Today's businesses and customers have evolved. Businesses are keener on finding the best strategies, techniques, tools, and technologies to develop, retain and acquire new customers than before. Customers, on the other hand, are engaging businesses on another level.
They know how to do their research to establish whether the product or service is the right one for them. The internet and the use of computers have played a significant role in this. With the remarkable evolution of both, the customers and businesses came CRM software and marketing automation systems. CRM software enables businesses to easily sell to their potential customers, win their trust, offer qualified support and provide additional services through the created relationship. This software ensures that every step of customer interaction with a business goes efficiently.
However, it gets better when marketing automation is integrated with a CRM system. Already a good number of B2B Fortune 500 companies, over 50% of the world's largest SaaS companies, not to mention most of the top-performing companies worldwide, are all using a marketing automation system, and they have integrated it with their CRM software. This has largely contributed to their extended stay in the top tier category of successful businesses of the world.
As a business, you might be wondering how syncing your marketing automation, and CRM system will benefit you. Well, it offers great benefits, which are further highlighted below:
1) Successful Lead Nurturing Before Sales Team Contact
When the buyer shows interest in a product or service, it is up to the marketing team to ensure that they retain their attention and lead them through the process to the conversion point and even result in repeated conversions in the future. Before the customer talks to the sales team, the marketing automation and CRM system will help the marketing department guide the customer by offering all the relevant information and answering most of their questions.
The marketing automation and CRM system will sift through data collected on every lead, and this will guide the marketing team on "who, what, when, and how" every lead will be nurtured. This will forge a great relationship between the buyer and business before they reach the point of making that purchase.
Keep in mind that 57% of the journey by buyers into your business is often alone before they establish contact with the sales department. They will be checking out your brand, the services or products you offer, your location, and many other things before they decide that they want to do business with you.
With such systems in place, the chances of every customer who comes into contact with you wanting to do business will be very high. This is because they will be fed with relevant information and be well-informed about the product or service you are offering them.
2) More Informed Customers Equaling Bigger Purchases
The result of successful lead nurturing is a legion of educated, gratified customers who will demonstrate their satisfaction by their purchase sizes. These customers' purchases will be large compared to non-nurtured leads.
Most businesses that have used marketing automation and CRM have experienced successful lead nurturing, which has generated 50% more sales than traditional ways of lead generation.
Even better, they have experienced these impressive sales at a lower cost per lead. There is no doubt that this form of lead nurturing increases sales productivity and simultaneously trims the marketing overhead. Earning higher revenues by cutting costs is every business's dream. Still, it can no longer be a dream for your business but a reality thanks to marketing automation and CRM integration. This combined platform allows customers to be well-informed and express their satisfaction through more significant purchases.
3) More Insight Into Buyers Interests
As a business, you need to understand your customer to be more targeted and strategic in your communications. The marketing automation tools help capture the relevant data of your target audience, such as how the visitors reached your site, the areas they visited and focused on, or where they spent a long time, and where they visited next.
The same tactics can be applied to email, which will help your marketing team determine the potential customers' feelings towards particular marketing campaigns. When you sync such valuable information with your CRM software, your sales team will be more informed on the buyers' interests and actions and therefore come up with more effective messages for that audience.
4) Scores On Leads and Prioritization On Stronger Leads
Of course, not all leads result in conversions, some do more than others. For that reason, your efforts as a business should be focused on the leads that are most likely to convert into sales.
Most businesses have little information to gauge their customers' intentions, but that is no longer the case because online data has granted more insight into this. Marketing automation systems can assign scores to leads and rank them based on their online habits.
Things like how much time they spent on your webpages and other mannerisms would indicate a higher level of interest, for example. This is why syncing your CRM software and marketing automation system is so valuable because it will keep both the sales and marketing teams informed on all customer activity, enabling them to make adjustments on strategies and changes as they happen.
