CRM for Marketing

Alongside their customer engagement colleagues in service and sales, marketing’s business in a company objectives are to generate leads, optimize customer relationships, drive customer loyalty, improve retention, revenue and customer lifetime value.

The best CRM software can provide both marketing, service and sales functionality in a company within their own operational requirements; but should also enable better collaboration and transparency between teams across the business; putting the lead, prospect and customer at the heart of the CRM strategy.

The CRM strategy should set the scene for what is needed from CRM software in order to manage the customer lifecycle for your business. So this should include the strategies, tactics, and the tools to support the execution of marketing activities.

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Elevate your team with CRM for marketing

Customer relationship management software helps the marketing team and marketers to attract, build and manage relationships with your customers.

The marketing team in a company can be supported by a CRM platform across inbound and outbound marketing regardless of physical or digital channel; in lead generation efforts, planning and executing multi-channel marketing campaigns, segmenting audiences, delivering targeted messaging at the right time, analyzing marketing spend ROI and carrying out best practice testing efficiently.

CRM marketing software has evolved from being “simply” a contact database; whilst having a centralized platform for records of your customers remains a key benefit of CRM tools, a marketing team expects more from the software in answer to the multiple channels and tactics that are used by the business to engage customers. An essential start point for reviewing CRM software is the structure and complexity of the database itself, as your marketing team will expect it to allow them to easily collect, organize, segment and analyze customer data.

Having your customer data in one place allows your business to spot trends both strategically and operationally; what is working or what needs improvement (for example, sales of a product line, a campaign creative or a new customer segment), and engagement level across all touchpoints.

The ability for marketing to classify user and audience types in your data for segmentation allows for more focused and personalized marketing campaigns, execution of testing best practice and for marketing automation techniques.

Harnessing data in marketing CRM

Automating marketing efforts with CRM software

Whatever the size of your business and quantity of user and customer data you hold, marketing automation features within a CRM has become essential. Whether it’s to meet complexity in your offering or segments, or to resolve a low level of marketing resource; automated workflows can benefit your business.

Marketing automation are processes executed automatically in response to activities and behaviors of your customers and leads. Your marketing team and marketers can set up customer journeys to keep engagement, improve conversion rates, request feedback, set reminders, up-sell and cross-sell and enrich the data you hold.

Remember to adapt your campaigns and assets according to the customer type, the reason behind the interaction and the customer journey stage.

Automated campaigns depend on your business needs but may include:

A welcome email series for new customers to reinforce their purchase decision post-sale and offer discounts etc.
A nurture lead campaign to keep leads warm and build qualification for sales and marketing, the triggers can come from what you set up, including website landing page visitors, a contact form sent, a live chat follow up, attendance (or non-attendance) at an event etc.
Reminders to complete CTA; abandoned shopping carts, incomplete forms, late renewals, event or webinar registration
Personalized offers and thank you emails sent to your most important customer segments to reward them for their loyalty to your business
As part of your inbound marketing approach across multiple channels to build brand awareness and engagement

Your marketing team will also be able to dynamically adapt the workflow based on responses of customers, using testing to serve up the best content, timing and offer in the best channel.

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Key Features of Marketing Automation in CRM Software

When reviewing CRM software, ensure it includes the following marketing features:

Multi-channel marketing campaign management: Manage campaigns across events, SMS, email, web landing pages, and social media based on customer contact preferences.
Integration with sales and service activities: Understand the success of lead and customer campaigns and identify opportunities for upsell and cross-sell initiatives.
Customer segmentation: Utilize personas and prebuilt segments for targeted marketing.
Prebuilt workflows: Automatically hand off sales-ready leads and drive follow-ups.
Marketing automation: Deliver personalized messaging based on triggers such as transactions, purchases, returns, and payments.
Configurable templates and design tools: Use reusable content blocks and visual editing tools for on-brand content without additional coding and design costs.
Built-in A/B testing: Optimize subject lines, content, offers, and channels for campaigns with dynamic content.
Event marketing and execution features: Plan and execute physical and digital events, from initial planning and budgeting to attendee registration, webinar broadcasts, and ROI analytics.
GDPR compliance: Ensure best practice storage and easy access to prospect and customer data.
Marketing dashboards: Use prebuilt and customizable dashboards to track campaign KPI performance, identify patterns, and interpret customer behavior.
Customer Journey management: Incorporate VoC data, personas, insights, and analysis to expand CRM use into a customer experience approach.

These features help ensure that your CRM system not only manages customer relationships effectively but also enhances your marketing efforts through automation and data-driven strategies.

AI and CRM for marketing

Enhance your marketing efforts with AI Marketing functionality where anyone can design customer journeys within minutes, even without prior experience. It allows marketers to pinpoint and nurture potential customers more effectively. How? By automating lead qualification process. Just describe what you aim to create using simple, everyday language, and let generative AI build the journey for you. This strategy sifts through data to identify potential customers who are most likely to convert, based on their interactions, behaviors, and preferences so you can focus your outbound efforts (emails, social media ads) on the right people.

This real-time approach not only personalizes the entire customer journey in real-time but also ensures you deliver the most tailored experience possible. Furthermore, advanced sentiment analysis provides insights into customers’ emotional states during interactions, guaranteeing each one receives a distinct, relevant experience complemented by personalized marketing tactics.