Why PPC Management Software?
While highly effective in delivering qualified prospects, the management of pay per click (PPC) advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN is increasingly complex. Many software marketers marvel at how their simple campaign with a hundred or so keywords has grown into a multi-national lead generation machine with thousands of keywords, across multiple search engines, and bidding strategies that sound a bit like war.

Successful PPC campaigns require extensive keyword lists, constant management and monitoring, sophisticated bidding strategies, and well-tested creative and landing pages to outperform the competition. Manually managing a PPC campaign of any significant size is nearly impossible.

Paid search marketing software helps software marketers manage their ad campaigns by consolidating campaign management, optimizing bidding, and eliminating tedious account management tasks to improve their marketing return on investment.

Signs Your Company May Need PPC Management Software
Is your marketing team spending more and more time monitoring your PPC campaigns? Have you shifted more of your marketing budget to PPC advertising? Or perhaps you have the opposite problem, a campaign that hasn’t been looked at in months? These are some of the indicators that send marketers in search of paid search marketing software. Another sign that it might be time to abandon your manual optimization efforts are competitor ads that continually outrank yours (and they are NOT spending more).

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CRM in Action: Big River Telephone

To keep its large customer base loyal (in the notoriously competitive telecommunications industry), Big River Telephone decided that it must integrate its back-office and customer-facing functions, and gain centralized control over both areas.

A Focused Implementation and Customization Phase
Working side-by-side with its Sage SalesLogix business partner, Big River examined several leading CRM solutions, ultimately selecting Sage SalesLogix.

“We looked at other software, but only Sage SalesLogix met our needs,” said Kevin Cantwell, President, Big River Telephone Company.

Big River’s business partner led the implementation process, installing Sage SalesLogix suite and integrating it with Microsoft Outlook and Sage MAS 90 ERP in only 90 days. After the initial implementation, Big River’s developers were able to take over and further customize the solution, as a result of the partner’s expert guidance.

Now, Sage SalesLogix resides at the core of Big River Telephone’s business. From sales opportunity management to ongoing customer support and targeted retention marketing, Big River utilizes the solution’s broad functionality to handle all stages of customer relationship management.

Improved Productivity, Customer Service, and Reporting
The new solution has enabled Big River to vastly improve employee productivity and effectiveness. For example, before the implementation, Big River needed six customer service representatives to cover its support lines. Now, using Sage SalesLogix, five representatives perform the same work, but with fewer customer complaints and faster resolution times.

As Cantwell described, “Because Sage SalesLogix delivers up-to-the-minute information, the customer service experience turns out positive, even if there’s a perceived ‘negative’ reason for the call. We know the exact status of that person’s account and how to help them.”

During an outage last year, Big River took advantage of Sage SalesLogix Support to perform critical damage control. They used the solution to e-mail 300 inconvenienced customers and explain the situation, even providing updates every 15 minutes. Once the problem had been resolved, support reps called each customer personally. As a result of these swift and primarily automated efforts, Big River Telephone managed the crisis without losing a single customer.

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The CRM Advisor
You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

This week’s question: “How important is the use of personalization in our email marketing campaigns?”

A: Email is one of today’s most popular marketing communication channels, and as a result, buyers receive hundreds of unsolicited promotions every week.

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Top CRM News

What’s Coming in 2008?
Experts predict that this year will bring many exciting things to the CRM marketplace – new trends, new announcements, new products, and much more. So, what can you expect from CRM in 2008?

State of the Market
The CRM market grew an impressive 14 percent last year, according to Gartner, reaching $7.4 billion.  The analyst firm is projecting an additional 12.5 percent growth in 2008, with the market topping $8.3 billion by year end. 

New Products
• Microsoft CRM Live, which was in beta throughout the latter part of last year, will formally launch in the first half of 2008. 

• TigerPaw CRM 10.6 began shipping on January 1st and includes such new features as quote management, project management, and materials management. 

• Expect SugarCRM 5.5 to appear in the middle of this year, according to company CEO John Roberts.  The new release will feature some of today’s most advanced Web 2.0 collaborative capabilities. 

Key Trends
Web 2.0 
Web 2.0 technologies are expected to spark new innovation in the CRM market this year, with companies scrambling to leverage social media to enable the kind of collective intelligence gathering and instant feedback and communication needed to create closer connections with existing and potential customers.  

Mashup Services
Some CRM vendors will be working on features that allow customer data to be dynamically recombined with other information.

For example, forecasting accuracy can be enhanced by incorporating credit history reports from third-party sources with the records of prospects that are currently in the pipeline.  Or sales reps can better plan their client visits by combining customer addresses with a Google map. 

By Lee B. Salz - President of Sales Dodo, LLC

There is a little test that professional buyers give to every sales person. It is a test to see if they are confident in the price they presented. They call it the flinch test. Will you pass the test?

