Since going self-employed in 2016, one of the best things I’ve done is use online tools that integrate with each other so that regular processes can be automated saving me many hours of time & effort.
The most important of these is HubSpot which I use to collect contact details of all my new or potential customers, clients & partners into a single CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system which allows me to divide them into different lists & send bulk or individual emails out to.
With HubSpot I can:
- Manually add new contacts directly into the CRM
- Pull contacts through automatically when someone books a ticket for an event on Eventbrite (this needs to be connected via another tool called Zapier)
- Pull contacts through automatically when someone fills out a survey or registers their interest in a new product or service via Typeform (this also needs to be connected via Zapier)
- Collect contacts via landing pages & data capture forms
- Collect contacts via Facebook or LinkedIn ads
- Collect contacts via pop-up forms on my websites
- Scan business cards via the HubSpot mobile app which are automatically added to the CRM (see how in the short demo video below)
The Business Card Scanner in the HubSpot mobile app is so cool & fun to use!
— Paul Lancaster (@lordlancaster) October 8, 2020
Watch this to see how it workspic.twitter.com/VP5ZmPl4ht
I didn’t appreciate how important a fully-integrated CRM was until I started using HubSpot so if you’re not using one yet (& even if you are), you can get HubSpot CRM completely free of charge at https://hubs.to/wVcGC only pay if you add the Marketing Tools on top (primarily email marketing & list management)!
