When it comes to running a business, there are a number of tools and techniques that we all need to tap into so as to reach our goals and create a success story like none other. We are sure you have heard terms like marketing automation and CRM often, and it must have led to a number of questions. So before we talk about the topic at hand – which is the integration of marketing automation and CRM – let us first understand these concepts well.
What is CRM?
CRM is data driven system that is powered by a customized software which helps you manage and track customer relationship management. This covers the entire spectrum from lead generation to customer interactions and even nurturing prospects in between the entire process. Sales management along with other systems like workflow processes and many others are managed through a centralized CRM system which makes it easy for organizations to take stock of leads and keeping in touch with prospects as well as customers. A CRM software is something that helps in taking all these processes and setting them into a system that will be easy to track and manage.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation for a small business, a medium sized one or even a large corporation is a process of launching various kinds of campaigns for a number of varied kinds of audiences, across multiple platforms. This is a process that helps in creating, scheduling and then launching posts as well as other collateral that can reach and engage a varied audience on a number of platforms. When you take the various platforms like social media, email, text and others, you can actually send a number of messages in many formats for businesses to efficiently reach their audience.
CRM and Marketing Automation – The Reasons for Integration
Now, as you can tell from the above discussion, the two processes – ie, CRM and Marketing Automation – would both require to be merged so that there is an efficient mapping of efforts along execution and actual follow up or lead nurturing and customer interactions as well. Here are our top 5 reasons why you need to blend CRM and Marketing Automation for your business:
- An All in One, Wholesome Process: When you integrate CRM with Marketing Automation, you will be able to bring in a wholesome process that lets you create a consistent effort that also takes your customer feedback and lead aspirations into consideration so that the posts can be planned and rolled out actually with the correct data in place. The communication has to be based on what you are creating and sending out, as well as what your customers and leads expect from you. This perfect balance for constant communication would be met if CRM and Marketing Automation would be merged together.
- Better Customer Relations: When you put your communication and your actual interactions together, your messaging and your actual interactions reach a unified mode where the quality of both will improve by leaps and bounds. This way, your messages and your quality of customer relations will also reach a good balance and blend so that you achieve the desired quality in all forms of communication. Having everything on a centralized platform will also help you process all your data in one place so that your marketing efforts and your customer interactions will also be managed from a centralized place with wholesome effort behind all of it.
- Data Management for a More Organized Approach: The CRM and Marketing Automation integration will help you get all your data on one platform that can help you track, monitor, record and even process data from one place. This makes your effort much more wholesome so that your interactions and other forms of marketing communication will resonate with each other for more relevant reach and engaging communication at the end of the day. This also makes the effort that much more organized so that all the information is in one place for you to access and process into campaigns, one on one calls and other such forms of communication and interaction. In doing so, you will also make all your processes that much more streamlined.
- Sales and Service Integration: When you bring in your CRM software and your Marketing Automation to come together for a unified approach, you can be sure that the sales and service teams that you have will also seamlessly come together. This is a good idea especially if you are looking at marketing automation for a small business. The sales and service teams are the backbone of any business, and especially the small business that is still looking to find its feet and find a special place in the heart of each customer for better customer retention and brand recall value.
- Bringing Home Sales Backed Leads: With the careful integration of CRM and Marketing Automation, you will be able to bring home warm leads, which essentially means that your efforts and all communication based workflow processes will bring you leads that are ready to be converted to sales. This puts the entire process into a cycle of sorts which makes your work that much easier. With sales ready lead generation, you will need to spend less time on actual conversions because most of your efforts have already been invested in the generation of leads that are sales ready. This is because your leads qualification process merges from both CRM and Marketing Automation so that you do not need to carry out the same again and again. This also helps you create a campaign that works across a number of audiences and the varied kinds of communication that you can offer.
So, in order to manage all kinds of communication and interaction to generate leads in a proper data backed manner for better conversions, you would do well to consider bringing your CRM and Marketing Automation efforts together. This will help you keep things wholesome, unified and much more efficient in the long run!
