Really using your customer database
Article
provided by Simon
Kemp, Q
Services
Do you have customers? Most businesses have them.
What do you know about your customers? Do you know where
they live and what products they are interested in? All
this information can be stored in a database and you can
start to make use of it.
Without a database, it is much more difficult to split your
customers up into geographical areas, industry types or product
interests. With the right database, it is easy to do this
and easy to get access to the targeted data that you as a
business need.
What
is a database?
A database is simply a collection of data. It doesn’t have to be within
a special software program. The dictionary definition is “A group of files
held in a structure that enables their contents to be retrieved, altered and
sorted”.
At its most basic, a customer database is a list of customer names and addresses.
This can be provided by a spreadsheet program such as Excel. |
It
would be helpful for it to contain the names
of people at the company, telephone, fax and
mobile numbers as well as e-mail addresses. This
is provided by Outlook
- for example.
It is often helpful to be able to make notes about customers or prospects such
as “Don’t call on a Tuesday”, or “Went to Tuscany on
holiday” in order that you can build your relationship with the customer. |
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As
your database grows, it will become essential that you
are able to categorise the people in it – sometimes
in lots of different ways. For example, you could have
separate databases for customers and prospects, but what
if an existing
customer is interested in a new product of yours – for
which they are a prospect?
A cardinal sin is to have more
than one copy of the same information, so where do you keep
them: in the customer database or in the prospect database?
Clearly, they can be both and your database should allow
this. It would be handy if you could recognise each product
or service prospects are interested in so that you can focus
on them when pushing those particular items.
This can be
done by using groups, categories or keywords alongside your
customers. Your application should allow multiple categories
for each person and also allow you to prepare lists based
on combinations of these categories.
QTact is one such application
as it allows as many categories as you like for each address
on the database. Incidentally, these categories are setup
by yourself so you can have unlimited choice.
How do you use it?
I meet a lot of people every week, at networking events alongside
the normal business meetings where I am given business cards.
All of those people are entered into the database along with
the source of the introduction. This means that I can easily
find them three months later when I need to revisit that
networking group.
I regularly review my prospects list (held in the database)
to ensure that potential business doesn’t slip through
my fingers.
I regularly review my existing customers to ensure that regular
events such as support contract renewals don’t go unbilled,
and to use their information to determine whether they would
be likely purchasers of a new product or service I’m
about to market.
Using the Microsoft Word template document
included with QTact that is already setup with merge fields,
I regularly mailshot sections of the database according to
monthly campaigns which target particular products or services – a “flavour
of the month” style of marketing. This ensures that
those people you know keep you in the front of their minds.
As
a writer of articles, I mailshot those on my database who
are potential users when the magazine is printed – thereby
achieving greater impact. All these measures help to ensure
that your brand is marketed effectively and that your customers
and prospects have every reason to do more business with
you, and are not given any excuse to forget about you!
Simon
Kemp, Q
Services
simonk@qservices.co.uk
Biog:
Simon Kemp is Managing Director of Q Services who supply computer based
solutions to a variety of companies, big and small, local and international
for over 15 years and has considerable experience with name and address
related systems. QTact is a particularly suitable name
and address contact management database for small companies and single
users.
Simon can be contacted
at information@qservices.co.uk. |
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