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As a small business or startup, you’ve got a lot on your to-do list: increasing awareness of your brand, converting leads into customers, and supporting customers post-sale. And, of course, there’s all the admin behind the scenes.
A big part of that is contact management.
To enable your small business to grow successfully and sustainably, you need to have a strong contact management strategy in place. But what does this mean, and how can you get it right?
What is contact management?
Contact management is how you look after all of the contact data in your business, including contacts’ details, communication preferences, sales history, and customer interactions with your company. It enables every team in your organization to have the information they need to stay productive and have the context they need to deliver personalized interactions.
Your contacts may include:

Leads (or people who are in your pipeline but haven’t bought from you yet)
Current and previous customers

A contact management strategy is implemented with CRM software that stores all of your small business’s contact data in one centralized place.
Although contact management is traditionally the realm of salespeople, CRM has evolved rapidly in recent years. Now many all-in-one CRM platforms offer advanced features for marketing and customer service teams to store and manage their own interactions, remove information silos and boost collaboration with sales.
An all-in-one CRM, or a CRM that’s strongly integrated with your other apps, is a particularly good solution for managing and streamlining the entire customer journey as you:

Attract and collect new marketing leads
Nurture those leads toward being sales-ready
Convert leads into paying customers
Carry out onboarding services and provide ongoing support
Offer upgrades and added value

Advantages of Strong Contact Management
Contact management impacts far more than sales. When you get it right, the benefits echo throughout your small business as every role has more data and insights at its fingertips. It also enriches every aspect of the customer journey.
With good contact management processes, you can:

Enrich your customer experiences with data-driven insights and automation
Spend less time on admin and free up time for what matters most
Maximize conversions by delivering the right messages at the right time

Contact management is something that your business will always do, but most small businesses have a lot of room for improvement to maximize their efficiency in this area.
Keep reading for our tips on getting the highest impact from contact management in your small business.
Six Contact Management Best Practices
Here’s our guide to using contact management strategies to drive growth and reduce the headaches for your business, both now and further down the line.
1. Keep your contact data clean.
Smooth contact management starts with clean data. You can’t deliver an excellent customer experience if you have incorrect or contradictory data about your customers, nor can you have smooth business operations and reporting inside your company.
Although you can reduce the amount of bad data that enters your database by adjusting your lead generation forms and introducing clear processes for your team to follow, you can’t avoid all of it. That’s why every business needs regular data clean-ups. You could schedule this every quarter, for example.
As part of a data clean up, take time to remove:

Duplicate contacts
Incorrect or outdated contact data, such as emails that have hard-bounced
Contacts that don’t want to hear from you anymore

Data clean-ups don’t have to be entirely manual. There’s a lot that you can automate. For instance, many CRMs and email marketing tools highlight duplicates so you can merge or delete them. 
Your email marketing software will also help you identify emails with hard bounces, alongside groups of unsubscribed contacts. Once you’re sure you can clean up this data, you can delete them from the app.
2. Choose the right CRM.
As part of a strong contact management strategy, your CRM should be at the heart of your business. It’s the software where you store all of your key contact data as well as interactions with every customer and lead.
This makes your CRM one of the most important apps to get right in your business. Take the time to research different CRMs and find the right fit for your industry, business size, sales and marketing strategy, and goals.
As your business grows, your CRM needs to grow with it. This might mean upgrading your plan, adjusting your strategy, or even switching tools as you scale.
3. Centralize your contact data.
The best contact management strategies include a centralized database that stores all contacts in one place. This will generally be your CRM, which is another reason why it’s important to follow step 2 and choose the right one!
By having a centralized contact database, you can:

Find all of the key insights you need in one app
Make it easy for other teams to find data, without needing to have login details and training for lots of tools they don’t need to use
Break down information silos between departments

