Getting your address book “business ready”

Keeping your address book organized is not easy- but if you are using your address book for business, do mind the following points when you are getting started with a CRM system. The rest can wait for now.

Complete Prefix and suffix fields: This is a field in all CRM systems where you then have a drop down for Mr., Ms. Mrs. or Dr. You will be surprised how little they are used until you try to do your first email

"merge" or batch emailing. Ideally you need to add this before the name of the customer. Not a big deal for personal emails but a must for proper business communication. If you don’t have this, it means that you have to go to each single email and add the prefix before each name.

Telephone format fields: Sometimes you have the area code and in some others you don’t. In most cases you never use the + symbol or the 1 for the US. This is minor issue but if you use Skype or any other

calling app (VoIP) it will make it easier to call as this is the format that they require. Most importantly for those international travelers, you can call from the address book without having to do some finger acrobatics on your mobile phone. With the proper + and country code you can call any number in your address book immediately from any country without doing anything else. This is handy for urgent calls!

Address format needs to be complete with zip code and for those with international customers with the country filled in. In case you do a mailing per post, your data will be ready to go.

Names.Use full names and make sure that the spelling is correct. If there is a nickname, many address books offer a field for this as well.

Duplicates. Check your contacts to see if you have any duplicate names. This will prevent you from sending multiple emails to the same person which does not look professional.

Use proper labels for customer data.All contact address books allow you to label addresses, emails, and telephones - like Home, Work, Mobile labels to name a few. Ensure that customers’ information is labeled "work". Oftentimes when you need to send a post mail, you need to indicate which address is the correct one before you print the labels. This is the same with email campaigns as you need to specify

which email is to be used.

Before you start with a new CRM system, make sure that you do this before importing the data. In this case you can do it from your trusted address book which you have been using for a while instead of trying

to do this in the new software. This is also important if you need to "map" the fields between the address book and the CRM Software iPad.

One last point is keeping the data updated. Make it a habit after sending an email newsletter communication to your customers for example, to verify for bounce backs. If this is the case, try to call the customer and find out if the email changed or to find if the person still works there. If the customer has moved on, then this is a good opportunity to reconnect with the customer as there may be a new

business opportunity where he is working now. For direct mail, do check for returned pieces and update the address, otherwise it is not money well invested.

Read more on how Clue CRM manages data importing

The points above are also applicable to the clue CRM app which is one of the best iPad Small Business Apps. Compared to other systems you don’t need to export your data from your address book to a excel CSV file and then map it to the CRM system. With Clue this is not necessary as we just import the data from your iPad address book, eliminating both steps. However before you import, we recommend that you clean up the data on your computer. If you want to get started right away, at least ensure that the following data is cleaned up before:

Prefix: Mr. Mrs. Ms. Dr. This is used when sending multiple emails otherwise you will send an email with a salutation: Hello Smith instead of Hello Mr. Smith. So add this to each contact.

Label contact company details correctly. So mark their work email, address and telephone using the "work" label. This will properly organize the "company" fields in Clue.

Duplicates. If you use mac mail use this â€|., for outlookâ€|.or specialized software. (I will provide some software which helps to do this).

The rest of the fields can be changed at a later time in your computer address book and synced to the clue CRM App which is one of the best Small Business Apps For iPad.