customer relationship management

Protecting Your Customer’s Data – How CRM Provides Security for Your Small Business

Governments around the world are tightening the laws on data protection and breach notification, affecting millions of businesses across the globe. Europe has already tightened their data privacy laws with the General Data Protection Regulation giving the individual more rights and protections. Now it’s Canada’s turn to beef up its data privacy laws.

Starting November 1^st, organizations across Canada will be subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) which will require companies to provide consumers and individuals notice of privacy breaches. Companies and organizations may also be liable and could face fines from $100,000 to $500,000 if they are found negligent.

Businesses must ensure customer information is in safe hands, and should come up with a system of reporting data breach to privacy agencies and all persons involved as quickly as possible.

Complying with Data Protection Laws

CRMs generally conform to data protection laws by helping customers make informed decisions along the ‘buyer’s journey’. With the new law coming into force, businesses that use them are much better off compared to those who don’t. This is due to the fact that CRMs have certain features and functionalities which covers both business owners and customers from improper use of customer data.

Consider some of the GDPR-compliant features and functionalities of Small Business Dream CRM:

“Double opt-in” email confirmation – your email subscribers will not be entered into your mailing list until confirmation by email, explicitly stating his or her interest to receive more information from you. This step is extremely crucial because it can be used as proof that they’ve agreed to your terms.

“Opting out” from your mailing list – subscribers can unsubscribe at any point in time by clicking “Unsubscribe to this email” at the end of every mail. This goes perfectly with data protection laws allowing users to opt out of your mailing list fairly easily. Sending marketing emails to your subscribers without an “unsubscribe” link puts a lot of risk to your business for non-compliance of the GDPR.

Deleting contacts – this option will come in handy if you have prospects and customers who want information about them completely wiped out from your system – again, in compliance to data protection laws about your customer’s right to be “forgotten.” However, it is good practice to keep a CSV file of all your customer’s data offline as in the case of a data breach where you might have to take drastic measures to prevent further attacks.

Business owners who use CRM will have better chances of being on the right side of the law than if they were to do things haphazardly on their own. Note: this is not legal or financial advice and is written only for educational purposes. Whenever possible, seek competent legal advice about data protection or have Small Business Dream help you with it.

Collecting and Storing Customer Information

As much as possible, you should avoid storing sensitive information which may cause potential harm to the customer, esp. matters about one’s financial status or health condition except in business like real estate, medical services, or financial planning where they are considered essential. In this case, we need to secure information about our customers by all means.

At the very least, we only want the bare minimum such as names and contact information from the get-go. But as we get to know our potential clients and customer, we can collect more information about them through surveys, e.g., specific interests, hobbies, preferences, and other such details which doesn’t reveal sensitive information. Ultimately, we want to make sure our CRM is impervious to cyber attacks and allows us to quickly respond to data breach with relative ease.

Keeping Your Data Safe

Before signing up for any CRM service, you should ask your account representative where they store their data. You should avoid companies that have data centres in countries that don’t have a good record of privacy or security. Small Business Dream uses servers in Australia, Japan and the United States – three countries that take privacy and security very seriously.

Most CRMs have SSL certificates to prevent unauthorized access to your customer database. Small Business Dream CRM uses secure connection for accessing the CRM accounts. It also makes it possible to remotely access the CRM in case of theft or loss, providing users some window to pre-empt a data breach, and quickly notify customers about it. In any case, don’t hesitate to let Small Business Dream help you out by availing one of our mentoring and customization packages designed to provide you with the best and most secure user experience.

In closing, CRM can be of great help for business owners to be a step ahead, not only in the competitive world of business, but in keeping it within safe bounds of data protection laws. Compliance is no longer just an option – having a CRM for your business is more of a necessity, if not the only logical choice.

Learn more on how you can successfully build your business through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

Customer Relationship Management Strategies for Financial Planners

Creating wealth and being financially secure later in life should be on top of everyone’s priority. However, most people know very little about the ins and outs of financial planning and probably need professional advice to help them with their short-term and long-term goals.