To start centralizing your data, identify the main apps in your stack that are collecting contact data. You can then sync this data with your CRM.
4. Automatically sync contact data between your apps.
Remember: for the most effective contact management results in your small business, you can’t let the contact databases in your apps be isolated from one another.
Your CRM, marketing apps, sales stack, and all of the other tools in your business deliver the best results when they are connected as part of an integrated ecosystem. The best way to achieve this is with data syncing.
After creating a centralized contact database, your next step is to sync relevant data from it to your individual apps.
5. Collect data that enriches your insights.
By syncing contact data between your apps, you can automatically enrich the insights you have at your fingertips.
If you collect geographic or content consumption data in your CRM, you could sync this with your email marketing platform and use it to segment subscribers into more accurate mailing lists.
6. Use good judgment with your contact data.
All businesses big and small need to pay attention to data protection regulations. However, this goes beyond playing by the rules and ticking boxes.
Be a brand that your prospects and customers can trust with their data. Protect the information they give you and respect their privacy. This might not have an easily measurable ROI, but having customers that trust your brand will always have an impact.

Despite huge investments in data, you might be surprised to learn that most executives don’t trust their company’s data. It might be that they’re skeptical of the data they’re using, or simply don’t know how to interpret the information at hand.
In fact, Havard Business Review reported that 90% of business leaders believe data literacy is crucial for company success. However, only 25% of employees feel confident when working with their organization’s data. 
The stats shout loud and clear that if you struggle to trust your business data, you’re absolutely not alone. However, this doesn’t make it any less important to fix it.
Untrustworthy data has repercussions across your entire organization. You run the risk of:

Pivoting strategies based on incorrect assumptions
Lacking a clear picture of business performance and ROI
Delivering poor customer experiences
Reducing job satisfaction for your team because of manual tasks and frustrations
Being hesitant to share important insights across the team

Instead, every business’s goal should be data integrity. Data integrity refers to the quality and reliability of your business data, including how precise, consistent, timely, and well-preserved that data is.
With high data integrity, your business can also benefit from the surge in opportunities that big data brings.
Here’s our guide to what to do when you can’t trust your reporting data. Learn how to turn things around long-term, so your data spend isn’t spoilt by leaky processes and frameworks.
How to Make Your Data More Trustworthy
It might sound obvious, but if your business has been wrangling with unreliable data for some time, to create a different outcome you need to do things differently.
Fixing untrustworthy data requires changes to your organization’s:

Processes
Mindset
Skillset

Let’s explore the best ways to make your data more trustworthy so you can benefit from accurate and timely analytics that pave the way for informed decisions.
1. Go back to the basics.
To make your data more trustworthy, let’s go back to the very beginning. Imagine you’re starting your database entirely from scratch with a clean slate. Now answer these questions:

What data do you need to collect?
What format do you need to collect it in?
What data don’t you need?
What’s the clutter or noise you would like to avoid?
How do you need to integrate your apps?

You can use these valuable insights to inform:

New processes for data collection, management, and integration
What to clean up and prune from your database
How to educate your team and increase data literacy in your organization

Once you’re clear on what needs to happen, start creating an action plan to put it into place and make your data more trustworthy.
2. Follow the data trail back to the source.
Whenever you’re faced with unreliable data, follow the trail back to the source. Where did the inaccurate data originate?
This includes looking at form fields and checking for consistent and standardized data collection. It also means making sure that Google Analytics tags are set up correctly, or that your SQL scripts for your business intelligence platform are flawless.
If this stretches your tech knowledge, perhaps because the person who implemented your systems has left the company, consider bringing in a data specialist to help you out. You could also get their help simplifying your data processes so it’s more manageable in-house going forward.
3. Tick the boxes for data best practice
No matter the industry or company size, there are some best practices that every company should follow for trustworthy data. These include:

