Addy's Blog on AddressTwo

Publishing Web Forms on CMS

2014-07-23T11:45:00.001-07:00

If you use a Content Management System (CMS) like Word Press or Joomla, you can add an AddressTwo contact form on your website.

Use the CMS IFrame link on the web form screen. (For .NET CMS systems.... )

Place the I frame link text in the source of a page where you want the form to display.

"<iframe width='400' height='400' src='http://www.addresstwo.com/contactform_iframe_external.asp?db=Dev11920101820&ID=14'></iframe>"

You will get a form like this:

Create a list of contacts that opened a campaign email but did not click on a link

2014-06-13T13:42:00.002-07:00

It's important to include a link in your campaign emails to give your contacts a way to engage with you. If you want to find contacts that opened a campaign email but did not click on a link, you can create a list. Then put all the contacts that viewed the email on the list and then remove the contacts that clicked a link.

You will be left with a list of all the contacts the viewed the email, but did not click a link.

Follow these steps to create a list of contacts that opened an email but did not click on a link.

Step 1 -Create a list under LISTS on the main menu. In this case 'Did Not Click'

Step 2- Pull up Email results under Campaigns, Manage, Sent , View Report.

Step 3-Find the contacts that have viewed the email and click create query.

Step 4-On the query results,use the 'Use this list' drop down and choose Global Update.

Step 5-Add the viewers to the 'Did not Click' list with the' Add To List' section of the Global update screen.

Step 6-Go back to the Manage, Sent, View report.

Step 7 Locate the contacts that clicked a link and use the 'Create Query ' link.

Step 8-On the query results, use the 'Use this list' drop down and choose Global Update.

Step 9-Remove the contacts from the 'Did not Click' list with the' Remove From List' section of the Global

update screen.

Step 10 Recall the 'Did Not Click' From the Lists.

Adding New Users

2014-01-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

You can add new users under Admin, User Logins.

Each username must be unique across all AddressTwo users. If you add a username that already exists in your account or in another account, you will get a message that looks like this:

The Username you selected already exists. Please click your browser BACK button and try again.

The user name you are trying to add may exist in another Address Two account.
User names must be unique from all Address Two user names.
Please use a different username.

You can assign permissions to users to restrict the capabilities of each user.

Administrators: see all data and change settings

Administrators are the highest level of permission and can see and do everything in AddressTwo.

Super Users: see all data

Super users can see all contacts but cannot make changes to administrative settings.

Managers: see only their data and subordinate data

Managers can be assigned sub users under the 'Assign sub users' link by their user name.

Restricted: see only their data

Restricted users also can not use global update or export contact data

There is a link to the abreviated permission list under the link called 'guide' under user permission.

Administrators: see all data and change settings

Super Users: see all data

Managers: see only their data and subordinate data

Restricted: see only their data

Production: see only projects that they are assigned

Once you add your new users you can send them their user name and password, or they can request their user name and password in an email with the forgot password tool. On the main screen by the login form at the top, click the (forgot?) link. This will let you put in an email address, and the user name and password will be sent to the user with that email address.

The Long and Short of Triggered Campaigns

2013-10-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

What is a Triggered Campaign?
The short: It's a campaign that can be triggered, silly!
The long: A campaign is a series of emails that are designed to send in a sequence. Of course, nobody wants to have to remember to send each email in the sequence at the correct interval, so AddressTwo allows you to "trigger"the entire sequence once, and each email is in the queue to deliver at its appropriate time.

Can you give me an example of a Triggered Campaign?
The short: Why, yes I can.
The long: The most common example of a triggered campaign is known as an Autoresponder. An Autoresponder is an automated email message (or series of messages) that is sent to a person that completes a contact form on your website. In simple applications, it's merely a message to say "thank you" and perhaps give an indication to the contact as to when and how you will follow up with them. A more complex application can be demonstrated when you sign up for a free trial of AddressTwo. Over the course of 14 days you will receive a series of emails (a "campaign") that was triggered automatically when you completed that form.

