CRM and Marketing Automation: The Best Combination for Business Growth
Did you know that the average SaaS company takes 397 days to achieve optimum results from its marketing automation strategy?
That’s nearly a year and a half! Why is this the case?
Well, most businesses don’t begin with a well-thought-out plan.
Instead, they implement one piece of technology at a time without thinking about how each piece impacts the others.
You need to think about synergy for your business to realize all the benefits of CRM and Marketing Automation.
Both systems have their unique advantages, but when used together, they can be far more potent than either is on its own.
Read on to discover everything you need to know about combining CRM and marketing automation.
What is CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
This strategy is used to manage and grow your customer base.
A CRM system allows you to store all the data related to your customers and their interactions with your product.
This data can then create targeted marketing campaigns and provide customers with a personalized experience.
Your CRM system is probably the most essential part of your marketing strategy. It is the system that ties everything together. It allows you to store information about your customers and prospects.
You can use this to create targeted marketing campaigns and provide customers with a personalized experience.
A CRM system is usually made up of three parts: A customer database — This is where all your customer information goes. It can include basic info like names and contact details.
It can also include more detailed information like what they bought and when.
A customer relationship graph (or relationship map) is a visual representation of your customer base.
It shows how each customer is related to others. It shows which customers are the most important.
It shows who is likely to buy more. An automated marketing campaign builder — This is where the magic happens. It is where you can create your automated marketing campaigns.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is software that allows you to automate specific marketing tasks.
For example, you may use marketing automation to create email sequences.
These sequences are like automated emails you can send to your customers regularly.
You can create all kinds of marketing automation sequences.
You can create sequences to follow up with leads.
You can create sequences to welcome new customers.
You can create sequences to onboard new employees.
You can even create sequences to help you grow your social media following.
Marketing automation is a powerful marketing strategy to optimize lead generation and customer retention.
Marketing automation is used by businesses to send out highly personalized emails, texts, and other forms of communication to customers or leads.
It is used to help customers make the right purchase decision and stay engaged with your brand for a long time.
Why Are These Two Strategies Together So Powerful?
To realize all the benefits of these two strategies, you need to start by thinking about each of them as an individual customer experience.
You then need to think about how these two experiences are related. Let’s start with the customer journey with your CRM system.
When someone contacts your business, you need to get their information into your CRM system to follow up with them later.
You may have a couple of different ways to do this: The first is by asking customers to enter their information directly into your CRM system.
This can be done through an app or a website. Alternatively, you may have a sales team that manually enters information into a CRM system every time they speak to a new customer.
You can also use another type of technology (e.g. a marketing automation solution) to import customer data from other systems.
Which Is More Important: CRM or Marketing Automation?
The better question is: “How can we use these two strategies to create an amazing customer experience?”
The key is to plan for these integrations ahead of time.
Before implementing any new technology, you need to think about how this technology will impact your entire customer journey.
One way to think about this is to imagine each technology as a lane on a highway. You want all of your lanes to be traveling in the same direction.
If they aren’t, the entire system will be out of sync and not operate as efficiently as it should.
How to Combine CRM and Marketing Automation for Maximum Impact
There are a few ways to do this, but the best way is to use a single platform that integrates both of these technologies.
Let’s look at how this might work for one of our previous examples. First, we’ll describe what happens when a lead enters your sales pipeline. We’ll assume that the lead is entering your CRM system from an automated marketing campaign:
The lead will click a link to enter your sales process. This link will take them to a landing page within your CRM system.
The landing page will be personalized to the specific lead. It will include information relevant to the lead’s buying journey.
For example, if the lead is researching a specific product, the landing page may have information about that product.
It may have a form where the lead can enter their contact information so the sales team can reach out and begin the buying process.
Final Words
As you can see, CRM and marketing automation go hand-in-hand. You can connect these two systems with the right software and get a fantastic customer experience.
You can import leads into your CRM system, follow up with them, and get them to convert as quickly as possible. You can also use your CRM system to trigger marketing automation sequences customized to each lead.
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Thanks,
Ritesh Osta
I Help SaaS & B2B Scale Fast using Sales Funnel Strategies.
