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Simple CRM and biz management tool for a small business?

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JavaJones:
Well, Maximizer looks promising, but really not much more so than e.g. SugarCRM, and it now bills itself as a "CRM" product anyway (with a feature set and UI that seems to match that description). Cost is fine for the Entrepreneur version, but unfortunately like almost all these programs, for some reason they only include mass mailing in the higher-level packages. This kind of marketing tool is becoming so vital for every business these days, that I think it is pretty unfortunate not to at least offer it as an optional add-in for the lower-end versions. Everyone seems to bundle it with their higher level product tiers which do have lots of features a small business *won't* need. But emailing is definitely something many will need, so I don't get why it's shoved into the higher level packages, unless it's just to get the small businesses to pony up for the more expensive versions. The problem with that is it also comes with added and unwanted complexity...

*sigh*

- Oshyan

40hz:
For e-mail mass mailing they'd probably bebetter off using a web service to start. They're very affordable and have the added benefit of helping you not run afoul of the CAN-SPAM act. These services also actively make sure their servers stay whitelisted so corporate sites, GMail, AOL, and Hotmail don't automatically flag them as spam. Many also have excellent "campaign" tracking and analysis tools to help gauge how effective your marketing efforts are.  iContact is one well regarded service, but there are many others that are also good. A quick Google will point you to dozens more.

Almost forgot to also suggest looking at Sharkware. If you're a fan of Harvey Mackay's customer service and marketing concepts you'll feel right at home with this product. It's been around for years. Sharkware focuses more on the relationship management and activity tracking part of the equation, but it's an excellent "core" app. This is what I used when I started out consulting. (I was running WFWG at that point in time. Like I said: around for years) The only reason I dropped it was because development had stalled (ok -more like stopped) for a long time and I got nervous enough that I went over to Maximizer. Sharkware has since come back (I believe it's a new company that took it over. )

A free trial is available for download so you could give it a run to see if it meets your needs without having to buy a copy.

www.sharkware.org
 :)

    

app103:
I found a free CRM awhile back when I was doing some research to find a free one for someone. Don't know if it is quite what you are looking for or could be adapted to your needs.

I posted about it here.

Cream
A free, open-source CRM for media organizations
Cream is a multilingual customer relationship management (CRM) system for media organizations that features powerful modules for sales automation, customer service, subscription management, incoming and outgoing email, template-based HTML newsletters, and a WYSIWYG editor.
--- End quote ---

40hz:
I found a free CRM awhile back when I was doing some research to find a free one for someone. Don't know if it is quite what you are looking for or could be adapted to your needs.

I posted about it here.


-app103 (March 31, 2010, 10:17 AM)
--- End quote ---

Nice find app! I knew about Campcaster from a seminar on webcasting.  But I didn't know these people had other software too.

 :Thmbsup:

JavaJones:
Thanks for the continued input. App, the included mailing tools of the Cream CRM you mentioned in that post look promising. Good recommendation.

40hz, I'm very familiar with dedicated mailing solutions (and I found iContact to be rather crappy honestly, but none of the several big ones I've tried have impressed me actually), but there are a number of problems with them, especially for this level of user, that I think recommends against them in this case.

The biggest hurdle is data exchange. There is the obvious problem of getting your contacts out of the CRM and into your mailing tool. No problem, CSV export, right? Sure, maybe they can be trained to do this. But my experience with dedicated mailing tools shows that dealing with multiple lists (e.g. individual exports for different client segments, or just different mailings) can be confusing, especially when the lists are derived from imported files. Maintaining them over the long-term becomes a hassle. This vs. just having mailing integrated with your CRM, where you can click one button or do a quick search, find all "Corporate Clients" and generate an email to them easily.

Even worse, if you want to correlate any of the mailing list tracking data with info in your CRM, it needs to be done manually, which is tedious and error prone. Not to mention returning e.g. bounced email addresses, unsubscribes, etc. to your CRM so the info is updated properly. For example let's say you use your CRM tool, either on its own or connected to a dedicated email tool, to send other customer communication. So you send out an email using a separate tool, 50 of your 1000 addresses bounce. Now you have to export those addresses, then find a way to import them into your CRM in such a way that they are removed or marked as "bad" addresses. A tool with this kind of functionality built in to the CRM system would make this a lot easier, turning something that is basically not feasible for the average business owner to do into something that's automated and fairly simple. So again, if a tool like this doesn't exist, it damn well should.

I can hear you saying it now "If they can't be trained to do simple CSV export/import, what makes you think they can learn to use a CRM?", but speaking from experience it's never as simple as that, and it never ends there. Maybe they can be trained to do some data import/export, but the tools will never be fully utilized that way. There's no good reason a mailing list system can't be well integrated into a CRM tool (and many such tools seem to have them, just in the higher end versions).

Not to mention that most mailing list tools are going to be an additional monthly fee, something I'd like to avoid if possible. I can use something like PHPList, DadaMail, or another self-hosted tool, but the data interchange issues remain. Whether or not the supposed deliverability advantages of large providers are real is questionable to me as well from personal experience with a list of around 15,000 subscribers. It's probably irrelevant anyway as the business in question would have such a small list that it's unlikely to trigger spam filters just from sheer volume.

All that being said again I really appreciate the suggestions and input. I'm just surprised a more streamlined solution doesn't exist for this level of business.

- Oshyan

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