Whether you’re considering Make for the first time or you’re already using it for workflow building and process automation, Make is an indispensable tool for businesses of all types and sizes. It connects apps to support cross-functional teams. It doesn’t require any coding knowledge. And it’s a powerful alternative to Zapier, Tray.io, or Workato if you’ve had problems with those solutions in the past.

How can you get the most out of Make when you’re using a contact management app or CRM? There are tons of possibilities — and the result (like with most workflow automation) is more efficiency, less expense, less reliance on IT companies or highly technical professionals to create solutions, a better customer experience, and ultimately more revenue or a stronger sales pipeline.

That’s a ton of benefit for a small price. Here’s our roundup of the best ways you can use Make alongside your contact management app to stay organized, keep contacts engaged, and improve overall efficiency at your organization.

Automate Contact Creation

The problem: You’re gathering new contacts from a range of different channels, but you don’t have an automated process for capturing and storing that info in one place.

The solution: Set up a Make command that extracts contact details from emails, social media, forms, and other channels and then automatically adds them to your contact management app. This keeps you from missing any valuable contact data (and ideally, your contact management platform can de-duplicate and clean up data as it comes in.) 

You can also use Make to do the same thing in reverse. For example, if your contact management app captures a variety of lead data from a form, you can use Make to push that data to appropriate third-party platforms — using an email address to create a new Gmail contact, for example, or sending phone number data to an SMS marketing platform.

Schedule Follow-Ups

The problem: Anyone involved in sales knows that follow-ups are an absolute necessity. It’s extremely rare to close a deal or build a lasting bond after just one meeting. But unless you’re highly organized or happen to have an eidetic memory, it’s common to forget to check in with leads at regular intervals.

The solution: Because Make allows you to schedule tasks and reminders, you can use this feature to set strategic dates and times to follow up with each individual contact. Set up a Make command that’s triggered by the entry of a new contact in your contact management app. Set the action to be an email or text reminder to yourself (say, three days later) to follow up with that person. You can even create a multi-step workflow that reminds you to follow up at regular intervals or notifies other team members to do so.

Integrate Communication Channels

The problem: You and your team are inundated with Gmail, Slack messages, and phone calls from different contacts, and it’s impossible to keep track of who contacted you and when. What happens when you need to track down a customer interaction but don’t have the right data to search for it in Gmail? Where do you store data gathered from a lengthy phone conversation?

The solution: Use Make to grab communication data from different channels. Make already has templates for sending data from Gmail, Slack, Livestorm, Callingly, and many more to a spreadsheet, where you can keep everything in one place. Make also integrates with tons of messaging apps, phone systems, and email providers to keep communications data recorded in a meaningful way.

Categorize and Tag Contacts

The problem: Your contact management app already has built-in categorization and tagging, but you have to manually select the right tags every time you gain a new contact.

The solution: Set up a workflow in Make to categorize new contacts automatically. Tag them based on location, interests, how they found you, industry, job title, or more — and use that info to tailor your conversations with them later.

Sync with Calendar

The problem: You want to know if (and when) you’ve met with a contact in the past, but you don’t want to spend all day poring over every past event in your Google calendar.

The solution: Use Make to connect your calendar to your contact management app. You can set it to automatically record calendar data in your contact management app, so you’ll never again have to wonder when you met with them or what you discussed. You can also use Make to create calendar events from your contact management app, so you don’t have to hop back and forth from your and your team member’s calendars.

Capture Meeting Notes

The problem: You’ve captured meeting notes in your favorite note-taking app, but weeks later, you can’t track those notes down.

The solution: Connect your note-taking app with your contact management platform using Make. Even something as simple as a paragraph of meeting notes stored in an Excel spreadsheet can be ported over to your contact management app automatically, so when you pull up that contact’s info weeks later, you’ll see your meeting notes there.

Analyze and Track Networking Efforts

The problem: Networking can be a long-term and complex process. You meet someone at a trade show, then run into them again at the grocery store, and exchange a few emails after that. They drop off your radar for a couple of months, then you get a text and a phone call…and finally, they’re ready to purchase your solution. There’s a world of information within those interactions that you could put to use to strengthen your networking efforts in the future, but how do you capture it and analyze it all?

The solution: Set up a number of Make commands to store data about every customer touchpoint. While Make may not have complex analytics on its own, it can certainly empower you to log networking activities, events, introductions, and referrals so you can analyze this information and generate reports to find areas for improvement.

By combining the capabilities of Make with your contact management app, you can automate tasks, streamline workflows, and enhance your overall contact management and networking processes. It’s an awesome tool for building custom solutions that fit your business perfectly, enhancing productivity and contact management for everyone on your team.

Looking for a contact management app that can integrate with Make and enrich your contact data? Sign up for a free Contacts+ account today.