My Little Voice

Archive for the ‘CRM’ Category

We are going through an interesting time at OpenCRM looking at the roadmap for new features and considering the user interface (UI) for the next generation version of the product.

Consultation has led us to be told that we should store up all of the new features, from now until the release of the new UI, to give a bigger Wow factor. This I understand, but what about all the current, paying subscribers?

Having given us their confidence over the years, how do we hold back for 6 or 9 months until the new version is available, especially when we are used to quarterly updates for users?

I guess its more of a head change for us rather than our user base. There was a time when we could consider making everyone a beta site, so they were all involved, but those days are far gone, just too many now :0)

So, questions about when to feature freeze and how to manage the UI changes all need to be taken soon, but first we need to get the rebrand out of the way…. more about this very soon.

I read this article and just wanted to share it with others. Email marketing, in particular the creation of email templates and marketing pieces,is a science, its not guess work any more, there is a wealth of information on the web, including our own FAQ section for OpenCRM users, the following information is a sound foundation when considering the image aspect of your email marketing.

Happy reading……

The Big Image Myth
Why your email newsletter shouldn’t have too many images, even if they look great on your screen!

In This Article…

If you are just starting to send marketing email and need advice on how to design an email template, or if you are currently sending email but aren’t satisfied with the click-through or deliverability results, this article explains why using large, graphic images in an email template will actually make your email less successful and detract from its overall performance.

Why Should I Second Guess Using Images?

Without a doubt, the number one error we see in companies who want to begin an email marketing program is the desire to design an email that looks exactly like a webpage or, worse yet, like a print postal mailer.

Everyone understands why email designers like images.  An email, just like any other piece of marketing material, looks better when it’s got appealing images in it. If it displays properly to the end-user, it probably converts better as well. The problem, as you’re about to see, is that most end-users won’t see your graphics. As an added bonus, including graphics can get you sent to the spam folder.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK I succumbed, I installed Opera Mobile for iPhone, just to see how it runs in comparison to Safari.

I have never been a great Opera fan, but I know of a serious Opera user, one of the development team (I should keep his name off this site in case of retribution :0) and he loves it. But I thought I would give it a go.

It installed very quick and I was up and running easily.

First reaction when I took a look at some sites, not that good really, rendering was out and just felt clunky. However on sites that did look OK it was quick, especially the revisits, cache is very good even on the limited iPhone resources.

When I logged into OpenCRM, again not that impressed, looked a bit odd, but once I was into using it, quick, and I like that one click zoom.

I turned off images to see how it ran and this did seem quite a bit better than Safari, which if you are using a browser to access OpenCRM with non 3G coverage, would make a difference.

Verdict, will I stop using Safari, probably not, but I might be singing along with Opera as an alternative!

I read this article and thought that it raised a number of issues

http://bit.ly/9QjNJU

This was just some comments posted for moderation;

Interesting article, which given more time I think there are a shed load of comments that I would love to make, however in the interests of bevity, some “food for thought”;

You comment that (paraphrase) “popular hosted systems may look good at first, but support may not be what you expected”. Well that’s a broad brush! Some of us in the hosted CRM Market are very proud of the support and service levels we deliver, and in fact, our support, it could be argued, is better with a hosted client as there is less variable under the clients control, so is better in terms of fix time!

You also mention “salesforce and how this may not be customisable”, honestly, have you looked at the market? Salesforce.com are our main competitor, and we do very well taking clients from them, so I don’t want to shout too loud about their merits, but come on, what about the force.com platform and the many add-ons already written in the app store. It is true that we win business from Salesforce because we can offer a more flexible solution, but that’s a commendation to OpenCRM, not a slight on salesforce. Flexibility is as much about the relationship and how you can work with your chosen application and it’s author, but I would not say that salesforce fail for their app being ‘inflexible’.

