Patron Technology CRM Software

Having just participated in the Patron Technology CRM webinar, I see alot of really great business building opportunities. It seems to offer a fully integrated crm system connected with social media, email marketing, ticket sales and fundraising. While touring the software on the webinar, I was really impressed with what they touted as the "360 degree view" of the customer. It really was a complete view! It shows you everything about the customer on one page - from contact information, to all the communication your organization has had with that customer, to ticket sales, donations and more. I was really impressed with the comprehensiveness of the information and that it didn't have to pieced together from several different sources. At my organization, if someone leaves there will be institutional memory loss. Not with Patron CRM - its all there on the site! And since the software is cloud based, you can access it anywhere.

Another plus to this software is the analytics. The fact that you can easily set up reports in many different styles and have them automatically distributed is fantastic. I asked the ability to save report definitions for future use, and the presenter confirmed that not only was this possible, but that they would be automatically updated in real time! Another huge plus. At the organization I work for, reports are very limited in nature and have to be generated each time you want to look at them which is not as efficient. Also, I have to print them out each time or save them as PDFs, and attach them to emails if I want to distribute them. It certainly can be done, but then it becomes someone's daily/weekly job. This is a task that should be automated!

Patron Technology also has the ability to do very targeted email marketing. From among your database, you can sort and target customers using many different filters to make special offers, solicit donations, etc. This eliminated the task of having to export emails to a different place for marketing purposes. Also, the filtering and targeting ability is huge so you can really quickly and easily reach the exact people you need to reach.

Another great feature was the Patron Chatter. This is a facebook style of communication with your co-workers so that everyone can see what's going on with customers/patrons. I asked the moderator if all employees had to be logged in to the Patron system to see this communication and she said they did not. There is a desktop client software application available for checking chatter posts. This is a good feature because otherwise I would fear that the "chatter" feature would monopolize everyone's time.

The last feature that really stuck out for me was the Facebook interface. Evidently, when someone buys tickets to a show, they can choose to post it to Facebook and share it with their friends. Their friends can then click on the link in their Facebook page and go directly to the theater seating chart and ticket purchasing page. When I asked if their Facebook friends would be able to see where their friend was sitting and select seats next to her, the answer was no. The reasoning behind this is to protect the privacy of the person who posted it on Facebook. I personally don't see the logic in that at all. If someone posts it on Facebook, they are in fact not interested in the privacy of that purchase. They are shouting it out to the world. If their friends cannot choose to sit with them, I think that would just create frustration and defeat the purpose of sharing it on Facebook.

On balance, I think this software is fantastic and has so many good things to offer. I can see where it would increase employee efficiency and provide very valuable information (marketing, fundraising, etc) to managers. This software seems like it would help you build your business and make your life easier in the process.