These are the steps I used:

• Created a view to select the contacts I wanted and the columns I wanted to update
• Exported to Excel, indicating in the export screen that I would be re-importing the data
• I used VLOOKUP to identify the records that had updated information in the source file from my data provider
• I then copy and pasted the changes into the Excel spreadsheet
• I saved the Excel spreadsheet (XML format – default)
• I imported the Excel spreadsheet into CRM

Easy to do. And I only had one problem. And it took awhile for me to resolve; only because I’m so darn busy that any blip in the process gets immediately de-escalated on my priority list.

So the error was that none of my records updated. That’s a big error. The error message was, “The following column indexes have data types that have changed since the file was exported: 15″

So I looked at the XML data in Notepad and determined that the 15th column was the Zip code. Really, a Zip code didn’t import? You’re kidding me, right? No. It was the zip code. I checked to see that the cell formats were ‘Text’ and I even copied and pasted “Special >> Format”. Didn’t work.

So I looked at the object in CRM and determined that the standard field size is 20; plenty of room for a Zip code; unless there’s extra stuff that I can’t see in Notepad. Could be.

I resolved the problem by trimming the Zip code values in the source file using the “TRIM” function in Excel, and then copy and pasting into the Excel spreadsheet for import back to CRM.

It worked. Geez!

Done. On to the next task.

I still like the export/import function. Here’s a video of it in action: http://youtu.be/e6UAnSvuQHs

We recently changed our on-line chat service on www.myGPcloud.com to allow chat slide-overs on the site. Others have had great success with this subtle change in regards to web site conversions. We initially experienced greater use of this function by site visitors, and then it dropped off. However last week we experienced three times more activity than we have ever experienced before. Yippee! It’s working. But now it won’t surprise me if activity dips. It’s a natural part of business.

I’m currently reading Harvey Mackay’s book, “The Mackay MBA of Selling in the Real World” and in it he relates a story of a veteran sales person Harvey met when Harvey was starting out. Harvey knew that the veteran was experiencing a slump and was surprised to see him enjoying himself at a sports event instead of pounding the pavement. The veteran explained that he realized that he was in a slump but knew that the slump would come to an end, and then he would be on the attack once again. No need to expend extraordinary energy when you’re in a slump. It will come back.

Peaks and valleys are a natural part of business.

“Thanks for the summary.I’ve found some isterenting uses in reports for the fact that the Start Date of phone calls and Tasks is filled in with Due Date on creation, but not changed if Due Date is updated later. In other words, you can see the difference between when someone originally planned to do an activity and when they pushed it back to, which might indicate someone who has too much on their plate, or is putting off undesirable jobs. This can also mean you might measure Actual End vs [planned] Start as a measure of whether things have been done on time, rather than Actual End vs Due Date, since Due Date can simply be changed by the user before marking the activity as complete.”

You might think that this looks legitimate, but it’s attached to a blog post that has nothing to do with the subject of the comment.

These new ones are submitted from Facebook accounts and reference websites in far off lands.

Someone is putting a lot of effort into this. It must payoff.

Anyone else seeing the same stuff?

In his article, “What Guitar Center Can Teach You About Smart Email Marketing“, Derek Halpern relays his experience following his purchase of a shock mount for a microphone.

What you can see from his experience is that Guitar Center is dynamically tailoring its e-mail marketing to each customer. This is beautiful. Guitar Center is deepening its engagement with customers and encouraging repeat business. This is so much better than just sending out generic e-mail messages.

Can you find a way to incorporate this in your own business?

• Follow up with customers every time and follow up with a specially tailored message for each one
• Provide additional content that is not just trying to sell another product or service

There is a lot of value in what Guitar Center is doing. You can move in that direction.

Read Derek’s full article here: http://ww.visibli.com/share/G7QXZY

Certainly by now, if you use LinkedIn, you’ve viewed the little gadget below:

I recently drilled down to see the results and saw this:

Anonymous? This cracks me up. LinkedIn is a social network, not an FBI file system. So if you don’t want people to know who you are, why are you on LinkedIn. I just don’t get it.

