Customer relationship management (CRM) is important for small businesses, as it allows you to monitor and analyze how customers interact with your company. There are many companies that have created software that helps make small business CRM easier. Most of those platforms function as Software as a Service (SaaS) so you pay a fee every month or year to retain access to the software. The amount you pay will depend on the company, what services they offer, and how they price their service.
What is CRM Software?
Small business CRM software is a tool that allows sales, marketing, and customer service employees within a company to organize and coordinate their data and activities. Small business CRM software and platforms make it much easier for employees to access and organize their data and communicate with the customer or client. In short, it’s a software that helps you manage the relationship and communication between your company, employees and customers.
What are Per-User and Per-Contact Pricing?
Per-user pricing charges your business according to how many employees, or users, have access to a particular software. Generally, a single platform will have multiple plans with pricing options that determine how many users and what special features you can use.
Per-contact pricing charges your business according to how many contacts, or users, you have. Unlike with per-user pricing, with per-contact pricing, the cost for individual contacts generally goes down as you add more. For example, you may pay $10 for 1,000 contacts, but $20 for 10,000.
The Downsides of Per-User Pricing
As your small business grows, you will need to hire more employees and they will need access to the platforms you use. What do you do when you need more users on a platform than your small business CRM plan allows? You upgrade your plan. Unfortunately, that means a price jump, usually a pretty significant one. Not only are you paying for a new user, but the price for all of your users has gone up. If you intend to hire more employees soon, or if you want to use the extra features you will have access to, the cost can be worth it. But if you do not need the features and you only have a few employees more than your plan limit, the price jump may be a frustrating extra expense.
You can limit the number of logins you use by having employees share logins, but this limits transparency and accountability because you can not see who did what through the account.
The Downsides of Per-Contact Pricing
With per-contact pricing, the more people you are trying to market to, the more you will pay. This is fine if your company has a tiny target audience or a very large team, but that is not true of most small businesses.
Getting contact information from someone does not guarantee future sales to that person. You can curate your contact list to include your most active or interested customers, but you do not want to lose out on future customers by deleting a seemingly inactive contact. Since per-contact pricing charges you for each contact, you pay just as much for inactive contacts as active ones.
Does Your Small Business Need Help With Small Business CRM?
Contact Blue Ridge Media Company in Cleveland, Ohio! We are experienced in helping small businesses CRM. Our expert team can help make your website and email newsletters the best they can be, increasing customer engagement and web traffic. Feel free to contact us through our website or by phone at (888)-336-9235.