Consistency – Maintain the same format across systems by using consistent and standardized fields and collection processes. When you integrate your apps, use customizable field mapping to ensure that the right data is synced to the right places.
Completeness – For each piece of data, you need to know the full picture. A few examples are the source of your marketing leads, sales history for your customers, or conversion path for new deals. Is your data complete?
Centralized and enriched data – Rather than having fragmented and incomplete data spread across several systems, maintain one centralized database with the most up-to-date and trustworthy information. This can be your CRM for your customer data, and a system like Chartio or Supermetrics for your company performance data. Create two-way integrations between your centralized database and connected apps to enrich your data everywhere.
Access control – Set permissions and policies that ensure only the right people see certain data. This is about balancing accessibility and transparency with security.
Validation – 28% of customer and prospect data is suspected to be inaccurate in some way, according to Experian. For accurate data, you need a method for checking and validating it. This can include automated processes for checking for anomalies and missing fields, backed up by some manual checks.
Real-time updates – For the best results from your data, it needs to be up-to-date. Look for real-time updates when choosing a business intelligence system and a data integration solution.
Quality sources – Make sure you know where all of your data is coming from and that you can guarantee its integrity. Maintaining a neat and tidy database that you know you can trust beats having highly advanced data sets that you struggle to make sense of or control.
Cleanliness – Considering B2B data decays at a rate of 2% per year, your database needs frequent clean-ups. It’s important to freshen up your data by removing duplicates, inaccuracies, and other data that’s turned from value into clutter.
Security and protection – Maintaining high security is crucial for data protection regulations such as GDPR in Europe, but it’s also just a basic principle for being a trustworthy brand. It’s also absolutely crucial if you want valuable data at your fingertips (and only yours).
Integrations – Over 80% of business operations leaders say data integrations are important for day-to-day operations at their organization. Data integrations reduce data silos and make data more accessible to everyone at your company, so employees don’t have to track down other coworkers to find specific information stored in their department’s database.

4. Document processes.
One common trap that organizations fall into is relying on one person to set up and manage their data processes. When that person leaves the organization, chaos is often unleashed.
You can avoid this by creating clearly documented processes that are stored in your company wiki, Google Drive, or a tool like Notion. And remember: overly complicated processes might end up doing you more harm than good. The simpler your processes, the better.
5. Simplify everything.
Complexity is often the root of bad data you can’t trust. For complex data analytics to work successfully, you need the time, resources, and knowledge to back it up.
For most organizations, it’s more effective to keep your data and reporting as simple as possible instead.
Simplifying your data means:

Only collecting the data you need
Organizing data consistently and in standardized formats
Avoiding complicated workflows and systems
Reducing your reporting dashboards
Avoiding multiple systems for the same job
Creating documentation that’s clear and easy to understand
Amending processes so anyone can quickly understand them

To make your data the most trustworthy, ask yourself: where can you simplify your data collection, management, and integration processes?
6. Keep the sunk cost fallacy in mind.
You’ve invested a lot of money, you have complex systems in place… and you don’t want to throw that away. So instead of starting afresh, you build on top of what you have – and hope it will cover up what’s underneath.
Investopedia describes the sunk cost fallacy, or the sunk cost trap, as “a tendency for people to irrationally follow through on an activity that is not meeting their expectations. This is because of the time and/or money they have already invested.”
This is all too common when it comes to business data and analytics.
If you keep building on unsound foundations, it will come back to bite you. Begin by understanding exactly what you’re dealing with and the problems at hand. Bring in a second opinion here if you need it. Then, make as unbiased a decision as possible about what you need to do to increase data integrity.
Over the long term, it might be easiest to go back to the drawing board, create a much more straightforward and accurate strategy, and trash what you had in place before.
7. Communicate with stakeholders.
While concerns over untrustworthy data are often valid, sometimes you or your organization’s stakeholders still don’t trust your data when everything is sound.
If this is the case, clear communication is your way forward. Explain why your business analytics data is trustworthy and how it’s set up to ensure reliability. Answer questions to help stakeholders understand how data is collected, managed, and integrated between your apps. Also, encourage concerns to be voiced so that you can explore their validity or irrelevance together.

