Let’s talk about contact information. There’s no doubt you know what it is — maybe it’s a name, maybe it’s an email address, or perhaps just information about a family interested in your activities. But what can contact information do for your business?

In this piece we’ll break down why contact information is important to collect, what you can do with it, and how it can help you grow your business! When it comes to communicating with parents and strengthening your business as an educator, compiling content information of either existing or prospective customers in your community can be the ticket to success.

Before we dive into this — let’s ask a big question.

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Why do we collect data? 

In a nutshell, data helps you make informed decisions — and contact information is a form of data. The more data you have, the more likely you are to make choices and decisions based on information that relates to your business.

Why should contact information be a priority?

Contact information can help your business on so many levels. Let’s break down a few of them:

Understand your audience

By collecting email addresses and physical addresses, you begin to get a deeper understanding of your market and audience. Gaining insight into the demographics in the community you’re operating in opens the door to more informed decision making. By knowing more information about your customers you’re able to personalize content specifically for them; like email marketing.

Marketing is essential

Digital marketing is more important than ever, and by collecting information you’re able to tap into one of the most successful marketing tools — email marketing. Whether you’re communicating with your customers about new classes and camps or sending surveys out to gauge interest, email marketing can be a huge driver of orders and communications for your business.

Make decisions on curriculums

When you run your business using registration platforms like Sawyer Tools, you can take your contact information to the next level. While collecting information from parents is one thing, Sawyer lets you build out profiles for children after they’ve taken your class. Information like age range and booking behavior can help you make decisions about the types of classes that are performing well, and help influence the types of classes you should be developing for your community.

What’s the best way to manage contacts?

As your business grows its contact base, it’s beneficial to have a system in place to manage the families in your network. Unlike many customer database systems, Sawyer Tools is built for families. Keep family information in one place with parent and children profiles, as well as details about caregivers and about attendance history. You can even include details like favorite colors! You never know when the information will be useful!