Contact Management System: A Comprehensive Guide for the Sales team

In simple terms, a Contact Management System (CMS) is a software application that helps businesses and organizations manage and organize their customer and client information. But there’s more to it. Here is a comprehensive guide to contact management systems.

 

What is contact management system? What does it mean to companies?

The process of keeping track of the contact information for everyone in your company's network, including leads, partners, subscribers, suppliers, and more, and managing your interactions with them is known as contact management.

Contact Management System may contain data related to contacting the person, such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, company names, job titles, etc. However, it can also contain information about a person's subscription status, demographic factors, interests, and the stage of their relationship with you.

Contact management is more complicated than simply keeping contact information on file. To make the most of this information, you must make sure it is all well organized. Read the sections below for more insights.

 

Contact management: best practices

 

 

A highly effective contact database will not only greatly simplify life for you and your team but also give you the ability to offer unified and seamless customer experiences.

• Managing your contact data effectively includes the following best practices.
• Setting up corporate standards for data entry and maintenance
• Cleaning up data on a regular basis
• Selecting the best apps to manage and store your contact data
• Storing all of your contacts in a single application, such as your CRM
• Using data segmentation to send each segment of your audience the most timely and pertinent messages
• Ensure that you only gather the information that matters to you and that it is collected in compliance with privacy laws
• Developing reporting workflows to enable the best decisions to be made with the help of high-quality data
• Synchronizing your contacts two-way across all of the major applications

 

Features to look for in a contact management system

 

 

Data Storage:

Organizing and storing customer and client data, including contact details like names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, is the main job of a content management system (CMS).

Data Management:

A CMS makes it simple for users to add, edit, and delete client and customer data as well as search for and filter through the data.

Contact Segmentation:

A content management system (CMS) enables users to divide their contacts into various categories, such as clients, leads, customers, or vendors. This makes it simple to focus marketing or sales campaigns on particular demographics.

Communication:

By integrating with email and marketing automation software, a content management system (CMS) enables users to send targeted, personalized communications to particular contacts.

Automation:

To save time and improve efficiency, many CMS systems have automation features like drip campaigns or automated follow-up emails.

Analytics and Reporting:

Contact management can offer analytics and reporting features that let users monitor the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, pinpoint areas that need improvement, and calculate the return on investment of their efforts.

Security:

To safeguard sensitive client and customer data, a CMS should have strong security measures in place.

Integration:

Contact management ought to have the ability to connect to other business applications like CRM, marketing automation, and accounting software.

Scalability of business operations,  pricing, and pipeline management are a few other additional features of contact management.

 

Steps to collect quality contacts for your contact management

Being systematic about how you collect data is critical for populating your database with high-quality data that leads to actionable insights. To make sure you do it correctly, follow these steps:

 

Analyze and optimize the channels used to collect data

Make a list of all the data collection channels you currently use including social media, customer surveys, landing pages, website forms, sign-up forms, emails, and mobile apps.

Examine each one individually and consider how you can improve it. You may also want to standardize data formats in these forms, such as only allowing valid email addresses and phone numbers with the correct number of digits. Check twice the information of the data that flows in, and see if they are linked to your CRM with the right tags and labels.

 

 

In exchange for data, give something of value

If you want to collect as much valuable information as possible, you must create opportunities for your customers to provide you with the information you require.

 

 

Ensure that this information is routed to the appropriate tools

If your new subscribers enter your email marketing tool directly, syncing this tool in real-time with your CRM ensures that these new contacts appear as leads in your CRM immediately. This data will then allow you to launch a lead nurturing campaign and increase your lead-to-customer conversions.

 

Tips and tricks for efficiently managing contacts in your organization

Before implementing a new and improved contact management strategy, examine your current contacts and go through the following steps.

1. Make a backup of your data: Your company is built on the strength of your customer data, and the last thing you need is for this data to be lost. That is why it is critical to back up your data before you begin. Most CRMs and contact management tools allow you to back up your data, but if yours does not, try exporting it as a CSV file and saving it to your desktop.

2. Stop any active integrations or syncs: If you already have a type of integration in place to sync contact data between tools, make sure to pause it before you begin cleaning up your data. This prevents incoming data from entering your contact management tool while you're trying to organize it. If you don't already have an integration in place, wait until after you've prepared your database to ensure you get the best results from your sync.

3. Remove data duplication: Duplicates may already be found and merged in your CRM or contact management tool. If this is the case, use this function to remove any duplicates from your database. This varies by tool, so the best thing to do is consult your CRM's knowledge base to learn how your tool detects and merges duplicates.

4. Delete any outdated or incorrect information: Emails that keep bouncing, phone numbers with invalid formats, incomplete addresses, and so on are examples of this. It could also contact that your company no longer requires, such as contact information for unqualified leads.

5. Manually scan your contacts: Your database will be in good shape once you've merged duplicates and removed valuable data. However, if you want it to be absolutely flawless, go over it with a fine-tooth comb.

This step will undoubtedly take some time, but if you implement company-wide data entry standards and commit to quality data, you will only have to do it once

 

Choosing the best Contact Management System

If your company already has a CRM system or contact management tool that it is satisfied with, you can skip this step. But if your application is failing to perform right, or if you haven't found the right tool yet, or if your contacts are scattered, selecting the right contact management software is the right thing you should do.

You must select a cloud-based CRM software solution that will serve as your central contact database and source of truth.

CRM systems provide excellent features for organized contact management, such as storing prospect and customer data in one location, monitoring interactions with customers across multiple channels such as phone, email, voicemails, meetings, live chat, and so on, and tracking customers' journeys and movement through your pipelines.