Good pairings are important. Like finding the right wine to go along with the right meal. It’s the same with your customer relationship management (CRM) and your marketing automation platform. Without one or the other, you’ll still reach some of your business goals and you’ll be able to make some things work. But when you integrate the two, you’ll create a powerful system that does so much more.
Organizations with aligned sales and marketing functions enjoy 36 percent higher customer retention rates. They also experience 38 percent higher sales win rates according to Marketing Profs. So it’s time to put the sales and marketing rivalry to rest and align the two teams and their technology.
Integrating CRM with your marketing automation platform will cut costs and increase productivity. Though both the points are true, there is still more to explore if you integrate your CRM with marketing automation software. Launching both the software differently is not only cumbersome but can also lead to data leaks and disruption in customer interaction.
However, the usefulness of integrating both the software together is that you gain organization and centralization in your data, have easy customer behavior visibility and improve workflow prioritization. The vast majority of Soffront users have integrated their marketing automation with the CRM because it offers ease in process and data management.
Having a CRM integrate with marketing automation will provide the benefit of consistent messaging. If you deploy both separately, you can cause problems with your messaging. This is because you need to look into two different platforms to know if the interaction with one customer is constant. Also, with integration, you can keep your messaging consistent without any communication issues. Another benefit of having an all-in-one CRM is that you can control data leaks and can fine tune the data.
Two different software platforms mean two different systems to track and analyze data. This makes the whole process of data management a laborious one and any new data can fall through the cracks or get lost. A single platform that has both the software integrated can help curb this major data management issue. That’s why Soffront created marketing automation to go along with our CRM.
Through integration, you can have a combined approach to data management as all the contact, communication and other informational data is saved under one single platform. The data is organized, easy to view and edit, and analyze.
The purpose of CRM and marketing automation is to approach the customers and build better relationships. However, two separate software equal to tracking two different conversations of the same customer. It is confusing and doesn’t add any value to customer interaction.
With integration, you can easily understand and analyze customer behavior to ensure you base your interactions on those insights so that you provide better service to your customers. This integration helps you in optimizing your customer relationship by providing you a centralized platform with improved customer data.
Together, CRM and marketing automation provides a unified platform for all the teams to track and analyze customer activities and behavior. Accordingly, having discussions and strategies to turn a prospect into a customer and ensure customer purchase cycle is continuous. The same software also allows for the perfect balance required between the teams, continuous workflows and instills accountability.
When you go down the list of the many benefits to a marketing automation system and CRM integration, it’s really a no-brainer. And when businesses are offering the two out-of-the-box, there’s really no reason why a company should have them working separately.
If you are looking to take your marketing and sales efforts to the next level, you need to consider integrating CRM and marketing automation. For more information on Soffront’s CRM and marketing automation platform please contact us today. We’ll answer any questions you may have about the software integration and other added features.