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The most important resource that eCommerce companies can have is customer data. Those that own more than one brand have unique insights into customer behavior across brands. Customer Data Platform is perfect for a comprehensive understanding of customer profiles using diverse data. Here’s a quick guide on how to get started.

 

When content marketing strategists build customer profiles and buyer personas, they often dream of having a glimpse of their customer behavior in relations with competitors to complement their information to gain a new perspective. Companies that have more than one store or more than one brand under their umbrella have a unique opportunity to look beyond the constraints of a rigid single relationship. What they don’t always know, however, is that the data they have can be easily pieced together and processed to make use of it.

 

In 2020, startup Mine verified that most people’s data was held by 350 companies, although the top 5% of Mine’s users with the largest digital footprints discovered that an average of 2,834 companies had access to their data (MarTech Series). Unfortunately, nearly 36% of companies are not using all the data they have, and 47% are only planning to implement a data analytics tool in the future (Datamation). This is partly due to a lack of analytical skills, partly due to a lack of the right software that helps fuse this wibbly-wobbly ball of data into a single profile. So with the growing popularity of digital channels, 73% of companies say that intuitive and versatile Customer Data Platforms that help combine diverse data from numerous sources will be critical to their customer experience efforts (Segment).

 

How CDP works

Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software that helps collect and unify a variety of first- and zero-party data from different sources. CDPs enable marketers and analysts to handle customer information and comply with privacy policies. And at the same time, they don’t diminish the quality of multichannel data personalization. On the contrary, they significantly increase its quality. It’ s because the platforms use identity recognition technology. It enables marketers and advertisers to unify zero- and first-party data in the areas of user identity and the devices they use both online and offline.

[Free eBook] Read more about CDP and zero- and first-party data >>

So if you’re managing several stores, you can start planning to comprehensively use all your data to improve User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX).

 

What data can be collected with a CDP?

Before you start collecting data, make sure you have implemented monitoring code in all your stores.

Learn how to implement SALESmanago monitoring code >>

Once the code is working properly in all stores, you can get down to collecting information. Here’s what types of data you can collect using the CDP platform.

Behavioral data – its collection stems from the module of identifying and monitoring the behavior of online contacts. This is one of the basic functions of CDP.

Transactional data – this data is available thanks to SALESmanago Marketing Automation integration with CDP and ERP systems.

Timeline – in other words, a chronological history of contacts, interactions and marketing and sales activities with a particular person.

Course of marketing and sales campaigns – precise information about which campaigns a given contact participates in and at what stage they are.

Customer communication flow – this is a list of all e-mails, Web Push notifications, SMS messages, VMS messages and phone calls that a particular contact has received.

Device Fingerprint – this feature allows you to track contacts even if they delete cookies.

Segmentation data – information about which segments a person has been automatically classified into based on behaviors monitored by the brand.

Any information from external sources – if you integrate SALESmanago with external systems and databases, CDP will also collect information from these sources.

Data entered manually by the sales department and Call Center – there is also space on the contact cards for notes made by people working with customers and clients. They can also manually enable certain features from within the contact card.

Contact scoring and its growth dynamics – for each customer-company interaction the system awards a fixed number of scoring points and also provides an analysis of their growth rate over time.

Product preferences – for each contact, the system tracks information about the browsed products and groups them by category, brand, price and color.

AI predictions – predictions are a separate category of data. They allow, according to the contact’s transaction history, to predict when they will buy something again, when there is a risk of churn and what communication channel to use to achieve the highest conversion.

 

Comprehensive profile, or how to understand customer’s profile across brands

Based on the data collected, the CDP platform creates extensive profiles for each contact. If you have data from one service, then the profile will correspond to how the user behaves in contact with one brand. If you feed the database with streams from 2 or more services, you have a chance to create more extensive and more realistic profiling. Comprehensive profiles, i.e., user profiles created on the basis of behaviors on 2 or more services, give insight into behaviors outside of the separate internet bubble limited by the monitoring of behaviors within a single platform.