Financial planners are the go-to persons for people hoping to maintain the kind of lifestyle they want beyond their productive years. In the busy age of social media, technology, and shrinking attention spans financial planner need a way to educate and communicate with current and potential clients about the necessity of financial planning in these uncertain times. The best way to stay in touch is to automate using Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Why Financial Planners Need CRM

Financial planners usually start small, often with very few results during the first few months. You’ll have to gain traction and build your name over time.

People who want to learn more about financial planning will come to you for answers. Most of the time, they can be dealt with in one or two articles (if you have your own blog or website), on your FAQ, landing page, or having an automated email response for each set of questions and related topics.

Autoresponders works perfectly in these situations, allowing you to stay in touch with your current and potential clients with less work. CRMs makes it easier to create your own pages, set up an email series or sales funnel, and have the system do the rest of the job screening out and acquiring new clients for you.

Strategies You can Implement Using Small Business Dream CRM

Let’s take a look at how CRM can be used to grow and succeed in this particular business.

Share your Expertise on Financial Literacy.

Most people shy away from financial literacy because it seems too complicated. You should start with an email series based on which plans your prospects would be interested in, say an email series about 401k’s, mutual funds, annuities, etc. Or you can have them sorted out based on a particular age bracket, net worth, long term/short term plans, and special cases such as illnesses and disabilities, and so on.

With Small Business Dream, you only have to do them every once in a while and have the system do the rest like switching from one email series to the next based on user response, or how often they’ll receive updates on their newsletter subscription.

Use Networking to Build Reputation and Trust.

Financial planners should work on building trust and establishing good reputation in the community. People want someone they can count on with their life’s savings, esp. one who is qualified to manage people’s funds. They want to know you really care about them and that you’re not just doing it for personal gain.

Networking events are a perfect opportunity to tell others how they can benefit from you. Whenever possible, make some preparations ahead of time building your own landing page and sales funnel, so you can present your business at a moment’s notice. Small Business Dream incorporates these features in the CRM and made it easier for the averager use to make one.

Follow up on your clients about their plans and recent changes in the market.

Inflation, market fluctuations, tax laws, etc. canimpact on your client’s portfolio. You need to be able to notify all of your clients as quickly as possible.

This can be done using Small Business Dream’s email blast feature, targeting specific segments in your email list that belong to a particular category of clients. This feature not only simplifies tasks for you, but it also helps build trust and confidence with your clients.

Conclusion

These are just but a few examples of how Small Business Dream can help financial planners succeed using CRM as their marketing and follow up tool to achieve phenomenal growth in the financial planning industry.

5 Reasons Why You Should Learn CRM Now

Running a successful business takes more than just hard work. A lot of times, it’s more about being smart, critical thinking, and minimizing work through sales and marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Many small businesses are still missing out on this remarkable tool which would have saved them time and money, reduced stress, and helped grow their business like never before. However, it’s never too late learning about CRMs. We have a system that can help small business owners and salespersons become a CRM virtuoso with practice and a little bit of creativity.

Here are five reasons why you should learn CRM now.

Use Time More Productively

You’ve probably heard about the 80/20 rule with regard to time management and productivity. Put simply, 80 percent of outputs comes from 20 percent of our tasks, while the other 20 percent comes from 80 percent of tasks.

Small business owners often put too much time and energy on things which can easily be done through automation like customer acquisition, and maintaining customer loyalty. Time lost is money lost, so we want to focus more on strategy and developing skill sets such as dealing with prospects and customers – also known as ‘soft skills’ – and be able to automate most of our routine tasks.

Small Business Dream CRM works on the same principle by allowing the system to do most of the heavy lifting so that by the time it gets to you, all it takes is a simple follow-up call, email, or SMS. In other words, we’re working smarter, not harder. Additionally, Small Business Dream keeps your customers in the loop through automated email follow-up series, newsletters, and surveys.

Use Technology to Outpace the Competition

Technology has levelled the playing field for many of our small businesses. We’ve seen this many times with brick and mortar stores, local shops and restaurants growing massively through the internet and social media. It’s incredibly hard to compete with stores like Walmart, Amazon, McDonalds and General Electric, however when it comes to reaching your target audience, no matter if you’re big or small, we all have the same access.

