Before you think CRM, think ToDo List. In a earlier post I have a quick overview and review of Remember the Milk (RTM) as a ToDo list package. It is very powerful and has grown up over time so that it now has almost every feature you might need. I love it. For $25 as year it will synch everything between your smart devices and your desktop.
RTM wasn’t designed to be a CRM tool, but it handles the “Customer Relationship” tasks very well. You have to cheat a little to get meaningful reports, but so far it has worked very well for me.
Background: Here is my situation:
I am running a Lead Co-op using Internet Marketing strategies to generate leads for the Network Marketing business I own.
Step #1. I start with a fairly standard Squeeze Page and an Ethical Bribe:
Squeeze Page and eBook on Network Marketing
http://
Step #2. I drive traffic to this page using Solo Ads, PPC, Ad Swaps, JVGiveaways, etc.
Step #3. The information about the leads is collected in AWeber
Step #4. AWeber shines at sending pre-set follow-up emails and one-time broadcast emails. I use AWeber to send the leads a series of pre-created emails about Dr. Hale, Network Marketing, the company I work with, etc.
Step #5. I need to track the results from my various ad sources and my phone calls, one-on-one emails etc.
Step #6. I want to call those people who left their phone number
Steps 5 and 6 can’t be done in AWeber and that is where Remember the Milk (RTM) comes in.
I’m not going to try to write out a full manual, but I will show you how I use RTM to help me handle reaching out to prospects and leads. This is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) function that usually you pay a lot for.
I’m going to walk you through my process.
NOTE: You can use RTM as a CRM even if you aren’t using AWeber. A lot of what follows is how I convert the AWeber export into something I can bulk import into RTM. You can certainly do the bulk import part without AWeber.
BTW – I am assuming that Excel is fairly new (or completely new) and I’ll try to explain each step in detail. You can Google for deeper explanations if something is confusing. If that fails, contact me and I’ll help you.
I collect emails addresses and phone number from squeeze pages on my web sites. Some of these leads I want to follow-up with using the phone. Here is how I do that.
Pick the List You Want To Export
#1 – Pick the list you want
#2 – Click on Manage Subscribers (note that the drop down has hidden the count J . It is much higher than “3”)
Click on the Export as CSV Button
At the bottom of the screen there is an Export as CSV (Comma Separated Values) button. Click that.
Open the File in Excel (or an equivalent)
If you don’t have Microsoft Excel – LibreOffice or Open Office are free and have an Excel compatible spreadsheet built in.
What I want to do is create a text file formatted so that I can insert my rows into RTM automatically.
Here is what I want is lines that look like this.
Pattern: Name phone state http://email_address
Example: Joe smith 555 555 5555 FL http://[email protected]
This will create a task called “Joe Smith 555 555 5555 FL and put the email address into a slot called URL. I cut and paste the phone number into Skype to make calls. (I do have the $60/year version that lets me have unlimited calls in the US and Canada. I have modified my Skype setting so that it reports my cell number as the Caller ID when I call people. I use the State info to tell me what time zone the people are in.
AWeber to Excel to Email to RTM
NOTE: If you are not using AWeber, you can skip down to the place when I have a text file to put into an email.
Here are the steps I go through to get my text file. There are a number of steps here, but if you know Excel (or are willing to learn) they become pretty natural and they take MUCH less time than manually entering the information for each lead.
- Reformat the Phone Column (See Below)
- Find your last version and sort on column D. Figure out the last leads in that group (If you don’t know how to sort, make sure the “Home” tab is clicked and then click on the column header for Column D – it has a “D” in it. That will highlight the whole column. Now up in the right corner of the menus is a button called “Sort and Filter”. When you click on that you will be offered an option to expand the sort to include the whole table. You want to do that. Sorting one column by itself would mess up the table and you wouldn’t be able to see when an individual signed up.)
- Take your current version and sort on column D. Delete everyone you already have in the earlier version. (Highlight the whole area and right click in the area and choose “Delete the entire row” from the options offered.)
- Reorganize the columns so that you end up with name, phone, region, email and country at the left side of the table. (See Below)
- The “Region” column contains the “State” in the U.S. It will be blank for non-USA. Manually insert something like XX or UK or Foreign in those that are from countries. These are ones you don’t want to try calling on the phone.
- Insert a blank column to the left of the email column (Click on the header for a column so that the whole column is highlighted. Right click and choose the “Insert” option.)
- Click on the Formulas Menu option. Click on “Insert Function” at the very left. Choose “Text” as the Category and Concatenate at the function. Press OK. Type http:// in the text 1 box and +F1 in the second text box and then click OK. You should have a column with the email addresses preceded by http:// BTW I know that this should really be mailto:\ but RTM will put this into a slot called URL and recognizes it as an email if you click on it.
- Highlight the name, phone, region, email columns and click on Copy button.
- Paste these into Notepad.
- Manually remove spaces from any lines that are very long.
- Copy and paste all the lines into an email and send it to RTM. You can find the email address in RTM under “Settings” à “Info. Use “inbox” as the Subject line of the email. I’ll talk more about what I do inside RTM later.
- Save the File – use a name that tells you the source and the date. You need to be able to find this file later.
Here are some of the steps in more detail.
Make Columns Wider in Excel
An important feature is how widen a column. The default is about 10 characters and that isn’t enough for columns like the Email Column. If you mouse over the header of a column, you will see the cursor change to an icon with arrows pointing left and right when you go over the line separating columns. Hold the left mouse button down and drag the icon to the right to make the column wider and to the left to make it narrower.