Marketing has evolved significantly over the years and has become more complex and perplexing than ever. Consumers are now using multiple media platforms to gather data and to stay up-to-date, making life difficult for marketers. However, with marketing automation features in its CRM, a business can streamline and optimize a variety of marketing tasks. This will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales and marketing team by saving time on administrative tasks, delivering messages with the right content to the right audience, closing deals faster through increased automation, hence, increasing revenue and profits.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is a technology that lets you target customers with personalized campaigns by leveraging data. With marketing automation software, you can streamline marketing activities, run effective campaigns, increase consumer engagement and drive high profits.
Difference Between Marketing Automation Software and CRM
It is important to understand the difference between CRM and marketing automation software before making the decision to implement them in your business processes.
Marketing Automation Software
Focused on marketing and delivering personalized campaigns, marketing automation software is limited to marketing. They allow companies to streamline marketing activities, automate marketing campaigns and gain insights based on data.
Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)
CRM software is customer-centric and gives you a 360-degree view of the customers. The main difference is that the CRM platform is not limited to a certain business operation as it allows flexibility for CRM customization so that your software mirrors your business needs, and CRM integrations for business optimization so that you can use different apps/software from a single platform. CRM software, on the other hand, offers a comprehensive view of customers as they relate to your organization. This means viewing all activities from sales, to lead qualification, to opportunity tracking, as well as the marketing and engagement data. Thus, CRM covers a wider domain as compared to marketing automation.
Key Features and Benefits of Marketing Automation in CRM
Marketing automation is an amazing technology but only if it is customized according to the needs and requirements of the business, otherwise it can prove to be counterproductive. For your convenience, here is a list of the key features that you need to look out for in a marketing automation platform. Moreover, we have also covered why CRM is the best marketing automation software for businesses aiming to stay ahead of their competitors.
Email Marketing Automation
Emails are the principal communication channels with potential leads. With an automation tool, you can test your email content, create beautiful email templates that match your brand identity, preview your emails across platforms and devices, and do advanced email reporting.
Marketing automation in CRM incorporates Email marketing functionality and then expands on it by customizing content interactions through logic workflows. For example, with CRM and marketing software, you can send a ‘Happy Birthday’ message to a loyal customer and offer him a discount or send a ‘Thank You’ message when someone makes a purchase. You could also set up a workflow to send a welcome email series to new subscribers or a series of re-engagement emails to dormant customers. By automating these processes, businesses can save time, improve efficiency, and consistently engage with their customers.
This can make the difference between a happy customer and a lost prospect. Can your current marketing automation software do this effortlessly? With the CRM platform, marketing is efficient and effective and is undoubtedly the best email automation software.
CRM and Marketing Automation Integration
Marketing automation platforms that integrate seamlessly with Customer Relationship Management platforms can be a very powerful weapon. Tight CRM Integrations will allow you to transfer lead information seamlessly between marketing and sales. This makes CRM the best marketing automation software with seamless integrations. It allows you to run effective and personalized marketing campaigns based on the data from interaction with the customers.
Moreover, better alignment between marketing and sales will improve the effectiveness of campaigns and help in marketing campaign automation. Your CRM system should talk to your marketing automation platform and your marketing automation platform should talk to your CRM system.
Marketing Funnel Automation & Lead Nurturing
Send the right information to the right prospects at the right time with marketing funnel automation. Lead nurturing is the process of sending a series of automated emails that will trigger based on a person’s behavior.
Being able to nurture leads based on a variety of attributes (behavior, demographics, buying stage) is a highly sought-after tool for marketers. Amazingly, CRM allows you to leverage this making it the best marketing automation software.
Campaign Management
Campaigns are the workflows you use to nurture leads along the sales cycle. Campaigns have both timed and triggered events. To run successful campaigns you need to send direct and personalized emails to a large number of people. Make sure the campaign management within your platform supports both inbound marketing and outbound campaigns as well.