Why don't you just call it an Autoresponder like the rest of the world?
The short: Because we like to be different.
The long: Because we ARE different. Unlike the "rest of the world" AddressTwo triggered campaigns can be triggered by more than just a web form. You can trigger it manually, for example. If you have a follow-up campaign designed for new prospects, after your first meeting you can manually trigger the appropriate follow-up campaign. Some customers even have programmed AddressTwo to have more customized triggers built in, such as a campaign that triggers each time a project is closed, or any time a new lead is entered by a sales rep. Any event can serve as the "trigger."

How long or short can a Triggered Campaign be?
The short: 1 to 730.
The long: A triggered campaign can be 1 email long (as in a simple autoresponder) or up to 730 days long, creating campaigns that last for 2 full years.

Creating a Mobile Icon or “App” for AddressTwo on your iphone

2013-08-14T13:54:00.002-07:00

“Does AddressTwo have a Mobile App?” We get this question a lot and as we are working diligently on bringing our customers what they want our app is currently in development. However, there is a great work around as you await the arrival of our next versions.

How to create a icon of AddressTwo for your iPhone

On your iphone go to your mobile Browser “Safari” in most cases, and in the website address bar enter addresstwo.com.
At the Bottom of your phone you will see 5 icons. Click the one in the middle that looks like a square with an arrow pointing to the Right.
Once you click that arrow it will take you to a admin page. You will want to click on the icon in the middle of your page that says, “Add to Home Screen.”
From here you should see and AddressTwo Icon created on your home Screen Now

To do a similar process using an Android phone, follow the instructions in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb7aCMspNUg

Email Template Font Format

2013-03-21T07:03:00.002-07:00

To format a paragraph click on some text in the paragraph. Then click the "p" or "span" html element in the list at the bottom of the html editor.

This will highlight the paragraph and you can select the font style and size. Do not try to highlight the entire text by clicking and dragging over the text. This will only set the font on one element, and there may be more than one paragraph in the text. Each paragraph should be formatted individually.

If a font is not selected, the font options at the top will say "font" and default font will show up on the email after its sent. The default font for the email recipient may be different than the default font in the email designer. This can cause the email to appear with different fonts than you intend, so be sure to format each paragraph individually.

Support Tickets

2013-03-06T06:19:00.001-08:00

You know how every time you ask us a question, when we answer via email you always see "[Ticket #0000]" in the subject line? What's that all about?

I'll tell you. Last year we developed a tracking system built as a plugin for AddressTwo to keep track of support tickets from users like you. It works quite well, and now we want to let you know that you can use it, too.

What is it good for?

Giving a support@ email address or a website form to funnel all customer support issues through one channel of communication.
Tracking all open issues within a date-stamped queue to make sure that no questions go unanswered.
Keeping a history of customer support issues associated to each contact.
Assign tasks and record notes on open issues, or "tickets" as we call them, so that everyone on your customer support team can know what's taken place with a given customer.

How do you get it? Go to Admin >> Modify My Plan and you can select the Ticket Tracking plugin from the menu there. It will add $15/mo. to your rate.

Hubspot Integration

2013-03-06T06:12:00.003-08:00

Are you a Hubspot user? More and more companies today are using Hubspot to drive online conversion. But what do you do with those leads after they convert? That's where AddressTwo comes in.

We have developed a very simple and straightforward integration with Hubspot. Simple and straightforward--that is our approach to everything, of course, and it's how we create such an easy-to-use CRM program. Our Hubspot integration works like this:

A One-Way sync of new leads from Hubspot to AddressTwo.
A link within AddressTwo back to Hubspot to view the corresponding Hubspot lead (and all Hubspot data and analytics)

So, what doesn't it do?

