“Infusion CRM has a revolutionary digital, interactive filing system that allows me to stay organized, follow up automatically and know who I need to bill, who has paid, and who I need to contact and why—and I never lose an email or any client-related detail.”
— My Wedding Film founder, Darby Schnepf
My Wedding Film is a small business with big ideas well-positioned in an explosively growing market: weddings. Based out of Arizona, My Wedding Film thrives on excellence in filming, editing, and customer relations. The company has grown through smart marketing and strong customer relations with so much success that their biggest lead source comes from referrals.
This unique business began using Infusion CRM soon after founder Darby Schnepf’s launched the company in 2001. Infusion CRM empowers Schnepf to manage the details of customer relationships almost effortlessly.
Through constant and diligent research and development they have created a “Wedding Film” so unique as to allow them to travel nationally and internationally to film weddings and events.
Business Challenge
As with any small business, My Wedding Film was looking to drive its revenue the quickest and most effortless way possible, but didn’t have the tools to get it done.
Darby Schnepf’s then current system, was very manual and included paper contracts, outlook calendars, and multiple spreadsheets that could make any businessperson’s head spin. For Schnepf, it was getting to be a trial-and-error process in keeping track of all My Wedding Film’s contacts, most importantly its clients and warm prospects.
Schnepf also wanted to make sure the company was on top of maintaining a consistent flow of information and communication with their database, touching each contact consistently at the right time such that a sale could be closed, a relationship solidified and keeping track of that prospect’s status.
My Wedding Film was losing an uphill battle of managing any kind of marketing campaign properly.
In Darby Schnepf’s words:
1. “We were horribly disorganized. Without a central system to track everything, we were spread out and cluttered. I never really felt like we were in control of our business.”
2. “Our website was nothing more than an online brochure. Visitors would come to our website and leave without us capturing their information.”
3. “Our follow up was pathetic. For example, the only prospects we knew about or communicated with were the hot ones-the ones that were ready to buy.”
4. “We communicated very little, if at all, with our clients. The communication we did do was difficult to keep track of and organize.”
5. “We were frustrated. Who wouldn’t be?”
“It’s almost as if running a small business like this is normal and okay,” added Schnepf. “I’m not saying it should be normal, but as I look around at other small businesses, they are suffering from the same problems that we were, and most don’t even realize there is a solution out there for them.”
Summary
With the advanced technology and understanding of how small businesses work built into Infusion CRM, My Wedding Film now has the ability to instantly correspond with any and all of its prospects after their first visit to the company’s website. For example, a prospect that expresses interest and fills out a simple lead capture form on the site with their information is automatically entered into My Wedding Film’s database, and based on that prospect’s needs, can be placed into the appropriate marketing campaign, which automatically performs a sequential outreach to that prospect—from emails to voicemails and direct mail postcards, you name it—all done automatically without any need for staff time.
[Photo courtesy of entrepreneur.]