Target Spotted: An Integrated CRM for Marketing Automation

A CRM, or Customer Relations Management tool, lists and organizes your book of business as people journey from lead to prospect to client. Capturing information like phone calls and emails, a CRM is your lifeline for understanding what a prospect knows about you and what they need to know in order to buy from you.

When a CRM tool is a part of your marketing automation software, you are able to weave your leads into every part of your marketing and messaging strategy. With targeted messaging, lead acquisition management and list segmentation, combining a CRM with marketing automation provides an easy and efficient way to market to the right person at the right time.

Contact Management

A CRM’s primary function is as a database for all of your contacts. This includes prospects, clients, vendors, Uncle Derrick, your second cousin and Paul the cat. Everyone is managed in one central location. In theory, that sounds great, and it is. When you start marketing, it becomes a hassle of copying contacts and data from one platform to another, and you’ll appreciate a CRM that is fully integrated with your other marketing efforts.

Most marketing automation tools have CRMs built in, integrating seamlessly in your biggest marketing initiatives. Want to build a web form specifically for your clients in the healthcare sector? Create a list pulling data from all your healthcare-tagged clients. Sending an email to all current clients vs prospective clients on your contact list? A few clicks and you’ll have segregated all current clients from prospects. Simply integrating your contacts into your marketing workflow helps get the right message to the right people.

Site Visitor Analytics

Some marketing automation tools include a web traffic plugin that identifies the visitors on your website. So you’ll see exactly who is coming to your site, which pages they view and how long they stay there. Creepy, sure, but highly effective.

Even if the person viewing your site is not in your contact list, you’ll still see their company and their activity on your site. Some marketing automation tools will even provide a list of potential emails associated with that company in their database that you may access to use in lead generation exercises.

This is great intelligence that enables you to market to your leads with confidence. When you know how often leads are visiting your website and what’s catching their eye, you will better integrate those topics into your business development.

Sales Pipeline

Your sales pipeline is the lifeblood of your business. To start, your marketing automation tool’s CRM tool will help break down all the steps of your individual sales cycle. From there, you may add your prospects to whichever stage they fit. From farming stages to closing the deal, your sales pipeline allows for custom segmentation to help you stay on top of your leads.

This organization leads to other opportunities within marketing automation. You are able to send emails specifically to those in different parts of your sales pipeline. If a lead moves into the next stage, that will also trigger an email sending event. Maintaining a steady sales pipeline within marketing automation will better organize your leads and customers, as well as open the door for more targeted marketing initiatives.

Although it’s just one of many of marketing automation’s benefits, the integrated CRM tools will help any business operate more efficiently. Let us show you how marketing automation will change the way you think about your business.