Today, it only takes a simple tool like sales and marketing automation to do certain tasks which would otherwise be more involved and time-consuming. Small Business Dream CRM combines marketing automation with a simple, user-friendly interface to help business owners build their own templates, landing pages, sales funnel, and survey forms, and be able to promote their business on multiple channels, either directly from a sales funnel card (QR code or link to site) or through referral links, social media posts, updates, and invites – the possibilities are endless.

Create a Good Impression about Your Business

Customers will have an opinion about your business during the crucial 8 seconds on your website or landing page. They’d either stay on page to learn more about your business, or look somewhere else. Most of the hard work when trying to get more customers comes from designing landing pages which are both appealing and engaging.

CRMs make it surprisingly easy for businesses to create user experience with potential clients and customers. Small Business Dream integrates a lot of its site-building capabilities on the Sales Funnel Setup enabling business to create stunning websites, sales funnels, and landing pages. With practice you’ll be able to create professional-looking web pages to impress your target audience, but more importantly, convert more prospects into qualified leads and buying customers.

Save Money on Your Marketing Expenses

Automation took over a lot of our tasks such as sending emails, replying to certain requests, promotion, lead acquisition, and so on. It enables small businesses to cut back on marketing expenses while still gaining a competitive edge over the competition whether it’s real estate, insurance, event planners, restaurants, salons, dental practice – pretty much any kind of business.

Nowadays, you don’t have to hire additional personnel to do multiple tasks. You can build on your marketing strategy from time to time, spending just an hour or two on Small Business Dream. Customize your email autoresponder, tweak some settings, and perfect your Sales Funnel after doing all your tasks in the Action List.

Spend as much time as your schedule would allow. For those who need more time typing in customer information, Small Business Dream has a Card Scan function to take care of your data entry tasks, and done-for-you (DFY) website setup packages for busy business owners.

Have Full Control On How You Want to Interact with Customers.

Marketing automation works best with different approaches to customer acquisition such as permission marketing, personalized messages, and human interaction. We want to use both full-automation and semi-automation when dealing with potential clients and customers. Buying lists from data suppliers won’t cut it, and you could end up paying fines on the wrong use of marketing automation like sending unsolicited emails (CAN-SPAM Act of 2003).

Small Business Dream CRM gives business owners total control by combining different approaches on how they wish to interact with their leads and buying customers. Need more clients to fill up your Action List? Set up a Sales Funnel or landing page and have your visitors and walk-in customers optin to your email lists, Facebook, or Twitter follow up series. Use templates to quickly send personalized, semi-automated messages on the fly, or make the call as soon as they show up on your Call List.

Conclusion

Your ability to use CRM will make a big difference in getting more customers and increasing sales. With all the challenges faced by many small businesses and with competition on every turn, this could mean the difference between rapid growth and going out of business. You, too, can experience the power of CRM if you only take the time to put these words into action.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

5 Ways CRM Can Help Your Auto Body Repair Shop

Standing out in a competitive world of auto repair industry is becoming more challenging. Shops are pretty much the same with their services offered, and they all share a common problem with regards to cycle times, turnarounds, and customer satisfaction. But there is a way to beat the competition and fix these problems using the right tools.

Growing Your Customer Base

Customer acquisition can take some time unless you actively market your business. Traditional means of getting exposure through ads and promos are still being used in the digital age, although they’re not always as affordable and effective as having your customers spread the word about your auto body repair business, i.e. through customer referrals or word of mouth. CRMs enable business owners to grow their customer base by reaching out to their target market more efficiently. Consider the following examples for auto body repair shops:

Acquiring information of potential customers on-site. Shop owners can collect customer details such as contact information from walk-in prospects and customers asking for quotes on their repair service and follow up on them based on their preferred method. Shop owners can also leverage by offering a referral program and give points redeemable for discounts, free items, and services to existing customers who can bring along new customers on-site. Small Business Dream’s Card Scan function takes a step further by having a data entry service to do all the typing work for them.
Acquiring information of potential customers online. Tech-savvy shop owners can acquire customer information through their websites, blogs, Twitter account or Facebook page and import them to the CRMs’ contact list. One advantage of having an online presence is it allows shop owners to collect customer data basically on autopilot. Small Business Dream can be used alongside existing auto body repair website, blog, Twitter, or Facebook Page, or it can create one for them as a micro-site or as part of a sales funnel. This automated feature not only increases your chances of acquiring new customers, but also saves your business time and money.

