Starting

Start with your details!

But firstly an overview

The screen has the familiar look of Windows based software with navigation across the top

File
Publish
View
Communication
Reports
Options
Window
Help - for the best help consult this site

From time to time you will need these features but for now concentrate on the larger graphical buttons.

Contact
Activity
Company
Address
Project
ToDo
Group
Write
Telephone
Reports

The florsists database is a relational database. The most sophisticated and powerful type compared to a flat database for now this will not be important but in time you will come to appreciate the benefit. What this does mean is that one has to navigate from one screen to another. If everything was on one screen it would be simply overwhelmingly confusing hence the database is displayed in different screens for different portions of data entry.

Get some data!

A key tip for success do not start to enter data for a contact if you have not got the following:-

Company name or lastname of the contact
Address especially the postcode
Contact name

If you are broken off halfway through - looking for data it can be a source of frustration.

Why not start with your own company details?

1. Click On the Company icon

Click the New button towards the right hand corner (think of this as getting a fresh record card).

Then add your company name in the box Company:

Then choose from the Company Type: list using the drop down arrow Associate.

There are more boxes which you can complete - but we will come back to these issues - one could also debate each of the fields and descriptions but again any discussion on these will be tackled later on.

Tip - enter the company name as you would expect to see it on a letter. - Capitalisation and spelling are important. - They can be corrected but do the job once and do it correctly first time. - When you write a letter to someone the Company Name will be drawn from this field.

Click Update on the right or press Return.

Click Yes you do want to add a new Company and then an address.

Note that the address is formatted as follows.

Address 1:
Address 2:
Address 3:
Post Town:
County:
Postcode:

If you do not require Address lines 2 or 3 do not worry when you write a letter the software in the Word Templates will automatically close up any unwanted lines. There are very big benefits in adding your data in a disciplined way. - Many addresses do not require county for the address to be valid, but if you do add the County you will lose nothing and again one day the benefits will become clear.

Tip - when adding data to Post Town and County you do not have to keep re-typing the town name add it once then in the future you can access it by typing the first letter or two so if the Post Town in Coventry type C and that will take you to it the second time if that does not work you may have to type Co etc - you will soon get the hang of this.

County is the same if you have Warwickshire and West Midlands then typing W will take you to Warwickshire and We... will take you to West Midlands.

As with the Company name this will be used for writing to your contacts so accuracy correct spelling and capitalisation are well worth attending to.

Region is an opportunity to segment your data useful at very busy times of the year - not sure if this if for you press n and that will select No Region

Switchboard - is for companies it is what is it says.

Fax means main fax number in some businesses people have individual faxes that will be tackled in a moment.

Once the Address data is entered press Update.

Select Yes you do want to add a Contact

This is the third and last screen Note there are three tabs:
Details | Summary | More Details

Click the Tab to navigate from one to another.

Complete Details with your details.

First Name
Last Name
Title - this means what would you expect to call someone Mr Mrs Ms Dr Sir etc try and avoid Squadron Leader etc whilst this might seem a nice touch it will lead to complications later.
Job Title is not compulsory but can be useful particularly in the corporate world e.g. Personnel Manger etc.
Dir Tel refers to their direct office line
Dir. Fax if they have their own fax there will be many contacts where some of these fields never get any data added to them
Mobile: worth collecting one day you might want to send SMS Text messages to people within the database
Home: refers to the home telephone number - many of your contacts may well end up with an entry in this field - do include the full telephone code and be consistent with your data entry
Email: add the full correct email address and you could be sending email shots from the database
Login ignore

Role if you are only ever going to send letters from your database ignore If you would like to send some people

letters
some texts and
some email use the following:-

l = letters
s = sms text
e = emails

Click Update

Congratulations!

You now have entered yourself in the database.

Initially there may be a temptation to think that this is going to take a long time but remember you enter the data once and then you can use it repeatedly with very little further effort.

Why not add some of your corporate customers - follow the same format but when in the field Company Type on the Company Form (page) choose Customer Corporate

Add a Corporate Client

To add a Corporate Client - get their data perhaps a businesses card or something similar

Company page
New
Company Name
Pick Corporate Customer from the drop down list and Update

Add Address details and Update

Add Contact details and Update

Individuals

Private individuals need to be added using the following formula.

