New letter template feature

PlaybookIQ now offers letter templates.  Letter templates are created just like an email template.  Under the template tab in your account, choose create a new template.  In addition to name fields, you can now add in address and date fields.  After composing the letter, you’ll be given the choice to create the template as a letter (pdf) or email. Choose letter and save.

Letter templates are assigned to a playbook just like an email template.  When a letter template is assigned a step in the playbook and comes due, you will be given the option to ‘download pdf’ instead of ‘compose email.’ Once you send the letter, you can save it and attach to the contact under the Attach Document link.

To convert an existing email template to a letter template, choose the email template you’re converting.  Edit the template and add in the necessary address fields to the body of the template.  Choose to save as a letter template and save.  Now the former email template is now a letter template.

Free Subscription for Veterans

In honor of our United States veterans, we’re offering a free solo subscription to PlaybookIQ to any United States service member, active or inactive.  Please visit our site at www.playbookiq.com.  If our service can help your business, contact us at support@playbookiq.com to set up your free account.  Thank you for your service!

*Number of subscriptions may be limited.  Proof of service required.

Bulk deleting contacts

PlaybookIQ offers several ways to affect multiple contacts at once, saving time in managing contacts.  These include adding and deleting tags, adding a task, assigning a playbook, and managing steps within a playbook.  Now users can also bulk delete contacts.

For example, a group of contacts imported from a purchased list have completed all steps in a lead playbook.  Viable leads have been followed through and all others are deemed dead.  A search for the dead contacts by tag or playbook will now yield the option to delete:

To delete all listed contacts, check the box at the top of the list (be sure to ‘show all’ if you’re managing more than 20 contacts) and click delete.  You’ll be asked to confirm you want to delete the chosen contacts:

Verify you desire to delete the contacts.  All chosen contacts, along with any associated tasks, comments and history, is deleted.

A reminder that the administrator of the account can deny permission to any user to delete contacts.  For more information on PlaybookIQ permission management, visit our Help Center.

New Import Feature

PlaybookIQ now offers bulk marking of contacts private at import.  When mapping fields for import, users can choose to mark imported contacts private.

Marking contacts private will allow only the user importing the contacts and the administrator to view the contact and associated information.

Easy tracking of comments and history

With PlaybookIQ, all actions completed and comments written are recorded for perpetuity in the History and Comments section of a contact.  Users can now easily review comments only with our color and icon differentiated entries.

When the contact full history is shown, user generated comments are now preceded by a balloon and appear in black lettering.  System generated history (contact created, task completed, etc) are preceded with a green check mark, have a gray background, and gray lettering:

This new format allows users to still see the big picture of their sales process but draws attention to comments.

Users can also now choose to view Comments only by clicking on the “Comments” link:

This new feature segments out comments only for easy review.   Clicking “History” returns to a listing of all user and system generated history.

CRM Import Help – Improved in PlaybookIQ

CRM import can be at once one of the simplest tasks and yet also one of the most rife for errors.  Contact data is relatively simple.  There are some basic fields for all contacts that most all CRM products support (name, address, email, phone, etc.).  There are contact information standards such as vcard that can help facilitate import and export of contact data.  Yet even with the relative simplicity of contact data and the availability of vcard standards, we find that most PlaybookIQ users have their data in an Excel spreadsheet or in a text file.

Unfortunately, these file types are also among the least standard and least structured ways to share information.  We have recently introduced three updates to help smooth out the CRM import process.

• We added a sample csv file that has been verified to import to PlaybookIQ.
• We added a “common reasons” help section which identifies and describes common issues with csv files.
• We simplified the import process from four steps down to two.

These small changes should make the import process more useful and more reliable.

PlaybookIQ increases custom contact fields

PlaybookIQ now offers 20 custom contact fields for each PlaybookIQ account.  Custom contact fields allow users to capture contact information specific to their business or industry.

Setting up custom fields is easy in PlaybookIQ.  Under the Admin link in each account is a Custom Fields option.  Simply click “edit”, input the desired fields, and save.  Now each time a contact is added or edited, the custom fields appear for data input.

Custom fields can be easily searched and segmented like any other contact field.  This allows for specific industry target marketing or followup.  Custom fields can also be used when importing contact data, to ensure none of the data associated with your contacts at import.

Web Forms Make Inbound Marketing Work For You

Make your blogging effort pay off

Make sure you have an easy way to capture prospects once they’re at your blog.  You’ve peaked their interest, now make the contact  and potential sale.

Add PlaybookIQ Web Forms to your inbound marketing programs

Use a PlaybookIQ web form to capture inbound marketing opportunities at your website.  Web forms are free with PlaybookIQ and require no coding or programming.  Set up is easy, and within minutes, prospect information - name, email, address, and phone)  -  is captured in PlaybookIQ.  Prospects can be instantly assigned to a playbook so you know of their interest and can respond immediately to their inquiry.

Inbound Marketing Works

According to HubSpot’s latest report: “Marketing Data: 50+ Marketing Charts and Graphs”, small business owners find inbound marketing to be much more effective than outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing has a 60% lower cost per lead than outbound marketing. Respondents also reported shifting more of their overall marketing budget from outbound to inbound efforts.

100% of business owners who blog multiple times a day have acquired a customer from their blog. Blogging is the key component to inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing has become more important to respondents.
A majority of people said that social media, natural search, and blogs have become more important while the number of people finding paid search important has dropped from 32% in 2009 to 22% in 2010.

I recommend you check out the full report for free at http://www.hubspot.com/Charts.

PlaybookIQ Affiliate Program

We are happy to announce the launch of the PlaybookIQ affiliate program.  If you like PlaybookIQ, we want to reward you for recommending it to friends and colleagues.  We know there are people that are happy to recommend it to others without any expectation of compensation.  Still, we think recognizing your contribution to PlaybookIQ’s growth is the right thing to do.

For each Paid Referred Subscriber who subscribes to a PlaybookIQ Monthly Plan you will receive a Referral Fee equal to 50% of the first month paid subscription and 15% for every succeeding month.   All the details of the affiliate program are found in the PlaybookIQ affiliate agreement.  If interested, you can apply to become a PlaybookIQ affiliate by filling out this simple form.

Thank you again for using, and now for recommending, PlaybookIQ.