Marketing automation and CRM are two of the most talked about technologies in business today. You can hear about them at networking events, during product demonstrations, or even from friends or family who work in marketing or sales.
But what exactly do they mean? And how do they relate to each other? This article will cover the basics, then dive into the best practices and benefits of using marketing automation and CRM together in your business.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is the process of using software to automate repetitive marketing tasks. From sending emails, to managing social media accounts, marketing automation can be used to handle all your marketing needs. It’s a fantastic tool for freeing up time for you to focus on higher-level activities such as strategy and content creation.
A key part of any marketing strategy should include a strong customer relationship management (CRM) system in order to better track prospects and customers. The data collected in this system will help shape future campaigns by providing valuable insight into what’s working, what isn’t, who’s responding best, etc.
Utilizing both marketing automation and CRM tools together creates an even more powerful system for managing the most important asset of your business: your clients!
Key Features and Benefits of Marketing Automation in CRM
The best-in-class marketing automation platforms offer a variety of features that make them easy to use, powerful, and scalable. They are designed to increase the efficiency of your marketing campaigns by automating repetitive tasks while providing valuable insights into your customers.
Features vary between platforms so it is important to evaluate which ones will be the most beneficial for your business. Marketing automation helps marketers keep their data up to date with customer records and behaviors without the hassle of manually inputting information into a system.
Marketing automation also simplifies tedious tasks like sending out product offers and tracking customer activity on social media channels. Thus freeing up time for marketers to focus on strategic initiatives. With marketing automation in place you can reduce the time spent on manual work as well as avoid costly errors caused by human error.
Most systems enable marketers to set personalized rules for how recipients interact with messages from your company. For instance, if someone clicks on a banner ad but does not complete the purchase process online or calls within three days. An email reminder about the offer could automatically be sent asking for feedback about what could have been improved. As another example, an app company might want to push new versions of its app based on the number of recent app downloads.
In this case, marketing automation would help launch new apps according to specified criteria. Such as whether customers who downloaded version 2 should receive version 3 first. Marketers benefit from predictive analytics tools offered by leading marketing automation providers.
These tools look at customer behavior and past interactions to predict future purchases and recommend products accordingly. Some examples include analyzing web traffic patterns to see when people typically convert into leads. Identifying which pieces of content resonate the most with visitors.
One of the great benefits of marketing automation is its scalability. Businesses looking to grow quickly can start small with a limited set of automated functions, then add more sophisticated capabilities as they scale up.
Other advantages to using marketing automation includes the ability to customize emails and other types of messages based on specific events or activities completed by your target audience. Automatic publishing of posts across multiple networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest., and knowing exactly where prospects are coming from.
This combination streamlines the entire process
If you’re struggling to execute effective digital marketing efforts because your sales team doesn’t have time. This combination streamlines the entire process for everyone involved – from lead management, prospect nurturing, closing deals faster, and managing complex campaign goals through every step along the way.
You’ll be able to better align marketing, sales, and customer service strategies and objectives by centralizing all the customer-related data into a single platform. This creates a holistic view of your entire customer base. Which improves your understanding of the value of each customer and provides greater transparency into your conversion funnel.
You’ll be able to better identify which groups of customers are the most profitable or provide the most opportunities for growth with this insight. This insight is helpful for generating a steady pipeline of new customers.
This creates a holistic view of your entire customer base. Which improves your understanding of the value of each customer and provides greater transparency into your conversion funnel. You’ll be able to better identify which groups of customers are the most profitable or provide the most opportunities for growth with this insight. This insight is helpful for generating a steady pipeline of new customers.
Benefits of Integrating Your CRM with Marketing Automation
A marketer’s job is hard enough, but when you have to manage your marketing campaigns in multiple places it can be overwhelming. Marketing automation can help with this by connecting your marketing campaign with your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Here are some of the benefits that come from integrating these two programs: –
Streamline each campaign by automating as many tasks as possible. Including sending follow-up emails, setting up workflows, and updating contact information. You’ll also see a huge reduction in data entry.
*Learn about what triggers your contacts should receive and which messages they need to hear so that they take the desired action.
*Track what works and what doesn’t, so you don’t waste time on something that isn’t effective or provide a message they don’t want to hear. You can even track how long it takes for someone to open your email!
*You’ll get better insights into who your contacts are and why they’re interested in what you’re selling. With this knowledge, you can focus on giving them more personalized messaging.
*Automate repetitive tasks so that you can spend less time doing mundane things like scheduling social media posts and handling follow-ups. It will allow you to make more informed decisions because you won’t have any distractions weighing down on you.
Integrating CRM and Marketing Automation
If you’re just getting started, here are some best practices for integrating CRM and marketing automation:
1) Have an understanding of where you want your business to go. What do you hope to accomplish? What metrics do you need? Don’t just choose an automated solution because it’s popular right now; instead ask yourself how it will benefit your company.
