ACT! by Sage 2010 Contact And Customer Manager Integrates Social Networking Tools To Help Businesses Better Research, Market To And Acquire More Customers

Scottsdale , AZ - Sep 01, 2009 - Sage North America, which provides business management software and services to more than 2.9 million small and midsize businesses in Canada and the United States, today announced the new ACT! by Sage 2010 contact and customer manager. New features include integration with social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter™, LinkedIn® and Plaxo, compatibility with a subscription-based ACT! E-marketing service, and fully customizable opportunities to support various sales models. ACT! 2010 also debuts a new look and user navigation that achieves up to 35 percent higher productivity than competing products according to a Keystroke Level Modeling study conducted by Measuring Usability, LLC and Sage. A social media news release including video demoettes is available at http://pitch.pe/24023.

“Social media can augment contact management and CRM systems with valuable information to help marketers create more thorough customer profiles,” explains Sheryl Kingstone, director of enterprise research, Yankee Group. “Tools like ACT! are advancing integration of social media into the sales cycle so users can develop more meaningful and profitable customer relationships.”

New ACT! 2010 features and enhancements:

Social Media Technology brings information from social networking profiles and tools including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps™, Google News™, Plaxo and ZoomInfo, among others, conveniently into ACT! contact records so users can quickly collect and learn more information about their customers and prospects.
New Look & Navigation makes ACT! even easier to learn and provides instant access to search functions from any view. Big “easy” buttons take users to tasks most often used and related tasks are grouped for efficient use in contact, group and opportunity views. A new Welcome Page displays help information, tips, news and common tasks on one screen.
New subscription-based ACT! E-marketing Service provides templates for e-mail design, survey and Web forms for gathering recipient feedback, drip marketing controls for automating campaigns with multiple e-mails, and a marketing results tab for identifying the most qualified prospects to follow up with based on e-mail open and click-through metrics.
Sales Tracking Enhancements display opportunities within customizable ACT! contacts, groups and companies so users can easily track history and set security options for each.
Dashboard Views & Reports help ACT! users manage their sales pipeline with new contacts and administrative dashboards, 12 new dashboard charts and 13 new reports for identifying and better understanding the biggest sales opportunities. A new reports view lets users see all available reports, mark favorites for quick access, and customize descriptions to fit personal needs.
More than 60 ACT! Add-on solutions that further extend ACT! 2010 with shipping, project planning, Voice-over-IP, mobile device synchronization and other capabilities are available at http://estore.act.com/.

Sage is connecting with ACT! by Sage customers on several social networking sites including the ACT! Online Community (http://community.act.com), Facebook (www.act.com/facebook), Twitter (www.act.com/twitter), LinkedIn (www.act.com/linkedin), Plaxo (www.act.com/plaxo), MySpace (www.act.com/myspace) and YouTube™ (www.act.com/youtube).

ACT! 2010 is available now for $229.99 MSRP (upgrade $169.95 MSRP). ACT! by Sage Premium 2010 with additional security and administration features for teams of ten or more is $399.99 MSRP (upgrade $259.95 MSRP) and ACT! by Sage Corporate Edition 2010 providing online data access in addition to all ACT! Premium features is $459.99 MSRP (upgrade $299.95 MSRP). The optional ACT! E-marketing service begins at $14.95 per month. ACT! products and services are also available from more than 700 ACT! Certified Consultants listed at www.act.com/certifiedconsultants.

ACT! by Sage is the #1 selling Contact and Customer Manager worldwide with over 2.8 million users. ACT! users can organize all the details of their customer relationships in one place to improve marketing effectiveness, attract new customers, and create more value from existing relationships. Complete sales pipeline visibility helps ACT! users identify and take action on the most qualified sales opportunities. ACT! is easy to use and integrates with existing business solutions including Microsoft® Outlook®, Word, Excel® and Lotus Notes®. For more information call 866-903-0006 or visit www.act.com.