When most people think of CRM they think of sales, and it’s true that sales is the function that tends to lead on most CRM implementations. However, CRM also benefits many other parts of a firm – notably marketing.
Implemented correctly it has been proven to deliver improved lead quality, increased productivity, stronger customer relationships, better communication, lower costs, and enhanced customer satisfaction.
Here are six ways in which it achieves that.
1. It strengthens the relationship with sales
Salespeople who are confident in the leads they receive from marketing tend to follow those leads up rapidly – around a day is the ideal for most organisations. According to Forrester Research that happens at just 10% of organisations that have no mature lead management processes compared to 25% where there is a mature lead management process.
So, simply by managing the leads through the process from marketing to sales gives the sales team confidence in the leads meaning they are followed up more rapidly, and are therefore more likely to convert.
It allows salespeople and marketers to easily see the sales pipeline, allocate tasks between departments, and effectively manage marketing and sales campaigns. CRM can underpin sales and marketing alignment.
2. It allows you to profile customers based on value
Successful marketing depends on understanding customers. CRM enables you to extract meaning from your database and apply your marketing with insight; explicit customer information that helps you join the marketing dots with purpose and effect.
This is not simply traditional segmentation which identifies customer groups based on demographics and attributes such as attitude and psychological profiles. CRM allows you to do that, but it also goes further. It allows you to do value-based segmentation, by looking at groups of customers in terms of the revenue they generate and the costs of establishing and maintaining relationships with them.
3. It integrates with, and enhances your email marketing
According to Jupiter Research, relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. Little wonder that CRM driven email marketing is such a popular tool amongst marketeers with 89% saying that email was their primary channel for lead generation.
CRM allows you to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time – and that leads to greater return on investment.
4. It allows you to automate part of your marketing
Automation through CRM makes your marketing far more efficient and effective. For example, automatic code generation, that captures data online, automatically inputs it in to your CRM and allocates leads according to workflow rules, reduces the scope for error and optimises marketing and sales resources for optimal outcomes.
5. It allows you to track performance
It automatically tracks campaign metrics like new customers acquired, customer attrition rates, cross-sell rates, up-sell rates, and average number of transactions. This happens in short, self-educative cycles, driving up ROI of your campaigns.
At the press of a button you can pull up reports or create ongoing dashboards where you can track the progress of your leads within the sales cycle and see how marketing is impacting pipeline and revenue – in real- time. This allows you to repeat successful initiatives, stop wasting resource on unproductive lead sources, and build a virtuous feedback loop.
In addition to better decision making, this information can also help you during the planning process when identifying future spend and helping you justify a request for increased marketing budget with the board.
6. It allows you to manage marketing suppliers
CRM isn’t just customer focused; it also helps you developing closer, more insightful relationships with your suppliers. You can keep contact details on your CRM platform. You get complete visibility of orders. You can track product pricing over time and so optimise for your needs.
This reduces costs, optimises timescales, and over time drives up the quality of your relationship with your suppliers.
CRM for sales? Of course. But the deep and actionable insights that your CRM provides – real-world, real-time information that loads and primes your future sales is surely compelling enough a reason for marketeers to make CRM a priority. Read more about how CRM can help you deliver the right propositions to the right people at the right time and in the right way in our CRM for Marketing Whitepaper.
