s coming down the road. I’d be lost without it.

Act! made financial sense

“Our markets tend to be very defined communities,” says Peter, “so we need to be able to send targeted messages to the right people. That’s much easier with Growth Suite because of the way it integrates both the CRM and marketing automation aspects of Act!. It’s become an essential tool for us because I can easily see how any single prospect or contact is responding to our marketing.”

MedX had previously been using MailChimp for its email marketing but “that meant we were often paying for a service we weren’t using as we don’t always run a campaign every month,” says Peter. “On the other hand, with Act!, we can still send out 10,000 emails a month as before, but do that much more cost-effectively.”

For this reason alone switching to Act! made financial sense, but MedX’s marketing is also seeing the benefit with ever improving results. “We’re still tweaking our emails,” says Peter, “but typically we’re now getting open rates of as much as 40 percent.”

That’s pretty good going considering that the average is nearer 15-20 percent!

Act! is Peter’s second brain

Act! is effectively Peter’s ‘second brain’. “If I didn’t have it I wouldn’t be able to remember who I’d spoken to, or when, and what about. But with Act! everything’s there, so I can find information quickly when I need it or be prompted to do something with a reminder.”

“As a Sales Manager, I need a clear picture of every upcoming opportunity in the pipeline. I can’t imagine a sales rep or marketing person not using something like Act! every day. With it I can see what’s coming down the road, so I don’t have to rely on what can sometimes be overly optimistic sales forecasts. If I didn’t have that then I’d only know how well the sales team was doing when orders turned up.”

Act! is Peter’s second brain

Because Act! holds every detail of every deal, that gives me real certainty.

Easy customization

Easy customization

Because, as Peter puts it, “tweaking Act! is very easy for non-techies like me,” he’s more than happy to customize the software himself by adding in new fields or making changes to templates himself. However, for installs and updates, he leaves that to MedX’s Act! Channel Partner, Keystroke.

“They provide us with excellent support,” says Peter, “and if there are any hiccups they are able to sort them out remotely. Act!’ these days is super reliable and robust, so hiccups very rarely happen,” which sounds perfect for a results-focused laser maker.

Key Takeaways

  • Peter estimates that by switching to Act! Growth Suite, the company has been able to save 25 to 30% on what it was paying for its e-marketing efforts.
  • By using Act!, Peter has increased his personal productivity, which has enabled him to focus more on managing his sales team and improving customer service.
  • Act! Growth Suite has become an essential tool for MedX because it integrates CRM and marketing automation, making it easier for Peter to send targeted messages to defined audience groups of dentists, chiropractors and physiotherapists.
  • The meticulous notes Peter enters into Act! about every customer conversation means he has an accurate record of what was agreed for every deal, so if a customer has a query, Peter can quickly call on this ‘perfect memory’ to resolve any ambiguous issue quickly.
Key Takeaways

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