Marketing has evolved significantly over the years and has become more complex and perplexing than ever. Consumers are now using multiple media platforms to gather data and stay up-to-date, making life difficult for marketers. However, with marketing automation in CRM, a business can streamline and optimize a variety of marketing tasks. This will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales and marketing team by saving time on administrative tasks, delivering messages with the right content to the right audience, closing deals faster through increased automation and increasing revenue and profits.
Marketing automation is an amazing technology but if it is not customized according to the needs and requirements of the business, it can prove counterproductive. For your convenience, we have prepared a list of the key features that you need to look out for in a marketing automation platform.
1. Email marketing
Emails are the principal communication channels with potential leads. With an automation tool, you can test your email content, create beautiful email templates that match your product specifications, preview your emails across platforms and devices and do advanced email reporting. Marketing automation in CRM incorporates email marketing functionality and then expands on it by customizing content interactions through logic workflows e.g. you can send a happy birthday message to a loyal customer and offer him a discount or send a thank you message when someone makes a purchase. This can make the difference between a happy customer and a lost prospect.
2. CRM Integration
Marketing automation platforms that integrate seamlessly with customer relationship management platforms can be a very powerful weapon. Tight integration with your CRM system will allow you to transfer lead information seamlessly between marketing and sales. Better alignment between marketing and sales will improve the effectiveness of campaigns. Your CRM system should talk to your marketing automation platform and your marketing automation platform should talk to your CRM system.
3. Lead Nurturing
Send the right information to the right prospects at the right time. Lead nurturing is the process of sending a series of automated emails that will trigger based on a person’s behavior. Being able to nurture leads based on a variety of attributes (behavior, demographics, buying stage) is a highly sought after tool by marketers.
4. Campaign Management
Campaigns are the workflows you use to nurture leads along the sales cycle. Campaigns have both timed and triggered events. To run successful campaigns you need to send direct and personalized emails to a large number of people. Make sure campaign management within your platform supports both inbound marketing and outbound campaigns as well.
5. Lead Management & Scoring
This is another fundamental feature of marketing automation software. Lead scoring enables marketers to concentrate on the most promising leads. Every customer receives a score, based on his activities. When a lead matures i-e reaches a threshold value, it is sent to a sales representative so that appropriate action could be taken. Being able to move leads through the entire marketing funnel is a challenging task and should be handled effectively by your Marketing Automation Platform.
6. Landing Pages
Also known as a call to action page, a landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action. Landing pages help increase conversion rates through targeted promotion. You can market multiple products to audiences using highly customized landing pages with specifically targeted content. Many marketing automation systems have excellent landing page builders. Make sure you select a landing page builder that is flexible and easy to use.
7. Social Marketing
Know what the customers and prospects have to say about your company’s products and services, how they respond to email messages and website content and incorporate that data into your marketing automation platform. The marketing automation platform you select should have built-in social media marketing and management tools.
8. Visitor Tracking
Monitor every person who visits your website by tracking their behaviour, including which pages they click, from where they access the website, what keywords they typed on Google that directed them to your website etc. Many applications deliver real-time alerts to sales representatives when a lead, prospect or customer visits the website. Visitor tracking should also be able to segment your database upon those tracked activities.
How we have assisted businesses to leverage their CRM by integrating it with marketing automation tools? Case Study
1. Evolution Marketing
Evolution Marketing is an independent business software consulting firm based in Australia. Their experts work with technology leaders like SugarCRM to provide high-value CRM and marketing automation solutions to help businesses acquire more leads and increase sales.
Evolution Marketing approached Rolustech in order to integrate marketing automation tools with SugarCRM for a local government based in Brisbane. The local government intended to run email campaigns comprising of surveys from within their Sugar to create awareness among the general public to use energy resources efficiently. Furthermore, there was a mobile game developed for the same purpose which users played in order to win gifts. The government wanted the game data of the app to automatically sync with Sugar so leads could be generated based on the results of the game.
Rolustech decided to enhance the functionality of Sugar by integrating the API’s of three key marketing automation tools that would serve their client’s needs. Read the complete Evolution Marketing case study.
2. Finding Friday
Finding Friday specializes in CRM for the Travel and Leisure Industry. The company strives to connect travel and leisure companies with potential travelers and tourists. Their primary need was to integrate marketing automation tools so their clients to whom the solution was sold could run successful marketing campaigns, nurture leads along the sales cycle and reach out to more customers in less time with little or no manual effort. MailChimp, Act-On and Instellar integrations were done with SugarCRM. Read the complete Finding Friday case study.
