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Contact Management

C

Centro Graphics

New Member
Hey Guys.

We don't keep email addresses and contact details of clients past and present in an orderly fashion at all, some are here some are there. Most I suppose are in our accounts software but if we never did any actual work for someone who contacted but didn't buy from us we don't keep the record in a proper place.


As its a bit of a mess I would like a software solution that can manage customers and prospects so we can email or send direct mail for marketing purposes.

What are you people using as a one stop contact management solution?

Thanks
 
chrisphilipps

chrisphilipps

Merchant Member
We use ACT Premium by Sage. It is a full contact management software and has an email marketing plugin that works well. You do have to pay a monthly fee for the email marketing based on how many emails you send out. We have it set to 3000 emails and it costs us about $65 a month.
 
G

GB2

Old Member
Good question, I think Contact Management is a very important matter that can easily get out of control if you do not have a good system to manage it. Your question should be taken in two parts I think:

1) How to manage contacts of current customers and business associates
2) How to integrate contacts of prospective customers or mailing lists, etc.

Most accounting programs, such as Quickbooks or others, will manage contact information of current customers very well but what about contact information when you're out of the office? Do you use your email/cell phone system to manage contacts? Do you keep a duplicate contact system this way in addition to your accounting? Do you have another software that will manage everything in one place and will be accessible when out of the office? Is it Act, Signvox, FilemakerPro, Cyrious or something else? Should you actually integrate prospective customers into your system or should you just keep separate lists for mailing purposes?
 
G

GB2

Old Member
By the way...I was just expanding upon the original question hoping to get a little conversation generated here about contact management
 
binki

binki

New Member
ACT is a pretty good software and it has been around for a while. Quickbooks seems to have a way to capture this info but I am not sure how good it is with contact management.

There are a number of CRM solutions out there though.

One thing we are trying to do is to increase our average order size. We figure upselling to an existing customer is far easier than getting a new one and we would have less work to do if we just extended a current order.
 
Sven

Sven

New Member
Thunderbird as an email client is great. Also quickbooks works pretty well for all contacts since every customer pretty much has to go in there, but I don't know about using it for mass emails.

I don't like getting promotional emails, so I don't send them. I consider it spam.
 
C

Centro Graphics

New Member
Chris

We have a 10 year (at least) copy of Act, I kinda remember at the time we got it it seemed to over complicate things, maybe I should have a look at it again.

GB2. Possibly your right with the two part solution, but the answer to your quastion is no, no ability to look up contacts when away, or working from another location. I would like to try Signvox if it has an ability to enter prospects and email from the software. The only thing stopping me is the (in my opinion) cost, I think if they had half of what they charge there would be a lot more signing up for it.

With SignVox (This is gonna sound a bit ridiculous:omg:) everyone who has it, now have all their customers stored on a big central database on a server somewhere. But the powers that be could start their own global sign company, franchising it to all and sundry with a ready made database of willing customers. They would have all their contacts, what they buy, how much they pay, the whole lot, squashing sign guys everywhere. Ok Im living in a paranoid dimension, could happen though. :ROFLMAO::help:omg2:

Sven

I knowq what you mean about promo emails, but if you have had contact and bought from a supplier then I dont mind the promo email, as long as its not bombardment.
 
Kevin-shopVOX

Kevin-shopVOX

New Member
Centro Graphics said:
Chris

I would like to try Signvox if it has an ability to enter prospects and email from the software. The only thing stopping me is the (in my opinion) cost, I think if they had half of what they charge there would be a lot more signing up for it.

With SignVox (This is gonna sound a bit ridiculous:omg:) everyone who has it, now have all their customers stored on a big central database on a server somewhere. But the powers that be could start their own global sign company, franchising it to all and sundry with a ready made database of willing customers. They would have all their contacts, what they buy, how much they pay, the whole lot, squashing sign guys everywhere. Ok Im living in a paranoid dimension, could happen though. :ROFLMAO::help:omg2:
Click to expand...

Yep you're overly paranoid.

We have a non-disclosure when you sign up that says your data is your data. We don't have any rights to it and won't share it.
 
C

Centro Graphics

New Member
Guys

thanks for the replies and suggestions. I have not found my solution yet as I have been absolutely flat out busy

Kevin, Yeah, my tongue was in cheek there:wink:. Does Signvox have this facility to control current, potential and previous (who you may not of heard from in a while) clients?

All I want is a simple system, possibly with online access, I am on the road a bit and would be nice to use it then too.


Thanks
 
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