After a lengthy buying process, the time has come to submit pricing. Countless hours are spent formulating a glorious proposal that details your comprehensive solution. Proud of your accomplishment, you present the proposal to the buyer. Skipping the sections about your company and your solution, she flips right to the pricing page. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t think it would be this expensive!”

What happens next determines whether or not you will get the business. When I say “get” the business, there are two sides to consider. The obvious is whether or not the prospect will award the business to you. The less obvious is whether your company will agree to their desired price level. The negotiation may get to a point where the prospect says they want to award you the business, but at a price unacceptable to your company. If you’ve ever been there, it is painful to say the least. As a sales person, you have a responsibility to facilitate the process in a way that leads to a mutually acceptable conclusion.

There is a trade secret in the purchasing world. They call it the “flinch test.” This is the test Procurement Agents and other professional buyers give to sales people when they provide pricing. “Wow! You are 25% higher than your competition.” These pros are trained to react with surprise so that they can see if the sales person is confident in the price they have put forward. It is nothing more than a straightforward negotiation tactic. Often times, they overstate the price difference such that you can do some quick math and see that the differential is bogus. I can recall a time where I was told that we were 50% higher than the competition. When I reviewed the numbers, this meant that the competitor was losing 18% based on fixed costs that we both had. It was highly unlikely that the competitor was signing up for this kind of an account. When I asked the Procurement Agent about that figure again, he flinched and we ultimately won the business.

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CRM In Action: Infor and CryptoLogic

Focused on integrity and innovation, CryptoLogic Inc. is a world-leading developer and supplier of Internet gaming software. CryptoLogic’s leadership in regulatory compliance makes it one of the few companies with gaming software that is certified to strict standards similar to land-based gaming.

As a provider of one of the most extensive Internet gaming solutions, CryptoLogic-developed software powers one of the largest poker rooms on the Internet and offers more than 260 online casino games and multiplayer bingo games, all in multiple languages and currencies. The company also offers back-office, player, and marketing support services to its customers.

As an international leader in online gaming, CryptoLogic operates in one of the most regulated industries. The company must provide solutions and services that both support its customers’ business growth objectives and meet the wide range of stringent government regulations that exist in most countries.

The business results of CryptoLogic are closely intertwined with the business results of its licensees. “Much of our revenue is based on the volume of online gaming activity that our licensees can achieve,” explains Patrick Siconolfi, manager, CRM Solutions, CryptoLogic. “Because of this, we have even more of a vested interest in seeing that our licensees succeed than most companies.”

In working with its licensees to optimize their marketing programs, CryptoLogic found many areas for improvement. “We found that their marketing dollars weren’t being spent as effectively as possible,” he says. “Many of our licensees were giving promotions to players who didn’t represent the most value to them.”

To correct this situation, CryptoLogic knew that it needed to implement an advanced customer relationship management solution that would help better segment players and do it in an a way that was efficient. The new solution also would need to provide analytics and reporting capabilities so CryptoLogic’s licensees could understand the results from marketing initiatives and continually improve their campaigns.

Getting Business Specific
CryptoLogic chose to implement Infor™ CRM Epiphany® Outbound Marketing to enhance its marketing product suite. “We purchased the Infor solution primarily to make our licensees’ marketing dollars go further and, ultimately, to make them more successful,” Siconolfi explains. “Of all the solutions available, Outbound Marketing clearly offered the best combination of advanced outbound marketing functionality, scalability, and ease of use.”

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The CRM Advisor
You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

This week’s question: “We are about to launch an aggressive email marketing program. Which approach is more effective – HTML or text?”

A: This long-standing debate is one that has yet to be resolved.  As the email marketing landscape shifts dramatically, the answer to this question isn’t so “cut and dried”, and even the top industry experts have yet to agree on which one works best. 

Read more »

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Sales Dodo has just published a white paper on this subject titled “Are There Criminals On Your Sales Team?” which is designed to help employers identify the important components when structuring a criminal background check program for their salesforce. You may think you know criminal background screening, but wait until you read this!

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Upcoming CRM Events
Looking to meet with the leading CRM experts, see the best CRM solutions in action, or network and share ideas with your peers and colleagues?  Then check out these upcoming CRM-focused conferences and trade shows:

9th Annual Sales & Marketing MindXchange
Host: Frost & Sullivan
Dates: January 13 – 16, 2008
Location: Phoenix, AZ

Customer Experience Management Conference
Host: The Conference Board
Dates: February 28 – 29, 2008
Location: New York, NY

4th Annual Customer Feedback Summit
Host: IQPC
Date: February 25, 2008
Location: Las Vegas, NV

CRMA National Conference 2008
Host: The Customer Relationship Management Association
Dates: April 8 – 9, 2008
Location: Atlanta, GA

Customer Contact 2008, East
Host: Frost & Sullivan
Dates: April 13 – 16, 2008
Location: Weston, FL