CRM Software in 2016: How CRM-based automation could be the next big thing

CRM predictions for 2016

A good marketing automation platform enables you to streamline your marketing processes and centralize all the data obtained from sources like emails, landing pages and hosted content. However, if you want to take your marketing automation experience to an entirely new level, you will have to integrate your marketing platform with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

An integrated CRM system will result in seamless transfer of information between the sales and marketing teams, thereby ensuring that you are available with the relevant information at the right time. A good alignment between your sales and marketing team will also help you to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns, and will provide your organisation with much better returns on CRM investments.

The Fundamentals

The integration between your systems – the marketing automation system and the CRM system – should be bi-directional, which means that your CRM system should be able to effectively communicate with your marketing automation platform and vice versa. For instance, if your business hosts a website with a ‘Contact Us’ form that is closely integrated into your marketing automation platform, then any acquired information from the submission form will be easily replicated in your CRM system.

On the other hand, the data and information on which your organisation is making regular updates, such as customer records within the CRM system, should be synced back to your marketing automation platform. This practice helps in ensuring consistency and efficiency in the two systems.

Assignment of Lead Qualification

One of the most common problems with traditional sales and marketing teams is the poor quality of lead management. When data is gathered through a marketing automation system, the marketers have the power to score every gathered lead so that only the one with the most relevant information gets through, and only the most qualified ones get passed on to sales. When the leads end up reaching a threshold score and grade, they can then be easily and automatically assigned to any available sales representatives. What this does is it allows your organisation to cut down on manual processes, and ensure that lead assignment is not only fair and efficient, but also effective.

Improved Revenue Tracking

A CRM system that is tied to a marketing automation system allows for easy ROI reporting. The presence of bi-directional syncing ensures that all campaigns that are created in your marketing automation platform are mapped back to your CRM system. This closed-loop reporting allows you to attribute the amount of revenue generated by different campaigns, track your marketing expenses, accurately measure your ROI, and so on. This ultimately allows you to make data-driven marketing decisions.

Targeted Messages

The behavioral information that is collected from your marketing automation tool allows you to send targeted messages and emails that are catered to your prospects’ interests. It allows you to create one-to-one email communications or perform segmenting, which is usually based on certain criteria such as industry relevance or product interest. These, in turn, add a degree of relevancy to your emails, and help your business increase and improve its engagement levels.

In order to take your sales and marketing effort to the next level, advanced integration and automation is the way to go.

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