CRM plays a key role in marketing
CRM is a powerful tool for tracking the real ROI on your email marketing and automation, as well as other types of marketing campaigns, such as networking, trade shows and events, direct mail, social media, etc.
For now, we’ll focus on CRM for email marketing and marketing automation, since this is where many companies struggle to measure marketing ROI with any degree of certainty. When integrated with the right email marketing campaign app, and set up with both your marketing initiatives and sales tracking in mind, CRM will play a significant role in allowing your company to not only deliver more precisely targeted email marketing campaigns, it enables you to accurately track the revenue directly attributed to each one.
Marketing budgets can now be allocated with greater confidence, knowing that results can be clearly measured and tactics can be adjusted much sooner than later, so you can do more of what’s working to drive revenue and profit for the company.
Marketing & sales unite
CRM can also resolve the age-old disconnect that often exists between sales and marketing. We know – we’ve been on both sides of this one during our careers. Marketing spends hours on campaigns to generate leads, then has no idea if sales is following up on the leads in a timely manner and closing them. Sales claims they don’t know which campaigns are going to who, and there are too many or too few leads coming in. Managers on both teams are under the guns to keep senior management happy, and point the finger at one another for not hitting the sales targets.
CRM gives both teams the tools and reporting required to handle their respective responsibilities more efficiently, keep them accountable, and close more sales deals. It provides visibility from end-to-end; from marketing campaign to sales lead, to sales opportunity, to won or lost deal.
The missing link
The key to getting the most out of your CRM for marketing and automation involves the proper integration of your CRM system with a compatible email marketing application. Your CRM system should always act as the central hub in which all prospect and customer information resides, not your email marketing application. The integration between these two systems, that allows the automatic sharing of data between them, is what we refer to as, “The Critical Link”, which is missing for many businesses. We can help your team set this up correctly, along with all of the other moving parts required to utilize both systems as one. Planning, testing and training on a number of scenarios are the keys to ensuring your team can use it efficiently.
Automation for the nation
The most common form of marketing automation is a system’s ability to send autoresponder campaigns, also known as drip campaigns, when a prospect completes a web form or clicks through on an email you’ve sent them. A series of emails, containing different content, is sent at predetermined intervals. These campaigns deliver relevant content such as client case studies, testimonials, and/or tips and tricks, designed to engage your target audience(s) further so they purchase your products or services.
Setting up and sending these campaigns is one thing, but being able to trigger them based on a series of events, specific criteria, and timing is another. CRM marketing automation that’s well-planned and set up, provides capabilities to marketers, that until fairly recently, was only possible if your company had the budget to spend thousands of dollars each month on marketing-specific systems like Marketo® and Eloqua (now called Oracle Marketing Cloud). While they have advanced marketing automation capabilities, these systems are complex and not an option for most companies due to their high price tag.
A company’s marketing automation capabilities also tend to be limited by the email campaign application they use or their staff’s lack of training to use it to its full potential. Our expertise in both CRM and email marketing helps our clients set up the system and the processes required to manage basic campaigns and lists efficiently, as well as those with complex requirements, such as dynamic list syncing and updates, content, email signatures, and “Send to” and “Reply to” email addresses that will change depending on who the campaign is being sent to, even within the same list.
Ten5 CRM can help you market to your prospects and customers within the rules of the new Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) so you remain compliant and avoid the risk of heavy fines. We’ll give you visibility into which campaigns are producing the best leads and sales opportunities, and the actual return on your marketing dollars spent.
Contact us for help with your CRM email marketing and automation.