CRM Button, Does it or Doesn't it?

[Crescentbunny]

So this might be kind of a long explanation of our situation, please bare with me. We do a monthly newsletter, a cutesy thing with little story tidbits about random things,recipes, and thank your for referrals in them. Clients love it I get comments on it a lot.

Anyway, we generate the mailing list for it as "clients in to the shop in a certain date range" and export the info into excel. Inevitably we wind up sending the newsletter to dead beats we've take off the CRM list because they are bottom feeders. I spend a lot of time hand combing the hundreds of people large lists in order to weed out known bottom feeders AND combing the list for people we've taken off because the letter bounces back and costs us needless postage. I've unchecked people, made double sure, and they will still get sent a newsletter again the next month. Its a lot of frustrating man hours combing lists. I do it WAY too much: Newsletters, thank you cards, and any other of the numerous mid month mailings the boss man likes to do.

We've called to talk to our CRM reps on multiple occasions and out of the 3 times, two times we were told that the CRM check box button IS NOT taken into account when we generate lists, and one time we were told IT IS taken into account when generating lists. So what is the correct answer to this question? If it IS taken into account then I should be able to generate lists and run with them, no more hand combing.

Is there some solution to this? Would Report Pro have one? I've got the boss convinced if Report Pro lists do take it into account we need to get on board because my life is lists and I don't like it!

We've also tried the export to excel through the query option but I have not found that that works any better, I still wind up combing lists.

This is such a huge frustration to our shop that the boss man told me this reason was big enough for him to change POS software and I LOVE Mitchell and I don't want to learn something new, I really don't want that to happen!

[ricmorin]

The last interaction on the forum regarding the CRM button showed the following....

1. The Include in CRM Campaign checkbox on the Customer tab does indeed affect internal marketing. Uncheck that box and the customer will not be included in searches done locally.

2. The CRM checkbox on the Vehicle screen does not affect local marketing searches.

It's unsure as whether this was intentional or not. You can try it out and see if it still behaves that way.

[Crescentbunny]

Ah thanks for the reply! Maybe I need to re-think my search terms, I didnt come up with anything I saw relevant, sorry about that! I always thought the CRM button was taken into account but every now and then I'll get one or two people that get sent newsletters, they bounce back, I go in to take them off the list and they are already off. We sent out Wow Cards last month and it went great except for ONE bottom feeder (Who mind you it says he hasn't been in since 2007, AND the CRM button had long since been unchecked) Who had in his hands one of those cards! I checked the card close too it had his name on it first and last. He stormed out mad because I wouldn't give him a full synth oil change for free on that card.(He didn't read on the card where it says repairs only.) It never seems like a lot but its always one or two people who are for sure off the CRM list make it through our promotions. Frustrating. It'll be even more frustrating if he gets online and leaves a bad review just because he can't read. It could have all been avoided, not sure why the unchecked CRM button got him on that mailer. Any ideas?

[MRISICH]

Hi Crescent Bunny,

Sorry for the delayed response. If it is helpful, we do already have what you're looking for in Report Pro. The report is called ‘Customer Spending & Visits For Export.’ One of the fields is ‘Include In CRM’ so these customers can be easily filtered out in Excel. Here is the full list of fields in this report:

Last Name Company Name First Name Address City State Zip Code First Visit Last Visit YTD Spent Lifetime Spent Last 12 Month Spent Last 12 Month Visits Last 24 Month Spent Last 24 Month Visits Include In CRM


I hope this helps. Please let me know if you need more information.

[Crescentbunny]

So when using this specific bolt on report, how do you configure Excel to delete names not on the CRM list?

[MRISICH]

So when using this specific bolt on report, how do you configure Excel to delete names not on the CRM list?

Hi Crescent Bunny,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

The way to do so is to filter your Excel list by TRUE and FALSE. False being the names not on your CRM list.

See attached for the details: http://boltontechnology.com/bot/web/mis ... er-crm.gif

Hope this helps.

[Crescentbunny]

I got it all figured out eventually, thanks!! This last time we generated a list from Mitchell for our monthly newsletter and there were MANY people who received newsletters who were NOT checked on CRM on their profiles. So this has really helped us out a lot.

[MRISICH]

I got it all figured out eventually, thanks!! This last time we generated a list from Mitchell for our monthly newsletter and there were MANY people who received newsletters who were NOT checked on CRM on their profiles. So this has really helped us out a lot.

My pleasure. I’m glad it helped. Please let me know if I can do anything else.

[Crescentbunny]

We sent out our December newsletter using for the first time, Bolt On's lists. I got my first batch of returns last night. Most of them were average, people moved or gave wrong address or whatever. BUT there were two people that were on the Bolt On list who were marked OFF the CRM list in Mitchell who still got mailers. I opened my list in excel to check them and sure enough, they have Ys in the CRM column. I've included the list I generated with Bolt On and the two names who received mailers were Jeff McCarthy and Peter Fajardo. I always go in to correct Mitchell after I receive returned mail, I opened both of their accounts and both CRM buttons were definitely already unchecked. Now this first batch of returns were much smaller than usual when using Mitchell generated lists so it's already much better than before. These two were just head scratchers.

Edited by John Dwulet, Admin
I downloaded and then removed your spreadsheet as it could be considered sensitive information. It would be useful to have tech support get a copy of your database with which I and Mike could compare.

JD

[MRISICH]

Hi Crescentbunny,

We’re scratching our heads a little too.

We’re thinking a few things, though:

• Maybe the customers were in your database twice, perhaps as older entries
• Maybe there was a change in your database shortly after running the report
• Maybe the filtering of the Excel file was slightly off

If it's not something simple, then as John mentioned, we’d need to compare your database. If you’re interested, ask tech support to look at it, and we’ll see what we can find also.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.