How to pick a database – the age-old marketing question. When you are setting up your online and offline small business marketing plans it is confusing to know what database you should use and if it will be able to accommodate your email marketing needs going forward.

I will start with my sad tale….

I have a great database that I really like (www.clpsuite.com) which has served me well for a couple of years. Lately I have had a burning desire to have online credit card ordering capabilities so I started using www.1shoppingcart.com for my credit card processing AND they offered email capabilities. I thought GREAT! I can have my database, my credit card processing AND my database all in one. NOPE. They do a great job at credit card processing but as a database not at all (it is almost impossible to get your people to “opt-in” which means you can no longer communicate with them – a REAL problem!).

So now I have a database with email capabilities and a online credit card processing system. Two is not bad. I guess. RATS!

So for everyone else, what are my database recommendations?

General Databases – You can put your clients in, send a reasonable amount of emails and set up auto-responders or activity plans

• Microsoft Outlook – already on most computers
• Act – I like the sales funnel reports you can get in Act
• Wise Agent – BEST Database for Realtors
• Top Producer – Widely Used Realtor Database

Email Marketing Programs – If you get over about 400 people in your database I highly recommend that you start having your people in a “real” email program. If I had it to do all over again, I would have started with this as I have about a thousand people and getting them all to opt-in has been a nightmare!

• Aweber – This is the one that I (and the internet business mastery guys recommend – see below). Aweber has great email and autoresponder capabilities!
• Constant Contact – This is a friendly email program that is great for beginners

I should have listened to the Internet Business Mastery Guys! They have a great podcast on iTunes and I belong to their Internet Business Mastery Academy which tells you start to finish what to do for each aspect of your internet business. They said that Aweber was for email and 1shoppingcart.com was for credit cards. Lesson learned – I will listen to their advice from now on!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.