Written by Kyle O.
Building a list of business contacts takes time and effort. To maximize your ROI from your list, it’s essential that you properly organize your contact
database, so you can deliver poignant messaging to them and measure your success in the digital space. Digital contact management professionals and software tools can help you evaluate your contact acquisition methods, adjust your messaging to reach different audiences, and analyze the data from your communications so you can adjust when necessary. Read on to explore tools and methods that can help you communicate effectively with existing and potential clients.
Identify Touch Points with Contacts and Capture Their Information
Since the era of rolodexes, contact management has evolved to the digital space. Inputting the information, you receive about your contacts into some sort of digital format helps you access their information quickly. This will help you cater content to pique their interest and adjust your methods when you see what types of communication are working and which aren’t.
To manage your contact list in an effective way, you’ll need to update it on a regular basis, ensuring each entry is accurate and up to date. If you have an employee periodically audit your list against the information your clients provide and against information you find online, you maintain a heightened level of familiarity with each client and can avoid wasting time on dead-end prospects or tire-kickers. Make sure to incorporate content list updates into your standard operating procedure, so your you’re your service and admin teams make a habit of updating the list after each interaction.
Organize Your Contact List
There are resources to help you manage your list and those that help you craft content to different groups within it. Customer relationship management (CRM) software are great tools that can help you maintain all of your contacts in a centralized location and allow you to see associated notes, tasks, and events related to each client. You can segment groups of contacts according to what stage they are in the buyer’s journey or use other criteria, like their interests and purchase history which will make it easier to send our specific targeted messages to your contact groups.
Targeted email campaigns with a similar end goal but slightly altered content can help you speak to clients according to their demographics or previous level of interaction. Retail sites, for example, may send periodic emails to clients who haven’t pu
rchased in a while, including a discount coupon or related items based on the client’s past purchases, while others may receive a different email with the hottest summer trends.
Analyze Data and Adjust Accordingly
Once you’ve begun sending email campaigns, it’s important to continue to analyze the data from them to adjust your lists. You’ll be able to see which recipients open emails and which click on different links within them. Have a low open rate? You can use this information to adjust your subject line or consider launching campaigns on a different day or at a different time. Clients who open emails but never take the next step in the buyer’s journey may require different messaging or more or less frequent contact. With a little trial and error and a lot of analysis, you can begin to focus on valuable messaging that matters to your clients.
Digital contact management is not only is valuable for email campaigns, but also for other forms of communication. If a salesperson needs to call an existing or potential client, he or she can quickly access your contact database to freshen up on key facts. Likewise, your database can help you adjust other forms of advertisement like print mailers or ads. With an overview of your clients’ background and interests, you can focus on messaging in the right area and avoid fruitless and costly advertising where it isn’t effective.
Make the Most of Your Digital Communication Strategy
Commit to digital contact management, and you’ll begin to know your clients more and be able to communicate with them more effectively. A digital marketing specialist can help you create and execute a plan of action that you can incorporate at every level of your business. Understanding your clients is key, and organizing their data is the first step in creating a strong relationship.
