Convert More Leads to Sales with Marketing Automation and CRM
by Matt D’Rion, Founder and CEO
We sometimes find that businesses lack a complete picture of customer relationship management systems and how they interrelate to marketing automation. We’ll see a $2 million-a-year business manually tracking leads and callbacks with handwritten notes and an array of spreadsheets. They know things are falling through the cracks; they wonder if some type of marketing automation or CRM might help—but who has time to do the homework?
These days, marketing automation and CRM are commonly integrated into one system and with good reason: the marketing side automates and tracks marketing campaigns which feed qualified prospects to the sales team. The sales team uses the CRM side to bring prospects to a closed deal. Done right, a well-integrated system will not only pump up your sales, it will boost staff productivity and efficiency.
The value of an all-in-one system is, clearly, the automation. For instance, you can prepare a series of emails and automatically send them out to designated prospects. A submitted “Contact Us” form could trigger an email to let the inquiry know someone will contact them shortly. Or you could “drip” out valuable content to blog subscribers with a preplanned series of emails on a preset schedule. You could even specify one action for someone who clicks through to, say, a landing page or another for a clickthrough to your site. As mere inquiries convert to bonafide, qualified leads, they pass through to the CRM system and notify the sales team. A CRM with marketing automation can manage all email correspondence, sending prospects updates and helpful product or service information.
Of course, scheduling followup calls and meetings is a breeze, along with recording all the prospect’s or customer’s needs and concerns. A prospect’s entire history can be monitored on one dashboard. You can also run your social media from this dashboard which means you can record a complaint that comes in on social media and track the actions taken to resolve it. Live chat can also be run through the software.
If you run a loyalty program or have memberships, notifications or messages for members can be generated automatically.
The right system means you can get more out of each lead or prospect who reaches out to you. And that means much less wasted time for you and your salespeople.
Who Can Best Utilize a CRM with Marketing Automation?
An integrated system is a pretty big investment, so it’s most suitable for a company with a fairly high-priced product or service, those with an offering starting in the low thousands are a prime candidate. A prospect shopping for a product or service in this price range may take a few months or a year to research and consider all their options. When you can track every contact with this prospect, you can maintain their interest with regular, automated communications until they are ready to buy. Your system can keep them updated and informed, refreshing their interest with every contact.
CRMs with marketing automation solve all sorts of sales issues. For instance, when a company gets five to ten prospects a week but loses track of them, the software can help them stay in touch with them and develop them into sales. Or if a company finds itself sending out quotes all the time but then loses track of them, they should also see their “closes” increase.
Once an integrated system is established, it costs very little to maintain regular contact with every person who is interested in your company’s products or services. The emails and followup messages can go out at the intervals you set and every response is automatically recorded.
One system really paid off for a client offering a high-ticket elective healthcare service. It was typically a service that a person would think about for six to twelve months before committing, and it had a hefty price tag of around $20,000. By the time their prospect made up their mind to buy, they had already received helpful information on the procedure, they knew what the aftercare was like, they had been receiving regular updates for at least six months. Our client had time to establish themselves as an authority in each prospect’s mind.
When you keep a prospect better informed and more thoroughly educated on your product or service than your competitors do, your prospects are more likely to gravitate to you when they’re ready to buy.
Building a CRM with Marketing Automation
When we establish an “all-in-one” system for a client, we’re going to dig into their products or services and thoroughly understand how their marketing and sales cycles work. The workflow of the system needs to complement the workflow in their business.
We’ll match the client to the best platform for their needs and then customize its function to their operations. This takes many man-hours, but it turbocharges the interaction between prospects and customers outside the client’s company and the marketing, sales and customer service teams on the inside.
When high-ticket products or services are being sold, the right solution customized to the company’s operations can mean more prospects are turned into customers through efficient and consistent followup. And customers are turned into loyal supporters through excellent followup and service after the sale.
Meeting Customers’ Expectations
In today’s business world, large corporations have set a very high standard for the consistency of their prospect and customer communications and services. A great CRM with marketing automation enables you to elevate your business to the level of service many people are now accustomed to.
If you’d like to improve your marketing and sales teams’ performance, I’d be happy to help you establish your own system and reap all these benefits for your company.