Two-way synchronization... once the lead is brought to AddressTwo, new information you add to that lead does not populate back to Hubspot. We have designed this in the approach that Hubspot generates leads, AddressTwo manages those relationships. It's a downstream workflow, not a two-way synchronization.
Import custom data fields. You may ask quite a few questions on your lead conversion forms in Hubspot, but to keep the sync simple, AddressTwo only imports pertinent contact information.

How do you set it up? Just go to the Hubspot markeplace and install it on your Hubspot account:
https://app.hubspot.com/market/front/addresstwo

Networking, sending Referrals, and your CRM

2013-01-28T06:38:00.001-08:00

Many of us are involved in one way or another in some form of networking, be it a formal group like BNI or Rainmakers, or just the informal behavior of being a connector and a good networker wherever you may be. So, how does a CRM help with that?

There are two ways to send a referral using AddressTwo. I'll cover both, starting with the simplest. The simplest way is to click the "send referral" button atop any Account View (shown below).

Now, using this method there will be an option offered to "Send a copy of this email to the referral contact." You will find this checkbox at the final step just before sending the referral. Some confusion has arose surrounding this option so, allow me to clarify. It does indeed send a copy of the very same message (literally, adding a CC to the notification email) that is being sent to the referral recipient. That means, if person A is being referred to person B, you can use this to notify person A that he/she is being referred. That is all.

It does not send an inverse message whereby person B's contact information is sent to person A. Why does that confuse some users? Because, there is another method that you can use which will indeed send two distinct messages, one sending person A's contact data to person B, and the second doing the exact inverse.

This is called an e-Intro, and you perform this method using Addy. To do it, you need to simply send an email to two parties that meets the following criteria:

both recipients' email addresses need to be found on a contact within AddressTwo.
Subject line needs to begin with the 7 characters: "e-intro" ... you can add anything you'd like after that.
BCC Addy.

So, your email would start like this:

Verification

2013-01-23T11:12:00.000-08:00

You can invite your contacts to verify and update their information in Address Two with the Verification button from the account view.

Clicking this button will send an customizable email to the contacts in the account.

This will send an email with a link to your contacts to verify their contact information.

You can also create a custom email template with a link to the verification form. There is now a merge link for the verification link.

The merge link will pop up a window with the link.

You can click Ctrl-c to copy the window and paste the results into the email template.

Then delete all the extra text and keep the link. The link should look like:

http://addresstwo.com/custom_app/mass_verify.asp?dID=XXXXXXXXXXX&eml=[emailaddr]

With this URL, you can link some text to the verification form.

There is one more way your contacts can get a verification. If you send an email to a person who is not a contact, and you cc or bcc Addy@addresstwo.com , then Addy will add a new contact for this person and Addy can send a verification request for you automatically. If you prefer that Addy does not send an email verification, you can turn it off by un-checking the box under admin, user logins,
Enable Addy Email Verification: at the bottom of the screen.

Webforms - Image Verification

2013-01-02T04:45:00.000-08:00

One of the earliest features of AddressTwo has been our free contact forms. If you haven't already taken advantage of this capability, it's free to all users. You can embed our form as the "contact-us" form on your website and have leads automatically inserted into your CRM. There are a number of more advanced features, too, including custom fields, lead-routing, triggering campaigns, tasks, etc.

But, as our popularity has grown, some spammers have taken notice of our forms becoming prolific on websites all over the internet. They directed their attention toward beating our anti-spam alogrithm... and after four years, they've cracked it. So, that means it was time to innovate again... and we did.

Webforms now include an image verification option. You can turn this on or off when creating forms by checking the box seen below.

This will insert an image into the form, like this one in order to ensure a human is submitting the form and not a spam bot:

Now, you may wonder: why wait so long to add this feature? Simple: our anti-spam methods previously had been highly effective without needing to require users to take extra steps to verify their identity. The truth is that using image verification has been shown to reduce the conversions on a form because some would-be leads are unable to get the word right (be it from poor vision, or just fat-fingers). So, we relied on other anti-spam methods. And by-and-large those methods have worked to-date and continue to work for many of our customers.

