Best Contact Management Software (CMS): 11 Tools For Business Success

How well is your business managing its leads and customers? Without accurate, organized data, it’s nearly impossible for your company to maintain healthy customer relationships—or for your sales team to know when to reach out to individuals.

You could keep a running list of your business contacts in a spreadsheet. But then you run the risk of transposing numbers or letters and suddenly losing their email addresses, phone numbers, or even getting their name wrong. And then there’s the problem of forgetting to update their data if there’s a change. Plus, spreadsheets limit what you can do with your data.

Contact management software keeps customer data centralized, clean, and easily accessible. It takes the guesswork out of your marketing and sales workflows so your team can make the most out of their efforts. Embracing software to manage contacts empowers your business by saving time, reducing errors, keeping your customer information up-to-date, and enhancing relationship management.

What Is Software That Can Manage Contacts?

Customer management software (CMS) is more than just a list of contact information—it tracks and organizes all prospect and customer-related communications data in one place. The software is a centralized database capable of storing, sorting, and retrieving details about your leads, all customer interactions, and sales history. Making it easy for your team to see the complete picture, track performance, and optimize future efforts.

Main Features of Software to Manage Contacts

Features you can expect to find in the best contact management software tools include:

• Segmentation: Group contacts based on demographics, behaviors, and other criteria to tailor your marketing campaigns, promotional offers, newsletters, and more.

• Search and filter: Find contacts quickly in your extensive list using a simple search of their name, or opt for an advanced search using multiple filters.

• Follow-ups: Reach out to specific leads or customers on your desired timeline with automated reminders.

• Reports: Analyze the behaviors of customers and prospects to see how they’re interacting with your website, marketing efforts, and sales team. Use the data to make well-informed business decisions in your departments or the executive level.

• Schedule events: Create events within the CMS so your entire team can view meetings or client appointments and stay up to date.

• Import/export data: Import or export your contact data from multiple sources and formats easily. Or sync your CMS data with other third-party apps used in your business.

How AI Can Help You Streamline Your Contact Management

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expanding into many aspects of business, including customer relationships. It’s already touted for improving customer engagement, and many content management tools use it to enhance and streamline their features.

AI integration in CMS automates time-consuming and mundane tasks like data entry, categorizing contacts, and lead scoring, freeing up your team’s time to focus on more critical work. AI also enhances integration with other systems, including your customer relationship management (CRM) tools, breaking down data silos between departments so your customer support, sales, and marketing teams get a comprehensive view of your data. This functionality leads to better communication and collaboration within your business and allows for greater insights.

AI technology also brings predictive analysis to contact management. It analyzes current lead and customer interactions, historical data, and market trends to better understand customer behavior and preferences. This gives your business valuable insights into your communication, marketing, and sales strategies.

The 11 Best Contact Management Software Tools

The best contact management apps offer the integrations and features your business needs to improve customer relations, increase conversions, and boost sales. Here are some fantastic options to consider:

1. Podium

Podium’s lead conversion platform is an AI-powered, all-in-one CMS tool for capturing leads, converting leads to sales and driving repeat business. This tool consolidates leads into one place so your team can easily organize and target the right audience. Key features include customer status tracking, communication and marketing automation, and an AI-Employee. Podium’s step-by-step onboarding ensures your business gets the most out of this tool.

2. Hubspot

This CRM tool offers fully customizable hubs to connect your contacts, customer data, and marketing and sales teams in one place. Key features include list segmentation, contact scoring, sales forecasting, and email and activity tracking. Hubspot offers a free version with slimmed-down features, or you can pay to upgrade to their business or enterprise-level options.

3. Contact Boss

This contact database software captures and organizes your contacts. Its segmentation, lead generation, and visitor activity tracking features improve customer relationships. Established businesses may benefit from its Legacy Data support feature, which allows you to import existing databases to reduce manual entry and data redundancy. It’s less focused on marketing and sales automation and isn’t yet AI-enabled.

