Customer Database

[Chef Isaac]

I would like to get more organized as far as customer information goes. What we do know is do a group email about three times a year to our customers but since we are not really organized, this takes us forever to do.

What I would like to do is to be able to store their name, email adresse, and what they like. For example:

Don Williams Don@gmail.com Likes creamed honey


I would just a list of all of our customers... just like the above. Than we can simple highlight all the emails, copy and paste them into the "To" section of an email and send a group email.

It is important that this database is not in the adresse book of an email account but rather on the hard drive so we can save to disk.

Any recomendations?

We are looking for something that we can have the ability to do a group email quickly and be able to alphabtize easily.

[Aisha]

What I would like to do is to be able to store their name, email adresse, and what they like. For example:

Don Williams Don@gmail.com Likes creamed honey

You might be interested in an on-line autoresponder-type newsletter program like www.aweber.com. I use it for my small business newsletter and some on-line courses I send out. I can sort clients by what is called an "ad category" that I create. It takes a little bit of learning to get it started but then it saves tons of time. I send out whole email courses that I created ahead of time on an automatic basis when someone signs up. Aweber.com has great customer support. Their competitors are programs like Constant Contact.

You can send the emails with "Dear Firstname," so it's tailored. People love it.

Good luck!

[Ben Brewcat]

Microsoft Access. You may already have it on your machine. It's great; you can search, sort, etc. By any field or combination of fields, like email everyone, or just customers in certain towns, or whoever ordered over $200 worth in the last X amount of time. Print mailing labels, write christmas letters addressed to their names, track orders/invoices, send email on their birthday, whatever you want to track.

[Bizzybee]

Open Office, "Base" = Access. Same as MS Office Professional for all practical purposes.

Free for the taking. Only thing missing in the suite is a publisher and email client.

http://www.openoffice.org/