Customers are the lifeblood of any business, and it is essential to record their information to manage business operations, including sales and marketing. As a business grows and the contacts list expands, it could be hard to collect data and relevant business information and keep it organized manually. Moreover, traditional manual data input and organization methods have not been proven effective.
Fortunately, a contact management system can save you from manually managing a large amount of data. You can utilize this software to collect and organize data, reduce data input errors and duplication, and make this data easily accessible to those team members who need it.
Let’s look into what contact management software is and how it contributes to your business sustainability and productivity.
Contact management software is a software application that stores and organizes the data of existing and potential customers in a centralized database. It typically works as a contacts’ address book to store their names, contact numbers, email addresses, websites, business addresses, social media profiles, and more in a searchable database. This organized profiling helps businesses to access data anywhere and anytime, see the customer history, remove duplicate contacts, and sort multiple touchpoints of a consumer.
This data storage aims to make it easy and quick to retrieve and edit data when needed. The contact management software reduces headaches caused by unsaved, scattered, and unorganized data. Searching for the required data becomes accessible, further enhancing the sales and marketing teams’ performance.
With data centralization in the contact management software, it becomes easier for team members to access customers’ data and quickly respond to their inquiries. Furthermore, it helps them create targeted emails accordingly, which increases brand awareness, sales, and customer retention rates, eventually leading to business growth.
The simple answer is they overlap; contact management software and customer relationship management (CRM) do almost the same jobs, but the latter offers a broader range of functionality. A CRM is a complicated suite of tools that, in addition to managing contacts, also manages sales pipelines and workflow automation, turns data into valuable insights, and much more.
A CRM encompasses the features of contact management software, but contact management software does not necessarily include CRM specs. In short, contact management software is a subset of CRM that keeps track of your contacts and is only limited to providing data in one place, organized and on demand.
CRM, on the other hand, serves the bigger picture of a business beyond contact management. It focuses more on nurturing client-business relationships, improving customer experiences, and providing personalized solutions to customers’ problems. CRM possesses broader functionality that spans sales, marketing, and service.
Let’s look into the key differences between CRM and contact management software.
| Contact Management Software | CRM Software |
|---|---|
| Easy-to-use interface | Advanced interface |
| Focused on data collection | Focused on turning data into insights |
| Less likely to be integrated with other apps | Comes with powerful integrations |
| A basic data collection tool | An advanced suite for managing sales, marketing, and customer support |
| Provides an overview of leads and customer interactions | Provides you the ability to create automated campaigns based on customer data |
While there is no direct comparison between CRM and contact management software, choosing one depends on your business needs and the approach and volume of data you want to manage. You may select contact management software if contact management is your concern, but CRM software can help you with its advanced suite of tools for advanced data implementations and a comprehensive coverage of customer interactions.
Here are some of the features and functionalities you may expect from a good contact management software.
Contact management software acts as a central storage to store contact details, including name, phone number, address, website, company name, designations, etc., of your prospects, customers, partners, and business individuals. With cloud storage, the contact information is accessible from anywhere. You can capture any important information about your contacts and maintain it in one place. The data in the contact database is organized, so you don’t have to juggle when you need to retrieve specific data.
The contact management software also segments the customer data based on the captured fields such as age, gender, interest, preference, etc. With segmentation, locating the required data becomes even more accessible. This data segmentation not only saves you a lot of time but also helps you create campaigns specifically for a particular customer segment. For example, if you want to run a campaign for males aged between 25 and 40, you can easily do that with segmentation.
You can pull the data inside the contact management software from various resources such as spreadsheets, Google Contacts, CRM, and other tools, as it allows you to connect seamlessly. Moreover, you can also extract data from contact management software to your system with the export functionality and other tools via integrations it supports.
The contact management software comes with data search filters such as name, city, state, phone number, email, age, date, contact activity, purchase history, tags, etc., to make it easier for the sales team to search for a specific customer’s data or customers matching a particular field. The filters save you time by narrowing down your search for a customer(s).
The best thing about contact management software is not just the data centralization but also the ability to centralize all of your customer and business communications in one place. You can even schedule your emails and SMS or make calls within the software while all of your communications are organized in one central hub. You can keep track of all your business communications across multiple channels and respond to them without switching apps.
