Last updated on August 3rd, 2023
This guide will help you understand and manage your CRM database of contacts, helping your business stay organized and effective.
Collecting vast amounts of information is a given the longer and longer you’re in business.
Consolidating your customer information in one hub will help you better service them, stay organized, and bring scalability potential.
A CRM database will help you do just this, BUT you still need the management know-how to get the most out of it.
In this article, you’ll learn:
- What Is A CRM Database?
- How Does A CRM Database Improve My Business?
- How Do You Use A CRM Database?
- How Do You Manage A CRM Database?
- Which Database Is Best For CRM?
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What Is A CRM Database?
A customer relationship management (CRM) database is a system that houses the information of the contacts (customers, partners, and prospects) of a business for commercial use or analysis.
Businesses can use this CRM database system to better serve their current and future customers by storing the most relevant data about them.
In fact, 74% of users mentioned that CRM improved how they accessed customer data.
Here’s what you can typically find in a CRM database:
- Primary information of customers (name, email, phone number, company role, etc.)
- The customer journey of the contact
- The communications done with your contacts
- Where the contact was sourced from (email, social media, etc.)
- How the contacts have engaged with the business
- The contact’s status relative to the business (subscriber, MQL, SQL, customer, etc.)
This information alone can be all you need to strategically market, sell and serve the people in your business’s orbit.
On top of that, CRM database software can help you keep your data accurate by alerting you of outdated information, contact bounces, and the like.
What Type Of Database Is A CRM?
Since CRM fills so many shoes for businesses, it has to have multiple database types going for it.
Here are database components that makeup CRM:
- Cloud Database – Easily accessible over the internet and provides encryption that protects information.
- Commercial Database – CRM is used to market and sell to a business’s customer base to make a profit.
- Analytical Database – Stores information on important business metrics, which helps key decision-makers make better decisions.
- Distributed Database – CRM can be accessed on multiple devices as opposed to it just being stored on one device
- Operational Database – Stored informational records that can be updated in real-time and accessed whenever needed.
- Shared Database – Multiple users in the business can access stored information to accomplish tasks (Think of CRM seats, for example.)
How A CRM Database Improves Your Business
Whether in B2B or B2C, customer service is emerging as a cornerstone to business success.
Sure, your product could be excellent, and have stellar marketing, but without having customer and prospect information at your fingertips, there’s a disconnect.
If that sounds familiar, you’re essentially missing out on helpful business systems that a CRM database can provide:
- Automation that saves prospect and customer information based on when they engage with your business
- Customer journey insights that your sales team can use anytime
- A more sharable and highly secure data storage platform compared to traditional spreadsheets
A CRM database is a cloud-based solution that improves your business by taking the guesswork out of who you’ve communicated with, what your business can improve upon, who needs to be contacted, and when.
You can also understand when your prospects are buying and what sales processes led them to purchase. With this understanding, you can repeat what works and scrap what doesn’t.
With more business predictability thanks to your CRM database, you can focus on new goals that will move your company forward in the future.
How To Use A CRM Database: A Tutorial
Using a CRM database is quite simple. Here we’ll outline how to set it up and use it without breaking too much of a sweat.
1. Sign Up For A CRM
Your database will be housed in the CRM you pick. If you haven’t already, sign your business up for a CRM that fits your needs, budget, and learning capacity.
VipeCloud’s Sales & Marketing Suite is a CRM that offers easy-to-use marketing, sales, and customer service tools for your staff. With VipeCloud’s CRM database, you can create and manage contacts easily and access them with ease.
2. Add Contacts
With your customer relationship database up, it’s time to add your contacts.
You can do this process manually, but many CRMs allow you to migrate your old customer data over. Another option some CRMs offer is the ability to upload your contact list from a spreadsheet, and their information will populate into your system.
3. Make Sure Adding Contacts Is Automated
As time goes on and you interact with more prospects and sign new customers, your CRM database should automatically add these people to your system.
Whether it’s an email you’ve received from a B2B founder or a key decision-maker you’re speaking with on social media, having your CRM add them automatically to the database can save you loads of time and potential human error.
4. Add As Much Information As Possible
This is a big step.
It’s very easy to let the automation do all the heavy lifting, but there are a bit more things to do on your end.
As I mentioned earlier, a customer relationship database lets you add more than just your prospects and customer’s name, email, and phone number.
You can add notes, move them in your deal stages, and assign their priority level (this is just naming a few.)
With this in mind, make sure your account managers, marketing, and sales staff consistently add information about prospects and customers where they can.
The information gathered about people in your business’s orbit is valuable data that can fuel future marketing, sales, and customer service campaigns.
How To Manage A CRM Database
As your CRM database is up and running, it needs to be managed well to not bring you any diminishing returns.
So here are 4 pillars of CRM database management to keep your database effective year-round.
1. Assign Contact Owners
CRM contact owners are people in your staff that are responsible for certain contact accounts.
For instance, one of your sales reps working on a deal is the one assigned to the contact for that deal.
This is very easy to do, and it lets everyone see who is in charge of what.
This is also a great form of contact management.
You can have each of your contact owners help keep the information up to date. And speaking of that, let’s delve more into what this is exactly.
2. Keeping Your Data Clean (Up To Date)
CRM stores lots of data, and it’s very natural for certain pieces of information to be outdated or sometimes duplicated.
For instance, one of your customers could be moving to a new office building with a new phone number that you may not have. For scenarios like this, it’s essential to do routine information updates with your contacts.
In this scenario, the contact owner can email the customer asking if they have a new phone number and then update the information.
Keeping your data clean is a cornerstone to CRM database management.
3. Compare The Customer Activities Month By Month
Your business’s CRM database will help you see the customer activity of each contact.
When looking through your contacts, note how they’re interacting with emails, your phone calls, text messages, and other communications mediums.
Maybe you’re seeing a pattern of one communication channel being more effective than others. Or perhaps there are specific seasons where customers are less busy, making them easier to reach.
Comparing customer activities will help you better manage what sales and marketing materials they may need and even what product upsells they could benefit from.
Your existing customers have a 31% higher chance of spending more on their average order value.
This lends itself to customer satisfaction which leads to customer retention.
With a high customer retention rate, you can see great results:
- More natural referrals
- More profitability since their lifetime value is high
- More feedback that can help your business improve even more
4. Create Alerts
CRM push notifications are a great way to keep tasks top of mind. These notifications can let you know when new contacts have been added to your CRM. For example, you can judge whether or not they are relevant for your business.
For instance, sometimes you might get contacted by a company whose services you may not be interested in. If they’re added to your CRM, push notifications can let you know about it, and you can clean up the unnecessary data.
Which Database Is Best For CRM?
This answer is simple:
VipeCloud’s Marketing And Sales Suite is the answer — thanks to not only its built-in contact database…
But also the helpful tools that make serving your customers and running your business evermore simple.
VipeCloud also provides tools that make managing your database easier, like email verification, for example.
See how businesses like yours are leveling the playing field using VipeCloud. Try the Sales & Marketing Suite FREE for 15 days!
Want us to demo it for you? You can request a free one here.
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