I recently read – The 15 Essential Marketing Masterclasses by Dee Blick.
The main takeaways for me:
The Chapter “Why it Pays to Do Direct Mail” (pg 139) and ” The Secrets of Successful Email Marketing” (pg 181) I found most interesting and relevant to me. The reason being that what Dee says is exactly in line with my experience of direct mail and email marketing over the past 18 years. But Dee also gives advice on how to achieve this in practicality. I myself found back in 2009 when I started on-line marketing that as soon as you want to integrate email marketing, direct mail, telesales etc then it becomes problematic technically and you quickly end up with disparate systems eg Outlook, Excel spreadsheets, a website, as shopping cart etc etc – soon you end up with “Multi System Chaos” and wasting time and money getting these systems to work in a co-ordinated manor. So I fully understand the need for an integrated CRM system to enable leads and customers to be managed effectively.
Another chapter which strongly resonated with me was “How to Wow Your Customers with Genuine Customer Care” (pg 233). Once again from my experience with CRM & Marketing Automation this is an area where having the CRM and automated systems in place enables you to not only Wow your customers and retain them, but to automatically ask them for referrals to reach new prospects and customers by means of a warm introduction. All too often companies are so focused on generating new clients (that cost money) that they neglect existing clients who then fall prey to competitors.
In her book Dee makes the case for upgrading from separate systems like Mailchimp, Aweber et al. to a more sophisticated CRM system which I would full heartidly agree with. Except I would think more in terms of an integrated CRM AND Marketing Automation system than just a CRM. Dee references SalesForce as a possibility which is a very good system, especially for a larger organisation and those that do not need to conduct e-commerce. But there are a range of alternatives out there from the free ones such as Sugar CRM and Zoho to paid for versions, of which of course I am strongly biased towards Keap / Infusionsoft.
So I would definitely recommend this book by Dee Blick. Here is a link to the book on Amazon, please note I do not receive any commission. Enjoy.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-Marketing-Masterclasses-Small-Business/dp/0857084402
Julian
