Making The Most Of Your CRM

If you recall from a previous post, we discussed the importance of CRM and why it’s a marketing must-have. At its core, CRM is consumer-focused and places them directly at the center of consciousness of your organisation and helps you manage and store any information relating to your contacts and customers more effectively.

A more expansive view of CRM explains it as an integrated business strategy that incorporates marketing automation software, customer service and understanding prospects all the way from lead generation through post-sale.

So, how do you understand prospects all the way through the sales funnel? More precisely, how do you develop and execute a fully integrated approach to CRM. A recent article by MarketingSherpa, points out some very notable insights into making the most of your CRM.

The first tactic, which discusses the value of utlising data from the latest marketing channels, such as social media is key. There’s a huge connection between marketing and CRM through the platform of social media. Prospective shoppers and existing customers must first be aware of and engaged with a brand before they consider it. Social media creates an environment in which brands can build awareness and attract consumers early in the purchase process.

Thus, this initial phase in buying behavior is of utmost importance and provides access to a different level of information on your buyers and a different way to reach them. This social information provides a more complete picture of the buyer to better market towards them and should be tracked and included in CRM databases. Tracking this information through social sign-on’s is a great way to achieve this.

Social sign-on’s through your Facebook account, for example, allow prospects easy access to your website and increases the likelihood of engagement with content, and social sign-on offers data from that social network.

The second method, which discusses understanding the databases and creating the best approach for an enterprise database, isn’t a “one-size fits all” solution.

Some would recommend using a single database shared by Marketing and Sales with full visibility for everyone into the entire dataset, or maybe limited visibility for different business units based on what data fields they are allowed to interact with or alter.

Others fall into the camp that two separate databases provide the best approach for an enterprise system. They believe that Marketing and Sales should each have their own database, which have an intersection point of shared data when Marketing hands off the data for “their” individuals to Sales once that prospect is fully sales qualified.

Both database approaches have pros and cons associated with it depending on whom you ask.

The last insight discusses the importance of aligning Marketing and Sales efforts with IT. It makes senses that the backbone of your operation is able to provide Marketing with the systems that they need to accomplish their goals and achieve their desired outcomes for marketing efforts. It allows business processes to flow much more efficiently when all efforts are properly aligned.

As a premier CRM solution provider, we allow you to better manage your tasks and processes and also strengthen your relationships with your customers and contacts far into the future.