6 Benefits of Combining CRM and Marketing Automation

If you are like most organizations, you have some big challenges in meeting your goals and seeing your full vision come to life. What are the biggest challenges facing your organization?

Well, we can bet these include some of these common challenges:

1. Not enough customers (revenue).

2. Key leaders in your organization have too much to do and not enough time.

3. Your communications and coordination across your team can be improved.

4. You and your team waste time finding important information.

5. You need to improve customer service and repeat purchases.

Do any of these sound familiar?

What is CRM (Customer Relationship Management)?

According to Wikipedia, Customer Relationship Management is defined as:

“Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.

One important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.”

What is marketing automation?

According to one data point, 80% of sales require at least five follow-ups after the initial contact. How can we speed up this process and make it easier to do? This is where marketing automation comes in to speed up this process.

Again, according to Wikipedia:

“Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.”

One of the key parts of this definition is “and automate repetitive tasks.” This could be initiating the sending of one or more emails, scheduling a meeting, requesting a consultation, purchasing a product, making a payment and many more actions.

Here is one example of some specific automated actions:

Benefits of Combining CRM and Marketing Automation

Here are some of the many benefits of combining CRM and marketing automation:

1. Generate new and repeat customers

2. Automate repetitive tasks

3. Improve customer service

4. Get organized

5. Save time (and money)

6. See complete history of leads and customers

7. Keep focused on key tasks

8. Improve communications and collaboration across teams

9. Get paid more quickly (with less effort) and track payment history