Comprehensive profiles can be modeled using data such as:

purchase RFM,
price ranges,
activity on services/apps,
categories/subcategories that a person is interested in,
declarative data, including demographic data,
location data,
predictions.

To better visualize the difference, think about how much you can learn about a person by spending time with them in different places and situations. How much more do you know about your partner than the person you play chess with once a week?

 

What activities can be done with the Comprehensive profile?

From the modeling data, we can create automatically managed (via rules/Workflow) funnels. These seemingly simple marketing tools are extremely useful. They allow you to track transitions between campaign stages and effectively work to achieve micro-conversions. This approach will help you select groups of contacts according to their activity in one and all services. By observing trends you can easily identify groups of people who are:

Very active on 2 or more sites,
Very active on one site and not very active on the others,
Not very active on any site.

Depending on your needs, you can use this knowledge to reward active contacts, engage those who are less active but still promising, and run win-back campaigns to those who are inactive or dormant across all services.

Additionally, knowledge of the trends among certain audiences can be translated into creating groups of like-minded contacts so that you can reach a wider demographic with your message.

Pro Tip: Use RFM analytics to see which groups are your best consumers and shoppers. Create custom audiences based on these groups to attract more like-minded people and increase in-store revenue.

 

Examples of rewarding activities

If you want to fortify the relationship with people who are good customers in several stores, think of interesting ways to reward their engagement. A lot depends on your imagination. We just give you some inspirations:

discount for your next purchase,
access to exclusive products from preferred categories in pre-order,
additional points in the loyalty program,
invitation to CSR activities carried out by brands (e.g. cleaning the local forest, planting trees, helping at Christmas Eve parties for the people in need)
an invitation to activities that impact brands (e.g. research, crowdsourcing, etc.).

A lot will depend on the prospect’s buying motivation. Therefore, the better you have an understanding of the habits and behaviors of your best customers and clients, the better you can tailor the bonus to the individual.

 

Examples of incentive activities

People who are very active in one service and less active in the others still might jump to the group of the best customers. It’s worth implementing for them actions based on preferences from the store where they are most active. When it comes to encouraging micro-conversions and conversions you have a very wide field of possibilities. Here are some examples of stimulating actions that can be performed using the CDP system:

on-page campaigns,
PPC Google Ads/Facebook campaigns based on Custom Audiences,
informative omnichannel campaigns about the website where there is no activity,
gradually engaging the user with Lead Nurturing campaigns, which after gaining interest can be changed to the product recommendation process based on the data collected from another service,
rewarding the user for their activity in store X with discount vouchers to store Y.

The CDP platform is irreplaceable for combining data from different sources. Advanced user profiles (comprehensive profiles) help to understand individual users’ behaviour on different sites and, in addition, to target activities aimed at activating them on different platforms.

 

Examples of win-back activities

There are also individuals who are not active in any of the services. There are different factors that can cause this. Sometimes it happens that a person goes to a store, buys once and forgets about it. Sometimes the offer does not meet their expectations. And sometimes they click on an ad by accident and immediately bounce out of the service. The good news is that at least in some cases you can still fight for customers. What can be done? Here are some ideas:

a survey to find out why they don’t buy,
SMS campaign with code for free delivery,
time limited promotion,
dynamic Web Push notification with recommendations based on completed purchases,
email with cross-brand recommendations,
a campaign using AI predictions to choose the optimal communication channel to send a shopping discount.

Not every dormant contact will become active again. That doesn’t change the fact that a win-back campaign greatly increases the chance of reactivating such a person, or getting them interested in your offer from other sites you manage. One of our clients, Domfan, improved conversion rates by as much as 33% through effective sales close and implementation of a win-back program for inactive contacts.

