Reach the right customers at the right time, use the best touchpoints for your message and probe the highest quality leads - all this is promised by marketing automation that keeps a close eye on your customers at every stage. While your Customer Relationship Management uses collected, analyzed and often further processed data, the basis for this lies in marketing automation. This is because it is connected to all the neuralgic points of your marketing.
Connecting your CRM with marketing automation brings many advantages. This allows you to exploit the full potential of human-collected and machine-collected data records. In this overview, we give you 7 tips that will make this integration easier for you in practice.
CRM and marketing automation - differences and similarities
It is precisely because customer relationship management and marketing automation work so well together that it is worth taking a look at the differences. The biggest difference is certainly usage. The sales teams and the sales department mostly use CRM. The aim is to be able to enter into better dialog with potential customers.
Marketers, on the other hand, use marketing automation data to gain a better 360-degree view of customers. While customer relationship management can actually be very close to the customer and often deliberately focuses on a human dialog, marketing automation is more geared towards repetitive activities at scale. This is primarily about collecting large amounts of data and driving lead nurturing forward.
Depending on the size of the company and the software platform used, the terms can become even more blurred. After all, your goal should be to collect all the data in marketing that will also help your sales team in the field. Depending on the type and focus of your company, you may have previously prioritized CRM or automation, but you will benefit from better integration in any case.
Connecting CRM with marketing automation - here's how
1. the individual interface
An API solution (short for Application Programming Interface) is the best and most flexible option for linking for many companies. This creates an interface with which different systems can exchange data records with each other. In CRM, the sales department therefore has access to the data that the marketing department has collected on the leads.
Depending on the size of the databases, the systems used and their integration into the respective teams, however, an API can involve a great deal of effort.
2. the connector
If you want to link CRM with marketing automation, you can also use connectors as a consistent solution between the two systems. The great advantage of this is the two-track working method and permanent synchronization. Regardless of whether your employees work in marketing automation or customer relationship management, the data records are always the same.
While an API represents an individual solution, a standardized connector is standardized and predefined.
3. Aggregate the relevant data
The aim of closer integration is of course to create central data sets so that all employees always have access to the latest information and can make truly informed decisions.
Which information you attach the greatest importance to must be weighted differently from situation to situation. Click behavior and past orders can be just as important as contract data (especially with as-a-service models), the topics clicked on in the newsletter or information from a personal conversation with a customer.
Before you link CRM with marketing automation, you should create an overview of the essential information to keep all processes lean and efficient.
4. Omnichannel strategies as an integral part
Successful integration between automation in marketing and customer relationship management is the basis for functioning omnichannel marketing. That's why you should already work out in the conceptual phase which channels your company is already heavily active on and which channels will be invested in in the future.
This way, you can easily design your linking efforts around your more global marketing strategy and create a sustainable concept that will serve your company for a long time to come.
5. Marketing clouds as an entry-level concept
Existing cloud solutions are often the best approach, especially for start-ups or digitally expanding SMEs. The cloud ensures permanent synchronization and your employees can flexibly access the most important data. This is not only important when working from home, but also crucial when your sales team is on the way to a customer appointment.
The advantage of ready-made cloud solutions is easy implementation and immediate functionality. You don't need to do anything else to bring CRM and marketing automation together technically. However, an "off-the-shelf" solution is not the right one for all companies; the need for tailor-made solutions is growing, especially with internal company flexibility.
6. Lead improvement for sales
Sales teams absolutely must be included in the integration, as a lot can and should change here. The close link between CRM and marketing automation improves the quality of leads, but also provides information about the touchpoints at which prospects are ready for a sales conversation and when the signals are not yet sufficient and they go back to nurturing.
Sales teams must be prepared to have more specific conversations with potential customers and take their history into account. If the wealth of data is not used here, you could expect an increasing drop-off rate.
7. Marketing and sales
Of course, software solutions are not the only difficulty in integrating automated marketing and CRM. Your employees also need to work well together across departments. According to a study by HubSpot, companies can generate more leads through their marketing team if they work more closely with sales.
Both sales benefit from a better overview of the entire marketing funnel, but the marketing team can also align their content and strategies better with individual customers. This is a decisive success factor, especially in the B2B segment with a small number of large customers.
Better communication between the departments involved is just as important as the technical link.
Sharpened profiles and the complete view
If you manage to develop a 360-degree view of your potential customers and align your marketing funnel consistently across all touchpoints, you will not only optimize the customer experience with your company. Your employees will also appreciate the improved flow of information and will be able to deal with customers in a much more specific way. Whether this is early on in the marketing funnel during lead generation or in the final sales meeting. Linking CRM with marketing automation leads to more insights into customer behavior, better service and more personalized marketing.
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