Are you looking for an easy way to nurture leads, increase personalization, and shorten the sales cycle at scale? Look no further than marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
When properly integrated, CRM automation is one of the best tools to have in your marketing toolbox. But before we get to that, let’s start with a quick review of what these two tools are comprised of:
Taking advantage of CRM automation can revolutionize your business, allowing you to engage your customers at scale. Read on to find out why you want this in your toolbox.
While generating leads comes first, you also need to have a plan to funnel them through your sales pipeline. The benefit of CRM automation is that you can engage with customers in a timely and targeted fashion. Rather than sending out mass emails, customer actions trigger the system to send them the most relevant message automatically.
For example, the system can automatically send out a welcome email to someone who just signed up for your newsletter. Or if someone added items to their cart but didn’t finish the purchase, it can send out a shopping cart reminder email.
This functionality allows you to build trust and show your expertise in the industry. You can also use it to maintain and grow relationships, which, in turn, leads to more conversions.
Alternatively, you can also see when a customer stops visiting your site. When this happens, the system can automatically send out an email reminding them of your business and even provide them with an incentive to keep engaging.
You can guide the sales journey by using automation to trigger sending timely, relevant content to your customers. This strategy helps to eliminate barriers to sales and allows you to answer customer questions effectively.
When automation is integrated with your CRM, you’ll see more business close and revenue increase. EmailMonday even reports that automation results in a 22% shorter sales cycle.
A study by Infosys shows that personalization impacts purchasing decisions for 86% of consumers. And there’s a lot more to it than just sending an automated birthday message or including their name in an email. For example, let’s say a customer returns to a specific product page for the third time. That can trigger the system to send a targeted email from the assigned sales rep to answer any questions they may have about that item.
Automation tools capture key customer data, including pages viewed, content downloaded, opened/clicked emails, and more, allowing you to personalize all of your interactions. The more personalized your engagements, the better the customer experience, which will boost customer satisfaction.
With the ability to track all of your customer’s engagements with your website, emails, and social media, CRM automation software can assign scores based on behaviors. Some actions may trigger a drip campaign, and others could auto-assign a rep for the next step in the sales cycle.
When the rep gets notified of a new opportunity, they’ll quickly see what the customer is interested in. With the ability to also see any previous interactions with the company, the rep will also be fully informed when reaching out directly to the customer. Talk about personalized service!
It’s also a great way to know when to reach out for a sale and to help inform of a customer needing more information or that they’ve hit a pain point. You can use the info to better segment customers into different pipelines, whether nurturing or a fast-track to sales.
The beauty of using a comprehensive system that combines CRM with marketing automation is that you get a view into all of the interconnected pieces. It’s easy to see which tactics are working, which you should stop doing, and which ones need some tweaking.
According to a whitepaper from Eloqua, using an integrated marketing system decreases campaign execution time by 50% and increases conversion rates by 16.5%.
By streamlining recurring tasks, you eliminate manual errors and speed up the process. Plus, the entire marketing process can operate more efficiently by simplifying duties like assigning sales reps and triggering automatic tasks such as creating opportunities when prospects reach new stages in the sales cycle.
Just like sales and marketing work better overall when the teams are in harmony, combining CRM with marketing automation makes the most sense for marketing today.
In a demanding digital world, it is essential to offer timely, targeted, and personalized customer engagements. Business success depends on making it easier to manage all customer interactions.
At Zero Gravity Marketing, our full-service digital marketing experts will work with you on a customized strategy to reach your goals. Reach out to us today to get started.