I just attended our CRM 2011 Launch Event and as an end user, I AM TRULY EXCITED!!! I am just a sponge at events like these where I can see live demonstrations, hear about the new features, interact with the presentators, and ask questions. I’m probably not the person you want to sit next to if you need it to be quiet in order to focus because I’ll be the person saying, “I didn’t know you could do that” or “Do we have a workflow set up like that for sales?” or “Oh…that’s a neat feature I didn’t know about…I’m going to have to give that a try”. I was feverishly taking notes and make a list of action items for myself.
Perhaps the most exciting demonstration of the day for me was to see how a can use CRM 2011. As a volunteer at a non-profit, I know firsthand how important financial donations from the public are in order to provide our services. We want to nurture those relationships with our donors and attract new donors.
CRM allows you to track your contacts, donation levels, the type of campaigns they typically respond to so when you are planning for the next year’s campaigns you can accurately forecast results for that campaign. I volunteer at an animal shelter so we could even track whether they are a cat or dog person or both! What is cool about CRM you can have all this information in one place. You don’t need to pull up multiple excel spreadsheets from the previous years that might be stored somewhere on your desktop. That’s if you can even find them. Imagine the time and energy you will save knowing that all your contact information and past campaigns are all in one system for quick access. Hard to believe? See for yourself how CRM 2011 can be used in your non-profit.
DFC Consultants will be hosting a on June 14th at 10 am central. We’ll show how CRM can be used for donation and pledge management, tracking your membership and your volunteers, how you can manage your campaigns and how reporting works so you can see if your campaigns are effective.
Cost is always a concern for non-profits and CRM Online is truly affordable. For per user in the United States.
By Vanessa Veflin, DFC Consultants, a