4. Streak

Designed for small to medium-sized businesses, Streak’s CRM seamlessly integrates with Gmail and Google Suite. Its task management, email marketing, reporting, and shareable pipeline features boost team collaboration and bring greater visibility into your lead communications. While Streak is useful in many industries, this lightweight tool may not offer all the robust features you need.

5. Pipedrive

While technically a CRM software, Pipedrive mainly focuses on contact management and lead generation. Sales teams can create custom pipelines to match existing processes and automate contact data collection. Other features include lead qualification and an AI sales assistant. You’ll have to upgrade to a higher-cost package to get the automation features.

6. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign’s CRM is a great contact management tool if you already use their email marketing platform. It’s designed to boost your sales team’s productivity through features like lead capture forms, lead nurturing, and task creation. The software offers automation for building customer relationships, tracking users through the customer journey, and helping to close deals. They offer a lower price point for entrepreneurs and small businesses and go up for larger team plans.

7. Freshworks

Freshworks’ centralized contact management database has a user-friendly interface that allows users to view contact information, customer profiles, and recent activities. It offers segmentation, marketing and sales automation, and predictive analysis through an AI assistant. Freshworks only offers 24-hour support during the week, which may be a dealbreaker for some businesses.

8. Nimble

Customer relationships are the focus of this CRM-based software. Nimble integrates and pulls contact data from over 160 apps into a contact database. Its features include lead capture, segmentation, sales pipeline management, and automated email marketing campaigns.

9. Nextiva

Nextiva’s CMS might be the right fit if you need phone monitoring features, contact management, and sales tools. They offer businesses of all sizes call queuing, voicemail-to-email, and mobile access alongside their contact database. Along with tracking sales, Nextiva can monitor customers through their pipeline and send automated emails. Their integrations include Salesforce and Outlook.

10. Keap

Keap’s CRM offers customizable workflow automation for sales and marketing teams with powerful email marketing capabilities. This tool can create custom segmentation, tags, and activity trackers to send predictive emails and A/B testing. It also offers lead scoring and analytics, and it has over 200 native integrations (including PayPal and Zapier). Keap’s pricing is based on your number of users and contacts.

11. Zoho CRM

This small business contact management software comes with a lower price tag, but you’ll need to use at least one of its other apps to get its full contact management functionality. Its key features include lead segmentation, integration with Google Suite, and predictive analysis. Zoho’s CRM tool is simple but effective at automating workflows and improving marketing outreach.

3 Benefits of Using a Contact Management Software

The right CMS tool is more than a fancy way to manage your business contacts. Top contact management software helps retain customers and optimize your sales and marketing processes. Benefits your company may see include:

1. Better Insight Into Customer Behavior

Contact manager software stores a contact’s entire history with your company in one place, giving you much greater insight than a spreadsheet or address book provides. You can quickly see how a customer interacts with your company, responds to marketing and other communications, and identifies their behavioral or purchasing patterns. According to Deloitte, personalized service has the greatest impact on customer experience.

2. Improved Data Organization and Accessibility

Using a CMS means your contact data is automatically stored and updated in a centralized platform, accessible to your entire organization. You don’t have to worry that your marketing team is looking at different customer information from your sales or customer support team.

3. Improved Sales and Marketing Outcomes

With a CMS tool, your company will stop losing leads or sales due to incorrect, lost, outdated, or mismanaged contact information. Your marketing and sales teams can quickly access key customer data, so they’re contacting the right people at the right time, increasing your chances of a sale or conversion.

Does Google have Free Software to Manage Contacts?

Currently, there are no free meeting-scheduling apps created by Google.

Upgrade Your Contact Management with Podium

Whether you want to eliminate manual tasks, improve lead management, or boost conversions, Podium offers AI-powered solutions for you. Our all-in-one conversational AI employee gathers lead information and communicates with customers on your behalf, pulling all relevant data in a single dashboard. From there, you can view all your contacts, track interactions, and optimize your sales and marketing workflows. Learn how our AI Employee can streamline your operations.