10 Steps to a Fruitful Aliance
Many companies view Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and marketing automation similarly. While in fact, the two have different functions and purposes.
CRM refers to software or a tool mainly focusing on managing the sales funnel, including customer service interactions.
The sales team can use CRM to store customers’ information, such as their purchase records and notes from the previous conversation.
On the other hand, marketing automation is a system that intends to support the marketing effort.
Implementing marketing automation allows users to automate specific marketing tasks to speed up the marketing workflow.
Even though CRM and marketing automation have different purposes, a company can always integrate them.
Discover the benefits of integrating CRM and marketing automation and tips for building a seamless system in the explanation below.
Benefits of Integrating CRM and Marketing Automation
Some benefits of CRM and marketing automation integration include:
- Improve lead quality
- Increase efficiency of the marketing-to-sales handoff
- Automated marketing communications
- Increased close rates
- Better insights into sales funnel performance
- Improved marketing accountability
- More effective segmentation
- Better targeting capabilities
How to Ensure Seamless Integration of Both Systems?
Integrating both systems inappropriately will cause chaos i
1. Build Communication Before You Start
Before anything else, you should build good communication between the two teams: sales and marketing.
Make sure to bring people together and involve them right at the start of the project. Also, discuss objectives and expectations.
2. Set Clear Goals
Clear goals are essential to developing a strategy and measuring ROI and success.
Also beneficial to identify and understand challenges, communicate the plan, and ensure all departments are on board.
3. Adopt User-Friendly Features
Utilizing user-friendly features will help the team members adapt to the system faster and easier.
User-friendly features should include one login for both systems, a shared dashboard, one-click access, task automation, and instant synchronization.
4. Start with Cleansed Data
Before using the new system, it’s better to cleanse or sort your database. Otherwise, you’ll simply be spreading poor-quality data around the two systems.
It may also cause errors across the organization, decrease sales pipeline quality, or generate non-targeted campaigns to customers.
5. Implement Data Population Shortcuts to Save Time
Data population shortcuts ensure that data entered in one system is automatically populated in the other.
There are more benefits of having data population shortcuts, such as making the system easier to use, avoiding manual data entry errors, eliminating dull data entry, and saving more time.
6. Auto-Synch Data to reduce Errors
Auto-synch data will provide real-time data and avoid data discrepancies. Also, it ensures the two systems are in sync.
7. Avoid Lead Leaks
Lead leaks can cause problems such as losing customers and wasting money and time.
Marketing automation comes to the rescue to help identify lead leaks by looking at the life of a lead from start to end.
8. Use an API
An API is a software-to-software interface that allows one piece of software to use the functionality and data of another.
By utilizing API, the marketing automation system can gather data about a lead from the CRM system and put it into a planned marketing campaign.
9. Provide Training
A company that just adjusted its integrated CRM–marketing automation system should provide training to its employees.
Good training should have clear goals, be available online and offline, offer follow-up training sessions, and encompass the how and why.
10. Choose One Reporting Option
Don’t try to reconcile data. Choose one system to carry out the reporting and stick to it.
Reporting is essential to monitor campaigns, sales pipelines, conversion, and overall success and measure performance and KPIs.
Takeaway
Given the great benefits of CRM and marketing automation, a company should consider integrating them into a system.
Not only beneficial for the company but integrating CRM-marketing automation is also helpful to ease employees and support them to maintain productivity.
If you want to learn more about CRM and marketing automation, you can check the infographic below.
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