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Category: Business tips

5 Steps to Get Your Business Ready for the Holiday Sales Season !!
Holiday season generates maximum business in the shortest period for most of the online businesses. The preparation for holiday season starts at least 6 months earlier in most of the businesses. Few businesses are little late and they start waking up just before the holiday season. This article is for these businesses to get their act together for holiday sales seasons in the shortest possible time.

1. Your website :

Your website is your face to the world. Use following check list to check about this.
- Responsive design : Make sure that your website is responsive. What we meant by responsive is that it should render correctly on mobile devices viz mobile and tablet. Remember, according to survey 60% of the visitors visit via mobile devices. So if your website is not mobile friendly, please work on this aspect on war footing. Talk to us if you need any expedited help.
- Website content : Please check your website for the appropriate content. Writing clean and original content improves your website ranking and helps in SEO.
- Metadata and Keywords : Please make sure that you use correct metadata and keywords so that your site can be found by search engines.
- Set up google analytics : Set up google analytics for monitoring the visitors, goals , behaviors etc of your visitors. Analyze the traffic at all times and make the appropriate corrections
- Security vulnerabilities : Check if your site has any security vulnerability. Speak to experts and get the audit done.
- Load Testing : During the holiday season, the traffic to your site may increase multi-fold. Work with your IT team and get your site load tested to avoid crashes during the peak season.
2. Products and pricing :
- Product upload : Create appropriate images and upload your products to your site. Double check for any errors in descriptions, features etc. As far as possible automate this uploading process. It can be very time consuming and frustrating to upload 100s and 1000s of products to online e-commerce system.
- Also set up your pricing appropriately
3. Supply chain management :
- The success of any online business also depends on how efficient their supply chain is. You can get into terrible situation if there is a demand supply mis-match.
- Talk to your suppliers and set up your supply chain network appropriately
- Stock your warehouse . Deploy warehouse management system / Inventory management system for better control
- Set up automatic connectors between your e-commerce store and inventory management system. This saves tremendous time and increases productivity by leaps and bounds. Check out our e-commerce, crm, accounting, email marketing and inventory connectors on ready connectors page.
- Set up your drop ship arrangements.
4. Customer Support :
- Remember, these days customer support is new sales.
- Set up customer support process.
- Set up the escalation process as well.
- Clearly mention support timings on the website.
- Set up communication process
- Train customer support agents properly. Excellent customer support delights the customers and forces them to remain loyal with your brand. It takes lots of efforts to get new customers whereas getting repeat order from the same customer is very easy if you maintain highest standard of customer support.
5. Marketing/ Sales :
- Set up your simple marketing campaigning system as mentioned in ( How to create a perfect campaign management system in 7 steps for Holiday season?) if not already done
- Plan your email campaigns / ad-word campaigns / social campaigns
- Set up budget for these campaigns
- Create campaigns, execute and monitor them
- Create customer feedback system and monitor for any issues
If you need any help in automating some of these activities, please talk to us. Good luck !
November 14, 2016
How to create a perfect campaign management system in 7 steps for Holiday season?

Holiday season is round the corner. Entrepreneurs can create a perfect Campaign Management system using Zoho CRM, MailChimp and KloudConnectors in 7 steps without breaking their bank .

Step I – Sign up for Zoho CRM :

Zoho CRM is one of the leading and value for money cloud based Customer Relationship Management system. They have different editions. Every edition has different features and price points. They have free , standard ( $12/month/person), Professional , Enterprise, CRM Plus and Ultimate editions. For creating campaign management system, we recommend you to sign up for at least standard plan. Free plan will work as well. Upload your leads and contact to respective modules in Zoho CRM. If you haven’t signed up Zoho CRM yet then you can easily sign up here.

Step II – Sign Up for MailChimp :

MailChimp is probably the best email marketing system. MailChimp has a free plan which allows you to send 12000 emails and offers 2000 free subscribers. If you want to send more emails or want to have more subscribers, you can sign up for higher paid plans.

Step III – Sign up for KloudConnectors :

KloudConnectors is a cloud integration platform which connects several popular saas systems. KloudConnectors has more than 55 ready connectors which integrates systems like Zoho CRM and MailChimp. KloudConnectors can integrate several other crm systems and also email marketing systems. It also has several connectors to connect your online stores ( Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, 1Shopping cart etc). Zoho and MailChimp connector ( Link) is available for a small sum of $19.99 for a month or at a discounted annual price of $179 per annum. Sign up for any of these subscription. KloudConnectors uses PayPal as a payment gateway so you are always in control of your subscription.

Step IV – Plan your campaign :

Create your email template in MailChimp. You can use standard template in MailChimp or design your own template using simple to use designer. Also create a MailChimp list where you want KloudConnectors to sync your leads or contacts.

