Making a mailing list database?

[Blowpastyou]

I need to find a way to print out mailing labels for our customers in the last 4 years. I have over 2500 customers from our past work with Home Depot and Sears. We feel like its time to focus as much on Premier Plumbing calls as we have on Home Depots stuff. Were wanting to have one van moving all the time for home depot and another full time for ourselves. Any ideas please feel free to share. We plan on getting an external storage device for the addresses and info. And were going to be offering coupons and discounts for repeat customers. Thanks in advance, Eddie.

[RIXXX93GT]

What format are the lists in that you have? You will probably have to add them to an Excel spread sheet or contacts in Outlook.

[Blowpastyou]

We don't have one at all yet. I have 3 huge filing cabinets full that need to be entered.

[Gene]

The most effective way is to invest in some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. Not only can you use it to print labels, but you can also use it to organize email specials and keep records of what conversations you've had with a particular customer.

My guess is that there is probably a few plumbing industry specific products out there. We use garage management software here that not only keeps track of customers and provides the infrastructure to generate mailers, coupons, etc, but also keeps track of inventory and costs.

A quick primer on CRM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management

[Sloney50]

See what a program costs but constant contact has done wanders for us with our current customers

[Black Horse]

You can set up a simple mailing list in Excel - then you use the mail merge funtion in MSWord to set-up the format for the label, you can choose the format of the print (label size, etc.) based on your label type.

Search "Mail Merge" in Word or Excel for step by step directions. The sheet that comes with the labels usually has good info for setting up the print as well.