LinkedIn also provides a way to drive more traffic to your business. Here is a great article about that aspect, specifically look at this part: Have Your Employees Optimize Their Public Profiles
And another thing; if you use Twitter, do you use True Twit Validation?

P.S. The guy from Anchor Bank is my brother-in-law. I’m working on him.

Here is a video that shows some of the new functionality: http://youtu.be/5HVqc5MthbI

Here is a Microsoft page that has further explanation of the features: http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/roadmap

“…additional browsers and platforms will be supported as part of this update including:

• Safari running on Mac or iPad
• Firefox running on PC or Mac
• Chrome running on PC

But I recently learned a lesson that reminds me to not forget that the glass is also half empty.

We’ve been running an effective e-mail campaign across our target market for over three years. The response rates are what I had hoped for, the click through rates are good, and the conversion rates are certainly acceptable; enough so, to keep me moving forward with the campaign as designed and executed.

We recently looked at the annual activity from our target market and shockingly discovered that the results, the kind that show up on our financial statements, were not impressive. We immediately moved resources to support that part of our business.

On further analysis I realize that I had missed early warning signs of the problem. Because the engagement results from our e-mailing campaign were acceptable, I didn’t look much deeper into the results. I was seeing the glass as half full, and ignoring the empty half. As it turned out, I was missing the trees for the forest (another cliché turned on its head). And it happened that the trees I was missing were the trees with the small pots of gold buried beneath (oh, shoot, another cliché). This realization supports our previous reallocation of resources (good), but I should have seen it coming. I missed it (bad).

It’s worthwhile to examine the empty half of the glass from time to time.

WordPress. I manage four WordPress blogs, contribute to a fifth, and will be launching a sixth in a few weeks. WordPress does not work well with Internet Explore 9. So Chrome is a great alternative. I can do all I want in WordPress with Chrome. It’s simple. All the WordPress functionality I use, works with Chrome, not with IE 9.

Twitter. I have been an active Twitter user for three years. I have multiple accounts I manage. I have struggled to find a good application to manage them. I started with TweetDeck on my laptop OS. No good. At the time it used Adobe Air, which had a horrible memory leak and made the application unusable, and eventually rendered my laptop unusable. I switched to Tootsuite. Fun name. Decent product, but it was slow.

Just last week I looked at TweetDeck again. To my delight they have a web based version that is a native application in Chrome. It is wonderful! Runs great! Couldn’t be happier.

Am I shucking IE? No. IE lights up certain websites in a way that Chrome just cannot. IE is my default browser.

Having more than one web browser works well for me.

The message editor that you use to create your e-mail template is pretty easy to use. It certainly has advantages over what I was using before. There is one quirk that I succumb to on a regular basis. And that is you have to save the HTML content within the editing window. Saving the e-mailing template alone, does not do it.

You can also easily view Web Page Views associated with each mailing, and see a graphic representation of the statistics.

Here is the message editor. Be sure to click on the disk icon in order to save your work:

And what I really like is the nice simple display of mailing results. Here is an example that shows multiple mailings together so you can compare results:

And because the functionality is contained in CRM, you can use the CRM inquiry and reporting functionality to really dig into results.

There are two reason I use this functionality:

• Help build my e-mailing list
• Provide positive identification for some of the “Anonymous Web visitors”

The second reason is the most important to me. The additional information provided by the web form starts to add real value to the web tracking activities captured by Coremotives. It allows me to analyze who and what type of people are using my sites. This will allow me to further engage with these people and broaden our relationship.

Here are the main components of web forms:

This shows the fields that are going to be visible on my web form. I try to keep it to a minimum. All I want is a name and an e-mail address. The rest will come later as I broaden the relationship. These fields are going to map directly to CRM

This shows that I’m going to have a lead record created in CRM when the user completes the form. It will also check for duplicates. I’m also associating these web form interactions with a specific marketing campaign.

This shows what actions are going to be taken when the form is completed. In this case I am sending an e-mail with a link to download an e-booklet. You can see from the drop-down list, that you could select from several action types to take, and you can select more than one.

The web form will also generate its own HTML code to make it easy to include in your web site, e-mail, etc.

What’s really nice about this is that you’re engaging your prospects and customers in an automated fashion. You’re making an offer that they can act on right away.