Walk4Life Steps Up Sales, Marketing, Service with GoldMine
Before implementing FrontRange™ GoldMine® Corporate Edition as its centralized contact management system, the fitness advocacy organization Walk4Life often found itself drowning in its own marketing successes. For example, when a major publication mentioned the company in a feature story, the resulting 200 to 300 orders a day nearly shut down operations because manual, disconnected processes could not handle the volume.
“All we had was a huge pile of spreadsheets and our [accounting] database,” said Jeff Murrow, Walk4Life Director of Operations. “We were using [our accounting system] as our contact manager, so everyone in the organization had to go into the accounting system to get customer information. We needed another way to manage prospects.”
Chicago-based Walk4life turned to FrontRange’s award-winning GoldMine software and nearby FrontRange Solutions Partner Ticomix to create a customized contact management solution that covers its sales and marketing needs, as well as integrates with other important business applications.
Founded in 1999, Walk4Life provides high-quality pedometers and movement-centered programs to raise awareness and activity levels for individuals and groups at corporations, educational institutions, health clubs, medical facilities and senior centers. The company maintains a busy schedule of more than a dozen outreach programs, including trade shows and mailing campaigns.
Walk4Life’s senior management attributes much of the company’s ability to sustain continuous sales growth during the last three years to the GoldMine system customized by Ticomix. Additional business benefits include:
- GoldMine process automation enabled Walk4Life to reach 35,000 trade show attendees with a mailing campaign that yielded 10,000 response cards – a return rate of 28 percent that is more than five times typical direct-mail programs.
- Walk4Life reduced the time to ship each order from two to three days to same-day shipping.
- GoldMine reporting enables the company’s sales manager to forecast sales accurately, which in turn allows the company to reduce on-hand inventories.
- Efficiencies generated by GoldMine allowed all 18 new employees in the last three years to be added to sales and service positions rather operations.
“As far as the pedometer market share, we’re second or third in the industry,” Murrow said. “We do that with our customer service. Whoever interfaces with customers does so intelligently. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the leaders of Walk4Life pin all that on GoldMine.”