2) Get familiar with the tools available and pick one that works best for your needs–you may not need all of them at once! 3) Determine if your CRM has a marketing automation tool. If it does, then integrate them immediately. Otherwise, consider starting with standalone tools such as HubSpot or Pardot and adding in other ones over time if necessary.
4) Evaluate pricing packages based on what features you need. Rather than opting for a more expensive package just because it includes everything else too.
5) Start small and grow. Pick one part of your campaign and automate it before moving onto another area. This way, you don’t overwhelm yourself trying to create processes out of thin air while simultaneously trying to stay on top of all the work that never ends up being automated.
6) Have realistic expectations. You may only be able to automate certain aspects of your campaign before having to give manual input elsewhere. This is okay, and it’s important to be realistic.
Integrating your CRM and marketing automation can bring you many benefits, but it’s worth being realistic about what you can and can’t do.
Personalized customer communication
At the end of the day, marketing automation is not just about sending emails. It’s also about harnessing data to create personalized customer communication that drives business results. Marketing automation can help you better understand your customers’ needs by using data from email, social media, web traffic, lead generation, etc.
This information should then be used to send them targeted content at the right time for their stage in the buyer’s journey. For example, if a prospect has been researching a product online but has not yet made a purchase decision. It might make sense to offer them more relevant content about the company or product that might push them closer to making a purchase.
However, marketers should still keep up with best practices like segmenting prospects into different lists based on interests or behaviors. So they know who to target with certain offers. Because each one will have different strengths for engaging prospects. Which will allow marketers to identify any trends or patterns in how people interact with their messages.
To get started with this type of personalization, all marketers need is some basic contact information (e.g., name and email address). From there, they can start gathering additional behavioral data by integrating third-party tools into their system (e.g., Google Analytics). To get richer insights into how someone interacts with a website before converting.
Seamless customer experience – and more sales
The digital age has ushered in a new era of marketing. Gone are the days of interrupting customers with flashy advertisements. In today’s world, marketers need to focus on providing a seamless customer experience that is tailored to their needs while still delivering the desired message or offer. And the good news is, it’s easier than you think.
All you need is a good marketing automation system combined with a customer relationship management (CRM) software solution for your business. Depending on what each customer wants. For example, if a visitor subscribes to one of your company’s e-newsletters but doesn’t make any purchases, he will be contacted by the system when there is an offer available.
If he responds positively, his email address will automatically be added to your customer database and his information from this purchase. Such as shipping address and contact details—will be stored securely.
That way, next time a similar product becomes available, all you’ll have to do is send out an email inviting him to buy. With this type of personalized service at the forefront of your strategy, not only are you going to see more sales—you’re also going to see a greater retention rate among past customers too!
Marketing Funnel Automation & Lead Nurturing
Automating marketing processes is a great way to ensure that messages are delivered in an engaging way. Ensuring the best chance of conversions. With Marketing Funnel Automation & Lead Nurturing, you can automate the process of nurturing leads. As they go through each stage of your sales funnel.
This allows for more effective lead management and better conversion rates. These also help with campaign efficiency. Because it ensures that everyone on the team knows who should be speaking with a given contact at what time.
There’s also less work required because all of the follow up needs will be taken care of automatically.
Additionally, automation helps improve data accuracy which is important for measuring ROI (return on investment). Marketing automation platforms allow companies to organize their contacts based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. So that the right message reaches them at just the right time.
Customer Journey Automation
The customer journey has evolved from a linear to a cross-channel experience. Which requires marketers to be more strategic in how they interact with customers. Marketing automation is one of the best tools for this. Because it provides an affordable, easy-to-implement solution for reaching customers across all channels. Including email, social media, SMS text messages, and web interactions.
It’s important to have the right marketing automation system in place so that your efforts don’t fall flat. A good marketing automation system should allow you to nurture leads. Improve lead conversion rates, capture new opportunities through segmentation, track campaign effectiveness and ROI, generate reports, and much more!
A Quick Wrap
When it comes to marketing automation, there are a lot of benefits. There are also many best practices that can be implemented to ensure you get the most out of your marketing automation software. One of the main benefits is that it will help you with your email marketing efforts by making sure you’re keeping in touch with your customers.
Another benefit is that it will help automate things like social media posts and push notifications, so you’re spending less time on them and more time on other aspects of your business. There’s no need to worry about forgetting important tasks or events because marketing automation helps you keep track of what needs to happen when.
Marketing automation is also great for following up with potential clients who haven’t converted yet – which means lower costs from customer acquisition. You’ll save a ton of money on customer service costs too. For example, if someone complains via Facebook Messenger instead of calling into the company hotline. They may not have had their issue resolved as quickly as they might have liked due to long hold times. It may also take a customer service representative some time to figure out how to resolve the issue. And finally, companies using marketing automation often see an increase in sales conversions due to targeted offers being delivered automatically at just the right moment.
