Using Highrise to manage sponsorships
Web-based software is magic. It all runs on a server in the sky, and we don’t generally have to worry about it. No upgrades, so patches to install, and no need to worry about installing it on every machine. It’s computer bliss.
One of my favourite developers of web-based software is 37signals, who have made products such as Basecamp, Backpack, Writeboard and Highrise.
My favourite product of theirs would have to be Highrise, which is a really easy to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. I’ve recommended it to our community station, and they have started using it for managing sponsorship deals. There’s a few different plans you can subscribe to, but we have the free version.
I want to take the time to describe how we use it to keep track of sponsorships. Previously, our tracking of sponsorships was all contained within a few different people’s heads, and in our inboxes. It was fine with limited sponsors, but once we got more than a few, it became hard to track payments, renewals, etc.
Introducing Highrise.
As Highrise is a CRM, it’s important to understand the concept. In a nutshell, a CRM will track all of your customers, your dealings with them, upcoming tasks, etc. It keeps track of business for you.
For our sponsorship tracking, we have all of the contact details of our customers contained within the system. Then, we have ‘notes’ added to each one, which describe our dealings with them. Notes, by the way, are just small snippets of text which we can attach to a company. Here’s a few samples:
- Called Rob about upgrading his sponsorship package – is excited about the possibilities. Have to email new sponsorship agreement to him
- Julie sent through the cheque for $220.00, which will give XYZ Builders 3 spots per day until 27/8/09
- Acme Warehouse is changing new management – previous management has passed on their details so we can try and establish a relationship
As you can see, notes are used to keep the whole team up to date with our dealings with individual companies.
The next aspect of Highrise we use is Tasks.
We absolutely exploit this feature (in a good way!) – we currently have twenty two tasks set for the next few months. Tasks are simple. Here’s a few examples:
- Renewal Letter – Jul 23, 6pm (Re: Julie from XYZ Builders)
- Sponsorship Finishes – Aug 29, 8pm – (Re: Acme Warehouse)
- Thank-you letter – Aug 30, 2pm – (Re: Council involvement in OB)
The beauty of Tasks is that the appropriate person gets an email reminder when an item is due, so we never miss a beat. There is no excuse to miss some important task which is time critical.
Of course, the information we receive from Highrise is only as good as the information we put in. The computer can’t read our minds – that is one feature that 37signals has failed to implement.
We love Highrise. The software is simplistic, but gets the job done really well. Hats off to 37signals for producing such a marvelous bit of software – you really have helped us a great deal as a community radio station.