Direct Marketing – Strategy for business promotions!

What is Direct Marketing?

Direct Marketing is a form a advertising that allows business to communicate straight with the customer by the means of phone, email, mobile messaging, brochure distribution, promotional letters etc. Direct marketingmethod is used by all sizes of business from startups to multinational companies. Direct Marketing is an attractive method as the results can be measured directly.

Direct Marketing Channels:

1. Email marketing: Sending marketing messages through emails is the most widely used strategy for marketing. It is relatively inexpensive and much easier to execute.

2. Mobile: Mobile marketing includes SMS, MMS, Mobile Banner Ads etc. This enables the business to engage with prospective leads in an interactive manner through mobile devices, smart phones or tablets.

3. Online Tools: With the expansion of technology and ideas, use of online tools and application has been rapidly increasing. Social media sites being the most popular these days along with banners and google ads etc.

4. Telemarketing: The most common and the oldest method of marketing is telemarketing where marketers contact customers through phone for lead generation.

There are various other ways how marketing is done. Some of the techniques could be time consuming or expensive but may offer more benefits.

Marketing is one of the main process in the business life cycle. It requires a lot of attention, strategy and analyses. Making time for marketing and concentrating on how to improve and make use of better marketing techniques is very much essential. Marketing is a mixture of sales, advertising, public relations and publicity.

Would you like to know more about Marketing Management? Read this article on Marketing Management Software.

SMS configuration with CRM

CRM can be configured with SMS integration to work with inbound SMS responses from customer or sales agents.

Maple CRM provides flexible SMS integration solutions and ensures that SMS communications can effortlessly keep running and it can provide continuous and consistent SMS delivery.

SMS marketing is considered to be one of the few marketing techniques that is used to reach the targeted customers at anytime and anywhere.

Consider a sample SMS configuration to know how it could help in a typical business flow. Company A is into telemarketing where it deals with generating leads and scheduling meetings for the sales executives.

With a well placed CRM, you have the records of all your contacts, leads and customers. You can easily monitor whats happening with a lead, which sales agent is working on it and how interested the customer is in your product/service.

But many a times it so happens that the meeting which is scheduled with the Sales Agent often gets postponed or cancelled and it goes uninformed to the sales agents resulting in loss of time and confusion.

So what if you have a system that could confirm both customer and sales agents time schedule and cancel if none responds. So if they receive SMS notification regarding the meeting and if they respond back to the SMS, then only the meeting time is confirmed. This process could happen few hours before the actual time scheduled. This can avoid Sales Agents to travel till the client’s place unnecessarily. This also saves up the time of your sales agent.

Such SMS integration can happen with SMS templates which could be even more easier when things are all automated and responses are sent automatically based on the time duration.

Read more on CRM with SMS integration.

CRM Solution

Most companies have different techniques and tools to improve business process and procedures. CRM is one of the most used and effective strategy for business. The software gives a platform for your business to handle the business functions and to automate the business processes.  

CRM software applications has the capacity to operate various functions and the information stored in the database can be reused throughout.

Online CRM like Maple CRM has been considered an efficient CRM software for managing all the business functions. Maple CRM software offers many advanced and easy to use features like:

1. Contacts Manager
2. Grouping and Tagging
3. Lead Management
4. Calendaring
5. Personal Tasks
6. Activities and Schedules
7. Notes and Remarks
8. Attachment of documents
9. Advanced Search
10. Account Charts.
11. Account Management
12. Custom Reports
13. Email marketing
14. Bulk email and SMS
15. Email and SMS templates
16. Contacts Import
17. SMS Integration
18. Website Integration
19. Account Classification
20. Email Integration
21. Zipdial Integration
22. Product Catalogue
23. Work Backlog
24. Standard Reports
25. Accounts Archive
26. Schedule notifications


Maple CRM can put you on the racing track to compete and win on profits. It puts all the information at the center, keeps your employees inspired and customers happy. Maple CRM ensures that your business gets going easily.

Have a look at the product brochure here: Maple CRM Product Brochure

Why Hotels need effective CRM?

Hospitality industry being a major employer includes service sector work like tourism and food service along with lodging, restaurants, amusement etc.