What does that mean for you? Well, as neat as this shiny new feature may be, I must say that you should still consider carefully whether you want to use it. If your webform is on a relatively low traffic website (<10,000 hits per month) and if your webform is NOT found on the home page, but rather some deeper navigation page where users must click to find it, then you could be safe without the image verification. Spam bots go after the obvious targets, and are not likely to find your form if the above criteria are met. We resisted using this anti-spam method until recently and even now recommend that you choose wisely whether you wish to add it to your own webforms.

If you have high-traffic forms and have experienced the frustration of form-spam in the past, the solution is here and it's easier to implement than Captcha or similar solutions. Just check the box, we'll take care of the rest.

Importing Contacts with Phones

2012-12-31T08:29:00.001-08:00

When you import contacts, you have a few options for mapping phone numbers. Here are a couple of pictures to describe where the imported phone numbers show up in Address Two.

If you have only one phone number for a contact, you may want the phone number to show up in the company information(1 Phone-Main) and the contact information (3 Phone-Direct). You can map the phone number to more than one Address Two field.

Mapped Fields

Address Two Fields

Side bar

2012-11-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

The side bar in Address Two can be helpful.

But when you shrink you window, it can get in the way.

When this happens, just refresh your browser.

The bar detects the window size and goes away when there is not enough room.

Zen and The Art of Searching for What is not There.

2012-08-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

We recently added the ability to search for blank values in the Query search. In response to several requests, you can now choose 'Is Blank' in the operators for select fields. The example below finds contacts with no First Name.

You can also search for non blank values. For example, if you wanted to find contacts with email addresses you could search for 'contains' @. There is not a way to do this for First Name or Last Name or Company. Now to find all contacts with any value in select fields, you can select the operator 'Is Not Blank'. The example below finds contacts with any First Name that is not blank (null or null string, '').

When using the Is Blank/Is Not Blank operators, you should leave the string blank. (There is a red x over the first name string above.) This lets the query know that you are searching for blank values.

This will add more power and flexibility to the Address Two query tool.

Happy Searching.

Google Docs Size Limits and Workaround

2012-08-20T10:58:00.002-07:00

Google Docs has long been our preferred method for storing files related to AddressTwo accounts. But, you might find that on occasion, the file-size limitations of the Google API prevent you from storing large files (over 10mb) on an Account in AddressTwo. Fortunately, there is a simple workaround.

First of all, since the file-size limit is only imposed on 3rd party applications like AddressTwo, this means that you can indeed still upload the file directly to Google Docs. To do this, go to docs.google.com and log in. You can place the file wherever you choose, but AddressTwo defaults to placing uploaded files in the "AddressTwo_Projects" folder.

Once uploaded, wherever you upload it, you can then link this file back to the desired AddressTwo account using the "link existing file" link.

Click-To-Dial Now With Your Current VoIP Provider

2012-07-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

In March, we announced a simple click-to-dial integration with a single VoIP provider. Hovering over any contact's phone number would allow you to click the phone icon and immediately dial the contact's phone. For a quick tutorial, watch the video below.

But today, we are pleased to announce a broader integration that will support nearly every major VoIP provider. Already have a VoIP service? No need to switch. All you need is a soft-phone (a computer software that dials out from your desktop, laptop, or Mac) that supports either SIP or TEL protocols.

Not sure what that means? We've made it easy for you. X-Lite is one of many such free software programs that you can download and use with your existing VoIP provider, including Ring Central.

If you're an existing VoIP user, this could be the single most time-saving new feature of AddressTwo all year. If you do not already have a soft-phone software installed, download X-Lite today and get started with click-to-dial immediately.

Getting tasks to outlook.

2012-07-27T11:52:00.002-07:00

Address Two does not speak directly to outlook, but it is possible to add tasks to Address Two and get them to your outlook calendar through Google calendar. The first step is to make Address Two your main point of entry. You can get tasks from Address Two to Outlook, but you can not get tasks from outlook to Address Two.

