In any relationship, communication is key. The same goes for your small business tools. Getting them to “talk” can keep your business running smoothly – without the drama of systems that just can’t relate.
Integrating systems is valuable. You get better, more accurate visibility into your data. You can easily share information across your company so that everyone can do their job better. And, you can automate and streamline processes so you can scale.
While integrating your tools benefits your business, it’s not always easy or feasible for smaller business that don’t have a boatload of time or money to spend on integrating tools they’ve already invested in.
That’s where an all-in-one CRM and email marketing system can come in handy. You get the benefits of integrated sales and marketing tools without the pitfalls of integration.
Getting Sales and Marketing On the Same Page
If you’re like a lot of businesses, you’ve got a CRM that houses your customer and prospect data, managed by the sales team. On the marketing side, you may have an email marketing tool.
When these systems are standalone and siloed, marketing is often left blasting the same content to everyone on their email marketing list. They have no insight into:
- Contacts currently in the sales process
- Hot prospects that are ready for a bottom-of-the-funnel call to action
- Cold leads who are still getting to know the brand
At the same time, sales has no insight into which email marketing campaigns their contacts have received or what their contacts have indicated interest in. They can’t tell who their most engaged contacts are – the ones who open every email and click every link. Instead of speaking with their most interested and engaged prospects, sales ends up taking more of a cold calling approach.
An integrated CRM and email marketing tool takes these pain-points away for sales and marketing. When there’s a love connection between your CRM and email marketing system, marketing and sales can ditch the one-to-many generic email blast and cold calls. Instead, sales and marketing can build relationships with their contacts, keeping them engaged and boosting sales.
Here’s how:
Personalize Correspondence
With integrated CRM and email marketing, you can send personalized, one-to-one emails that resonate with your audience. Contact status and unique interests are tracked on the CRM side. Then, marketing can send highly targeted and relevant communication that feel like personal, one-off emails, instead of a generic newsletter blast.
Personalization can go beyond first name and company to the products and services contacts are interested in and the main problems they are trying to solve.
Automate Follow-Up
We all know that the key to sales is follow-up. But sticky-note reminders to follow-up with prospects aren’t always super reliable.
With an integrated CRM and email marketing, sales can create tasks and run simple email campaigns to keep in touch with prospects who aren’t quite ready to buy. In addition, marketing can automate processes like sending a thank you email to prospects who download a resource or subscribe to a list.
Through automated follow-up, teams can spend less time trying to manage to-dos, and more time building important relationships.
Email Nurturing
According to KissMetrics, 96% of prospects who visit your website for the first time aren’t ready to buy…but that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future.
With a CRM tied to email marketing, you can offer a resource to capture contact information from new prospects when they hit your site for the first time. Then, you can automatically nurture these prospects with email over time, educating them about their pain-points – and your solution.
Need more incentive to create sparks between your CRM and email marketing? Check out these stats:
