6th July 2022 back to blog

If you think of your business objectives and goals for the next year, 5 or 10 years. We would imagine regardless of the type of business or industry you work within. Increasing your sales is high on the agenda for your business goals.

Integrating your CRM with marketing automation is a proven way to do just that. From converting high quality leads and increasing the average customer value.

Along with many other benefits too, including improved customer service and workflow processes. Our blog post will look in more detail at why your business should use your CRM and Marketing automation tools together.

What is a CRM

CRM stands for customer relationship management. It is used by most if not all functions and departments of a business. CRM software is a central location to store, collect and analysis customer data to improve customer service at every stage of the customer journey.

Typically the sales teams would heavily use CRM software for lead management and to support them during the sales funnel. It also improves internal workflow processes for each department and provides in-depth analysis and data for senior management for strategy and goal planning.

For more in-depth information on what a CRM is, please refer to our previous blog post

What is marketing automation?

Similarly to a CRM, marketing automation tools collect customer data, however it is typically used by marketing departments. This would be for delivering targeted marketing campaigns, such as email marketing delivered through automation features.

Marketing automation key features allow the marketing team to send personalised and targeted emails to their marketing contacts. With the ability to use automation features to easily follow up with customers on their marketing platform.

Why use CRM software and marketing automation tools together?

Perhaps you have read or learnt about CRM software and marketing automation in silo. However they actually work best together. By integrating customer data across both, it provides a unified and seamless approach to all customer interactions along the customer journey.

Both the sales teams and marketing teams will be singing from the same hymn sheet. They can do this by seeing at any time for any customer where they are in the sales funnel, what communication they have received and how it performs across any type of segment they wish to.

Along with easily being able to analysis how any sales tool or marketing campaigns have performed to then further test and optimise, to further improve on customer satisfaction and customer retention.

Benefits to using CRM with marketing automation

Below we will look closer at the benefits of using CRM software and marketing automation together to help your business grow. When used correctly the sky is the limit!

Streamline workflow processes

No doubt having a productive and happy team is important to you and senior management. One of the great benefits of integrating together CRM systems with marketing automation software is the ability to streamline processes!

It removes the need for the marketing team or sales team to enter customer data multiple teams, it removes any duplication. It also avoids sales reps needing to ask existing customers or potential customers to repeat information they already provided to another member of the team or on web forms. Another simple action to improve customer service and customer satisfaction.

With sales and marketing departments able to eliminate admin and time heavy repetitive tasks, this frees up time for them to focus on their lead management and sales management to convert their marketing and sales efforts into valuable business.

Quality leads with higher conversions

If you find your sales reps are manually sieving through contact data to try and establish who to call first or which sales approach to take. With combining your customer relationship management CRM with your marketing CRM systems, your sales team can happily wave goodbye to this sales process for a more efficient and effective method to their contact management.

This is done by using a scoring system. Leads are given a score for example 1-50 with the highest scoring leads being the contacts for sales and marketing to focus their efforts on. In order for sales tools and marketing efforts to have the best impact, it is important as a business to decide a relevant scoring system. Which can always be reviewed and adjusted over time, as you take more learnings from your marketing strategy.

To give some examples they could receive points for: each time open a marketing email from targeted campaigns, if they download a file from your website e.g. a free guide or when they add items to their cart or view particular products or ranges on your website.

Personalised and seamless customer service

When it comes to customer relationship management being able to personalise the customer service and interactions at every stage of the customer journey provides a competitive advantage to provide excellent customer support, encourage customer retention and customer loyalty.

With using both your CRM software and marketing automation together for both sales and marketing, it ensures when managing customer data it is more accurate. When it comes to personalisation the last thing you want is the wrong customer data, that would only weaken the customer relationship.

Marketing features that are beneficial for personalised communication is the ability to segment the CRM data however you wish. This includes age, location, number of purchases, products visited on landing pages and when last made a purchase. These are just a few examples.

As part of the automation features, you can personalise right down to who the email is sent ‘from’ to the customer, so they receive it from their dedicated account manager. All built in as part of the marketing processes, without them having to manually send that email communication.

Also, don’t forget to get their birthday on your web forms so you can send them a special offer or present. These little personalised touches can go a long way to customer relationship management.

Targeted approach

Including lead form integration with marketing CRMs means email marketing campaigns and the entire sales funnel can use customer information efficiently to deliver targeted messages and targeted campaigns.

With no need to track data in different places, it means data isn’t getting lost. It is a full 360 approach, so anyone within the business can see quickly how a lead has been scored and any marketing efforts they have already received.

These advanced features means you are able to identify and plan the right message at the right time and to the right customer. This targeted approach gives the perfect opportunity to both cross sell and up sell through the marketing automation platforms and marketing tools.

With the segmentation mentioned earlier, this can lead to the sales pipeline being sped up with sales closed quicker and can be with a higher average customer value too. An example of segmentation to target could be your customers who purchase most frequently or with the highest purchase value. Providing them with a timed discount code as part of your marketing strategy.

As part of the marketing tasks, after the initial email campaigns a follow up targeted email could be sent two days later if they didn’t open the email or use the discount code. All of which could be done through the marketing automation tools.

How can we help?

We hope you found this blog post useful to explain how using CRM software and marketing automation together is beneficial for many reasons, but ultimately it can increase your sales.

If you would like to discuss further how your business could benefit from a custom CRM software and marketing automation tools, please feel free to get in touch. We are happy to help.