While most of you are still struggling with the concept of CRM, marketing automation is relatively another new approach that is becoming the future of the business process. Thus, it is often confusing and not clear to the operators about how these two marketing techniques vary. The confusion is mostly prevailing because the footprints of marketing automation and CRM often seem to overlap.
Apparently, both seem to carry out the same operational tasks as handle leads, companies and contacts- thus, creating sufficient vagueness about the exact features and operational process of marketing automation and CRM.
We are going to decode the two distinct purposes served by these two processes so, there is a thorough understanding.
Basic Difference Between Marketing Automation And CRM
To start with, the basic difference between marketing automation and CRM is their distinct targeted audience.
CRM software is primarily sales focused but, the marketing automation software is appropriately used for marketing. The marketing automation software is a system to streamline, automate and measure the marketing workflows and tasks of a company.
On the contrary, CRM is defined as the strategy through, which a company manages all its interactions with current or prospective clients. A CRM system saves information like address, phone numbers, names of the customers and their interactions with the company.
As these are just the basic differences between marketing automation and CRM, we have to dig a little deeper to know the distinct features vividly.
Marketing Automation Software
This system gives you an overview of the prospect’s top-of-funnel activities like, when it is visiting your website, reading your blog or filling out a form.
This tool is creating a significant difference for marketers who are using marketing automation software to schedule and monitor marketing campaigns. The email campaigns and other mass B2B customer communications are seeing a new light with marketing automation software.
You can now understand the distinct features of marketing automation and CRM.
A Quick View Of Marketing Automation Software
These are some of the distinct features of marketing automation software which proves to be beneficial for marketers from different industry backgrounds.
• Segmentation of Prospects:
The difference between marketing automation and CRM is the latter’s ability to segment prospects into appropriate lists for emails. The segments are done on the basis of past interactions with a company and their preferences and interests.
• Lead Nurturing:
Another important feature of marketing automation tool is its lead-nurturing facility. It lets the marketer automatically send triggered emails at regular intervals to most interested prospects in the company’s product or services.
• Analytics and Insights:
Once a particular marketing campaign ends, the system generates insights on analytics showing the success rate of the campaign.
Marketing automation software helps to foster leads and get them ready for the sales team, where CRM has a bigger role to play.
Now, let us come to the other half of this argument, the difference between marketing automation and CRM, where we are now going to dig deeper into the concepts and facts of CRM software.
CRM store information including, the time period for which the customer is doing business with a company, track records including past purchase sheets, notes and important dates, phone conversations. The system also stores other information like contact numbers of the leads, record of inbound emails and much more.
Both customers service and sales team benefit from CRM data to optimize and enrich one-on-one interaction between companies and their clients. It improves sales rate and customer satisfaction as well.
Significant Features of CRM
Now, you have come to know, how marketing automation and CRM are distinctly different from one another, let’s take a closer look at CRM software and its features,
• Tracking and Monitoring:
In layman’s term, CRM can be defined as a tracking system that does more. Sales personnel track and monitor customers through the sales pipeline and help to close the deal.
• Better Lead Conversion:
The business will be able to offer more targeted promotional material with a high probability of lead conversion. It also improves good faith between you and your clients.
• Complete Customer Overview:
CRM helps the sales personnel to get a complete overview of the customer they are dealing with. It includes their history with the company. Sales personnel will be better equipped with all the right information while talking to the customers making the call as successful as possible.
• Integration With Social Media Platforms:
CRM now has the capability to get in sync in with social media platforms so you can better track which one is driving more traffic. You will be well aware of what people are talking about you in the digital world.
All in all, the major difference between marketing automation and CRM is CRM makes the sales process a more personal experience with the customers.
Do You Need Separate Systems Or Both?
Even though you have understood the distinctiveness of marketing automation and CRM, you still might be struggling to understand whether to implement them or not. To help you out with that, Soffront will suggest you look at your sales to funnel to identify your biggest challenges. This will assist you to make a decision.
The differences between marketing automation and CRM systems make them more unique and valuable to the team they serve.
It is usually observed that small businesses start by integrating CRM into the system to optimize the bottom of the sales funnels for more lead conversion. As the company grows, the business invests more in marketing efforts. Implementation of marketing automation currently seems more viable. Integration with CRM is a better strategy when the company is at its consistent growth phase.
The possible integration of CRM with business process automation makes it one solution accessible by both sales and marketing team. Companies will be in sync in both ways so that no leads or customers go unattended.
