Use a Contact Database But Make It Easy To Use The Contact Data You Capture

Surprisingly in this day and age a large number of small businesses are still guilty of not even keeping a customer or prospect database, with many still relying on Microsoft Outlook to keep adhoc information. This might work initally for a very small business when the business owner is involved in the day to day operation and may often know all his customers by name. But very quickly if the business is to grow in any way at all it becomes vitally important to keep contact informtion and notes on each prospect and customer so you aren’t left relying on your brain remembering every minute detail.

There are a number of software packages and online services that let you maintain a customer database, or for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and using one of these will bring you on the right road to maximising your existing customer base and converting the most prospective customers.

However one failing with the majority of these systems is that even if you have captured the data there is still quite a lot of work involved in using that data to send communications to the contacts held in it. 

A number of these systems can facilitate email, however when it comes to sending postcards or letters or SMS messages these systems cannot do it. Often they expect you to export the contacts for printing on address labels or some kind of mail merge function. The big failing with this as we see it is this is still very time consuming and not easily managed once your contact list grows to more than a few hundred.

This limitation is the key reason why businesses that have captured this information still do not often use it to the best of their ability.

Autopilot Marketing Systems can change this. At the core is a robust contact management database, but where it differs is with the integration to send letters, postcards, emails and SMS messages built into it. Sending a message, or a sequence of messages to customers and contacts is now much easier. All fulfillment is automated so you don’t get bogged down in the menial tasks of printing out and sticking address labels.

The result is better communication with clients and contacts which can’t help but strengthen relationships and increase sales.

How Autopilot Marketing Systems Can Save You Money on Admin Staff

One of the biggest obstacles to growing a small business is trying to do everything yourself. Often small business owners are caught in a chicken and egg situation where they know they can grow their business if they could free up their time but they cannot afford to take on an admin staff member to help them.

One area that can take a lot of your time is keeping in touch with your prospective and existing customers. If you have to send out marketing materials, follow up with people that enquired a few weeks ago that you haven’t heard back from, or many other tasks then you can quickly become overwhelmed.

Sending out a letter to 100 people could easily take the best part of 5 hours by the time you have printed out the letter, addressed the envelopes, stuck on the stamps and dropped them off at the post office.

With Autopilot Marketing Systems all of this is automated for you. You simply decide which of your contacts are to get the letter, add them all to the sales letter campaign and press the save button. Suddenly that 5 hour task only took you 15 minutes. All of the letters are printed, addressed and stamped and sent out for you.

Even if you value your time at little over the minumum wage rate of €10 per hour you can see that in this simple example Autopilot Marketing Systems has saved you €50 for this one mailing alone. If you are sending out lots of mailings, postcards and emails in the course of a month this could easily run to €500 or more worth of your time.

Better still if your time is now freed up you can focus on other activities in your business, or even treat yourself and finish work early. With plans starting at under $30 per month Autopilot Marketing Systems could be the cheapest employee you ever hired – and it won’t call in sick on a Monday morning!