Having the right software programs will help your business run smoothly and enable your team to respond to the needs of customers. Depending on your business model, you’ll need at least one and maybe multiple software programs.
You’ll need a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that can securely store the information of your customers and prospects. The more data you collect from your customers, the better you’ll be able to retarget them on Facebook and other platforms. Our CRM software we (quite literally) live by is Pipedrive. This tool allows us to schedule out calls to prospects, task team members to invoice, set meetings, etc.
Some CRM’s have features to let you schedule and send emails to your lists and collect payments. If not, you can use a separate email management system and payment processor. You should use an event registration software if it’s relevant to your business. Eventbrite integrates seamlessly with Facebook. Project management software allows your entire team to assign and organize tasks. We use Teamwork for our project management software and it works so well. Again, we use it to assign and organize our tasks by client or by task type.
You can use Zapier or create customized code that allows your programs to integrate with one another. For Source Brand Solutions, Zapier is the glue we use to tie it all together. We use it to get our sales prospects into our project management software.
Many programs allow you to do a trial so you can determine if it will work for your organization before making a purchase.
We started with just a CRM early on in our agency history, but we’ve added project management software, event registration software, and an e-commerce site for advertising packages. As we’ve scaled, these additional programs have saved us time and frustration.
For social graphics, photo and video, we’ve really utilized Canva and Animoto, which provides free templates to create your graphics from, or you can design from scratch.
For email marketing campaigns we use Constant Contact Pro. This software also has pre-made templates you can use to create emails and email automations.
For analytics and website data, we use Google Analytics and Raven Tools. Other softwares we utilize include Survey Monkey. This is an awesome platform for creating dynamic surveys to get market feedback.
Never be nervous to try out these different tools. There’s a few of them that are free, or allow you to do a free trial so that you can see if it works, or will work for your company.
The right software programs make all the difference in gaining and retaining customers.