The Benefits Of Integrated CRM and Marketing Automation

Customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation are renowned for managing and boosting a company's sales and marketing efforts. CRM software acts as a database of your leads and customers. It's a central hub for your salespeople to view the status of leads as they move down the sales funnel. On the other hand, marketing automation focuses on the earlier stages of the sales funnel. It facilitates lead generation and fires off automated communications based on visitors' behaviours and interactions with your business. These automated communications can include new subscribers' welcome emails and text confirmations for appointment bookings.

Do you need to integrate your CRM and marketing automation software?

Technically, it is possible to manage your CRM and marketing automation separately. However, you are missing a trick if you don't integrate them. Marketing automation boosts the functions of your CRM. You can use the information from your CRM database to acquire, engage and retain customers. This article explains why an integrated CRM and marketing automation system is helpful.

What Are The Benefits Of Integrated CRM and Marketing Automation?

A centralised location for data

Don't waste time switching between different apps, platforms and systems to access data. With an integrated CRM and marketing automation system, everything is in one easy-to-access location. You can access all your contacts' information in just a few clicks, including lead scores and form fills. It makes life easier for staff members across your business, including sales, marketing and management. Alignment of sales and marketing departments

Is there a disconnect between your sales and marketing teams?

An integrated CRM and marketing automation system can help. When both teams work from the same system, they align their goals, and communication becomes more accessible. They work with the same data and have visibility of leads across the whole sales cycle. Both teams working to achieve common goals are encouraged to collaborate rather than compete and pass blame.

Consistent interactions with leads and customers

When your prospects or customers interact with you, they interact with your brand. It doesn't matter whether it's sales, marketing or customer service: they expect the same service and experience regardless of which team they're talking with. Because of this, it's essential to offer a unified experience to contacts, no matter where they are in the sales cycle.

An integrated system allows you to provide this level of consistent communication. Your contacts experience a smooth transition as the system passes them from sales to marketing. This improves the experiences of your leads and customers and your brand image.

Visibility of the bigger picture

Reporting should be easy and intuitive. With parts of your sales and marketing activities overlapping, managing them within one system makes sense.

As a manager, an integrated system gives you visibility of what's happening throughout the sales cycle. You can also analyse how your marketing automation strategies impact your sales results, which isn't easy without an integrated platform.

You can see what's working across your sales and marketing efforts and then work on improvements and adjustments for both.

Nurture leads before passing them to sales.

Have you ever found your sales team struggling because the leads they're pursuing aren't ready? This wastes time and resources and decreases morale. We've all been there.

Without marketing automation, leads may enter your sales team before they're ready to be closed. This is not only a waste of everyone's time, but it can also lead to leads being pushed away.

With an integrated platform, your marketing automation system uses information stored in your CRM database to send personalised communications to the right leads at the right time. This happens by collecting visitor information, form fills, segmentation, and website activity.

Your salespeople prime and are ready to close leads. Once your marketing automation system identifies a lead as sales-ready (based on their interactions with your website, content and emails), it automatically passes the lead to your sales team. It will ultimately lead to an increase in conversions.

CRM and marketing automation work well individually but even better together. That's why we always recommend platforms that integrate the two. Contact Flowbird today to learn more about the systems we use and which one is right for your business.