Read the free case study of Domfan about the effects of implementing SALESmanago >>

 

A few words in conclusion

Customers smoothly navigate between stores not only in shopping malls, but also online. Monitoring behaviour on several platforms that you manage can have a very positive impact on the overall performance of your campaigns. If you skillfully combine data from different services, you can gain a unique insight into customer behaviour in relations with other brands. The CDP software helps you unify and organise this data and, from one place, run consistent campaigns that will move individual contacts towards micro-conversions and conversions across different sites.

If you would like to try out SALESmanago’s CDP capabilities in this area, please consult with your account manager.

Piecing together a project timeline template usually involves a Google Doc and mediocre formatting skills. Then comes assigning tasks to teammates and promising to hit the agreed-upon delivery date. But a few weeks go by, and the timeline falls apart. Higher priorities pop up, and deadlines slip past without much progress.
Projects can fail for many reasons: a lack of support from leadership, unforeseen budget cuts, or overpromising outcomes. In fact, poor project management is more common than you think – only 55% of projects are completed on time.
But creating a timeline where everyone involved knows what they’re working on and when it’s due can help ensure your project doesn’t creep past its original deadline. It’s essential for keeping projects (and the people completing them) on track.

To make sure your next project stays on schedule, we’ll cover how to set up a project timeline, the best templates to use, and a handful of examples to inspire your future scheduling.
Why Create a Project Timeline?
Time management is one of the top skills employers look for in candidates. Missed deadlines and rushed projects can set entire teams (and companies) behind schedule.
A structured project timeline offers more than brownie points from your boss. It can also:

Bring leadership and structure to a project
Outline what is being delivered, by when
Share who is responsible for each task and sets expectations for the scope, quality, and delivery of work
Show how the project outcome contributes to company goals
Decrease risk by accounting for any changes to the project scope, budget, deliverables, or deadlines.

Ultimately, a project timeline makes it easier and more efficient to manage a project. But it’s important to match the timeline structure to the project scope. Planning an editorial calendar for the quarter may take more time and effort than creating a marketing video for an upcoming product launch.
That’s where the right template comes in.
Project Timeline Example
Without the right project timeline template, organizing a project can be a lot of manual work — not to mention the formatting mess once multiple people get their hands on it.
The ideal timeline brings direction to a project, yet is easily adaptable when changes arise. Here’s a look at a project timeline for opening a new company office.

You can create a project timeline for any process that relies on a schedule (almost everything these days), like onboarding employees, handling a crisis, or planning social media campaigns. All you need to know is how to outline the steps of a project and the tasks required to complete each phase.
Let’s get into the details.
How to Create a Project Timeline
Crafting the perfect project timeline takes strategy, organizational skills, and a whole lot of collaboration. You need buy-in from supporters and clear directives for everyone involved.
To get started, follow this step-by-step guide to set up a structured timeline — no matter your job, industry, or management level.
1. Write a project brief.
A project brief communicates how you will approach a project. It includes details on the goals, deliverables, timeline, tasks, process, people involved, and resources needed to take a project from start to finish.
Asana outlined the steps to create a simple, yet effective, project brief. You can use this free project plan template to outline the project’s goals, roles and responsibilities, schedule, deliverables, budget, and more. It’s a great starting point for any planning process.

Or if you need a more comprehensive overview that includes key messaging and distribution processes, a creative brief may be the right fit for your project.
2. List all tasks and action items.
Every task involved in achieving a project’s objectives needs to go into the project timeline. After creating the brief, make a list of these tasks. You can start with large tasks and break them down into smaller to-dos.
Let’s say you’re responsible for creating a marketing video to launch your company’s newest product. Your list may include the following:

Establish project leads from each department
Set project budget
Find a video production company
Layout the video storyboard
Choose main features for video
Write video script
Capture video content
Add in sound and background music
Add animations and graphics
Edit video
Write announcement copy
Craft marketing campaign
Create clips for social sharing
Get video and marketing assets approved

Once you have the major milestones down, break down each task into smaller pieces. For example, choosing a video production company involves:

Research video production companies
Curate a list of production companies
Get quotes from each production company
Compare quotes and narrow down options
Meet with the selected companies
Choose a production company
Finalize the contract

3. Connect dependencies.
In a project, certain tasks can’t be started until another is complete. These tasks are called dependencies. For example, a video can’t be filmed until the storyboard is finalized. And the storyboard can’t be finalized until the video theme is chosen.
Mapping out dependencies helps you solidify the order of each task and decide who’s responsible for what. Everyone will know what part of the project they’re working on, which tasks must be completed before their own, and who to contact for the deliverables they need.
Here’s a look at how dependencies can play out in a project timeline.

