Contact management software

Customers are the lifeblood of any business, so it’s important to keep their information organised and easily accessible. Modern contact management software decreases input errors, saves time, and helps your team procure and organise up-to-date customer information.

In this guide, we’ll review some of the basic features of this useful sales technology, as well as explore some of the latest innovations and how they help.

• What is contact management software?
• Benefits of contact database automation
• Features of a contact manager
• Contact management software trends
• Top 10 contact management solutions
• How to select the best contact management software for your business
• Frequently asked questions
• Try a contact management platform for free

A contact management platform is a digitised address book where businesses can store and organise contact information. Simple, yes, but important.

Disorganised or incomplete contact information causes massive headaches, delays, and missed opportunities. Well-organised and accessible customer data, on the other hand, is easy to search, up-to-date, and most importantly, scales sales performance.

What is it used for?

Organisations of all sizes use contact management software to keep their contact lists organised, current, and remotely accessible by all departments.

It’s a pretty simple function. Which is why many contact management systems are already integrated with other useful business software. Customer relationships management (CRM) and project management, for example.

Is CRM the same thing as contact management software?

Short answer? A CRM (customer relationship management) platform does what contact management tools do, but with more bells and whistles.

CRMs can analyse your customer data to improve coordination between your sales, marketing, and customer service teams. CRMs also include powerful features like pipeline management, email automation, and even a sales power dialer.

Basically, all CRMs include contact management features, but not every contact management app includes CRM features.

Using the right contact database software and customising it for your sales process can lead to:

Better insight into customer behavior

Contact management tools let you store more information about your customers than an address book or spreadsheet. With it, you can view a contact’s entire history, keep in-depth notes about their interactions with you, and easily identify purchasing patterns. All this data means better insights into your current and future customers.

Improved data organisation and accessibility

Maintaining organised, mobile, and up-to-date contact information means everyone in your company can be sure they’re looking at the same data. Teams can work cross-departmentally with confidence, knowing that they’re never wasting time looking at last month’s information.

Improved sales and marketing outcomes

Never allow a lead to fall through the cracks because of mishandled, lost, or incorrect information. Keeping contact data current and organised means more customers can move through the sales pipeline and make meaningful purchases.

Plus, developing an organised sales process based on actual customer information and trends is guaranteed to translate into more sales.

Here are the best contact management tools you can expect to be included with your CMS.

• Contact database: Store all of your contact details, including name, email, phone number, website, social media handles, addresses, and more.
• Data analysis: Tag contacts based on specific demographics, such as age, location, interests, and industry, which allows you to target specific segments of your customer population.
• Lead management software: Capture, track, and score leads as soon as they enter your pipeline, minimizing the chance of dropping leads.
• Prospecting tools: Automate repetitive tasks associated with prospecting, such as qualifying prospects, booking meetings, and finding contact details.
• Integrations: Connect your CMS to the business and sales app you’re already using, like G Suite, Outlook 365, Zapier, social media channels, others.

Our current landscape of technology is a never-ending conveyor belt of innovation, and contact managers are no different. The following trends are shaping the future of online contact management software.

Automation

As AI gets more advanced, automation is here to give precious time back to your sales reps. Automating tasks like customer profile generation and data analysis lets your team focus exclusively on the to-dos that require a human touch.

Customer experience & personalisation

Providing a great customer experience is crucial—86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience, and businesses that focus on improving CX see a stunning 80% increase in revenue.

This is why contact functionality integrated with a larger CRM platform is so valuable. CRM is contact management on steroids, allowing you to improve customer interactions with data-driven precision.

Greater reach

The recent explosion of e-commerce means that businesses have an unprecedented opportunity to sell—and flourish—outside their local markets. Companies are also trending towards employing more remote workers to make this happen.

Having a cloud-based system that is compatible with all devices and browsers means you and your reps can access customer data no matter where you are without sacrificing speed or security.

Expanding channels

Utilising social media for lead management and prospecting is a great strategy for automatically populating your sales funnel. Nowadays, everyone is on social media, so it only makes sense to meet customers where they are. The best contact list software should be able to navigate and draw data from those channels as your customers engage with your marketing efforts.

Enhanced digital experiences

Content is the name of the game, and customers are naturally attracted to the latest and greatest. By keeping an eye on innovations like virtual reality and voice-activated hardware such as Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa, contact systems can stay open to accumulating customer data wherever customers go next.

1. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a sales CRM software solution that offers some of the most useful contact management tools today. With mobile access and a customisable and intuitive user interface, Sell is easily integrated into daily workflow no matter where your team is or what their IT capabilities are.

Zendesk Sell boosts salesforce efficiency by letting your team convert more leads with conversational and consultative selling. That frames your reps as advisors as opposed to salespeople. They’ll also save time by automating repetitive daily tasks.

Features

• Contact database
• Lead capture
• Sales pipeline management
• Lead generation software
• Customer service analytics
• Segmentation
• Prospecting tools
• Referral and sales tracking software
• Performance metrics and KPI sales dashboard

2. Hubspot

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HubSpot is a customer relationship management platform that includes a dedicated contact hub, which offers a drag-and-drop editor, SEO recommendations, and website themes. This sales contact program can integrate with Gmail and Outlook, as well as schedule and track emails and contact activity.

HubSpot’s CRM software is a free CRM platform that integrates with the larger HubSpot ecosystem. Along with contact functions, Hubspot offers other business apps like Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub. While it is well-reviewed by customers, it does not support languages other than English.

