Know-How Exchange : Other

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but I do use several pieces of software.
1) A contact management system (which is something we created in-house) to manage contact lists, leads and sales communications; 2) An online event registration system (again something we created in-house); and 3) A document management software that archives my marketing projects, etc. so others in my organization can view them if desired.
I mostly design print work in Adobe InDesign, and I work on our website through Microsoft Contribute. Our blog is run by WordPress.
Hope that answers your question!

Dear Dona

You can approach this from marketing, CRM, Contact Management, Project Management, Costed Job, Campaign Management, and even from a Task-List view.

Most CRM systems have marketing campaign and marketing contact management modules or areas. We used to recommend Maximizer, but I am revising my opinion of it. (Or at least revising my opinion of my ability to work with Maximizer Inc!)

From 10 years in Professional CRM Consultancy, marketing campaign modules are rarely used or used appropriately. This is usually on the specious basis that it is expensive to get an expert to set them up to your needs. Often they are self-activated, straining the customer service line and after 6 months of piddling around with them, they are abandoned or the person responsible gets the sack for not doing their real job.

This is a pity as campaigns, costs, timescales, marketing contacts, progress and so on can all be held on the same system and the enquiries or leads they produce are directly booted into the client side of the CRM system for a bit of love, care and attention through Prospect Relationship Management (PRM) by sales.

More so, with the forecasting side of the CRM system activated (About 8% of CRM users do this!) the sales pipeline or funnel takes shape with the projected sales split, automatically by sales executive, product under consideration and most importantly for marketing, the campaign or advert or direct mail shot from which it arose.

It is very difficult to get rid of a marketing manager who can demonstrate at the touch of a key, that their activities are responsible for £X Million of the forecast.

Forecasting also justifies re-investment in successful campaigns and impacts every aspect of a business, from sales bonus expectations, cash-flow, purchasing, goods-in stock, manufacturing-load and finished stock on the shelves.

I think that you need to spend some time talking this over and a starting point is to examine how you do it now, what you get out of it, what the limitations are and what you want it to do. Spreadsheets are a great stopgap, but they are subject to data entry error which goes undetected and they along with your other systems require your critical data to be endlessly typed into different spreadsheets, reports and other programmes.

Email me through clicking my name if you want to discuss this in private, but preferably keep as much as you can on the forum so that the other members can benefit.

Best wishes


Steve Alker
Xspirt, SymVolli and Ex- Maximizer BP