Image Source
In the example, you can see that hiring a caterer has to happen before finalizing the lunch menu. But other tasks, like finding a DJ and deciding on an event theme, can happen at the same time. So as you map out each task, you’ll have to see which steps can overlap and which need to wait for others.
4. Estimate the time it will take to complete each task.
Once you figure out the sequence of tasks, you need to figure out how much time each will take. Estimate as best you can. That way, it’ll be easier to create the project roadmap and understand the project’s overall time frame.
As you go, make sure to consider the other projects and priorities your team has going on. A designer may be able to come up with a rough draft of video animations in one week, but if they’re wrapping up another project, they may not be able to start on yours for another two weeks.
Being mindful of your team’s time will make it easier to put together a reasonable, reliable timeline.
5. Create the project timeline.
Build your timeline by organizing your tasks from the first to the final step. Make any necessary adjustments to the task times, add milestones, and solidify the deadline. If your team works with project management software, organize the timeline and tasks so it’s ready to share after the project kickoff meeting.
You can save time during this step by using one of the project timeline templates below. It’s simple to customize each and avoid the extra work of creating your own from scratch.
6. Share the timeline with the project team.
Whew, your timeline is complete! Now, you have to share it with stakeholders. This includes everyone who is involved in the project. You’ve already listed these people out in your brief (during step one), so it’s time to share your clear path forward for the project with them.
It’s a good idea to hold a project kickoff meeting with both stakeholders and individual contributors so everyone starts on the same page. You can communicate the project goals, deliverables, roles, and deadlines — without going into an overwhelming amount of detail. From there, you’ll want to schedule time with the project’s immediate contributors to chat specifics and answer any questions before the work begins.
Need help visualizing the entire project? It can help to include a timeline graphic like the one below to give everyone a sense of the overall time frame. You can add or remove steps, depending on the complexity of your project.

Image Source
7. Adapt as you go.
Remember how just over half of projects are finished on time? Roadblocks and setbacks are inevitable in every project. So if your team runs into a delay, you’ll have to understand the impact and adjust the timeline if necessary.
While it’s possible to make up for delays without changing the final deadline, it’s your job as the project owner to update stakeholders on the project’s progress. Reporting a minor issue (like a coworker being out sick for a few days) isn’t always necessary to higher-ups. But if it’s a major roadblock that requires an extreme adjustment to the timeline (like a core contributor leaving the team), you have to communicate a new timeline to stakeholders.
Change is part of every company, so don’t panic if you have to adjust your timeline. It’s better to be transparent about the scope of work and timeline than keep people in the dark until the deadline hits. The earlier you adjust to change, the easier it will be to get back on track.
Project Timeline Examples
Visualizing a project makes it simple to understand what needs to happen from start to finish. Whether you need a template for a product launch or campaign meeting, these well-designed project timeline templates are perfect for your next planning session.
Employee Onboarding Timeline

Product Launch Timeline

Crisis Response Project Timeline

Historical Timeline

Task Project Timeline

Meeting Project Timeline

Need as many templates as you can get? Download all of these project timelines (and more) for free. With the right timelines in hand, it’s easy to keep everyone up to date and informed. Now all you have to do is make sure your projects stay on schedule. Good luck!

How to create a social media marketing plan in 2024?

