Customer relationship management (CRM) software and marketing automation software serve different purposes. For sales and marketing, having both adds value. When the two work together, they can help streamline the customer journey, promote team collaboration, and drive efficiencies.
CRM software handles contact and sales management, tracks sales team productivity, and shows customer relationships.
Marketing automation software can help streamline and automate marketing tasks, like content distribution, lead generation, lead nurturing, prospect segmentation, and account-based marketing.
Here are some of the initiatives marketing automation software can help facilitate:
- Tracking customer engagement
- Scoring or grading leads
- Attracting prospective customers with marketing content and landing pages optimized for search (SEO)
- Capturing leads through forms
- Segmenting audiences
- Automating workflows, like triggering a next engagement event or assigning a qualified prospect to a sales rep
- A/B testing marketing messages
- Measuring advertising and marketing campaign performance
- Providing a foundation for customer journey mapping
By combining CRM and marketing automation technologies, your sales and marketing team can get a full picture of a prospective customer’s interaction with your organization, including which marketing content may be influencing the purchasing decision. When working in tandem, marketing automation feeds your CRM the detailed information needed to serve personalized messages to your current and prospective customers to help drive sales.
Implementing a marketing automation solution with your CRM tool can help you:
- Position marketing to send quality leads to sales
- Improve lead nurturing with relevant and timely communications
- Track your social and paid digital advertising campaigns in CRM
- Aggregate and analyze key sales and marketing metrics
Here are a few tools that work well together:
- ClickDimensions marketing automation – Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM
- Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) marketing automation – Salesforce CRM
- Marketo Engage marketing automation – Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce CRM
Learn more about the benefits of using these tools when you dive into our resource library or contact us to set up a personal demo. The Business Technology Solutions team at FORVIS is here to assist you throughout your CRM journey. Use the Contact Us form below to get in touch.