Oprius: How Does Oprius Compare to Other Contact Managers and Autoresponders?

Oprius is a contact manager, autoresponder and calendar rolled into one system. This tool was designed specifically for those in direct sales and network marketing. So though any business person will find Oprius a valuable tool for their business, those in network marketing, direct sales and affiliate marketing will particularly appreciate some of its unique features.

Having a good contact manager is crucial to your business in keeping you organized, ensuring you don't miss appointments and are following up effectively with your contacts. You should be able to easily move appointments, set up follow up appointments after contacting people and set up reminders so you don't overlook important appointments. Some contact managers even have color coding to allow you to easily see if your appointment is a business appointment, a family event, personal appointment, etc.

Also, with a good contact manager program you can easily retrieve all the information you have entered and the record of your prior communication in a few seconds. So if someone you haven't spoken with in 6 months or a year call you, you will be able to retrieve their information easily and "remember" all about their wants, needs or situation.

A lead capture and autoresponder system allows you to have contacts opt-in to your newsletters, free reports, request ebooks or audios, etc. Once the person has opted into your list, you can continue contact through a series of educational emails. The important factor with your email campaigns is that you make them educational and of value. People will just opt out of your autoresponder if they feel like you are just trying to sell them on your deal or you include hype.

The purpose of your email campaigns should be to inform your potential clients of information they may not be aware of, relative to the topic of their requests, and show how your product or service may address their wants and needs. So if they request information relative to your product or service, you should not be blasting them with information about your business opportunity. You could mention in a P.S. with a link to request information, but it shouldn't be the main topic of your email campaign.

I have used a variety of contact managers and autoresponders over the years - ACT, Aweber, GetResponse, etc. but one of the things that impressed me when I tried out Oprius was that everything is in one program. With the other programs I used I had to use Address Grabber to copy the contact inform from the request forms that came in from my autoresponder and then transfer it to my contact manager. With Oprius this is can all be done seamlessly within one program.

Another benefit I saw immediately was the ease is using the lead capture and email campaign features. If you are working with a team of new associates this is a huge benefit. Autoresponders like GetResponse are very good, but they do require quite a bit of set up that can be overwhelming to a new person. Also people may not be aware, but if you don't set up your GetResponse autoresponder right, your contact could be viewing ads for other business opportunities after opting in to your lists. I discovered this while setting up my campaign and testing it out. This is something that could easily be overlooked.

Another feature to consider is that Oprius was design specifically for those in network marketing and direct sales, so there are many features that allow you to share tools that would be helpful in getting new associates up and running. Oprius also lets you distinquish between downline members, clients or potential clients and what stage potential clients are at in the sales process through groups and by a color code.

At first I was not so sure I wanted my contact manager online, rather than having it on my own computer, like I had with ACT. However, once I was convinced of the security and ease of downloading and always having access to my contact list, I started to see a lot of benefit to this.

First of all my current laptop's operating system is Windows XP and I have been putting off purchasing a new laptop because of the problems I have seen with Windows Vista. Apart from all the other problems I have seen, if I would switch to Vista, I would have to upgrade my current version of ACT to the newer version which is a high end software purchase. Also, I would have to spend the time tranferring all my contacts, setting up the new software, intergrating it with my email, transfer email templates, etc. This would be fairly time consuming, but with Oprius, all I would have to do is add the login page to my favorites and I am up and running without missing a beat. Oprius also has the advantage of being compatable with Mac and Windows, so if you have associates who are Mac users, like I do, they are able to use the same system.

Finally, at only $14.99 a month, you really can't beat the price. This is less than most systems which are only autoresponders. This cost is for unlimited contacts so you don't have any big increases as you grow your business like some autoresponder services. Since Oprius is a contact manager and autoresponder, you really are getting a great value. In addition, you can take advantage of Oprius's 30 day free trial so you can actually test it out yourself without entering any billing information until you decide to keep it. You even get a discount on the price if you decide to pay for 6 months or a year ahead.

I arranged for Oprius's Product Manager, Jovan Harmuth, and their VP of Sales, Greg Strong, to join our weekly Mon. Night WorksTeam Training webinars as guest trainers. Our first Oprius training webinar on May 12th, 2008, was recorded and archived on the WorksTeam site and the second training, How to Utilize Oprius For Lead Capture, Email Campaigns and More was recorded on Mon. August 11th, 2008 and available on the WorksTeam site. 

If you would like to access this recording, or attend any of the WorksTeam live training webinars, you register for upcoming live webinars at no cost on the WorksTeam Blog. Try out Oprius yourself free for 30 days - you don't even need to enter billing information to take advantage of this Oprius free trial