Features to Look for in an Online Contact Management Software

Contacts (leads or customers) are crucial for any business. Does not matter if it is a small-scale start-up or an established enterprise, it is important to have well-organized contacts. Effective contact management with support for advanced operations such as address label printing and custom address labels is vital to help expand the business.

However, it is not recommended to keep relying on spreadsheets and emails to have your contacts in place. Today’s dynamic business environment calls for a feature-rich online contact management software, that helps you stay on top of all that you need to know about your contacts.

Amongst a lot of options available, how to pick the best one? Well, the easiest way is to evaluate it against the features that it offers for a given cost. Let's explore the top features that are a must-have for any contact management software.

Multiple Address Books

While buying the subscription to any online contact management software, it is crucial to check if it supports multiple address books or not. Multiple address books come handy for various reasons. You can easily map contacts between address books, to begin with. Not just that, you can use the feature to maintain personal address books or segregate contacts based on what label they fall under. See if the software allows address label printing or use of custom address labels!

Groups and Sub-groups

Another feature that any good online contact management software needs to have is the capability to segregate contacts into groups and sub-groups. This allows better control while eliminating duplicate entries.

Moreover, in case you are the admin of multiple address books, you can have a better overview of everything going on and can manage the contacts in an improved manner. Having multiple groups and sub-groups allows contacts to exist in the primary address book while being mapped between groups and sub-groups and more sub-groups under them.

Contacts in CSV

The next feature that you need to check while subscribing to an online contact management software is to see if it allows you to export or import contacts in the CSV format. Make sure that you only buy software that comes equipped with this capability because it will make things a lot easier for you.

All you need to do is upload the entire file into the address book and you are good to go! In case, you need to move the contacts or download them, the feature would let you do that as well (with equal ease). CSV brings flexibility and freedom, make sure the software is compatible with it.

Contact History

A nice online contact management software stores the contact history and allows you to access it as and when required. See to it if the software you are wondering about stores the user activity related to a given contact or not. Being able to check the records related to any contact can help you a lot while preparing reports or deriving results of any sort.

Trash

There may be instances when you happen to delete a contact by chance. How to go about it when you didn't mean to delete the contact? Well, make sure that the software you have been willing to purchase allows you to restore contacts even if they are deleted. In case the software permanently deletes the contacts, you may have a hard time soon.

Contact Mapping and Sharing

Finally, see to it if the software that you are buying allows mapping of contacts amongst multiple address books and groups. This feature will save you from duplicating the contacts in different address books. Also, this allows you to share contacts with your fellow team members allowing better contact management.

Thus, these were some of the important features to look for while selecting an online contact management software for your business. Although there may be a lot of platforms claiming to be the best online contact management software, you need to see if it meets your business requirements or not and if it supports advanced operations such as address label printing, use of custom address labels, automation, integration, and tracking or not. Always explore your options before committing to a tool!