Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions have been around for many years and changed the way sales and customer service operate, from the early days of the Rolodex and databases to the modern times of today’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) giants. While CRM systems are great for organizing information and tracking sales, they do not provide the end to end marketing automation and insights a marketer needs within an organization. Marketing automation systems are great for helping you automate marketing processes and provide a centralized place for marketing collateral (emails, landing pages, content, social media, etc.). Marketers can use marketing automation to have better visibility and control over the lead generation/development process, better facilitate the online buyer’s journey, and provide sales enablement tactics inside CRM.
This opens the door to CRM and marketing automation integration. By integrating the two systems, you allow for the seamless transfer of lead/contact information, ensuring that the right marketing messaging is going out at the right time, and a true organizational alignment with marketing and sales departments. Below I will outline the key benefits to be discussed in this post that will benefit your organization by integrating these two technologies.
- Deliver sales-ready leads
- Sales and marketing system collaboration
- CRM user adoption
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Deliver sales-ready leads
When you have both systems working together seamlessly, they can help you get leads in front of sales at the moment they are most likely to make a purchase. Good integrated systems understand this because the marketing automation system uses the CRM database to send out personalized communications. These communications or messages are enriched by data collected through the marketing automation system (visitor tracking, landing page/form submission, and segmentation). Instead of passing leads directly to sales, marketers are allowed to nurture leads along in the marketing automation system and through integration to CRM, only pass over sales qualified leads (SQL’s).
Sales and marketing system collaboration
With integrated systems, you open the door to better communication between marketing and sales organizations. We all have heard the story about marketing not giving enough leads to sales or sales is getting the leads and only following up with the best ones. By integrating your systems, you will be creating accountability for both organizations. Marketing organizations can see exactly what is going on with the leads they are producing through reporting and ROI of campaigns and the sales organization is only receiving the most qualified leads based on the behavioral lead score agreed upon by both organizations. A great example of this would be when a sales rep has reached out to a lead multiple times and finished with the lead qualification cycle. Rather than letting the lead sit stale in the unqualified status, a marketing automation system can detect that status field and enter that lead in to a re-marketing campaign
CRM user adoption
Poor user adoption is the main reason why CRM projects fail to deliver expected results. Pairing your CRM with a marketing automation system will increase sales productivity and serve as a centralized location for sales to find key information on leads/contacts and easy access to sales content. Things like lead score, website data, form/landing page submissions, email opens and clicks, and sales notifications are all tied to the lead/contact record for easy access by a sales rep. This type of sales enablement is not found in standard out of the box CRM functionality and will serve as an even more valuable place for sales reps to spend their time.
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Better together
Integration between CRM and marketing automation systems can help sales and marketing organizations work better together. The combination of the two systems make it possible to share important information, create organizational support, and make the work between each more effective. After all, both the sales and marketing are after one goal….Revenue!!
Thank you and happy marketing!!
by Hitachi Solutions America
CRM and Marketing Automation Integration: 3 Key Benefits is a post from: CRM Software Blog
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