5) Sales Process Shortened
The days where businesses had to spend months wooing potential clients who end up losing interest somewhere along the way are long gone thanks to marketing automation and CRM integration. Time is usually crucial for both buyers and sellers in today's technologically advanced world. As a business that understands that a buyer has multiple options, it is important to avoid any communication inefficiency and unnecessary dragging of the purchase process resulting in the narrowing down of any chance of a successful sale.
Automation and CRM systems minimize wasted time by enabling the sending out of only the most relevant content at that crucial time when the customer still has their attention focused on the business. This considerably shortens the sales process and results in a higher percentage of successful conversions within the shortest time. With such an increased number of successful conversions, there is no reason why a business shouldn't be successful.
6) Reactivation Of Previously Dormant Leads
Not all leads will be the same. Some leads will want to make that purchase today, while others don't want to make the purchase then. This doesn't mean that they will always never want to purchase because they would eventually buy from you when the right time comes. Recycled leads have resulted in impressive sales for businesses who understand how to go about them.
Automation helps glean informative email content from leads that went cold in the past and in the process reactivating the buying process. Remember that 60% of customers feel encouraged to try out a product after reading the information, especially through email. The CRM software will highlight any customer activity and indicate any renewed interest. This will immediately alert the relevant departments of such developments, spurring them on to appropriate actions that will result in successful conversions. Remember, email marketing is very profitable, and emails through marketing automation are more effective. After all, they are likely to be opened because they capture the buyer's interest.
7) Higher Success Rate With Focus On Mature Leads Only
Transferring premature leads between marketing and sales teams has led to many lost opportunities for businesses. A vast percentage of these leads are often not ready for the next sales cycle. When every lead obtained is rushed to the sales department, 3 out of 4 leads are usually not prepared to talk to sales, resulting in the loss of most of the promising leads.
Automation systems in place will help determine whether the leads generated are ready for the next step. With seamless integration with CRM software, the sales team will have access to valuable data that marketers have previously collected. This allows both teams to work in tandem to achieve a higher success rate and not waste any time and revenue opportunities by engaging the premature leads.
8) Effective Data Management
When it comes to data management, a unified approach will be complex if you use CRM software and a marketing automation system separately. This is why marketing automation and CRM software integration make it possible for your business to have this unified approach to data management.
With every information saved under a single platform, organization, viewing, editing, and data analysis become easier and faster than having two systems managing data. A centralized data system makes it easy to add new data, organize, track and generate reports of activities. Things like data leaks or misinformation can rarely happen, and since such a combination often guarantees data hygiene on a single platform. This integration helps in efficient data management, allowing businesses to thrive as they engage their customers and build better customer relationships.
9) Effective Analysis Of The Whole Marketing and Sales Process
With the linking of marketing automation and CRM systems, it is easy to single out every action that resulted in success and the actions that weren't effective. Such a level of end-to-end accountability cannot be achieved by using only the CRM software. With only CRM software, your business will receive bits of information that could be misleading indicators of success.
A good example is high email click rate indications, which can be ranked as successful even though those users never bought anything. Integrating your marketing automation system and CRM software will enhance efficiency across the board through live updates of relevant information. The chances of manual duplication of data and any delays in record keeping will be slim.
Your marketing and sales teams will be well informed about every action and they will be well-armed to focus effectively on the common goal of being profitable and making sales as a business organization.
10) Effective Teams Synchronization
The marketing and sales teams have the common goal of achieving successful sales and gaining customers. The marketing, sales, and services teams have to retain those customers and have them continue making purchases. With different systems, it can be difficult for your business to achieve this as compared to when you have an integrated platform. A CRM and marketing automation platform offers this unified center for all the teams to track and analyze customer behavior.
Such a platform also makes it easy to have discussions and strategize on how to turn all the prospects that make contact into loyal continuous customers. With such a perfect work environment for the teams, the workflow will be smooth, and accountability will exist for every team member.
