HubSpot
Cloud-based business applications offer brilliant, flexible, and affordable solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. They have their own structure, business model, benefits, and challenges, including contact management. We asked David Anderson, LionDesk Founder and CEO, about the impact of these platforms on the growth of SMBs and the importance of keeping different tools aligned. This is what he told us. Q&A With David Anderson, LionDesk CEO 1. How do you think cloud-based solutions and SaaS are impacting the growth of small and medium-sized businesses? Consumer expectations are at an all-time high. To remain competitive, businesses must evolve to deliver products and services faster, easier, and better. SaaS technology allows businesses to keep up with demand while running their business effectively and efficiently. For example, a LionDesk user can set up their system to remind them of important tasks, automatically follow up with contacts throughout the year, and show them at-a-glance…
Which apps are you using to power your marketing operations? Most teams collect and use data in their CRM as well as several marketing apps, such as an email marketing tool and automation software. These apps enable you to streamline operations, bring in more leads, and carry out effective marketing campaigns. However, do they work together and exchange data about your marketing leads and customers, or do they operate in silos? If you take away one thing from this post, make it this: Your marketing apps are strong independently, but they’re most powerful together. As a marketer, the most impactful sync to set up is betweenyour CRM and marketing apps. This sync has the potential to enrich data in your marketing platforms, amplify possibilities for segmented and personalized communication, and boosts performance. It also sets you up foralignment with sales. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to connect your CRM with…
The amount of data in the world is growing exponentially. By the time you finish reading this page, 90 million texts will be sent and received. 350,000 Instagram posts will be uploaded. 1.2 million Skype calls will be made. 21 million GB of traffic will be received on the internet. Big data is everywhere, from the Netflix shows we watch to the social media we browse. But did you know that big data can also benefit your small business? 61% percent of companies say that big data drives revenue because it delivers deep insights into customer behavior. With this valuable intelligence, you can delve deeper into the collective psyche of your customers — and find out what consumers really think. Imagine you could guess what customers purchase — and when and how. Big data isn’t a crystal ball, but it can certainly help you make smarter, faster decisions about the…
Proper contact management is essential to keep your business productive and organized. But while technology offers countless solutions to effectively manage contacts at scale, without good processes your contacts can get messy very quickly. Without proper planning, centralized administration, and automated syncing, contacts end up being spread across multiple email accounts and other databases. When your contact management processes break down, some team members may be tempted to go back to paper or DIY solutions, noting down contacts on sticky notes where they inevitably end up getting lost or mislaid. With the extra work required to find the right data and tidy things up, it’s not a recipe for productivity for anyone. Fortunately, with the optimal blend of process and technology, you can improve access to this mission-critical information across the board. Here are five tips to improve your organization’s contact management systems for the smoothest operations, productivity, and reliability.…
Over 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI. Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to engage your contacts and nurture them to becoming long-term customers, one email at a time. But how can you get the best results from email marketing? Some of the best practices for effective email marketing include: Personalization and segmentation for the most tailored messages High-quality content that delivers value with every email A/B testing emails, especially workflows, to refine your messages Not sending emails too often, nor forget to send them for so long that your contacts forget who you are But to be in the best position to increase your email marketing conversions and get the highest ROI, there are many valuable tools worth adding to your marketing stack. We’ve compiled 10 of the best to get started with. 10 Tools to Get Better Results From Email…
So you’ve decided to grow your business. You might already be thinking about best practices to avoid common pitfalls when scaling. But this doesn’t mean that your business will be immune to challenges. The best strategy for growing businesses is to be aware of common problems so you can prevent them or fix them fast. Here are seven of the most common growth problems faced by small businesses and the best ways to prevent and solve them. 7 Challenges for Growing Businesses 1. Your earliest employees are unhappy. The Problem: While working for a growing business sounds good in theory, some of your earliest employees might start to show signs they’re unhappy. Why do things have to change? Why can’t we all sit around the same meeting table anymore? Why can’t I chat with the CEO whenever I need to? How to Avoid It: If your longest-standing employees are unhappy,…
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley,” wrote Scottish poet Robert Burns. Even the finest, most well-thought-out plans sometimes have to be set aside for reasons outside of your control. During times of uncertainty, one of the most important traits for any business to have is flexibility. With a willingness to adjust plans, divert from the original strategy, and make small or large pivots, your business can be more resilient during stormy weather. If your business is facing uncertainty and the road ahead is unclear, here’s how to add more flexibility to your plans, projects, and strategy to help you get through it. How to Make Your Business Flexible During Uncertainty Accept what you need to postpone or change. If the landscape your business exists in has suddenly changed, you will need to make changes inside your organization, too. That’s especially the case if you…
You’ve decided to become a freelancer. You’re the boss of your own time, your business, and the projects you choose to work on. There’s a lot going on, from finding new clients to managing your workload. The truth is… you kind of have to do everything, especially when you’re just starting out. To maximize your chances of success, one of your first decisions as a freelancer is how to manage your processes – especially your invoices, accounting, clients, and projects. To find, retain, and receive glowing reviews from clients, you need an efficient and scalable way to stay on top of invoicing, accounting, time tracking, and client management. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to neglect the billable tasks that build your business and always be playing catch-up. After a lot of testing, here’s our pick of the best freelancer apps to manage your business and prime your freelance career for…
Old email addresses, duplicate contacts, misspelled names… these are the bane of your marketing and sales efforts. After all, your CRM and marketing tools are only as strong as the data you’ve got in them. If you have poor-quality data in your databases, you’re setting up to fail in your sales and marketing initiatives. Your customer data is the most valuable asset your organization has, so it’s important to ensure it’s serving your business’ bottom line as much as possible. A solid data quality strategy will not only save you hours of janitorial work, but it makes sure your data is trustworthy – which means that any insights you gain from this data are much more accurate and useful for your business. So, to help you figure out how to have the best possible contact data in your business databases, we’ve put together four tips to clean up your data.…
With the technological developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution impacting how we all live, work, and relate to one another, a rapid pace of change is happening across all businesses. This is doubly true in uncertain times, where organizations in every industry are faced with a sudden need to switch to working styles and make their business more resilient and flexible. It’s a good time to ask how your business can organize its key processes to deliver the best experience for both your employees and your customers. With the optimal blend of people, processes, and technology, you can make your organization adaptable to change and in the best position to grow and thrive. With that in mind, here are seven organization tips for businesses to help you continue on the right track. We’ve also included relevant goals for each tip, so you can measure your success over time. 7 Organization…