Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Why not create a exel spread sheet for each of your clients. Fancy it up like a survey... then tie all of the responses back into the same workbook?

If you have dozens of clients it shouldnt be that hard. If you have hundreds.... never mind

Why not try SugarCRM. I think it will do all of the things that you are looking for as far as storing specific client data and info as well as many other things like you are talking about. You can import any excel information that you collect. You can set up client names and project names, assign tasks, call backs and such. Also, it is free. Check it out.

Good Luck,
Promo Chic

This is one of theose situations I would recommend a BLEND of open source and proprietary software.

For creating your database and client records, I would use either sugarCRM or vTiger. Either system would be perfect as you can create ONE master storage place for all your client's records. You can create multiple user access permission categories in Sugar or vTiger, and keep the ultimate all access user/pass for yourself to see everything.

For the questionnaire and recording responses for a data base, well, there are a few open source survey tools that would fit the bill, but the reporting/exporting of data is a little weak (and copying a survey for use with the next client is a bit bothersome unless you know what you are doing in MySQL). These tools would work, but if budget allows a 200 investment on a proprietary script, I'd go with a company I can't publicaly name because their referral tracking software does not work (what a bunch of chumps! - but I'm emailing you a link to the web site privately Dave).

Looking deeper into your response Dave, vTiger allows you to keep track of client campaigns, and templates of messages for future response. For managing multiple email addresses and various identities, you might want to go with an opensource email client like Thunderbird. T-bird lets you set up multiple accounts, with multiple SMTP server addies, and multiple identities (personalities). Heck, it will even sort your incoing mail into folders for each email account to help you keep it all sorted by client.

You may want to try installing all these tools on a 'server on a stick'. Simply plug in your 'stick' into a USB port, and you have access to all your data in local host. You can also install all of this on a web based server (save for t-bird) and you can have access via WWW. I'm using a portable version of T-bird on a stcik to save me carrying a laptop every where, and I can back up my email from the stick to anything. VERY handy and highly transportable.

So far, I think your needs are covered. Is there anything else on the wish list you can think of?

Hope I helped you.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network

Hi telemoxie,

One way to gather information and store it is with webware solutions such as Wufoo at https://wufoo.com/, or form generator Icebrrg at https://www.icebrrg.com/.

I believe both of these tools will allow you to customize the info questions and store the results.

Hope this helps.
Beth Cole

I wanted to chip in and share a little bit more about web based form builders. I'll start by saying that I am one of the co-founders of Wufoo, but my intent is to give a higher level overview.

Most web based form builders first specialize at collecting data, and then go on to offer various additional features such as RSS, reporting, themes and so on. Two of the first things to evaluate are ease of use (WYSIWYG editor, works in multiple browsers) and how much logic you need. Some builders focus on collecting simple, straightforward data (Wufoo) while others allow for a bit more complexity in the logic (FormAssembly). Once your basic needs are met, you can go on to compare the additional features.

For telemoxie's situation, most builders will accomplish exactly what he needs. If he were to use Wufoo, each form is given a custom URL that can be emailed out to everyone on his list. The recipients go on to fill out the form, and he can access the data online whenever he wants in addition to having it emailed to him, seen via RSS, and downloaded to Excel. All of this is accomplished without a single line of code, and it can be setup within a few minutes.

Form builders are definitely the way to go for simple data collection. Most that I have come across are based on a monthly and/or usage fee, and have varying levels of features based on the plan you sign up for.

Hi, I'm Tim from Element Fusion, the company that makes Icebrrg. Thanks for the invitation to participate.

Ryan did a great job of explaining the benefits of online form builders. I'll just throw in one additional feature that you might find useful.

It could be a really nice touch of branding to actually display the forms for your clients to submit right on your own company website. I know that both Icebrrg and Wufoo make this easy by providing code snippets for you to drop on your own web pages in order to display your forms.

Hope this helps.

Dear Telemoxie

I’ll come back to you later when I’ve got the tech-spec clarified – I might have to send you some detail to your home email address if there’s too much propriety stuff in it!

Firstly, the contributions offered so far from those with a vested interest in their own solutions are startlingly good and refreshingly honest in admitting their involvement. I’m going to look into a couple with a view to similar-but-different projects where our own solution doesn’t go far enough or in the right direction.

Unimax developed, in tandem with the inevitable Maximizer CRM system a form-based system which allows a recipient to receive a locked form written in Microsoft Word with as many fields in it as you want. The recipient fills in the form or ticks boxes or used a drop-down and then returns it. It is either pre-identified via a code or if the recipient is as yet unknown to Maximizer, they fill I their address etc. details. On receipt, the form either populates an existing record or creates a record and then populates the metrics bits.

We can do this in HTML and other formats, including (Obviously) plonking the thing on a web server and doing the lot via a link and a “Complete” button on the website.

The limitations of this are that the information must be essentially two dimensional and not truly relational.

A further refinement is to use the customer portal facility available in many top range CRM systems and humble old (new) Maximizer 9.5. The recipient has an account which they can access. You design a form for them. They access their account over a web-browser, fill in their details and exit. The limitations there are that they can only change fields in their account once before you analyse the data, but that can be overcome by writing the form details to a notes page or to an associated SQL table which can be attached to the record they are accessing. That is truly relational, so that one recipient can submit multiple different entries depending on the desirability of doing this.

Siebel also have a similar solution, but I don’t have enough space on the page to fit the price in for it! Too many noughts after the $ sign.

Best wishes


Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions