How you handle your Customer Contact Management System in a small business can make or break your marketing techniques. It does not matter what type of business you are running, a well built and well organised customer database with an efficient CRM system is worth it's weight in gold if you ever decide to sell or if you ever want to market to your customers the right way (which of course you will be doing often). You will need to implement a customer relationship strategy that is right for your business.
Below we have answered some of the most common questions in regards to how to keep your data and what programs we recommend for doing so.
►Why should I store my customer data?
You will need to store your customer data if you want to be a smart business manager. If you ever wish to contact your customers for marketing purposes and you wish to contact your possible customers for marketing purposes then you need to save their data in an organised format.
The reason you save your customer data in organised groups is because they are all different people. Some may have just shown interest in your product or service and some may have bought from you 10 times so why would you market the same material to two completely different clients with two completely different needs? Saving your customer details into organised groups allows you to build relationships with your customers acording to their needs.
►So what kind of data should I be keeping?
Generally you will need to be storing the name, address, contact number, website and most importantly email for all of your clients and possible clients. You should also have a history of their payments (that's why we reccomend storing your customer data and financials in one place) so you know how to market to them in accordance with what kind of customer they are and what their needs are. Keeping details of those clients who have contacted you but not yet bought from you is a must.
►What type of CRM system is best for me?
Deciding what kind of system you require will depend on your needs and will depend on whether you sell predominantly online or offline. As a basic rule we are aiming for customer relationship management to be as simple as possible and something that requires little of your time.
So what does that mean? When ever somebody visits your site and leaves their details or whenever a customer buys something from you we want their details to find their way into a system that groups their details according to their interests or needs. In the beginning you can do this manually yourself with something like Microsoft Outlook or you could use your accounting system to store the data and export the data into microsoft programs (Word/Excel/Access Mail Merge) for marketing purposes if your system allows you to do so (like Quickbooks).
You would use this kind of system if you predominantly sold OFFLINE and you were already entering data into your system each week or month.
If you are going to be marketing to your customers regularly via email (and you should be) then we reccomend two systems that can be helpful in keeping in contact with your clients, storing their data and allow you to make use of tools like autoresponders and email tracking statistics to save you time and help you track your marketing techniques. You would use these kinds of systems if you predominantly selling and marketing ONLINE.
Aweber
iContact
►The General Rule:
Whether you are gathering customer data only from a website, from your shopping cart service, from within a store or all of the above; that information needs to be recorded into a system that allows you to export into other systems like Outlook, other Microsoft Mail Merge programs, Aweber or IContact for marketing purposes. You always need to have the complete control and rights over your customer details.
There are many ways that you can organise your customer relationship management systems. We discuss this further in our EBooks....