Lastly, for any SME that I talk to, budgets are always an issue, however I agree that getting some third party assistance with your selection is a good plan, however, I would caution on two points, firstly, getting someone that knows what they are talking about is less easy than you might expect, I spend a great deal of time educating ‘consultants’ about CRM and the pro’s and con’s of hosted -v- in-house, and second, ‘consultants’ often eat up so much of the valuable budget, that projects start lean, in some cases too lean, and can be in danger of failure before they get going. So, yes, engage with the right people, but don’t assume that all CRM providers are just out to sell you their solution, some of us, especially the successful providers, might actually be honest and have a high degree of integrity, only wanting to sign up solutions that work for both parties! It’s never in a suppliers interest to ‘stick it to a customer’, they always find out and when they do, boy will you get it with both barrels, more hassle than any up front payment could justify. As I say, good suppliers want to forge a good, long term relationship, never more so than the hosted market, as the revenue only comes in if the customer stays with you.

Regards

Graham Anderson
Managing Director
Software Add-ons – The Home of OpenCRM
http:\\opencrm.co.uk

Another comment worth considering is the license costs for an on-site installed application is likely to be in excess of £30,000. That’s a lot of OpenCRM development time, not withstanding the development costs that would be needed on-top of your installed app if you wanted to go down this route!

Here at OpenCRM we migrate dozens of customers from competitive products, it’s one of the things that we do really well, sometimes the migration is due to cost, often it’s because our customer wants a more flexible technical solution or a stronger relationship with their provider, that’s us.

Whatever the reasons we have become very good at managing these moves, some sites are small and just require some data manipulation skills and then they are ready to go, others need a full system analysis to achieve their goals.

This article, published independently, gives in my opinion some solid ‘no nonsense’ advice for people wanting to move systems provider, worth taking note of the comments if you are looking to change.

Sales pitch : needless to say at OpenCRM we tick the boxes, I will summarise the advice in a separate post so that any interested company, looking to move to OpenCRM, can see how we stack up. Read the rest of this entry »

One of our company New Years resolutions (yes we really do have them), is to send out a customer satisfaction survey. This is a first for us (in a structured way).

We are keen to see how well we do in the mid ground of our customer base, which accounts for a good number of our customers. We will always be acutely aware of the small number of projects that are hard work to keep on track, as well as the ones where we excel, in both cases customers are very vocal and (because of the project management escalation and communication around these projects), the implementions are very visible, so we want to use this survey to gauge our success levels for all of our users.

This is one way to measure our customers satisfaction, however, the second area we are keen to explore, which is a direct spin off from the results we will receive, is to develop further our referal program. This will reinforce the levels of customer satisfaction we are achieving !

So, two ways to monitor what our customers think, firstly ask them, then ask them to refer us, that will uncover who is willing to be associated with our business, an interesting project for us which I am happy to post the results for everyone to see.

I guess as a sidepanel to this excercise, we will pick up a host of issues to address and more items for the OpenCRM wishlist, both of which will no doubt raise areas for future discussion here.

I have just come off the phone from a potential client and he passed on a comment, made to him by a competitor (well not really, but it makes them feel good), which made me smile.

“What you going for a hosted solution, OH, you know they don’t work like everyone thinks they do, you need to have a cloud account with Amazon before you can use them, and you need an account for each user”…..

Now I know that this could just be a ‘newbie salesperson’ who doesn’t know his A from his elbow, it sure sounds like that, but are there really people out there, that don’t A) understand what SaaS is all about and B) so desperate for business that they are trying to mislead potential CRMers into believing this trash?

I guess this is a beware post, the world is full of stupid people (yes, I even count myself in this group at times as well), so check with an adult before you believe what your told, or read up on the Electrical InterWeb, there is a load of good solid reference to SaaS and the benefits.

I will, of course, post a link to our own SaaS benefits document, just as a blatant Sales Pitch for OpenCRM, but it did make me smile :0)

On the 31st of December at 12:00 all OpenCRM systems will start to update automatically.

This will be complete by 9:00 1st January.

This change will affect all OpenCRM users.

