Customer Search

Each time a customer buys a book, Focus keeps track of the transaction details along with their subject preferences and interest on the book.

This enables you to

You can build up the customers buying pattern from the type of books they have bought in the past, and in the case of prospects by manually attaching subjects and interests to their record.

Knowing your customers and what they are buying is crucial to effective marketing as you are able to offer new and similar products to them first. 

To define the customer’s buying habit through their interests and subject do the following.

How to use the Customer Search window

  1. Go to Publishing > Marketing 
  2. Select Search on the page top panel toolbar

Simple Search

The simple search presents a default set of record selection criteria, i.e. a database field and an occurrence to find. You can use additional selection criteria by inserting more fields to search by.

Each time a new field is selected from the field list, the system will add a criteria row to the bottom of the criteria list. Complete the entries on this row and then click on the Run Query button to execute your search.

Advanced Search

The Advanced search window provides the following search routines:

  • Standard (Table: Dealers): Search the database for customer, supplier and prospect/contact records.  This search will only present fields from the Dealers table.
  • Keywords (Tables: Dealers, DealerKwds): Search on the keywords stored against each dealer records. Enter a keyword into the entry box provided and click on the Find button and the system will display any matches found into the list below. Click on the Ok button to load the account records.
  • Sales (Tables: Dealers, Sales_Trans): Search the database for customer records based on their sales. This search will present fields from the Dealers table and sales transactions table called Sales_Trans.
  • Orders (Tables: Dealers, Sales_Ord_Detail): Search the database for customer based on their sales order details. Use this search routine to build searches that should look through the Dealers table and orders table called Sales_Ord_Detail.
  • Accounts (Tables: Dealers, DealerAccts): Search the database for customer based on their balances. This search will present fields from the Dealers table and sales accounts table called DealerAccts.
  • Best shop  (Tables: Dealers, Sales_Trans): Search the database based on best shop analysis. Enter a required number of top best shops into the entry box provided and click on the OK button and the system will display all account records found.
  • Interests (Tables: Dealers, Dealer_Interests): Search the database for customers based on their subject areas. This search will present fields from the Dealers table and the subjects table called Dealer_Subjects.
  • Subjects (Tables: Dealers, Dealer_Subjects): Search the database for customers based on their interest areas. This search will present fields from the Dealers table and the interest table called Dealer_Interests.
  • Contributors (Tables: Dealers, STK_Contributors): Search the database for customers based on their contributory roles. This search will present fields from the Dealers table and the contributory roles called STK_Contributors
  • Multiple (Tables: Dealers, Dealers, Sales_Trans,  Dealer_Interests, Dealer_Subjects, Matrix, DealerKwds): Search the database for customers based on any triple combination of their sales, keywords, subject areas interest areas and discounts.
  • Chase: Use this routine to follow up on previous mailings

Generate mailing lists

In the next few steps we will use the marketing search routines to pull up customer and prospect records, based on selected criteria, in a mailing list, ready to be merged with prepared form letters, emails or labels.

  1. Go to Publishing > Marketing 
  2. Select Search on the page top panel toolbar.
  3. Select your desired criteria.
  4. Tick the email and Address data fields
  5. Click Run Query to display search results with the emails

Mail-merge Letters

  1. Click the Mail Merge button.
  2. Click Select File to select the form letter (prepared earlier).
  3. In the Destination box select
    • Send to Email
    • Send to Fax
    • Send to New Document
    • Send to Printer
    • Auto Save
  4. If you selected Send to Email, then enter the Subject of the email and select ‘Email Attachment’ where applicable.
  5. Below, select by ticking/unticking which recipients you really want to mail to.

The result from each search routine is effectively a mailing list and is displayed on the same search result window. This mailing list is printable as a list, but more importantly forms a consistent data input to your letters, emails or labels.