It is quite obvious that your customer’s journey and customer behavior changed. What matters now is how you are going to react as a digital business. Will you take a stand and keep delivering to your customers through new digital channels? Or will you hesitate to take action and see how your market share declines in front of your eyes?
If you decide to go for the first option, our Viram Labs teCRM and marketing automationam will be able to help you with tools and resources. Then, read on. Enjoy this blog and keep taking action.
If you want to go for the second option and decide to do nothing, then, unfortunately, we cannot help you.
Let’s say you want to go for the first option: you want to maximize your profit and you intend to implement CRM and marketing automation tools within your workflow.
The first questions you should ask yourself are: Why your customers buy differently now and what can you do about it immediately? And what is actually CRM in marketing?
CRM in Marketing Automation Platform
According to Salesforce, CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a strategy for ‘‘managing organization’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers.’’
The company can look at its CRM tools from three perspectives: CRM as a technology, CRM as a strategy, and CRM as a process. There are several main reasons why a company will invest in a CRM system: because they want to ‘‘stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.’’
Since the way our customers buy has changed, CRM turns out to be very useful. It documents relevant information about customers, while this, in reality, means that the company team has a 360-degree view of its customers; This also captures the interactions of users and business.
By providing the next steps in a call for action, particular action alerts the company members about the timing.
Factors about the CRM solution in marketing for you and your team:
- Know the main segments of the business where you will apply CRM. It is important to understand that until recently CRM has been used for sales and marketing, while it is also applicable for customer service, human resources, as well as supply-chain and account management.
- There are certain costs that CRM decreases or eliminates for you. For example, you will save a lot of time on managing customers’ individual files and aggregated data; your team members will be able to know exactly where a particular client is inside the sales funnel, while you will be also alerted to take the next step with this very client.
- Understand that setting up CRM is just the beginning of your journey. Once you set up effective tracking through CRM, you will be capable of assessing what marketing activities and campaigns will work with your customer base. You will still need to perform certain activities: to update the CRM database with daily progress and changes, to edit contacts and to assign tasks to yourself or other team members.
- Create a buy-in inside your team so that CRM and marketing automation tools can work out. If you create an engaging atmosphere among your team members, both CRM and marketing automation tools will not just be simple items on your to-do list. Instead, CRM will become a reliable collaboration tool that brings the best in your people, while they remain focused on long-term goals and perform daily, current activities with greater efficiency and automation.
- All your efforts with technology should be aimed at actionable insights.
Once your tracking through CRM and marketing automation provides actionable insights, you will be actually able to see which marketing campaigns will create value for a particular customer. As a result, you will have the opportunity to increase your budget and deliver greater ROI.
Let us know which business goals of technology should help you achieve. Our consultants will give you a tailor-made perspective about the integration of CRM and Marketing automation platforms. Of course, you should bear in mind that these two kinds of software solutions are different, yet they will run seamlessly.
How to tell a Difference between CRM and Marketing Automation Platform?
The decision-makers in your company will need to understand the differences between these technologies and kinds of software. Because they know what their teams need. also streamline, improve, or optimize the processes in your company.
To put it in a nutshell, CRM software enables you to increase sales and optimize activities in your sales processes. On the other hand, marketing automation software provides intelligent insights from your marketing efforts and helps you automate certain campaigns and activities.
Once your CRM is integrated with the Marketing Automation platform you can have seamless and consistent messaging. Otherwise, if both kinds of software are deployed separately, it may happen that you experience actually a glitch or a roadblock in your messaging. Do not look at two sources of communication, but create one streamlined communication and collaboration channel.
Capterra identified the best CRM tools and shortlisted the globally relevant providers trusted by thousands of SMEs and established brands: Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SAP CRM, Close.io, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Infusionsoft, Streak, etc.
Viram Labs can also help you with CRM of today and marketing automation, so you better book the consultations with us today.
Likewise, on the Capterra blog, you can choose the best marketing automation software such as GetResponse, MailChimp, MailerLite , Adobe Campaign, IBM Marketing Cloud, IBM Watson Campaign Automation, Buzz360, SAS Customer Intelligence.
Conclusion
Depending on the stage of your business, you can make the best out of your technological solution: the integrated CRM and marketing automation platform. For example, you will be able to segment prospects according to mailing lists, past interactions with your company, as well as stakeholders’ preferences and interests. Then you can nurture leads in a timely and effective manner while you also create ‘‘drip campaigns’’.
Multiple emails may be relevant if your brand stays as a top choice in the consumers’ minds. GDPR and other regulations use processes and analyze customers’ data. Even after finishing the campaign, the system can generate analytics and show the key successes of the campaign.
To conclude, it is high time that your company starts using CRM and marketing automation platform in different scenarios: when your customers’ list is growing, when you have stellar content to share, when you deal with too many clients and your team needs extra time for handling ‘‘bigger-picture-tasks’’.
Choosing the best technology solution is not something you can do over the night, but it is important that you start working on that priority and you get going. Our company blog and the entire team remain at your disposal to help you.
