January 11, 2007

Microsoft Outlook Your Hidden CRM-light Gem

Sometimes it surprises me how slow I am to know the hidden gems in technology. However, I'm comforted that I'm human and simply can't know everything about technology.

One thing I HATE is having to send email to a lot of people via a BCC field. The BCC field is used, however, to a) hide the email addresses of other people and b) most importantly in marketing it looks better than having everyone scroll through 500 different email address to see the email message.

Although there's many powerful programs like ACT!, SalesLogix, GoldMine, Maximizer and so many others you can use for powerful desktop CRM - Microsoft Outlook does a decent job. I'll bet that 30% of you know this already. The other 70% - keep reading.

You can send personalized, custom emails to a selected contact list. Those of you who are power mail merges in Word love that you can make a letter with custom and personalized information - you can do the same via email using Outlook.

The integration between Word and Outlook is seamless.

My only complaint is that Outlook keeps asking, for each email, for my permission to send the email. I wish there was a security setting I could set to say "YES" to let the email be merged and sent. Microsoft knows this is an "issue" and is working on a solution in the next version of Microsoft Office.

Outlook asks this question so that in case there's a rogue program on your system, email won't get sent without your permission.

I'd love to hear about your CRM "light" experiences.

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