Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is often misrepresented as a simple contact management tool when, in fact, it can manage every aspect of your customer interactions. When you are reaching out to a prospect, it’s important to know how many times they have been touched by sales calls and by your marketing efforts. These numbers can help you to determine what types of marketing efforts create the most closed opportunities and drive your marketing plans for the following years. CRM has become integral and even essential when planning and executing marketing campaigns. Here are a few ways to use your CRM system to maximize your marketing efforts.
- Track Campaigns. Email blasts and newsletters are sent but is anyone tracking who reads which articles? Knowing that detail can be a perfect conversation starter when contacting a prospect and may lead to a more meaningful call. CRM can link to many third party email providers and automatically update the client record to show which articles and offers that particular person has clicked on. That prospect is linked to the email campaign and, if they become a viable opportunity that closes, the credit is given to that campaign. You will know in seconds if your marketing efforts are resulting in actual sales.
- Clone Existing Campaigns. Marketing campaigns can become very complex when there are multiple components interacting together. You may have an annual sale that involves a three part mailing series, email blasts, signage and promotional giveaways. Create the initial campaign in CRM to track the costs, timing and target audience than simply copy it the next time you would like to run the same sale. This keeps your messaging and marketing approach consistent and saves you the work of recreating a campaign from scratch.
- Budget Reports. Budgets are extremely important when you are managing a marketing campaign and CRM can help you to track that component. When a campaign is created, you simply associate a cost to each step of the campaign. As you spend, record the actual numbers to see if you are staying within your budget.
- Social Media Integration. Managing social media is becoming more and more cumbersome as we try to ensure consistent posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others. CRM can simplify the process by showing you the company’s feeds and those that you are following. Customer and prospect social media links and handles can also be stored and viewed within CRM to give you a complete view of the person and organization you are calling.
CRM has evolved way beyond contact management and has become an integral component to marketing departments everywhere. Learn more by contacting ASI today.