Lastname and Postcode - how often has someone asked you for your Unique Identity Number and when you cannot produce it the conversation stops. - Using this technique we only have to have to ask for their lastname and postcode 2 facts we all know, armed with that we can add their details to the database or if they ring in find them quickly. Lastname on its own is not sufficient with 1000 names in your database you could have 20 Smiths but by adding the postcode we can narrow down any name.

Because the database comprises one pot but divisible in different ways if you follow this format you will be able to separate corporate customers from private clients.

.Lastname Postcode so .Willcock B47 5JP is the format to use.

To pre-empt your new question - when we write to the private clients we do not include the company name field and by assigning them the Company Type: Customer they can be easily separated from the Corporate Customers.

As with anything the instructions are more complicated than the reality.

Armed with some data add a private individual contact

Company Page
New
.Lastname Postcode
Pick Customer from the drop down list and Update

Add Address details and Update

Add Contact details and Update

Extra Detail

Now with private individuals you will almost certainly want to be able to segment the data along lines as:-

Valentines
Mothers Day
Easter
Fathers Day
Christmas
You might have some others - Warning do not create dozens of groups this only causes confusion less is more

Out of a database of 2000 names you might have 400 who order at Valentines day - save money by not mailing the 1600 who do not order and the same with Mothers Day etc.

Flagging a contact

First you must add the contact and update (Do not try and add the Company Page / Address and then Details then the Contact / this will cause an error).

Summarising Company Form Address Contact add their details Update and then click on the Summary tab.

On the right you will see Profiles if it is closed (i.e. you can only see the word Profiles click the + and it will open out.

Thinking ahead if someone has ordered for Valentines this year they are a perfect person to contact for Valentines next Year. Click on the variable you want to flag and add a y - lower case y is perfectly fine (if you do not want to flag them do nothing). The result of this work will be that when you come to contact those people in the database then we can build a group based upon those with a y in the field Valentines Day.

If there is no y in the field they will not be selected.

Sounds simple - it is simple and that is why it is easy to flag the data in your database with just a little thought.

If you flag everything for everyone then - well you are going to be contacting the whole database every time you do something and that will probably produce results which you will feel are not cost effective. - It is the ability to segment the data which is the key to success.

Similarly you can flag the other fields: -

Mothers Day
Easter
Fathers Day
Christmas

Anniversaries

Days such as Valentines are the same for everyone but the one thing which is unique to individuals is Anniversaries | Birthdays etc.

These are referred to as Event_Date_No_n

Initially this might sound strange but has been developed as the result of much research and work on making it simple to pick groups from the database and communicate to them on mass.

Our objective is to be able to extract from the database quickly a group which needs communicating with and send a personalised letter.

If the variable which we are looking for is a number greater than 24 and less than 30 then any contact with a Event_Date_No_n which is between those two dates will be extracted put in a group and we can then mail.

The reason we do not use actual dates is this increase the complexity without producing any significant benefits.

Please download a copy of the date picker PDF - you loose the date picker download a new copy.

The date picker lists the Calendar and provides a numerical equivalent so the 25th January is 25 and the 29th September is 272.

If someone purchases flowers for their wife's birthday 25th Jan then we want to send a reminder about the 14th January next year to do that we add the date as 25 in the Event_Date_No_n field and then search on the dates in advance so on the 12th Jan next year we would ask the database who should we be mailing 22nd - 26th Jan by changing the variable to Extract all dates greater than 21 and less than 27 which means any which are 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 again soumds complicated but as you become familiar with entering the data creating groups and mailing this will become second nature.

Event_Date_No_n can hold a number of dates (the maximum number is 252 separate events again clearly this would be excessive and a typical contact would have between one date and a dozen.

If you click the + sign you can see the dates - dates can be edited or deleted.

The wise florist will manage this actively

So far we have covered a lot of ground and this option is advanced users - Last Spend_d If you want to you can log the last date some when spent money click on the date and add the date using this format dd/mm/yyyy for success.

What this will allow us to do is if you want to extract a list of people who have not spent money in the past year we could then mail such a group alternatively we could reward loyal customers with a 20% extra promotion - whatever the choice is yours.

Have ago

Enter some data perhaps 10 - 20 names and then try doing some letters. Tip Do not enter hundreds to start with - if you are not entering the data correctly it is a lot to correct!

Where now? - Using the data!

Miraquel

105 Shawhurst Lane
Hollywood
Birmingham
West Midlands
B47 5JP
Tel: 01564 829055 Fax: 0870 138 7679
Email: info@floristsdatabase.co.uk