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Marketing technique doubles as affordable campaign management, CRM for small businesses
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP management (CRM) solutions are traditionally thought of as saleslead tools used by the sales team in the field. E-mail, by contrast, is usually considered a direct-marketing channel, with the finger of the marketer hovering over the send button.
For small businesses, however, the distinctions between CRM and e-mail may be blurred. Many small businesses and entrepreneurs rely on commercial e-mail solutions as their primary CRM tool, the most potent source of information about their customers and their history of questions, complaints and purchases.
"Obviously e-mail can't be a full-fledged CRM tool, but a CRM application would be overkill for us," said Chad Barczak, CEO of IDX Inc. "We use e-mail more or less as a ticketing system to keep track of customers, to share notes about them across our team and as a database of customer correspondence."
IDX, which enables Realtors to display Multiple Listing Service information on their Web sites, communicates with its customers via an e-mail solution from Palo Alto Software called Email Center Pro. Palo Alto Software recently upgraded the product with a Conversation Tracker tool for keeping tabs on multiple conversations across different...