Contant Management
-- Choosing Software

When choosing software for your contact management you must be able to manage the more obvious information you will want recorded in your real estate business contact records. This information is best defined by you and dependent on your approach to business and the processes that work best for you to maintain the information.

It is important to have your contact data recorded in a way that offers you the versatility to communicate with different types of contacts easily. Otherwise, you may end up spending hours sorting through the records to find the contacts you need from your list.

Beyond that, if you intend to outsource any of your marketing projects, there are three functions that would make your contact management and group search exporting easier.

Be able to search and sort by any field with combination searches possible – Why is this important? You may only need contacts within a specific zip code, which is an easy search and usually accommodated by any contact management program. But what if you need contacts in a specific zip code that are also only Potential Clients, and have seen the property located at 1234 Main Street? This is a combination search requiring a searching function for three different fields.

Export function to .csv format (comma separated values) from the records that meet the criteria of your searches – After completing a search or combination search, this function allows you to export a file into a format that is most commonly used by outsource companies for imprinting addresses or e-mailing.

Ability to choose specific export fields – Generally, all the information an outsource company will need for direct mailing is the name, company, address, city, state, and zip code. Or if you are outsourcing an e-mail, the name and e-mail address. Avoid providing outside companies with more information than they need to do your project. It could unnecessarily confuse them and delay your job.

Finding a program that offers these functions will require a little research, but in the long-run it will save you time and money.

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