With a growing number of entrepreneurs building businesses online, the principles of traditional customer relationship management can be a bit more difficult to apply. After all, you are dealing with a much smaller sales force (probably one person), a relatively small marketing team (again, likely one), and of course, a smaller support staff (still just you!). Does this mean that you don't need a comprehensive CRM strategy? Certainly not.

CRM is more than just software. Obviously, as an online entrepreneur you do not need an enterprise software application to tie your organization together. However, you do need a customer-centric approach that takes advantage of existing tools to improve customer retention, improve conversion rates, and in turn, maximize your customer value.

Who are Your Customers?

In order to develop a customer-centric approach, you need to understand who your customers actually are. Depending on your revenue model, you may have a few customer types.

Web Traffic - the most common type of online customer, in one way or other you are targeting John Q. Websurfer. Whether you want him to click an ad or buy some doggie biscuits, he is the most important figure in your online business. Find more, you sell more ads or doggie treats. Fail to retain them and revenue will almost certainly decline. The best tools I've found for better identifying the makeup of this group is Google Analytics. Google Analytics can provide you with key details about every visitor - where they are from, how they got there, and what keywords brought them to your doorstep. How long did they stay on your site? How many pages did they see? All of this will be valuable information as you ultimately take steps to bring them back and keep them on your site even longer.

Advertisers - if your revenue model relies on advertisers to keep it afloat, it is important to understand the profile of these advertisers. What type of advertisers are you attracting? Do you have advertisers in a closely related niche that seem to offer a better CPC, CPM, or flat monthly rate? If so, you can use this information to target your content toward a more profitable area.

Affiliates - understanding how your web traffic customers respond to various affiliate programs can help drive conversion rates higher. Experiment with different programs, products, and styles to find the right fit for your site. Most affiliate programs are happy just to have you generating sales, so strong relationships in this area aren't nearly as valuable. Translation: Focus on your true customers (web traffic) first.

Retaining and Growing Your Customers

Once you are able to generate some web traffic, it is important that you keep them. Check out the following tools to track your customers while adding to the overall user experience.

• RSS - use sites like Feedburner to provide users with RSS feeds from your site that you can then measure.
• Mailing List - give your visitors an opportunity to 'opt-in' for your company's mailing list. Do not abuse this trust by selling to a third party or sending announcements too frequently. In addition, develop a clear privacy statement to provide your visitors when they register.

As far as growing your customer base, there are sites that can explain the basics far better than I can. Check out SEO (Search Engine Optimization) sites such as SEO Book and Tropical SEO for insight on how to improve your rank within search engines. Self Made Minds also offers some tips on building web traffic

CRM Software for Online Businesses

Currently, there aren't any traditional CRM solutions that I would strongly recommend using for small online businesses (assuming that you are a team of one). I expect that some valuable offerings should not be far off. Key to any CRM software designed to support online businesses would be integration with major affiliate programs, integration to Microsoft Outlook, and strong action-driven campaign management features. If you feel that your business will ultimately grow and add sales and marketing staff, you could start with a free solution like Free CRM or ZohoCRM (up to 5 users free).