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👉   To understand how to solve the same business use case using Process Builder and Salesforce Flow. Check out this article Getting Started with Process Builder – Part 16 (Creating Custom Record Sharing Logic). Big Idea or Enduring Question: Sharing records automatically without sharing rules or role hierarchy Using Apex
The post Getting Started with Salesforce Flow – Part 70 (Creating Custom Record Sharing Logic) appeared first on Automation Champion.

Crafting a customer win-back email is a delicate balancing act. Here are some surefire tips for creating one that works.
When a customer avoids your products and newsletters it doesn’t mean they’ve dropped off the face of the earth. It just means you have to change your approach.
So how do you convert those once-loyal customers into rabid fans again? With smart use of win-back emails.
Today we’re going to talk about what makes a perfect win-back email; from eye-catching headlines and crisp copy to exit surveys and incentives.
What exactly is a customer win-back email?
A customer win-back email is a carefully crafted message sent to inactive customers. Inactive customers are those who haven’t purchased or interacted with you in a set period of time.
Timing is everything for these kinds of emails. Now, most businesses will recommend six months before you start implementing your win-back strategy.
But that’ll vary depending on the vertical you are in. If you’re selling subscription gourmet pet food your window might be shorter than someone who’s selling bespoke garden tools.
What makes a good win-back email?
You put a lot of time and effort into building your email list. 
And all because some of them have gone quiet doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road. Adopting a good win-back email strategy can help get your customer buying again.
There are several components to a solid win-back email strategy:

Reach out and remind them you exist

Craft an email title that’s impossible to skim over

Make sure the copy is on point

Incentivize them to buy with a discount or coupon

Ask for feedback on where you went wrong with survey emails

And finally, goodbye emails

Let’s dive right into some of the types of win-back emails you can send.
The survey email
Sometimes a win-back email is as simple as just asking, “Hey, what’s going on?”. You can send a form asking them questions relevant to your business, and hopefully, get them to re-engage. This kind of email can also be sent when customers are unsubscribing.
Even if it’s an exit survey, it’s always important to have accurate data explaining why customers are unsubscribing so you can make business decisions about how to handle it. 

Source: Really Good Emails
Take a look at this email by SeeSo.

They kept the tone right, balancing on-brand humor well

They kept it simple and on message with concise copy, and a clear CTA

Plus they blended visuals seamlessly to support the message of the text

For more tips on the importance of survey emails, check out our guide here.
The reminder email
The world is a busy place these days.
Things come up and customers forget about your product. Don’t take it personally—with some smart marketing you can get them back on board. Set up an automation to target these customers after 3-6 months of inactivity.

Source: Really Good Emails
Sometimes as little as reminding them you exist is enough. And other times you might want to offer them a discount. Let’s take a closer look at this email by language app Busuu.

Busuu offers discounts to incentivize a customer’s return to the service

They also target FOMO by making it a timed 24-hour offer

The image chosen reinforces that message well.

The end of the line
What happens when that’s not enough? You tried everything and they’re still not engaging? Well, you just have to accept it and move on.
But with your final email, you have a chance to gain some benefit.

Source: Really Good Emails
This email by Atlas Obscura ticks a number of boxes—they sincerely wish the customer well, and then offer them another option. Why not subscribe to a list with less frequent emails, which might well have been the reason they unsubscribed in the first place!
It’s important to note that if you still are getting ghosted or left on unread at this stage in your customer win-back automation, it’s best to cull them from your list—which is easy to do with the latest Campaign Monitor updates. There are disadvantages to having ghost subscribers, like:

Emails getting filtered to spam
Emails may simply get blocked by the service provider
Your sender reputation ranking might be damaged

For more on factors that affect your deliverability and how to navigate them, consider enrolling in our free course on deliverability best practices!
Wrap Up
Now you know what makes up a smart win-back strategy. You’ve learned how the various types of emails to send, and when. And you know how to tempt them into interacting with your brand again.
But there’s still a lot more to learn about emails. And for more tips on how to get the most out of your email list, check out our modern guide to email marketing.
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