MarketUP: Marketing & PR Services

So many discussions swirling around 'economic recovery'...Has it started? When will it start? Will it last? Where are the jobs? It's not just that uncertainty remains, it's the paralysis that overtakes individuals and corporate decision-makers because they're waiting for a definitive answer that chafes.

My last post was around the reasons marketers like/need to use a decent CRM system. I concluded with the statement that we were going to test-drive FreeCRM.com for a new client. Well, this is my follow up report on that experiment: FAIL.

While at first glance FreeCRM appears to have decent functionality, if a very inelegant interface, once it was populated with some data, it began to show its flaws. Rather than write a full description of some time consuming frustrations - I'll keep it to just a couple of important points to know if you are considering using this application.

1. Export of data is a MESS. It does not retain records in an accurate format - and produced a dump with dozens of duplicates and mis-matched fields. Never could figure out how it did this. Importing the data INTO the system worked pretty easily.
2. Setting up reports - too difficult and time-consuming, and not everything necessary.
3. But the real killer for us: WEB-TO-LEAD FORM is not technically available! Yes, they provide a very convoluted guideline in a download for you to configure your own XML-API, but even following their example, the data never populated the CRM.

So - this wasn't working for us, since one of the key points to using a database was to provide a Contact form on the website to capture new contacts, have the information enter the CRM database and semi-automate a number of possible activities, including automatic responses.

The good news is that we've found a new and better replacement (I think). Zoho CRM - part of a 'suite' of productivity apps from Zoho.com, an up and coming world presence (or so several business trades think, including Time, the Economist and Business Week).

So far it is much easier to use, much easier on the EYE (looks a lot like Salesforce.com) - and it's FREE for up to 3 users! Not on a trial basis, but ongoing. Even this free version has not one, but TWO different web forms - one for Leads and one for Contacts - that can be set up in minutes. And they work! And you can customize them!

If only I had discovered this first...would have saved hours of fussing and aggravation. Now I have the pleasure of spending hours 'playing' with it, configuring it and deciding which of the many sister apps will be best to adopt.

--Donna
From now sunny but still soggy Georgia