An important part of most of the businesses in this world is Sales. Without sales goals cannot be achieved and there won’t be growth in business as well. And for sales to take place there should be proper advertising for the product or service offered. Marketing is the core of every business because it helps in getting people more engagement with the audience. CRM and marketing automation increases the alignment between sales and marketing. Most of the steps in a business takes time and with the integration of these two saves a lot of time.
What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
CRM is the strategies and techniques which are used to track, process and analyze customer data. It helps the companies in managing customer engagements and communications with the help of various guidelines. CRM gathers customer data from different sources and stores everything in a single location. And this data is then used by the sales team to identify potential leads, improving relationships and also increasing sales by optimizing customer experiences. This is used by businesses to have a better understanding of their customers. Features of CRM software:
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is the technology and techniques used by companies to handle routine or day to day marketing operations on autopilot. There are lots of routine marketing activities done by a business frequently and when it’s done by a person it consumes a lot of time. Instead of that repetitive and mundane tasks are with the help of marketing automation software without the use or human input. This also helps in eliminating lots of data errors and other risks associated with manually doing the work. This will help the businesses in delivering apt content for their target audience. A marketing automation tool will have lead scoring, email list segmentation, campaign management, A/B testing etc. And this will help the marketers in creating appropriate content for the right audience at the right time. Features of marketing automation software-
Lead nurturing
Landing pages
· Social marketing
· Segmentation
· A/B testing
· Multi channel marketing
· Analytics
CRM and Marketing Automation Integration
CRM and Marketing automation as two separate tools provides greater results to businesses and when it is combined together it further enhances the business operations. A potential buyer or lead will get converted to a loyal customer and overtime to a repeat customer. And in each stage of a customer’s journey an organization should take certain actions to convert the customers from leads to regular customers. Mainly marketing, sales and service departments should take necessary actions. CRM is for tracking customer interaction and marketing automation is for providing right messages to the audience.
Combination of CRM and Marketing automation is like bringing two important aspects of businesses together which is Sales and marketing. Integration of these two systems gives the businesses a complete view of their customer
Benefits of integration CRM and Marketing automation
We have already discussed that CRM and Marketing automation will enhance the performance of the company so now let’s have a look into the benefits of the integration-
· From the data gathered from both systems companies can understand used behavior and develop tailor made content for its customers.
· Marketing teams have to create engaging content for their customers and with the help of CRM they can understand the needs of the customers and create content accordingly.
· An integrated system will help in creating personalizing content for its customers.
· Integration of both systems improves team collaboration and can share customer data with each other for creating better content.
·Data synchronization consolidates data across various devices and helps in managing consistency when data is modified or updated.
·The main motive behind these two systems is to reduce workflow and automate things so when comparing things together it will definitely give better results.
·Transferring of data from one place to another is also a long and tiresome process which can be avoided with the help of integration.
·A business fixes its target customer based on their characteristics and needs and with the integration of systems it helps in reaching the right audience.
Before the integration of systems certain things should be followed to implement this in the right manner. First thing would be to determine the goals of the business accordingly. And the next part will be to identify the target audience to provide them with personalized experiences. There are several CRM and marketing automation tools available in the market and each of them has different purposes and features. So the third step is to identify the tool which best suits your business and requirements. After this there should be proper onboarding of staff who have the ability to plan things strategically and incorporate them in business. Adapting to the integration alone is not enough; there should be regular monitoring of performance to ensure that things are moving in the right direction. And the last step will be to gather the feedback from the users about their experience. Every step we take comes with challenges and even if it is not working out in the beginning it will definitely provide better results over time.
It is the need of the hour to integrate both CRM and Marketing Integration. Rather than just creating content and looking for customer engagement and integrated system will help in reaching the customer in need and also helping them satisfy their need at the right time. It is the ultimate tool for boosting your business and reaching your target customer for increasing conversion rates.