Managing Your Customer Data

Customer information has a lot of potential for growing your income. Unfortunately, many shop owners don’t have a system of collecting and storing them, or they have no idea what to do with the information they have. As a result, they miss a lot of opportunities for making conversions and repeat customers. CRM keeps all the customers’ data in one spot and shop owners can easily organize them however they want. This allows them to do the following:

Segmenting contact list. Business owners should be able to categorize and manage their contacts if they are to stay relevant and top of mind with them. Majority of email marketing campaigns fail because they are too generic or end up in the recipients’ spam folders. Small Business Dream CRM enables auto body repair shops to hone in to a specific type of audience based on category, whether they are new clients, regular customers, or you can categorize them based on their cars’ make, model, mileage, ownership status, and so on. With Small Business Dream you can also send automated or semi-automated emails to let customers know what stage their car process is at. For example, an email can go out that you’ve got a quote for the work from insurance. The next email can be you’ve started work and so on. This is an easy way to keep your customers engaged and will ensure a higher level of customer service which will in turn get more referrals and more sales.

Prioritizing qualified leads and customers. Shop owners pay careful attention to cycle times and turnaround times in order to stay on schedule. Small Business Dream CRM allows them to prioritize who comes up first on their Action List and when they wish to have them back on that section. This feature will come in handy when you want to give your customers a heads up in case you experience some delays with your auto parts supplier, auto insurance company, or if you want to update them about the status of the repair. You can also set the date when you want to follow up on them based on your turnaround date so you can quickly notify them of a successful repair, and a thank you note for choosing your shop.

Maintaining Customer Relationship

Brand loyalty can be a game changer in the auto body repair industry; you need a tool to keep your business top-of-mind to your customers and be able to do them with minimal effort. CRM helps maintain customers’ interest by automating certain tasks for you. Touch base with your customers if they need a tune-up. Offer tire changing services for the winter and summer season. Small Business Dream lets you accomplish all these tasks with just a few clicks after searching for a specific category of clients and potential customers on the Email Group section you wish to communicate with.

Creating an Email or Content Marketing Strategy

As a shop owner, you can share your expertise and experiences gained in the auto repair industry to educate your prospects and customers about proper care and maintenance. Small Business Dream’s autoresponders, enables you to build an email series for your subscribers about the importance of rotating their tires once every 5000 miles to evenly distribute wear and maintain traction, or preserving their cars’ lustre and shine by using automotive cleaners instead of liquid soaps and detergents. This CRM feature can also lead to a sale or a new customer when used with the sales funnel and following up on them through the Action List.

Listening to Customer Feedback

Business owners learn a lot by listening to their customers and can make you stand out in an industry that isn’t known for its customer service. Small Business Dream’s Survey Funnel allows shop owners to find gaps in their services and act accordingly. By automatically sending out a survey to all its customers it allows you to receive valuable feedback. How many of your customers prefer shorter turnaround times and those who prefer to have a thorough check-up, damage assessment and repair? Survey forms can be fine-tuned at any point in time to stay relevant and collect more information from your customers as needed.

The Small Business Dream Survey Funnel is extremely easy to use and doesn’t require any special web skills. All you need to do is write the questions you want your customer to answer and then create an answer field. You can use multiple choice or a checklist – whatever fits your needs.

Whatever your customer service needs, Small Business Dream is an amazing tool to collect, contact, and manage all your customers and leads.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

Marketing Opportunities to Help You Stay Ahead

Every time a company misses out on a marketing opportunity, competitors will try their best to seize the initiative. In order to win in a fiercely competitive environment, businesses must learn to look out for missed opportunities and seal the gaps in their marketing strategies.

Some of the most common missed opportunities are surprisingly simple but can have a huge impact in promoting businesses. It also shows that with a little bit of creativity and by being sensitive to our customers’ needs, we can create meaningful connections and make our products and services closer to them.

How Businesses Are Taking Advantage of Customer Data

Businesses that’s been around for quite some time have the advantage of being able to track customer activity and see the whole picture of what’s really going on with their sales and marketing strategy. This enables them to map out their next strategy based on current trends and make some slight adjustments for future customer engagements.

