The NetOffer Contact Manager is a powerful contact management tool that can replace ACT or Salesforce.com for many users.
The Contact Manager is available to ALL Account owners.
The main complaint that most business owners have of their contact manager tools is that they are very complicated to use and therefore they do not get used as much as they could and should be used.
The NetOffer Contact Manager is central to the business community building process. Here is the process for using the Contact Manager effectively:
- Community Members initially may either Register with you (create a new account on the NetOffer system through your portal) which means that they become a ‘Sponsored Member’ or they may Connect with you (if they already have an account on the NetOffer system) meaning that they become a Connected Member.
- You then visit either the Sponsored Member or the Connected Member list and click on the Vendor ID # of the Community Member. Clicking on the Vendor ID# creates a Contact Manager Member Record for that Community Member.
- Once you have created a Contact Manager Member Record you have the ability to classify the Community Member so that you can group them in significant ways, and, you have the ability to record private information about the Member, and record private communications with the Member.
- You may Classify Contacts in the Contact Manager according to any or all of three classification schemas. We call these these schemas Category, Type and Source, however, you may alternatively think of them as Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3. You create and edit the classes using the Classify Contacts tool in the Contact Manager section of the menu.
- Once you have set up your Classes you may visit any Member Record and classify the Contact accordingly. Once classified you may use the Search Contacts tool to find Contacts based on the Classes that you have established.
- Each Contact Manager Member Record allows you to record a variety of information about the Contact that may not be public knowledge, such as Spouse Name and Birth Date. All information contained in the Member Record can be exported as a .CSV (comma separated values) file and may then be used however you wish.
- You may record ‘Comments’ about conversations or thoughts that you have had with the Contact. A date and time stamp is placed on these Comments for your future reference.
- You may tell the system to ‘Schedule Reminders’ which will trigger an email sent on the morning of the date entered into the system. The Email Notification will include the last 4 Comments you recorded along with essential contact information so that you can print off the email and use it as a reminder for your next contact conversation or other communication.
- You may schedule multiple regular ‘Reminders’ to be sent with recurring messages on a weekly, monthly or annual basis.
- Emails that you send to your Contacts, either individually or by using the ‘Send Message to All’ process are recorded in the individual recipients Member Record for future reference.
- You may keep your Contact Manager data up-to-date and accurate by clicking a [Refresh Source Data] button that retrieves current data from the source files for the Community Member and allows you to elect to update your data files with the data from the Community Member’s source records.
- You have three custom data fields where you can store custom data about the Members of your Community.
- When you send a Broadcast Email to any or all of your Community Members a copy of the outbound message is stored in each Member’s Record so that you always have a record of what you sent.
Future enhancements will be announced as they are developed, however, our goal is to keep the Contact Manager tool simple so that you will find it’s use easy to implement in your daily activities.