Lead Management & Lead Scoring
This is another fundamental feature of marketing automation software. Lead scoring enables marketers to concentrate on the most promising leads. Every customer receives a score, based on his activities. When a lead matures i.e. reaches a threshold value, it is assigned to a sales representative so that appropriate action can be taken.
Being able to move leads through the entire marketing funnel is a challenging task and should be handled effectively by your Marketing Automation Platform. Moreover, CRM and marketing software together help in strategizing better so you can have marketing automation optimization in your business.
Landing Pages
Also known as a Call to Action page, a landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action. Landing pages help increase conversion rates through targeted promotion. You can market multiple products to audiences using highly customized landing pages with very specific targeted content. Many marketing automation systems have excellent landing page builders. Make sure you select a landing page builder that is flexible and easy to use.
Social Media Marketing
Automated social media marketing software has changed how marketers communicate with customers on social media channels. Know what the customers and prospects have to say about your company’s products and services, how they respond to email messages and website content, and then incorporate that data into your marketing automation platform. The marketing automation platform you select should have built-in social media marketing and management tools. You can plan your social media content in advance, and use the engagement data to refine your marketing strategies going forward.
Analytics and Reporting
Marketing automation tools provide comprehensive analytics and reporting features to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Businesses can track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue generated. These insights help optimize marketing strategies, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions.
This enables businesses to measure the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing activities. By tracking the revenue generated from specific campaigns, businesses can determine the effectiveness and profitability of their marketing efforts. This data helps justify marketing expenditures, allocate budgets to high-performing campaigns, and optimize strategies for maximum ROI.
Personalization and Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation plays a crucial role in marketing automation within CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems. When combined, marketing automation and CRM provide businesses with a powerful toolset to effectively target and engage different segments of their customer base.
Customer Journey Automation
Monitor every person who visits your website by tracking their behavior in your CRM platform, including which pages they click, from where they access the website, what keywords they type on Google that direct them to your website, and so on.
With CRM software, you can deliver real-time alerts to sales representatives when a lead, prospect or customer visits the website. Visitor tracking should also help you segment your 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. By automating these processes, you can deliver personalized experiences at every touchpoint, from initial contact to post-purchase follow-up. Customer journey automation can help you better understand customer preferences, anticipate their needs, and optimize marketing efforts to drive business growth.
Have a look at how Rolustech has helped businesses leverage their CRM by integrating it with marketing automation tools.
Evolution Marketing
Evolution Marketing is an independent business software consulting firm based in Australia. Their experts work with technology leaders like SugarCRM to provide high-value CRM and marketing automation solutions to help businesses acquire more leads and increase sales.
Evolution Marketing approached Rolustech in order to integrate marketing automation tools with SugarCRM for a local government based in Brisbane. The local government intended to run email campaigns comprising of surveys from within their Sugar to create awareness among the general public to use energy resources efficiently. Furthermore, there was a mobile game developed for the same purpose which users played in order to win gifts. The government wanted the game data of the app to automatically sync with Sugar so leads could be generated based on the results of the game.
Rolustech decided to enhance the functionality of Sugar by integrating the API of three key marketing automation tools that would serve their client’s needs. Read more about our Evolution Marketing Case Study to learn about the marketing tools integration.
Finding Friday
Finding Friday specializes in CRM for the Travel and Leisure Industry. The company strives to connect travel and leisure companies with potential travelers and tourists. Their primary need was to integrate marketing automation tools so that their clients, to whom the solution was sold, could run successful marketing campaigns, nurture leads along the sales cycle, and reach out to more customers in less time with little effort. MailChimp, Act-On, and Insteller integrations were done with SugarCRM. You can read the complete process in our Finding Friday Case Study.
Rolustech is an Official Salesforce Partner firm and has completed several projects in Salesforce Customization, Integration, Implementation, and more. Contact us now for a FREE Business Analysis. We will be glad to assist you!
