Clients
Database Features:
Extensive
Search Capabilities
Client
List Management
Import
Client Records
Download
Client Records
Clients
Database Management
In
addition to the shopping cart, Professional Cart
Solutions also includes a full-featured clients
database. All users who interact in some
way with your Professional Cart Solutions account,
either by purchasing something through the shopping
cart, filling out one of your forms, or becoming
your affiliate, will have a record in your clients
database. You can find out who bought a particular
product, who is subscribed to a particular autoresponder,
who was added to your database during a particular
time, who is not subscribed to a particular
autoresponder, and so on. Once you do a search,
you will get a list of clients. With this
list, you can create a custom Mailing List, do
a Broadcast, Mass
Subscribe them to an Autoresponder series,
or even download the list.
Clients
are added to your database in five ways:
- Manually
entering the record.
- Importing
your database (see Import
Client Records).
- When
they join your mailing list by using filling
out your Questionnaire, Join
Our List, or Custom
forms. These clients, who have
made contact with you but have not made a purchase,
are called prospects.
- When
they make a purchase through your shopping
cart. These clients are called, appropriately, customers.
- When
they join your affiliate
program. Regardless
of whether they have
made a purchase from
you, these clients
are called affiliates.
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Extensive
Search Capabilities
Using
different search choices, you can view some or
all of your client records, and then do things
with that list, such as Broadcasting to
the list, or downloading it to save it on your
PC's hard drive. Here are some ways to search
your database:
- Using
Wildcards. Of course, you can
enter the client's full name or, better,
their
email address and you will get that client. But
that may not always be possible, or you may
not be willing to type in their full email
address. The simplest method to search your
database is to use a wildcard. The
asterisk (*) acts as a wildcard either
at the end or beginning of your search
term.
- Negative Searching. There are
two forms of "Negative Searches" with
Professional Cart Solutions. The first
is to look for blanks, or empty fields. For
example, you would like to find everyone in your
database who has no company name entered. The
other sort of Negative Search is to switch the
search type from "Normal" to "All
clients who do NOT match the criteria." Using
this choice will give you a results list that
omits the criteria you have selected. This
is especially useful for finding all the
clients who have not purchased a particular
product.
- Limit Search Results. This function
allows you to limit your search results
to the first portion of client records as specified
by you.
- Order
By. This simply sets how
you want the search results ordered.
- Searching
By Date. These search
criteria refer to the date the
record was created.
The date search can be combined
with any of the fields above it
(name, email, company).
- Searching
By Client Type. As noted above,
there are three basic client types - prospects,
customers and affiliates. You
can restrict your search to one
of these types.
- Searching By Custom Field Response. You
can also search by Custom Fields - this is a
good place to use wildcards. This criterion
will override other criteria, except for client
type. You can combine the
Custom Field Response search with
the Client Type search.
- Searching By Mailing List. Searching
by Mailing List allows you quick access to a
previously-created mailing list.
- Searching By Autoresponder Subscribed. Selecting
this option will override all the other options. Select
one or more autoresponders, and you will get
a list of all the clients subscribed to that
autoresponder. You can also search using
this function in reverse - choose to search "For
all Clients who do NOT match the above criteria" to
find all those clients who are not subscribed
to one more autoresponders. Select all
the autoresponders and this negative option to
find Clients are not subscribed to any Autoresponder
at all. This can be surprisingly
handy!
- Searching By Product Purchased. You
can find everyone who purchased a particular
product. Perhaps even
more useful is doing a 'NOT'
search (see Negative Searching
above)
so that you can find clients
who have yet to purchase
a product you wish to promote
more heavily.
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Client List Management
When
you do a search of your Clients database, you will get
a Client Hitlist. There are a variety
of actions you can take with such a list of clients.
Creating a Custom Mailing List makes this
list accessible at any time from your Manage
Clients search form.
Broadcast and Mass-Subscribe. There
are two ways to do a mass emailing from Professional
Cart Solutions:
Broadcast and
Mass
Subscribe. Using the Broadcast
function will allow you to send a one-shot
broadcast message
to all the clients on this list. You
can also do an effective broadcast by mass
subscribing
this list of clients to an autoresponder.
Email/Download Clients. The system
can email the list to you - or, more accurately,
an email with a download hyperlink. See
Download
Client Records for more info.
Unsubscribing or Deleting Clients. The
delete function removes the client records entirely. Unsubscribing
the list of clients from an autoresponder works
in the same manner as mass subscribing, only removing
the clients from the autoresponder.
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Import
Client Records
You can transfer your client
database records en masse to Professional Cart Solutions.
You can upload an existing database, add new client
records, or upload new information about clients
already in your Professional Cart Solutions clients
database.
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Download
Client Records You can also download your client
database records en masse from Professional Cart
Solutions quite easily. The system will send
an email message with a download hyperlink. The
downloaded file will be a comma-delimited text (CSV)
file that can then be loaded into another application
such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access.
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