Features

• Standard SSL certificate
• List segmentation
• Landing pages
• Contact scoring
• Content delivery network (CDN)
• Record customisation

3. Contact Boss

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Contact Boss is a business contact software offering a “Quick Create” function that allows agents to input new contacts quickly and fill in further details later. It also has features for organising and searching contacts, as well as eliminating accidental duplicates. Its Legacy Data Support function allows users to upload existing contact databases to reduce manual entry.

Contact boss provides contact reports, auditing functions, and security tools to keep confidential information secured. It integrates with Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, as well as common marketing applications such as MailChimp, iContact, and Constant Contact.

Features

• Contact database
• Lead management
• Segmentation
• Data import/export
• Search/filter
• Shared contacts

4. Streak

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Streak is a lightweight CRM for small to mid-sized businesses, and is fully integrated with G Suite applications. It includes features such as social media integration, task management, and email marketing. Live and shareable pipeline information and tasks allow for instant collaboration across teams. Visual reports can track pipeline and individual contributor data.

A tool called “Snippets” can insert commonly repeated text into emails in order to save time. Streak works through G Suite, and is advertised as a useful tool for any number of business needs, including: sales, project management, fundraising, support, hiring, real estate, and business development.

Features

• Pipeline management
• Gmail integration
• Zapier integration
• Mobile for Android & iOS
• Customisable workflows
• Reporting

5. Pipedrive

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Pipedrive is a CRM software for sales teams that focuses on lead generation and contact management. It allows reps to customise the naming of their pipeline stages to fit within a preexisting sales process, and it uses simple drag-and-drop features to track business contacts and lead progress.

Automation tools include one-click contact data collection, webhooks, open API, and an AI-powered sales assistant. It provides tools to help with goal setting, activity tracking, lead qualification, and smart communications. Pipedrive features numerous integrations with other contact software apps, including Zapier, Pandadoc, and Leadfeeder.

Features

• Call recording
• Contact database
• Lead nurturing
• Calendar/reminder system
• Chatbox
• Reporting/analytics

Learn more about Zendesk for Pipedrive

6. ActiveCampaign

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ActiveCampaign is a CRM platform that allows users to personalise messaging, segment customer populations, and automate workflow. This sales CRM software can automate lead prioritisation, task creation, lead nurturing, and contact management. ActiveCampaign can close deals automatically and build branching automations to track the customer journey through various customisable pipelines.

The centralised platform migrates old data for free, and automatically updates contact details. Its email and marketing automation tools include a full email template library and integration with over 300 other commonly used sales tools.

Features

• Analytics/ROI tracking
• Calendar/reminder system
• Contact database
• Lead management
• Landing pages/web forms
• Drip campaigns

Learn more about how to integrate Zendesk Sell with ActiveCampaign

7. Freshworks

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Freshworks’ customer contact management system markets itself as an intuitive customer engagement platform with a straightforward user interface. From a centralised contact management database, sales reps can view prospect details, social profiles, contact info, and all recent activity.

Freshworks’ has an AI-powered assistant named Freddy. This tool can provide predictive contact scoring, analyse historical data for sales insights, and recommend next steps. It offers salesforce automation, marketing automation tools, and segmentation, as well as automated personalised email campaigns. Unfortunately, free 24-hours support is available only on weekdays.

Features

• Calendar/reminder system
• Reporting/analytics
• Internal chat integration
• Data import/export
• Analytics/ROI tracking
• Auto-responders

8. Nimble

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Nimble is a “relationship-focused” CRM featuring Office 365 and G Suite integration, as well as social media connections with popular channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Nimble’s tools can pull contact information from over 160+ apps and has integrations with Zendesk’s Customer Service software.

The various features allow users to segment prospects, send group messages, and set follow-up tasks. With Nimble, users can build out detailed customer profiles as well as track team tasks, events, and calls. Automated email marketing campaigns let users pull from templates to send personalised group emails with tracking, analytics, and reporting capabilities.

Features

• Lead capture
• Sales pipeline management
• Contact database
• Data import/export
• Mobile access
• Prospecting tools

9. Nextiva

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Nextiva is a contact manager serving both small business and enterprise clients. It is known for its business phone functions which include voicemail-to-email capability, call queuing, and a mobile app. This customer contact database includes customer tracking sales and service tools, as well as built-in automations that can send emails, surveys, and auto-responses.

Sales tools include a customisable visual pipeline management tool that allows users to map out and track customers through every stage of their sales journey. Nextiva integrates with Outlook, Salesforce, and G Suite, among others.

Features

• Call monitoring
• Contact management
• File sharing
• Mobile access
• Multi-user collaboration
• URL customisation

10. Keap

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Keap is a CRM for sales and marketing teams with workflow automation that offers features like pre-build reminders, automated emails, and predictive email sending. Keap provides customisable processes and automations, reporting and analytics, as well as a mobile app.

Keap utilises a central contact database to organise leads. It can qualify leads, tag them, and create customisable segmentation and activity triggers. It has over 230 native integrations, including Zapier, PayPal, Outlook, JotForm, and Instapage.

Features

• Contact database
• Customisable templates
• Analytics/ROI tracking
• Calendar/reminder system
• Lead qualification
• Marketing automation

Here are some of the things to consider when you’re shopping around for the right solution.

Cost

Contact database tools are included in many more robust CRM software packages, so prices can vary wildly. Take a good look at your budget and needs to determine exactly what tools will help you achieve your business goals.

Scalability

As your business grows, so will the length of your contact list and the complexity of your sales strategy. Pick a contact manager that can grow with you to avoid messy switches down the road.

Mobile capabilities

Life is mobile nowadays. The best cloud contact manager will include an app for quick and easy access to customer data, no matter where you are.

You’re ready to start looking for the best contact management app for your business, but it’s likely you still have a few questions. Here are the answers to common FAQs concerning CMS software.