Customer Relationship Management 2.0

Sometimes I get irritated by the enormous number of Web 2.0 websites that are only intended for entertainment. While for many-many of us Internet is actually about business and business tools are sometimes under-estimated. And I have just been informed of a really interesting enterprise solution that is definitely a good example of how Web 2.0 can serve corporate customers.

Relenta is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that is targeted at small- and medium-sized businesses. It is a completely web-based customers management tool to manage your team email, contacts, calendar and email marketing in one central location. It often happens that when a key team member is on vacation or in a business trip no one has any idea of previous communications with a certain customer because all the data is stored in this employee's mailbox. Here all the data can be found and managed online.

Relenta offers complete email management and it is important that all messages can be associated with particular contacts. The team has a shared calendar that permits to track all the activities and coordinate schedules of each team member. An important feature that actually makes Relenta unique is its support of email marketing - your team will be able to send out personalized newsletters and manage subscribers' lists (and we all know that this is vital to turn leads into customers). It is also important that Relenta permits to import existing contacts from numerous email applications, existing databases or purchased lists. Besides, if you ever decide to leave Relenta for any other tool, you will be able to export your contacts, emails and calendar. Relenta also enables its users to upload documents and associate them with customers (for example, the whole team will be able to access customized quotations sent to each customer to start working on respective agreements when required.

As for the pricing, the product is available in four versions:

1. a basic free one
2. personal for 1 user (50 MB of storage, 500 contacts and 5,000 emails) for $15 per month
3. monthly based on the number of users and priced at $50 per user per month (100 MB of storage, 2,000 contacts and 20,000 emails per user)
4. 1-year pre-paid - $1,000 per year (5 users, 200 MB for files storage, 5,000 contacts and 40,000 of emails)

What I also like about the pricing policy is that you can develop a custom pricing and feature set for you: for only $10 you can buy additional 5,000 contacts or 100 MB of storage or 20,000 emails. This pricing does not sound terrifying if it permits your company actually reach your goals in marketing and sales. So after giving the system a close look I think that if you need to put in order your sales, marketing and customer support Relenta could be a good tool for you to get things done - the Web 2.0 way.