Manage Contacts & Leads with a Quality CRM

Customer Relationship Management and How to Use it

I've worked with a number of clients recently on marketing their business, and one thing which crops up time and time again is how they manage their contacts. Most people who are just starting out or self employed will have several different methods to store contact information – Outlook, Gmail, Excel Spreadsheet etc. All these 3rd party apps are suitable for keeping the basics – an address book, which you can search quickly by name or telephone number. However to keep track of website traffic, enquiries and sales leads they are not so suitable.

This is where a CRM comes in – Customer Relationship Management application – it does what it says! Managing contacts is the key thing for your business, keeping contact records of people who have enquired about your products or services, who have bought from you and recorded their buying history, and your entire communication history with them. You can use this system to manage marketing campaigns, promotions, and product launches in real time.

The choice of CRM for small business is extensive, there are many features available to suit different needs so it's best to do some research before you commit yourself to one system for gathering and managing contact details.

Contact Management Made Easy

We use ActiveCampaign as our CRM software. Here's why we like it:

Many management tools in one place. When you sign up for ActiveCampaign you get access to a whole range of marketing tools to help you attract potential customers; automation , list building, event landing pages, follow ups, and other advanced features. They are all grouped together, making qualified leads quick and easy to find.

The interface is flexible, with pre-set layouts and the ability for you to edit them as you please. I particularly like how it opens up in a dashboard layout – giving you one screen showing all of your recent contacts, followed by a list of members on your newsletter list, then landing pages which are currently active etc. You can easily switch between these groupings too.

ActiveCampaign is very easy to set up and use, I had it up and running in an afternoon. It streamlines your sales process while allowing your sales reps to focus on, well, making sales. If you need some help getting started there are plenty of training videos available on their website . It's also flexible for your workflow so if you don't like the pre-set layout you can choose your own.

ActiveCampaign are working towards being an all-in-one solution for small business so there are some integration options already in place including with Mailchimp and Aweber email marketing tools, GoDaddy website builder , PayPal and Stripe payment processors etc. This is all useful in terms of getting your business setup to receive the latest customer data. This data can help your sales teams in a big way.

ActiveCampaign Pricing There are four different pricing options available from ActiveCampaign, which you can see here . Most businesses I work with have a very small mailing list so the Basic plan starts at $9 per month and allows up to 500 contacts. This would be more than sufficient for many business owners looking to optimize their sales pipeline at a bargain.

If you need additional features there are more advanced plans available, or if you want to use some of the other tools included ActiveCampaign offers a custom plan which is set up just how you like it so your price will reflect this. There is no minimum contract length – so if after your 30 day free trial you decide you no longer need the service, it's easily cancelled.

ActiveCampaign also has a free version which will suit most business needs – this limits your contact list to 100 and the number of contacts that can be imported from external sources. I think this is a really good idea as not many small businesses need more than 100 contacts (most people I speak to maintain around this number), and it makes the free version very affordable.

There are a number of CRM tools and contact management systems out there, but ActiveCampaign is a powerful tool that makes managing contacts super simple. And it's very affordable for small businesses. This combined with its ease of use makes ActiveCampaign the Divas' choice for CRM.

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