Step V – Set up your connector in KloudConnectors :

You would need to follow instructions given in the User Guide of your connector on kloudconnector’s site and set up your connector. It is very easy to set up if you follow the instructions. It takes about 3 minutes to set up your connector. You can decide to sync your Leads/Contacts or Zoho CRM campaign to MailChimp list. You can also map the fields from your Lead/Contacts modules with MailChimp list. KloudConnectors sync your data every 12 hours or on demand. If you want to sync immediately, just press sync now and your data would be synced with MailChimp.

Step VI – Create a campaign in MailChimp using the list ( or segment in the list ) and the template created in earlier steps.

Step VII – Send or schedule your campaign in MailChimp

If you want to see the campaign results like open , bounced etc in Zoho CRM for your leads/contacts then select the checkbox for syncing campaign statistics check box in KloudConnector set up.

KloudConnectors also offers Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor and iContact Connectors for Zoho CRM. You can follow the same process for creating solid campaign management system using these software. Good luck !

November 10, 2016
35 Habits of Productive People – Infographic

As a small business owner, we always struggle with the time. Here is an excellent Infographic on 35 Habits of Productive People by Anna Vital.

December 18, 2013
7 Cloud Infographics you must See!!

Here is an Collection of 7 Interesting Cloud Infographics. The theme is Cloud Technology.

Together they cover all : Why, How, Why not, Trends, Facts, Options and a lot more about Clouds .
Let’s have a look one by one.

This one talks all about Costs giving you a Holistic picture of Cost of Ownership.

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/12/cloud-infographic-total-cost-of-ownership-tco/

As we have repeatedly highlighted, Cloud is the best thing that has happened to SMBs.

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/09/a-cure-for-small-business-it-aches-pains-its-in-the-cloud/

Yes, this one is about Big Data. With Cloud Technology, the access to big data, the high end analytical insights has become so democratic, so easy.
That’s why you would find many talking about Big Data and Cloud in the same breath.

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/11/cloud-infographic-what-is-big-data-anyway/

This one throws light on interesting trends when it comes to Cloud Adoption.
Whopping 72% of them work with multiple Clouds instead of laying all eggs in one basket. That’s even more interesting!
Of all the people we at www.KloudConnectors.com should know how true it is!

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/12/cloud-infographic-fresh-insights-into-cloud-adoption-trends/

No Perceptions, no Trends, no Estimates, no Projections.
Let’s Talk Facts. Cold Facts.

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/09/true-facts-to-help-you-talk-about-cloud-computing-in-the-social-scene/

Why more and more businesses moving into Clouds. This Infographics tells you all

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/07/cloud-infographic-moving-to-the-cloud/

This one will surely come handy when you have made the decision to move to Clouds

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/10/cloud-infographic-cloud-apps-a-buyers-guide/

January 22, 2013
Why Cloud is Great for Small Businesses

Cheetah -World’s fastest predator, with unmatched hunting prowess.
Yet they will surrender a kill immediately to even a single Hyena.

Surprised?

Think about it. They rely on their speed, agility to obtain their meals and anything that slows them down could be essentially life threatening.May be now, the readers know why I am talking about Cheetah when I am writing a piece for the Small businesses. Does it ring a bell?

Agility. One of the biggest advantages that small businesses have over large organizations is their Agility.They are light weight, they decide quickly, they start execution immediately and they seldom lose focus like their big peers.

Interestingly they also want to grow.

And on getting more and more business, when they are supposed to be excited,they actually start worrying about losing their agility.One of their core strength.They don’t want to lose this asset even if they want to serve more and more customers and increase revenue.They want the growth.At the same time they don’t want to be big.They just don’t want to add to the weight.They like it lean, they like it light.They like the ability to move in and out, change course, respond to market and speed up very quickly without much risk.

This is the time they start realizing the beauty of Cloud based business tools.It is almost like their every wish has been granted.The typical conversation between a small businessman and Cloud service provider would go like this :

I would love to have Productivity tools like the big guys.                                                                            Done
( but don’t want the huge upfront investment)…………Don’t worry about it.

I want it at my fingertips, any time access from anywhere.                                                                         Done
(don’t want to be chained to my desk, nothing to restrict my mobility)…… Ok. Heard you.

Should be able to scale up and down easily without risk Done
(want full flexibility in pricing. I ain’t paying for what I don’t use.
(I don’t mind paying for real value. But don’t expect big money on day 1.
(Let me grow at my own rate)………….Okey.Ok.Point taken.

And look I am no computer geek. AND I don’t have money to pay IT admin guys
(or to have my own ‘IT department’ to take care of all the Hardware, Software upgrades and stuff)
(It should just work. Like my email. No hassles, No viruses and malwares)                                                 Done

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it ?

Well, It is true. Cloud technologies have made these things possible. Companies like Zoho, MailChimp, Kashoo, Xero, Freshdesk and a number of their peers have completely changed the game in business software industry.All I can say to small business owners out there is that you have fought so far with only your brains and sheer guts. Now you have the tools too.

Field is more even now. Go, Get Even.

April 27, 2012