Data security is one vital aspect of a contact manager. When choosing contact management software, ensure that it offers top-notch security measures and prevents security breaches at every level. Features like unauthorized access prevention, data backup, data encryption, etc., can maintain data security.
Not only in CRM, but you can also automate tasks in contact management software. Set automation on repetitive tasks such as updating contact data, assigning a tag, or sending follow-up emails. The automated workflows save time and effort that go into manual intervention.
Contact management software also includes reporting tools to analyze audience insights, track conversions, and engagement, and determine the efficacy of your sales and marketing efforts. These insights help craft the right strategies for your business.
The ability to integrate with other tools and apps helps you capture more leads, gives your sales team better opportunities to track customer interactions, and improves your business workflows. Kemo SaaS contact management system lets you integrate with multiple tools used in project management, marketing, accounting, finance, etc.
While contact management software keeps your data organized in one place, it also eliminates the need to manage it manually. Below, we have mentioned some key benefits of contact management software.
Since the contact management software does not require manual intervention in storing, managing, and organizing data, it reduces the workload on your sales and customer support teams. With the help of centralized data, they respond to customer queries quickly and precisely.
Contact management software advances your business by automating repetitive tasks and streamlining multi-channel communications without manual assistance. You can integrate it with other software and ensure steady business growth.
Contact management software stores more data about your customers than an address book. Not only the contact details stored, but other vital information such as customer’s previous history, specific notes about them, purchasing patterns, etc., are also stored efficiently inside a contact management software that makes it easy to keep track of all of your existing, previous, and potential customers.
When no lead data is lost or mishandled, it becomes easier to follow up with the leads. When the data is up-to-date and organized without any repetition, no lead falls through the cracks, and you can purposefully move them through the sales pipelines to maximize conversions eventually.
When no lead data is lost or mishandled, it becomes easier to follow uYou not only utilize contact management software to improve your client-business relationships, but it also helps improve the collaboration within your team. Instead of retrieving information from each other back and forth, all team members can access the same data from one place, which saves time and removes any possible data discrepancies. It eventually improves team collaborations and enhances their decision-making capabilities. Data is updated in real-time, and you can also track who made a particular change, enhancing transparency and ensuring accountability.p with the leads. When the data is up-to-date and organized without any repetition, no lead falls through the cracks, and you can purposefully move them through the sales pipelines to maximize conversions eventually.
If you think using contact management software will increase your expenses, and you can save money by relying on a team for your data management. You’re probably wrong, especially if you’re a large company. Think of the number of employees you need to hire to ensure data sustainability and accuracy and the training sessions and equipment required to fulfill the tasks. Customer data management software saves these expenses and does more with fewer resources. There is no need to hire more employees for data management, which will eventually reduce costs, including employee training sessions, salaries, transportation, extra office equipment, etc.
Using contact management software and CRM platforms can empower your sales and marketing team with better decision-making abilities. You can access data analysis and reporting tools to help you drive insights. You can utilize these insights to determine how the sales teams are performing, how the leads are nurtured inside the pipeline, the areas that need improvement, etc. With accurate data insights in hand, you can optimize your sales processes, make strategic decisions, and predict revenues and campaign outcomes.
A CRM is a powerful suite of tools and features that advance your business at many levels. However, if you plan to start your business and only need software to maintain your contact details, you probably shouldn’t implement a CRM system initially. Contact management software is all you need at the planning stage to help manage and organize your data seamlessly.
If you have a smaller customer base, it can be managed with contact management software since a CRM can cost more, and you might be required to train your employees. However, if you are expanding your business and have a complex and comprehensive sales process, you need to upgrade to a CRM that can help you manage sales at a larger scale. Managing a large customer base in CRM is beneficial in offering them personalized experiences, such as product recommendations and communications based on their interests and preferences.
When looking for a contact manager to accommodate your needs, you will find a lot of contact management systems claiming to maintain your data at every scale. However, you should not pick one out of your gut feeling and should consider a few important things in addition to the above-mentioned features, such as:
As your business expands, your contact list will also grow, which means that the contact management software you choose should be able to accommodate the growing list. When choosing the software, look at its capabilities to scale so you don’t have to make last-minute switches and make the data management process messier.