You will need to associate your Address Two Account with a Google Account in Address Two under Admin menu, Google Tools.

When you add tasks in Address Two you want to add a Time to push the task to your Google Calendar. Once you have the tasks in your Google calendar you can synchronize your outlook with your Google calendar. Instructions are here: http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955

It is recommended to manage tasks in Address Two to keep things simple. We are the simple CRM. Synchronizing adds to the management overhead, but if need to get tasks to Outlook, this is the process.

Task management updates.

2012-07-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

There are 2 new ways to manage time and tasks.

Tasks now display time, if there is time assigned to a task.

If you have the Project Manager, you can add the allotted hours for a task on project tasks.

The Hours show up on the CSV export of tasks under projects.

Visualization - The Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass

2012-06-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

We are excited to introduce a new way for you to view your contacts in AddressTwo: a visualization. And, our first integrated visualization method is the popular Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass™ method. Visualizations create simple ways to group your contacts according to rules, such as their Customer Status, and view those groups visually rather than in a query result.

The effect can be very powerful. In one glance, you can visualize where your leads hit a bottle-neck in the process of becoming a customer. The Marketing Hourglass charts the progress of contacts from people who merely "Know" about you all the way beyond just the sale to those loyal fans who "Refer" you to others.

To find Visualizations in AddressTwo, hover over the "Browse" button in the top menu.

If you are interested in learning more about how to put The Marketing Hourglass into practice in your business, download this free whitepaper from Duct Tape Marketing.

BCC Addy on Project-Related Emails

2012-06-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

A tiny icon has been added to the Project View screen with big possibilities. Next to the primary contact, you will find an email icon, like below.

This icon does what you would expect: it opens a new email message to the contact listed. But, you will quickly notice that the subject line contains some important data. Namely, the project number. When Addy receives emails with this in the Subject line, she knows not only to pair the history record with the contact, but also the specific project as well.

Event Manager Plugin - Tutorial Video

2012-05-17T12:45:00.003-07:00

Export contacts from Outlook 2010

2012-04-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

Outlook 2010 behaves a little differently than previous versions. Here is a link to instructions for exporting contacts into a CSV file.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/export-contacts-HA101870639.aspx

Notify a user when you assign them a task

2012-04-04T06:23:00.003-07:00

One of the main principles of our simple CRM is to show features only when they are relevant. If you assign a task to a different user, the notify check box becomes available.

This feature design is it to notify the user via email if another user assigns them a task. Presumably, the other user may or may not be logged in to address two, but has access to email, and needs to be notified of a task before the next day when they will be emailed a task list from address two.

Custom Quoting

2012-03-06T09:19:00.009-08:00

On the projects screen, you can print quotes with the print button.

This will show the available quotes in the list.

You can customize the quotes by downloading the .rtf, make the update and upload the file.

First, click the (customize) link and download the file under "Download Templates:"

The custom templates are listed first and the Default Template is available at the bottom of the list.

Then update the text and add images to the rtf file as needed. Save the rtf file with a new name and upload under the "upload New:" section.

This makes the file available in the "Print Quote" list.

Happy Quoting.

Advanced Search: Query with OR, Write your own SQL

2012-03-02T06:51:00.002-08:00

If the phrases in the title, "query with OR," and "write your own SQL," sound like Greek to you, then this might not be a feature you care about. But for the few geeks among us, this is a major upgrade. In the lower-right corner of the Query Builder screen, you will now find a link to "Advanced Search" where you can structure your own SQL statement using plain-english to reference the fields in the AddressTwo contacts and accounts table(s).

Now, as you may imagine, this does open the possibility for syntax errors. If you receive errors that you do not understand, please feel free to copy what you see on screen and email it to us. As this is a brand new feature for us, we are sure to find ways to improve it. But at a minimum, we're pleased to give our advanced users a more detailed control over the way their searches are constructed.