Customer data allows businesses to identify their weak spots, i.e. missed opportunities, and use that information to gain the advantage in the marketplace. Most of these marketing opportunities are fairly common but has the potential of improving sales significantly.

Startup companies can also take advantage of big data from another source such as Google Analytics and Adwords along with other free data tracking tools. But to really understand and appreciate customer data for marketing solutions, a good CRM service or application should be in place.

Practical Marketing Solutions

Missed marketing opportunities are essentially like blind spots; they’ve been there all along but we can’t see them through our peripheral vision. Marketers can get too overwhelmed with the numbers that they often overlook even the most basic, yet very effective marketing strategies that stood the test of time.

These marketing opportunities include:

Social Media Marketing

Although not generally regarded as a primary marketing tool, it could still contribute to your overall marketing efforts as much as 20 percent.

Timing is key here. On average, it would only take three to five hours for a status update or post to reach peak activity, followed by a steady decline in viewer’s interest. Peak hours will differ from country to country and marketers will have to experiment different posting times.

The old practice of buying ‘likes’, ‘fans’, and ‘followers’ had already lost its popularity, and social media marketers are now re-focusing their efforts in sharing timely and relevant information, upcoming events, contests, collecting data from fans and followers, and extending their reach through multi-channel marketing.

Cross-selling & Upselling

This strategy is usually practiced during the final stages of the buyer’s journey in the sales pipeline or during follow-ups with regular customers. This allows you to get an additional 10 to 30 percent increase in revenue.

It opens up more options for buyers and potential customers, especially those related to their purchase which they have missed or left out unintentionally.

For instance, you’re running a carpet business and your clients have shown interest in buying one of your carpets. You may suggest buying a carpet cleaner along with the carpets to save more money on carpet cleaning services (cross-selling).

Another example is when doing B2B like providing office supplies to a certain company. You can suggest personalizing some items (pens, notepads, etc.) with their company logo or brand name at just a fraction of the cost (upselling).

Maintaining Customer Loyalty

Customer retention allows your company to save 5 to 10 times in marketing expenses than having to look for new customers every now and then. In fact, existing customers account for 65 percent of the company’s income.

Businesses are now stepping up on improving customer retention and are starting to cut down on advertising expenses and promotional ventures. More emphasis is now given to customer loyalty since they are less expensive to maintain and has the potential of producing leveraged income through customer referrals.

To achieve this, they also need to increase their marketing capabilities through marketing automation to cope up with the growing number of customers.

Mobile Marketing

Recent statistics reveals that as of 2016, mobile users have grown to 4.61 billion. That’s more than half of the world’s total population. Missing out on this one meant giving away a large portion of potential customers to your competitors.

Mobile marketing has already been employed by a lot of companies successfully to promote their brand, collect customer information, and maintain customer relationship.

One great example is through their use of free mobile applications on mobile platforms such as Google Play and iTunes which allows companies to collect important relevant information about the mobile users.

Businesses can also employ this strategy for mobile CRMs to link up with their customers and prospects on the go. Another advantage of mobile marketing is that it gives them the ability to send push messages and notifications which is a common feature in most modern mobile devices.

Improving the Company’s Visibility

Aside from improving a website’s visibility, some of the ‘old-school’ marketing strategies are still as effective as today’s modern marketing approach.

This is especially true with brand awareness. However, instead of spending hundreds of dollars on posters, print ads, and billboards, you can give little items with your personalized logo, brand name, or website as giveaways to your loyal customers and on-site visitors.

Things like pens, golf pencils, umbrellas, wristbands, caps, t-shirts, and other memorabilia are inexpensive yet effective marketing tools which can be used to promote your business. It doesn’t cost too much, but you’ll be surprised how even simple things like these can help endear your customers to your business.

Other ideas include coasters and tent cards if you’re into local restaurant business, or perhaps giving a mint or two with your personalized packaging as a way of saying ‘Thank you,’ to your valued customers.

It only takes a little bit of creativity and keeping your eyes open on the most recent marketing ideas and tools to stay ahead of the competition. The key is to never stop looking for more opportunities, because if you do, your competitors will do their best to catch up on you.

It pays to remember one important rule in life as it is with business: “In life there is no security; there’s only opportunity.”