CRM - Customer Relationship Management

CRM platform

CRM platforms connect all the data from your sales leads and customers, all in one place. A CRM platform consolidates all communications (form fills, calls, emails, text messages, and meetings), documents, quotes, purchases, and tasks associated with each lead and client. Your entire team can access those details at the right time–to close a sale or deliver outstanding service.

The specific CRM platform a business uses for its marketing campaigns will depend on the industry and size of the organization. However, most businesses will benefit from the following features:

Centralized location for audience data

A CRM platform stores and organizes customer data (e.g., contact information, phone calls and emails, customer feedback, sales activities) in a centralized location. Creating a central repository of customer data helps you find, organize, and analyze customer information as you collect it, as well as uncover trends, patterns, and insights (e.g., the most popular products, the most effective marketing messages, customer demographics).

Segmentation and targeting of customer groups

A CRM platform enables businesses to segment customers into groups according to a wide range of characteristics, such as demographics (e.g., age, geographic location, job role, industry, company size) and activities (e.g., recent and past purchases, email response rates, social media activity, personal preferences). This information enables marketers to create very defined customer profiles and then personalize their marketing messages to target very specific groups of customers. Marketers can also create targeted business-to-business email marketing campaigns, which can increase subscriber numbers, email marketing metrics, and revenue.

Creation of personalized content

Because a CRM platform provides a wealth of information about your customers, you can customize communications to each person you contact. People dislike impersonal marketing messages that begin with generic introductions like “Dear customer.” You can pull information from your CRM software to create communications that address potential and current customers by name. You can also include the customer’s position and company to truly tailor the message and grab their attention.

Having other information about the customer, such as their purchasing history and preferences, as well as notes on previous communications, allows you to craft a message tailored to each customer. For example, you could discuss ideas and opportunities, provide useful and helpful information, and guide the conversation to suit a specific customer. This level of personalized content results in increased response rates, more positive brand perception, and higher revenues.

Seamless connection to marketing channels

Using a CRM platform, businesses can share customer information across all departments within an organization, such as marketing, sales, and customer service. When these departments share access to audience data, it makes it easier to uncover customer insights and create personalized communications. Without a CRM, it’s easy for data in different departments to be duplicated, overlooked, or lost, but a company-wide CRM platform allows the marketing team to create and use customer reports that contain complete information. It also ensures messages are consistent and focused within specific channels.

Ability to create, test, track, and improve marketing campaigns

Your business can use the information a CRM platform collects to create targeted marketing campaigns, test campaigns and different elements of those campaigns (e.g., headings, offers, graphics), and track the results of each campaign. Using a variety of metrics – such as email open rates, new subscribers, and purchases, you can evaluate how each campaign performs and then adjust it to improve results (or cancel campaigns that are clearly not getting results). This will enable you to make the best use of your marketing budget.

Another benefit of a CRM platform is that you can reuse marketing campaigns that have proved effective in the past. You can use the data and analysis from previous marketing campaigns to demonstrate their success, thereby removing any guesswork about where to spend your marketing dollars. The ability to recycle campaigns, templates, forms, and other marketing materials for new customers and markets will improve the efficiency of your marketing resources.

Tools to support business growth

By using a CRM platform to collect audience data and learn more about your current customers, you can apply your research to find and communicate with potential customers in existing and new markets. You can also improve customer loyalty by using the information you have collected on your customer base. Small businesses that do not have large marketing budgets can use a CRM platform to stretch their resources and support business growth. Rather than marketing to large swaths of potential customers, a small business can identify the people who are most likely to buy its products or services and focus marketing resources there.

The best way to fully understand how to use a CRM platform to organize and grow your business is to use one. Try Simple Fast Funnels CRM platform for free in a 14-day free trial. Try us out, take it for a spin, and see just what Simple Fast Funnels can do to grow your business. A company that is willing to let you try it all out for free for 14 days is a company who knows that their product really works. Start your free trial today at simplefastfunnels.com.