The dynamic duo: CRM and Marketing Automation

Gone are the days when we had to convince companies of the benefits of customer relationship management (CRM). Today almost everyone knows that CRM is golden for sales and services in terms of structuring information, streamlining processes, and coordinating with prospects and customers.

However, despite the many strengths of CRM, it typically falls short in meeting the needs of marketing. Today’s marketers require end-to-end visibility and control over the entire lead lifecycle; from brand awareness, to demand generation, to customer retention and expansion. That’s where marketing automation comes in.

While your CRM keeps track of your sales, marketing automation engages your prospects. CRM captures your sales process, while marketing automation executes it. So, top-of-class sales and marketing organisations need both CRM and marketing automation software to succeed and scale, due to the fact that customer journey has changed.

The buying process has evolved

Today 57% of all buyers begin the buying process by conducting online research. Meaning leads now spend most of the buyer’s journey in the care of the marketing team. They visit your website, read detailed descriptions of your offerings, learn about your company as well as your competitors, and read customer reviews all before contacting a potential vendor. Leaving it up to the marketing team to ease buyers through the journey. It’s no longer enough to just shout the loudest or most often, and then let the rest be up to sales.

No, modern marketers have to identify and reach out to prospects with relevant content, and other engagement strategies, while conducting lead analysis, nurturing, and scoring, to evaluate a lead’s sales-readiness. Once a lead is primed and ready to go, the sales team can step in and work their magic by sealing the deal. Post-sale, marketing must continue to nurture the relationship, maximizing customer retention and upselling additional products/services.

So, having a marketing automation system is vital in this new era of marketing, and having a system that fully integrates with your CRM is imperative.

Better together

The integration of CRM and marketing automation allows marketing to create, automate, and measure campaigns. Whilst sales become an equal partner in defining lead qualification and have more informed conversations to close the sale faster. There’s no other way to guarantee this level of intelligence than through a deep integration between your CRM and marketing automation systems, so make sure they sync well – like Mautic and Sugar.

Now what?

If you’re interested in mastering Sugar 8, and getting started on marketing automation, you’re more than welcome to join our open training on November 6 in Copenhagen – it’s free.

For more details on our event go to: https://enableit.mi360.eu/open-training and sign up today.