Ive been pondering how to best setup Zoho to allow users to record marketing activities under CONTACTS in a way that they can be used for future marketing and strategic decision making.

To clarify the functionality we need, let me provide a case example:

My company uses direct marketing and also attends road / trade shows.  Employee Jim-Bob goes to tractor expo 2008 and picks up 30 leads.  We enter the leads in CRM, and now want to document that the contact was an attendee at the expo, because doing so allows us to send mass mailings to tractor expo attendees (after a search filter), gives the sales reps a history of the customer they are dealing with, and allows us to steer which kind of promotion should go to which kind of contact. 

Of course this is only possible if a).  There is a realistic way to enter (AND UPDATE) this information in a "mass update" method, and b). That the data is able to be sorted and pulled out of CRM at a later date (eg. we want to mail all potential customers who have been at our stand in year 2008, AND have downloaded marketing material from our website).  It would seem as simple as setting up a multiselect list, and over the course of time, just adding additional selectable choices.

The corresponding challenge to this need in Z. CRM is a). That one cannot update a multiselect list without erasing whatever previously existed in that multiselect list (eg. the customer visited tractor expo 2007 and was listed as an attendee in a multiselect list field.  Some time later that customer visited Tractor World 2010.  Zoho will just erase all tractor expo 2007 listings when you go to mass update contacts with the Tractor World 2010 designations).  This really is a pain.  An alternative would be to create custom fields for every single non-electronic marketing activity - not exactly a realistic option.

The challenge with b). is that one cannot search and filter data under Contacts in a multiselect pick list, to create a new list for direct mailings/promotions, etc.  So as is with Zoho, the multiselect pick list is not a great way to categorize data for future reference.

If anyone has a suggestion on how to best create marketing/customer history fields that can be easily searched, exported, and changed as needed please let me know. 

(Perhaps this older thread helps clarify my problem):

https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/#Topic/2266000000008256

BR,

Marc