Joanna Jordan is a harpist with the skills of several musicians. She offers all types of music to her clients, and provides live music and DJ services through both her companies—HarpBeat and DJnLIVE—in Toronto, Canada and globally. She, herself, runs the entire business, from the administrative side—receiving inquiries, vetting potential clients, scheduling and billing—to performing the actual gigs. That’s a lot of responsibility for one person. In order to be successful, Joanna realized that she needed a customer relationship management (CRM) software solution to help streamline and automate the time- consuming administrative tasks involved in her business. It was necessary so that she could focus more time on the music she plays and growing her presence in the Toronto and global music scenes.
Joanna has been doing this for over 30 years, and she’s very confident in her ability to deliver the music. However, she had struggled a little in the past with finding the right ways to grow her client base, process clients faster and serve them in the way that best fit their needs. There was a lot of administration that she was doing manually. New prospects would email her, and she would have to manually reply, then engage in a back-and- forth to provide price quotes, understand what kind of music the prospect wanted, and gather the details she needed to process them. Finding new clients was also a challenge, and it often happened through word of mouth.
She employed three different CRM solutions in the past, but found that none of them was helping her to sufficiently solve these issues. She also employed a marketing automation solution for email marketing, but found that some aspects of the solution she chose were coming up short, and not allowing her to evolve in the way she wanted. She still faced the same pain points, and was a little disappointed that the solutions she implemented did not solve for these.
She eventually came across Agile CRM, and was intrigued by the fact that the system provided both customer relationship management capabilities, as well as marketing automation. Here was a single solution that could replace the two solutions she had in place, but was not entirely satisfied with. She decided to give Agile CRM a try, and signed up for an account.
She was immediately impressed by the level of assistance that the customer success team provided her during the onboarding process. That team’s job is to train new Agile CRM clients, and ensure that they are set up to be successful using the system. “The customer success team was great,” Joanna says. “They didn’t just show me how to use the system, they asked questions to help them understand what I was trying to accomplish and went above and beyond by giving me advice around system best practices that applied to my business. They gave me lots of attention right from the start.”
Indeed, there are many things that Joanna is able to do now that she was not able to before. She is using the email marketing feature, leveraging the system’s web forms and landing pages, tracking web and email activity, and more. “I used three different CRM systems before moving to Agile CRM,” she says. “I am learning more and more about the system as I go, and I’m hopeful that as I learn more, I’ll continue to improve the service I provide to my clients.”
Joanna is now growing her client base, with the ability to implement email drip campaigns. New prospects are coming in, thanks to a broader email presence and the ability to tell a story over time with drip marketing. She is also pleased with Agile CRM’s email and website tracking capabilities that let her drill down into the browsing history of people who land on her website, and view which emails a particular prospect has opened and clicked. Agile CRM’s online appointment scheduling feature has been quite helpful in her prospecting efforts as well. “I love being able to provide a link to my calendar in my emails and on my website, so that prospects can schedule meetings with me at their own convenience,” she says.
She has also drastically reduced the time she spends on the routine administration of her business. She uses the Agile CRM campaigns workflow feature to automate the processing of incoming prospect inquiries. “Previously, I had to manually respond to each incoming inquiry,” she says. “Now, I use a form to capture all the information that I need from a prospect, in an instant. Plus, they automatically receive a confirmation email, meaning I don’t have to respond to each one individually.” She also uses Agile CRM’s web forms to sign up new subscribers to her online community and newsletter. “They sign up via my web form, and I can tag them based on the information they provide,” she says. “This lets me segment them so that I can easily know what information to send them in the future.”
Perhaps the most important take away for Joanna has been her improved ability to deliver the kind of personalized service that her customers deserve. “Over the years, I have taken lots of business courses, which have taught me how important it is to serve clients the way they want to be served,” she says. “For example, millennials prefer to communicate via emails and messages, so the ability to let them complete a form rather than asking them to speak on the phone makes them happier by serving them in the way that suits them best.”
Unusual for the typical musician, Joanna is very proficient at database management. This is one reason why she sees Agile CRM as having an advantage in creating a great customer service experience for current and potential clients. “I work a lot with large data files and have ample experience in database management,” she says, “which is why I am so picky about the software I use to drive my business.” Because of that, the fact that she has chosen Agile CRM speaks volumes.