The main update will set the default level of VAT to 17.5%. The current level of 15% VAT will still be available as an option. Existing records will not be effected, thier rates will remain as originally set.

As part of this update, we will be streamlining the way that VAT is managed across all versions of OpenCRM, in particular vertical or bespoke solutions.

If users are using line level VAT the table that manages the VAT selection is being rationalised also.

This is the second phase of development that sees a full merge of all versions and add-ons for OpenCRM, including muti currency support for SageLink for OpenCRM.

Just a quick update on some testing of our hard ‘opt in’ and soft ‘opt in’ eCampaign.

Just to qualify what I mean by these terms;

Hard – the person has been asked specifically if they would like to receive details by email, and have elected to do so by ‘ticking’ a box. This list is also cleaned on a regular basis, with the person being asked either, “do you want to remain on the list”, or at worst “here are your subscription details, do this thing if you want to be removed”. So in principle a high level of “buy in”.

Soft – these are the ones where the “box is already ticked” and they need to untick it, or the data comes from ‘other advertised’ sources, with contact details soliciting contact.

Now, I guess my initial instinct was that the Hard opt in details would get a higher delivery rate, as these are actively checked, and that was the case. But there has been a percentage of these addresses that were undeliverable, which is odd if the address was checked within the last 8 weeks (as the case with the list we purchased), and some of the Out of Office Replies indicate that the address has been retired for some time – I got one, from a small business, that said they were closed as the owner had literally retired, so no emails would be read on this address, Hmmm so could that really have been checked in the last 8 weeks, perhaps, but seems odd!

Of course there will be address details that have just “gone away”, are incorrect (human error), or just got sick of receiving emails and turned the address off, but if what you are paying for is clean data, and this is being ‘sold’ to you as a service to maintain the cleanness of the data (8 weeks check period), then I might have expect less problem records.

The other big thing for me was the ‘click through’ rate.

We track, through OpenCRM the click throughs from the email, and the specific links that get clicked. We track this right down to the specific contact that was sent this email. Incidentially, we track each click through, so if you click on three different links, we receive the activity report of each click, from where (campaign, mail piece and link in mail piece), when and context in terms of the campaign, and because we run a live statistics component on our site, we can see who enters the site (in real time, not just Google analytics), which pages you view, in which order, and can invite you to a Live Chat to help answer any immediate questions. Now this is all a bit Big Brother, but a great marketing tool.

Back to the plot …….

One interesting point relating to click throughs, we received 40% more from the Soft Opt In list, than the Hard list. Which given logic, we thought was odd.

We actually received a higher number of enquiry from the Soft list, and incidentially, they spent more time online.

Part of our sales process is to make it very easy for prospective clients to see the product ((OpenCRM Demo) so the ability to see browsers who start at the OpenCRM website, go to the online demo and see what they view and how long they are online, gives us a wealth of information to help profile our approach.

So, upshot at this stage, ‘Hard’ did not give us anything more except a higher bill to procure the data, and ‘Soft’ is easier to come by so gives us a larger marketing opportunity.

We will do the next batch of 20,000 pieces and keep you updated.

Note : just a point, one thing that does need highlighting, when we relay emails we need to be aware of any potential high rate of undeliverable’s, this can have an impact on the mail cluster and any black marks against the IP addresses. So ‘Hard’ (with a lower % failure rate) does have an advantage in lower human resource costs, in short we don’t need to check as often or as deep when sending to the Hard Opt In list, as generally the data is more accurate and therefore undeliverable’s are less.

So, here we are starting the new multi channel campaign today, focusing on the “Plate Spinners of the Business World” theme, trying to get people to buy into the idea that better procedures will lead to consistency and allow business Principles (that’s Directors, Owners and Senior Managers) to ‘Spin more Plates’.

I will keep you informed of the key points that are being raised in the eShot campaign, the telemarketing effort and the live seminars that we are conducting around the UK.

Ooops… better rush, I’ve a got a plate (or two) to keep spinning :0)

Graham