How to effectively handle a ton of members

Question

I've put together a new board for the purpose of CRM with our course membership site -- However, I've run into a possible limitation I didn't anticipate and I'd really appreciate any advice on how to better systemise / approach the setup as we continue to scale.

One piece of the overall process is to better track course enrolment and support the member. This means when a user has enrolled in a course or completed a course on the website, the trello card is ladled accordingly with the help of zapier.

There is however a rising number of registered members (close to hitting 1000). And considering 1 person is 1 card, I fear things will get very messy and slow down.

I recently read some great advice to keep your CRM board to represent active opportunities rather than being a complete database of all contacts.

So although what I have setup might all continue to work okay, I'm posting here in terms of contingency planning to effectively improve the flow for the long term as things scale.

The only soloution so far that I can think of is to 'archive' all current subscribed members in the trello board - for the reason that this would make a large portion of cards hidden / not visible.

The main problem with that soloution is that If I archive cards, then Zapier is unable to impact those archived cards. For example zapier is set to label members who subscribe / unsubscribe and also label members who enrol / complete courses, but if the card is in trello archive then it won't be effective.

So I'm not very sure now that this 'archive' idea will work after all, and thus I would appreciate any suggestions and opinions on what you think would be the best way still be able to label cards with zapier (subscriptions, course enrolments etc) but without having a full list of visible cards.

Thank you in advance.

Iain Dooley · Answer

@Rosko yep that's possible, you can add "on edit" triggers in Google Sheets. If you store a link to the Trello card in the spreadsheet row you can easily load the card and update it based on info in the spreadsheet.

I do something similar to what you're describing in my product BenkoPhone which uses Trello as a TXT interface for Australian mobile numbers. When someone archives a card, a link to that card is still held in a Google sheet mapped to a mobile number, then when a new SMS message is received, the existing card is unarchived if it exists rather than creating a new one each time. This means people can maintain their full communication history without overloading their board with thousands of cards.

If you need to discuss further drop me a line on team@benkoworks.com Thanks!

Rosko · Answer

@Iain Dooley- May I please ask you a quick quesiton regarding this.

I've been trying to think. As per the OP, based on the idea of 'archiving' inactive cards (1 card being 1 website member), but with the problem of Zapier not being able to have any effect.

Instead. If I put in an extra step in all zaps to create & update a Google Sheet that held a list of all crmble cards (members name, etc etc)  And alongside If I still archived in trello all relelvant cards that were labled 'unsubscribed' and 'inactive' on courses.

In your opinon, would it be possible using Trellinator to look at the Google Sheet as a database and perfom an action only on cards that exsist in trello archive?

For instance...

1a). When a card row on google sheet is marked "subscribed" or "unsubscribed", then update the custom feild on the relevant card IF found in Archive.

2a). When a card row on google sheet is updated to "Active Course", then IF the card (members name) is found in Archive, update the feild and move the Card from Archive to "List Name X".

If it's possible great, and I'm happy to contact further about a custom request if you're able :D

Summer Bammes · Answer

My thought is to store your contacts in your other app (I assume a Google Sheet?) until they need an action performed. For example, you can create a workflow like this for contacting prospects:

Using Zapier, set an action for once a month to create cards for everyone you haven't talked to in 60-90 days. Put them on their own board and contact them all over the course of a month. When the month is done, use Zapier to export your cards back to the Google Sheet, archive the cards for clients who aren't ready to buy or couldn't be contacted, and start again. Then, when the prospect comes up for action again, Trello creates a new card, but with all the information you exported to the Google Sheet last time you contacted them. This way, you don't have cards cluttering up your board doing nothing.