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6 Features Every CRM Should Have

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions allow businesses to establish and maintain strong relationships with sales leads and customers for the ultimate purpose of driving sales and increasing profitability.

CRM software also collects and processes customer data to help businesses identify trends and make more informed business decisions. If you're thinking about selecting a new CRM solution for your business, here are six features every CRM should offer.

CRM, Lead Generation, Social CRM

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Capture your customers, don't CAPTCHA them

Take a step back. What ARE you protecting? The Crown Jewels? Then crank up the CAPTCHA. A random spam comment showing up once a week on your company blog? If you're running a company blog, you're going to want to be vigilant anyway. Cleaning up some spam isn't that onerous of a job. You can also make your blog comments requiring approval before posting. The danger in this approach is the honest blog commenter is robbed of the instant gratification of seeing his/her words posted immediately. If you're trying to nurture engagement, it's a good way to snuff it out.

Lead Generation, Social Networking

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Why buy hate on Facebook?

An important lesson to learn is there can be a gap between the tacit permissions your customers think they have given you and the permissions you think you have to engage and promote. There's a very fine line between keeping users informed of critical updates and not making it seem like you're unnecessarily spamming them with fluff.

Lead Generation, Social Media, Social Networking

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Blog or microblog?

The stats are pretty hard to deny. Blogging leads to more traffic and more leads. If you blog on at least a weekly basis, you can double the number of leads. With so much buzz about Twitter and Facebook, blogging seems downright old school. Social networking has not replaced blogging, any more so than cardio exercises replace strength training. They work very different aspects.

Lead Generation, Social Networking

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Hash it out

Most of us are familiar with hashtags on Twitter. Maybe there's a chance you found this blog post from the #scrm hashtag I used in my Tweet about it. On Twitter hashtags are a way of creating ad-hoc communities or discussions organized around a certain topic, like social CRM. Or the NHL. Or some political movement. Need a quick and dirty idea how sentiments are trending on a certain topic? Follow the hashtag.

Lead Generation, Social Media, Social Networking

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Social CRM and Social TV

The biggest mistake people make about trying to sell online is reasoning "people who want to buy X can be found in social groups devoted to X." Yes, you and 2,000 other merchants have thought about that. And you're all in that social group waiting for some potential customer to join. And then everyone pounces on the poor guy with their pitch.

Lead Generation, Social Media, Social Networking

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Power up your Twitter profile page for more followers

You want people to follow you. The best way to get someone to follow you is to follow them first. Or re-tweet or favorite something they've tweeted. Or do all three. I've said it before here in the Roo blog but let me repeat: sometimes the best way for people to think you're interesting is if you find them interesting first. Following, re-tweeting, and favoriting tweets is one way to signal such interest. But that's only step one. People do not spend much time deciding who to follow back. There's a considerable body of research in both traditional marketing and online marketing about the very, very small window of opportunity you have to get someone's attention.

Lead Generation, Social Media, Social Networking, Tips

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Create Immediacy and Intimacy with Instagram

Many small businesses lend themselves to the informal, personal touch. People understand Instagram is not the product of a big media campaign. It's street level. It's a merchant's on-the-spot snapshot of the here and now. You are proud of your office, your building, your warehouse. These things don't really lend themselves to web sites or marketing materials. But Instagram lets you get out these slice-of-business-life snapshots in a way that doesn't seem crass. Keep the photo caption verbiage to a minimum and raw/authentic.

Lead Generation, Social Media, Social Networking

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Influence Over Social Networks: Part 1

Following a person or following a person back is a first step. But replying to their tweets actually raises your influence with them. Raising influence is about building personal relationships and the perception of a personal relationship. It takes time. Using a robot to follow/unfollow people to build numbers is a complete waste of time.

Lead Generation, Social Networking

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Infographics for Web Traffic

The most powerful trend these days in communicating information is the "infographic". As the name implies, it's communicating information using images. Anyone who has ever witnessed a political race knows how powerful a pie chart or bar chart can be ("Number babies my opponent eats per month"). Good infographics take it to the next level, presenting complex information in ways that are easy to digest and scales/relationships can be quickly grasped.

Business life, Humor, Lead Generation, Social Network Scout