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Tutorials
Setup Subscribe/Unsubscribe Undeliverables Mining Queries Advanced Features FAQ
Setup
ACT!'s standard E-mail Address field is structured such that we can't programmatically perform a query against it. As e-Scribe checks for duplicate email addresses in your subscriber databases, the first thing you need to do is set up an alternate field for email addresses in each ACT! Database that you will be using and to copy the E-mail Addresses into it. (If you are already familiar with e-BLAST!, or FortuneFlow HTML Edition, you've probably already set this up.) This is easy:
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Run UpdateACT!.exe |
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Select E-mail Address on the left and
an alternate email address field that you want to copy the email
addresses to on the right, as pictured. (An unused User or Custom
Field) Click the Update ACT! button and click Yes to confirm. This will copy over the E-mail Addresses to the alternate field. |
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Then Run e-Scribe and click on
the Preferences Button on the toolbar |
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Setting Up e-Scribe Preferences
ACT! Database Actions Tab
The ACT! Database Actions Tab is where you select which fields in ACT! hold what data. The ALT Email address Field, Delivery Status Logging Field and Subscription Flagging Fields can be any available field listed in the drop-down lists, but must be a different field for each. It's a good idea to check a candidate field to make sure that it's empty by querying your ACT! Database if you're not sure.
You can also select a field to flag duplicate existing records in your ACT! database, and a Date Stamp field to record the date and time of an incoming email. By Putting the word "Date" in the Alias header row of any field you can populate that field with the Date and Time of the email.
In the Unsubscribe Action selection, you can either update the subscription flagging field with the word "Off", "Unsubscribe" , or "Remove". Alternately, you can tell e-scribe to automatically delete records with an Unsubscribe request from your database. In most cases I don't recommend that you remove records - it's a better idea to flag them, but keep them in your database, in case they get re-introduced to your database again at a later date, you know that they don't want to receive emails from you.
Scan and Update Fields Tab
This tab displays the fields that will appear in your import table for normal importing of contact data.
Fields you should include:
Contact, First Name, Last Name & Salutation Fields
If your inbound data includes contact names, then you should also have the Salutation, First Name and Last Name fields selected, as e-scribe will automatically populate these fields correctly for you, whereas ACT! itself assumes a single name like "Chris" to be a last name if left to it's own devices. Likewise if you have First Name and Last Name field data inbound, also select the Contact and Salutation fields, as e-Scribe will also populate these from the First Name and Last Name field data.
Phone Number and Extension Fields
If your phone numbers include extension numbers, e-Scribe will see the added extension data and parse it into the corresponding extension field for that phone number field.
Your default phone number format in ACT! should be setup as +# (###) ###-#### for U.S. and Canadian numbers, where the +# is the country code, the numbers in brackets are the area code and the rest are the local phone number. This is called "Canonical Format" and is the format in which ACT! MUST Have data in order to write it into the database. At a minimum you should have +# a space and then the balance of the number. If there is no + sign and country code the phone numbers may not import properly. To ensure that they do, always require visitors filling in web forms to provide the Country and State data in addition to the phone number - that way e-scribe can figure out what the correct data should be for you.
Country and State Fields
If you have phone or fax numbers in your import table, make sure you have the Country and State fields too. If all you have is a phone number, e-Scribe will automatically populate the Country and U.S. State or Canadian Province data for you, based on the phone number! If you have inbound phone numbers that don't have the country code, then e-Scribe will use the country or state data to correctly populate the phone number fields in the correct format for you.
Setting Up Outlook to Work with e-Scribe
e-Scribe can scan any Sub-Folder of your Outlook 98, 2000 or 2002 (XP) inbox. The program processes emails according to the name of the sub-folder containing them. The following naming conventions apply:
Undeliverable Emails should be places in a folder that starts with the word "Undeliverable"
Unsubscribe Requests should be placed in a folder that starts with the word "Unsubscribe"
Mining: Emails you want to mine contact names and addresses out of, should be placed in a folder that starts with the word "Mining".
Subscriptions and all other inbound emailed
web form data can be placed in subfolders with any name.