Businesses across the board are revising budgets and cutting costs where possible in order to cope with the financial crisis. We all know that it is not advisable to cut marketing budgets, as this causes sales to reduce in the medium to long term. That said, many business owners and fincanical controllers feel they have no option. Or have they? What about taking a different approach to marketing that’s not only cheaper, more effective, but truly GREEN?

Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system it is possible to automate the marketing and sales function to facilitate a personalised direct marketing campaign. The objective is to target advertising and promotional material at the decision-maker directly. It is now possible to have a low-cost, hosted sales software system where you don’t need any expensive equipment on-site to run the software (see www.profits.ie for full details.) This means that not only are you not paying for a server and all of the equipment that goes with it, but also you don’t need to have the associated running costs. You also have the added benefit of choosing electronic delivery of your marketing material, or if it needs to be paper based, the numbers are much lower due to direct communication with the right person.

How Hosted CRM is GREEN MARKETING:

• Using our datacentres to host your IT system means that many businesses are using the same servers – each business does not have a dedicated server.  This means much lower energy consumption through manufacturing and on-going maintenance of servers
• Enegery consumption is further reduced in running costs – one server might have 50 systems running
• Electronic delivery – e-mail, text message – means no paper and printing
• Direct, targeted marketing via letter means much smaller campaigns with much larger conversions. So no more leaflet drops of 10,000, bulk newspaper ads, etc.
• Less manual tracking means much less paper notes

Green marketing is fast becoming a vital component in getting new customers and retaining existing clients. Linked to social marketing (using Linked in, Fackbook, Bebo, Twitter), hosted CRM can provide a whole new Eco-Marketing strategy that some of the largest corporations in the world are beginning to embrace (if you don’t believe me, google “Green Marketing”.) It’s only a matter of time before this filters down to the small business. Why wait when you can get in first and build a name for Green IT?