How to Organize Your Companies & Causes CRM Using Company Lists

The information in your CRM can be useful for many things including sending email newsletters to your Contacts (people) and cross-promoting with your Local Connections™ which are made up of Companies & Causes (organizations).

To help you stay organized and speed up using Locable's many tools, you can create Company Lists (formerly Local Networks) which are groups or categories of businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations.

Why use Company Lists?

You likely use our Community Calendar, Directory, job board, volunteer opportunities board, and other embedded tools to automatically feature content from local organizations. Additionally, you may leverage Express Email Newsletters to distribute this content to your subscribers.

While you can add businesses individually, this process can be repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to errors—such as inadvertently missing businesses in your directory.

Common Uses for Company Lists:

• Grouping Businesses by Industry: Examples include categories such as Restaurants, Retailers, or Professional Services.
• Organizing Businesses by Participation: This might include designations like Members or businesses that Accept Downtown Dollars.
• Categorizing Businesses by Activities: For example, businesses that Host Live Music.
• Highlighting Sponsors and Supporters: Such as businesses sponsoring specific initiatives, like Summer Concert Series Sponsors.

Creating Company Lists (Local Networks)

You can create or view your Local Networks by going to CRM > Local Networks.

A single business or nonprofit can be in multiple Local Networks and as a rule, a network should have multiple or even many businesses. Think of it like adding a song to a playlist.

For most businesses and nonprofits, Local Networks will be simple and streamlined. For example, you may simply have two local networks - Businesses and Nonprofits.

As you create and manage the various Local Connections™, you can use these networks to quickly add or remove businesses, filter content, etc.

Adding Companies to Your Company Lists

You can add or remove Companies & Causes from Company Lists(Local Networks) in a couple of different ways:

Edit the Company List directly

Click CRM > Local Networks to directly edit the Local Network to add or remove businesses.

Edit the Company Recoord

Click CRM > Companies & Causes and open the company record to directly manage how and where you are including them.

Click 'Add' to choose additional Company Lists to include them in:

Once you select the Lists to include them in, click 'Add to Selected' to save your updates.

Removing from a Company List

To remove a company from a Company List, simply click the 'Remove' button 

Then you can decide if they will be removed from all of the resources that List is populating, or if you want to select to maintain their participation in any of the resources:

Once you click 'Remove from Company List', their participation will be updated.

Exporting your Local Network Data

You can export the list of businesses in a specific Local Network by clicking Export Companies while viewing the Local Network.

The export will begin to be processed and the data will be emailed to you in a CSV file once complete.

Leveraging Local Networks allows you to make a single change that will automatically update across all your calendars, directories, job boards, and other tools when adding or removing Companies & Contacts. This also streamlines finding and sharing content in your Express Email Newsletters.