All the email addresses on your contacts list won't do you much good unless you use them regularly to reach out to your once and future customers. Here's how.
If you've been following basic business marketing principles, you've been swapping business cards with prospects and updating your email contacts list diligently.
Email addresses have a way of accumulating, but they won't do you much good unless you use them regularly to reach out to your once and future customers.
Large corporations use powerful customer relationship management (CRM) applications such as SalesForce.com, Oracle CRM, and Sugar CRM.
Small businesses can replicate some of that sweet CRM power using a tool they probably already have on board (or will have soon enough): Microsoft Office 2007.
Business Contact Manager is All You Need
Within Microsoft's Office Small Business 2007 and accessible through Outlook 2007, is Business Contact Manager, a potent contact tool powered by a SQL Server relational database. At its most comprehensive use, Business Contact Manager can manage your incoming and outgoing email via business contacts, accounts, opportunities, projects and tasks and ultimately enable you to efficiently and effectively conduct email marketing campaigns, which have the potential to significantly expand the reach of your small business.
Email marketing campaigns can be used to promote your product or service, offer limited time offers or announce new information about your company. The viral quality of the Internet means that the news will travel fast and far, a boon for the small business owner whose marketing resources are limited. The following step by step guide will show you how to use Business Contact Manager to get in on the action.
Building a List of Business Contacts
You don't have to use Outlook for project management in order to run an email marketing campaign. However, you will have to build a list of business contacts separate from your ordinary Outlook contacts.
Outlook offers several methods for building your business contacts, including imports from ACT!, QuickBooks, Access, and Excel. You can also move selected records from your Outlook Contacts using drag-and-drop.
Then, assign each business contact to an account, and fill out as much information as you intend to use for your marketing campaigns. For example: Which are your highest-rated contacts? Which ones are overdue with payments? To the extent that you use the available fields, you'll be able to better target your marketing messages.
Setting Up a Marketing Campaign
Start from the Business Contact Manager Home, or from any of several places within the Office interface. The process is well-marked and mostly self-explanatory.
Once you've titled your campaign, create the list of recipients. Either send to all, or filter the list by creating a "New List..." where prompted under the "Who will see it?" section.
With the "Simple Filter," you'll be able to select clients based on contact status, payment status and several other criteria. Or, using the "Advanced Filter," you can choose contacts based on virtually any data element in the contact database.
Creating Your Message
The answer to the next question—"How will they get it?"—depends on what type of message you'd like to send.
Next Page: What You Send Determines How You Send
