ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups Drives Award-Winning Direct Mail Campaign For Transcontinental Printing

Sage Software announced today that the Catalog and Magazine Group of Transcontinental Printing, the largest Canadian and seventh-largest North American printing company, is using the ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups contact and customer management solution to manage its direct marketing campaigns. A recent direct mail campaign managed using ACT! generated a 74 percent response rate, significantly exceeding typical response rates, which were 2.6% or less for lead generation direct marketing campaigns in 2006, according to data from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). The results won Transcontinental Printing the DMA’s 2006 International ECHO Award for strategy, creativity and results in the business-to-business marketing category.

“For our award-winning “Get the Right Combination” campaign, we mailed 200 lock boxes to prospects matching very specific criteria organized in our ACT! database,” said Bruce Jensen, Transcontinental Printing vice president of sales. “Two years ago, we could not have generated targeted lists with this level of precision in such a short time, but using ACT! we did it all in a day.”

Adopting An Easy Approach To Contact And Customer Management

Transcontinental’s Catalog & Magazine Group had minimal results with an alternative contact management system prior to implementing its ACT! solution. The company’s previous system was not well adopted among employees, resulting in fragmented use, inconsistent lead tracking methods and no central location for customer information. The Catalog & Magazine Group has since used ACT! to standardize its sales and marketing processes and cites a cost-effective rollout and easy to use features as key benefits.

Fifty-five employees in Transcontinental’s Catalog and Magazine Group including vice presidents, sales directors, sales representatives and business development coordinators now share a centralized ACT! database.

“ACT! is well received by everyone on our team because each employee has experienced the first-hand benefits of having all of our customer information accessible from one location,” continued Jensen. “Our salespeople have quickly embraced ACT! as a simple to use and effective productivity tool that helps them make more sales.”

Transcontinental worked with Donna Freedman of Success Analytics, an ACT! Certified Consultant and Premier Trainer, to customize ACT! for the Catalog and Magazine Group’s specific workflow requirements. Freedman also integrated ACT! with Swiftpage, an ACT! add-on solution that provides enhanced e-mail marketing and response tracking capabilities, to support the Catalog and Magazine Group’s electronic marketing activities.

“ACT! has helped Transcontinental’s Catalog and Magazine Group become a sales leader within the company,” said Freedman. “Their success with ACT! has inspired other groups within the organization to take a look at adopting ACT!.”