CRM Marketing Automation

Marketing has changed a lot over the years and it has become more complex and perplexing than ever.

Consumers nowadays are using multiple media platforms to gather data and have to stay up to date making life difficult for marketers.But with marketing automation feature coupled with CRM a business can streamline as well as optimize different marketing related tasks. This will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales and marketing team by saving time on administrative tasks, delivering the right content and right message to the right audience, therefore closing deals faster through increased automation therefore increasing revenues and profits.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation is a technology that enables you to target customers with personalized campaigns by fortifying data. With marketing automation software you can streamline marketing activities by running effective campaigns, increasing consumer engagement, and driving high profits.

Marketing Automation and CRM.

It is very important to know and understand the differences between marketing automation before deciding to implement them in your business processes. Marketing automation software is focused on marketing fundamentals and thus delivering personalized campaigns. Marketing automation software is limited to marketing. They allow companies to streamline marketing activities to automate marketing campaigns and gain insights based on Data.

Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)

CRM software is focused centrally on customers and gives a 360-degree view of customers. The main difference is that the CRM platform is limited to certain business operations since it allows flexibility for CRM customizations so that CRM customizes your software mirrors needed business needs and CRM Integrations for optimizing businesses so that one can use different apps and software from a single platform.

Important Features and Benefits of Marketing Automation in CRM

Marketing Automation is an amazing technology that is customized according to the needs and requirements of the business; otherwise, it can become counterproductive. For convenience below are some of the key features which you need to look out for in a marketing automation platform. We  have also discussed why  CRM is the best marketing automation software for a business who want to stay ahead of its competitors.

Email Marketing Automation

Emails are the main communications that produce potential leads. With the automation tool, you can test your email content, create beautiful email templates which match your brand identity, preview your emails across different platforms and devices, and do advanced email reporting.

Coupling of marketing automation in CRM involves functions of marketing and thus leads to expansion of it through customized content interactions with logical workflows. For example, you can send happy birthday messages to loyal customers and can offer them a discount or send a thank you message when someone makes a purchase. This can create a distinction between a happy customer and a lost prospect. Is your present marketing automation software doing this effortlessly? With the CRM platform, marketing is efficient and effective, and therefore it is the best email automation software.

Integration of CRM and Marketing Automation

Marketing automation software coupled with Customer Relationship Management platforms is a very powerful weapon. Tight CRM integrations allow you to transfer lead information seamlessly between marketing and sales. This makes CRM the best marketing automation software coupled with seamless integration. This allows you to run effective and professionally personalized marketing campaigns based on data from interactions with customers.  Moreover better alignment between Marketing and sales improves the effectiveness of campaigns and helps in the automation of Marketing automation. Your CRM system must talk to the marketing automation platform and there should be communication between marketing automation and the CRM system.

Marketing Funnel Automation & Lead Nurturing

For funneling Marketing automation and lead nurturing you must send the right information to the right prospects at the right time using marketing funnel automation. Lead nurturing is the process of sending a series of automated emails which will trigger a person’s behavior. Nurturing a lead based on different attributes like behavior demographics and different stages till buying stage is highly sought after tool for marketers. Amazingly, CRM allows leverage to make it the best marketing automation software.

Campaign Management

Campaign Management is the workflow that you use to nurture leads along the sales cycle. Campaigns have timed and triggered events. To run successful campaigns you must send direct and personalized emails to a large number of people. Make sure the campaign management in your platform supports inbound marketing and outbound campaigns as well.

Lead Management & Lead Scoring

This is one of the fundamental and basic feature of marketing automation software. Lead scoring software enables marketers to concentrate on most probable leads. Each customer basically receives a score based on its activities. Whenever a lead matures or reaches a threshold value, it is provided to a sales representative in order to take appropriate action. Moving a lead through an entire marketing funnel is challenging task and thus must be handled effectively by Marketing automation Platform. Moreover, CRM and marketing software assists together to strategize better results so that you can have optimized marketing automation results in business.

Landing Pages

A landing page is a page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt an action. Landing pages enhance conversion rates through targeted promotion. One can market multiple products to a specific audience using customized landing pages with targeted content. Many marketing automation systems have excellent landing page makers. Ensure that you select a landing page that is flexible and easy to use and modify.

Social Media Marketing                                         

Automated social media marketing software has changed the way marketers communicate with customers on social media channels. This software let you know what customers and prospects have to say about a specific company’s products and services. How they respond to email messages and website content and then incorporate that data into marketing automation platforms. The marketing automation platform you select must have built-in social media marketing and management tools.

Customer Journey Automation

CRM software monitors each person who visits your website by tracking your behavior like the pages they click, from which point they access the website, and what keywords they type on Google which directs them to your website, and so on. With CRM software you can deliver real-time alerts to sales representatives whenever a lead, prospect, or customer visits the website. Visitor tracking assists you to segment the database based on these tracked activities, hence with CRM and marketing automation integration, you can have accurate market segmentation to focus on prospective customers and increase your conversion rates.

Conclusion—CRM and marketing automation are great tools to monitor customer behavior on a particular website. These tools study customer behavior through different means like their search history and what different touchpoints the customer has come across before making a final decision to purchase.  

Top CRM and Marketing Automation Software to Track Customer Activities