Hotel operations vary in size, function, and cost. Most hotels and major hospitality companies that operate hotels have set widely accepted industry standards to classify hotel types.

The industry has great opportunities to connect with new and the existing customers. With the present pace of booming IT sector, business hotels offer conference and meeting locations.

Experience and research states that there are few crucial elements that points out to use CRM as a business strategy for both sales & marketing as well as guest service in Hospitality Industry. The fact is that even hotels need effective CRM solutions. One of the main concentrated benefits is that the CRM ensures that the hotel’s technology is up to date and that a hotel can track a customer’s satisfaction and the details of his stay.

CRM allows hotels to maximize profitability by creating loyal customers, improving customer service and improving customer retention.

Read some more benefits of using CRM for Hospitality Industry: CRM for Hotels and Resorts

Small Business CRM Software

CRM for Small Business

Large businesses have different plans and goals where as small organization have different goals and different plans. Small Business CRMs are quite helpful in increasing revenues, it improves lead conversion rates, smoothens the sales cycle, provides better customer service and brings in improved profits.

But before implementing such a CRM software for organization the business owners should ask themselves a few questions justifying the need and requirement of a small business CRM like - Why CRM? - Do you even need a CRM solution? How to choose best CRM? etc.

The business CRM softwares are present in abundance in the present software market. But you should not take any decision hastily. Understand and analyze each and every aspect of the business CRM software and then only consider buying it.

Small business CRM software are available online which can improve your overall working model as it is cost effective. Web based Small business CRM can be implemented must faster than the on-premise CRM software. They are location and computer independent which enables CRM users to access the software from anywhere at any time.

Customer Management Software

Customer Management Software can be used to manage the entire sales process. This could include scheduling appointments, storing contact details, activities and to-dos, recording all interactions with customers as well as generating accurate reports to understand the result of the process.

In today’s business evnvironment, customers are demanding for a higher level of customer service. The customer service executives need to be empowered with all the information related to the customer at their finger tips.

Customer service is all about the customers perception. You have to do more than just get the job done. You must deliver on all the things (big and small) that affect the relationship with your clients.

Achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction involves having all information about the customer at your fingertips. Businesses need to know their preferences, their behavior, their purchase history as well as their demographic and psychographic information. CRM solutions can make this information available at every company executive’s desk. Practically, every company representative can find out anything that he wants to know about a customer in ‘real time’. For instance, all outstanding issues with the customer such as unpaid balances, outstanding complaints and orders being shipped are available at the click of the mouse at every executive’s desk.

No wonder, CRM is expected to unlock the doors of customer satisfaction. By connecting the back office and the front office, CRM has the ability to make the organization function like one entity and not like many departments. A CRM software system isn’t just a good to have sort of but it can do wonders for your business and help improve the productivity of your business.

Where to find a good Customer Management Software?

Maple CRM is a customizable easy to use Customer Support Management Software with useful features for your business. You can manage Sales, Marketing and Customer service in an efficient way using Maple CRM. All in all a simple integrated software that suit any type of business and can help in business functions.

CRM Software Solutions

In the world of information technology, CRM standing for customer relationship management is a technology used to profile customers as well as track their buying records in order to assist the sales staff in providing better service for each customer. Overall customer relationships are improved as a result.

It can also be defined as a business philosophy which involves identifying, understanding and better service providing for your customers while building a relationship with each customer to improve customer satisfaction and maximise profits. It's about understanding, anticipating and responding to customers needs.

To manage the relationship with the customer a company needs to collect the right information about its customers and organise that information for analysis and action. It needs to keep that information up-to-date, make it accessible to employees, and provide the service as needed.

The secret to an effective CRM package is not just in what data is collected but in the organising and interpretation of that data. The customer data and information will be stored in CRM and with the help of this you can access these details, manipulate them and make your decision from anyplace in the world at all times. Thus helping companies build a strong link with their customers and increasing its stronghold with its customer, giving a profitable return of investments through the business.

Customer Relationship Management promises faster customer service at lower costs, higher customer satisfaction and from this, better customer retention and ultimately customer loyalty. Naturally, all this is done in hope for more sales and profits!

Know whether CRM is required for your business