Discover the benefits of a customer database and how it can transform your marketing results.

Benefits of a CRM System

• Helps sales people manage sales opportunities and follow-up prospects;
• Gives sales managers a complete view of the sales pipeline;
• Automates sales forecasting;
• Provides a complete picture of every customer, to relevant team members;
• Run and track the results from various marketing campaigns;
• Offer better customer service;
• Enables you to target certain customer segments and send out tailored marketing campaigns;
• Convert more prospects into customers by implementing a prospect nurturing program;
• Different types of CRM systems;
• Identify which clients invest the most with you at any given amount of time;
• Know what your customers‘ hobbies are which helps you target your marketing messages with information that interests them. For instance, if you know some of your clients are interested in golf, invite people who have “golf” listed as their interests, to a golf day;
• Write to people who have purchased a specific product of yours, with an offer to buy an additional product;
• Put in place an automated client nurturing program that schedules and then prints out follow-up letters and contact reports on certain dates, so you can keep in touch with customers without having to think about it;
• Keep track of prospects and the various stages of the buying cycle they are in;
• Send targeted direct mail to certain segments of your database;
• Identify which marketing efforts are working and which aren't by monitoring the source of new customers;
• Identify spending patterns, peak times, slumps etc; and
• Perform market research.

Important ways a database (CRM Program) helps you enhance your marketing results

Not only is it important to accurately record the customer's contact details and purchasing patterns, it's also very important to record the source of every customer or prospect. In other words. how did they hear about your company?

Recording accurate source codes in this way enables you to achieve the 3 points listed below:

1. Back-end business analysis

Meaning that:

• You will understand which mediums produce the best results for you e.g. direct mail, magazines or press advertising;
• You will know which publication within the media works best e.g. Courier Mail as opposed to the Financial Review;      
• You will be able to allocate your promotional dollars to vehicles that are likely to generate the very best return on your investment.

2. Psychographic customer analysis and follow-up

Your marketing results will definitely see improvement by identifying the medium which produces the most customers, rather than those that are merely interested in your advertised product. And, if you segment your list by ‘source’, you can follow-up on parts of your list by source of name, to capitalise on this knowledge.

3. To aid in categorising customers for future promotions

Knowing which products your clients have invested in is extremely important. By searching your database on product, and on source code, you can create a special offer based around the source of the sale e.g. because you’re a Financial Review reader, etc, etc. Although this task may seem laborious, once you've done it. you'll find that the effort was well worth it.

Next, it's important to create a field in your contact management software that identifies what services your clients and your prospects are ‘potentials’ for.