June Meeting: CRM Features with Native Drupal Tools

Your Drupal site probably has users. Those users are probably doing interesting stuff. Every time they log in, participate in a forum, make a donation, or contact you or someone else; your users are telling you something about themselves. You want to know more about who they are and what they're interested in, and maybe you even want to contact them and ask them to give you some money, business, or time.

You could use a 3rd-party service to keep track of your users and their stuff. This works well for a lot of users, but you also risk creating data islands, where visitors' participation information is segregated from their contact information and you can miss out on the big picture. You're also in the business of updating separate databases and working with disparate service providers, which might not be nearly as much fun as working on your Drupal site. Alternatively, you could use specialized modules like CiviCRM, but in many cases, you can get a lot further with a little configuration and some Drupal savvy. So let's spend this Wednesday night getting savvy with CCK, Views, and Mail integration!

This topic is equal parts presentation and open forum on the strategies, best practices, and pitfalls of using "Native Drupal" as your CRM. I'll cover what I know, what I've worked on, and what could use a little polish. At the end of the evening, you should have a better sense of collecting and querying information about your users, contacting them, and tracking their responses.