When choosing contact management software, choose the one that offers value for money. Multiple affordable software programs are available but do not offer advanced features. If these programs do not satisfy your business needs, you might have to replace them, which increases the cost in the long run.
Most contact management software offers free trials, which give you a sneak peek inside the software, including its interface, dashboard, navigation, capabilities, etc. A free trial is a great way to evaluate whether the particular software is the right choice.
If you are using contact management software for the first time, it is important to know how the company will take you on board and guide you through its use. A detailed onboarding process with an expert helps you understand the software even more and gives you in-depth coverage of its features.
When choosing a contact management software, look at how efficient the customer support team is. The customer support agents should be active, knowledgeable, and professionally handle customer queries. There may be guidance via detailed FAQs from which you may get help when needed. Prefer contact management software that offers 24/7 support and answers customer queries as soon as possible.
An online review is as effective as a friend’s recommendation, so always look for online reviews about the software via Google search, what people say about its customer support, how frequently it introduces updates, how user-friendly it is, etc. Avoid companies with fewer to no customer reviews or unaddressed customer inquiries.
Platforms like Kemo SaaS offer free trials to customers to help them evaluate the software’s efficacy. With active customer support available 24/7 and a smooth onboarding process, Kemo SaaS assists customers in implementing contact management software.
With Kemo SaaS, you not only get a comprehensive contact management system but also benefit from a wide range of features and functions that are usually lacking in other software providers. Beyond data organizing and management, Kemo SaaS also integrates contacts’ data with sales and marketing tools inside the platform in one place.
Kemo SaaS helps you build a sales pipeline using a website, landing page, and forms. Once the lead is captured inside the pipeline, its data is stored and organized inside the Kemo SaaS contact management software. The data segmentation is performed based on set criteria, making the data easy to search through.
Kemo SaaS is not just a typical contact management software, but it also gives you the power of a CRM. You can leverage the marketing automation features and functions to create personalized campaigns to move leads across pipeline stages. Once you utilize the platform’s advanced capabilities, there is no going back to a typical contact management tool. You get a complete overview of the client interactions, and at the same time, you can automate follow-ups to stay at the top of your clients’ minds.
Get the most out of your contact management software by implementing it the right way.
Your existing customers might have changed their email addresses, phone numbers, or other vital information. To get the maximum benefits of your contact management software, it is vital to keep the data updated and relevant, remove data redundancy, and keep validating the stored data.
Personalization plays a vital role in establishing long-lasting relationships with customers. You can create customer segments based on specific criteria such as demographics, preferences, and behaviors. Craft personalized marketing campaigns for every customer segment and build strong relationships.
It is important to back up your data repository in case of any unfortunate data loss. By creating recovery repositories for your contacts, you can ensure minimum data loss. You can build effective data pipelines for duplicate data so businesses can have a data backup to rely on if needed.
To run your business successfully, it is essential to understand your audience better. When you have access to your customers’ comprehensive and relevant data, choices, and chat histories in one place, it becomes easier to interact with them and offer solutions they can relate to. This data centralization helps you analyze your audience and streamline your sales and marketing processes. A good contact management software efficiently manages the data according to your business needs and requirements and is easy to use and upgradeable.
Contact management is the process of storing and organizing the details of clients, stakeholders, and other business individuals to establish and manage relationships.
The contact management system is a software application that is used to organize and maintain customers and business details in a digital centralized database.
Both customer relationship management software and contact management software have some similar capabilities, but there are a few differences that set them apart. Contact management software is primarily used to organize customer data in a centralized database, while CRM is used to convert customer data into useful business insights for sales, marketing, and customer support purposes.
The contact management software stores and organizes up-to-date customer data in a centralized database, which helps the sales and customer support team communicate with customers on time and offer personalized communications based on their previous history. This eventually leads to improved customer relationships.
Yes, the contact management software facilitates the management of large data volumes. Many contact management systems are scalable and seamlessly manage extensive data.
Contact management software allows you to store and organize data in a centralized database, but it might limit your ability to track interactions and build customer relationships.
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