If you have a small list of clients and you are using Outlook, one of the solutions to follow-up with them is by using the Mail Merge function. The Mail Merge function allows creating personalized mailing labels, envelopes, form letters, catalogs, e-mails, or faxes for mass distribution.

Business Contact Manager is an add-in for Outlook (2003, 2007), and comes either as part of Office Professional, Small Business or Ultimate suite, or with an Outlook bundle for $150 (the cost of Microsoft Outlook is about $110, the cost of Outlook with Business Contact Manager is $150). It works only with Outlook and this is why it's not sold separatelly. Though there is a new version of Outlook with BCM, the 2007 suite, this review focuses on the benefits (or headaches) that Outlook 2003 with BCM has. I'm still one of those that didn't update to Office 2007 (they still have to convince me that there's more than the glossy look) and that has no plans on upgrading to Vista. So is it worth to install the Business Contact Manager from a CRM point of view?

Last year I reviewed Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager, and being somehow disappointed on some lacking features of BCM 2003, I decided to take a look at what Business Contact Manager 2007 has to offer. First of all, Business Contact Manager doesn’t come as a separate product, it is an add-on for Outlook 2007 so you cannot purchase it separately.

Ever right-clicked in a received email on the From or To email address or name in MS Outlook? If you have smart tags enabled in Outlook then you've seen for sure an annoying menu called Additional Actions that when clicked showed No Additional Actions found. Well, after some research, I was able to find out how to add items to that list.