Most businesses integrate Marketing Automation with CRM systems. There is a common misconception that they are the same thing. However, they both work differently from one another. They may seem similar according to their face value, but they have distinct roles.
Investing in the wrong software can harm your business and slow down sales. Therefore, it is important to know the roles of CRM and Marketing Automation so the business can analyze which system they need to for.
Today’s article is all about the differences between both tools:
What Is CRM?
CRM – Customer Relationship Management is an exceptional technology that helps manage professional interactions and relationships with current and potential customers. CRM focuses only on improving the business’s relationships; helping the firms stay connected with the streamlined process and customers to enhance retention rates.
These relationships it manages include service https://www.osmoscloud.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/header-cover-1.jpgs, suppliers, colleagues, and customers. The process keeps moving as a lifecycle starts with finding new customers, converting them into customers, and offering them support and further additional services throughout the period. A perfect CRM system includes tools that assist in sales management, productivity, contact management, and much more.
Let’s find out some of the benefits of CRM.
Benefits Of CRM
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Enhanced Collaboration
When a firm introduces a CRM system into the business, team collaboration gets convenient since CRM keeps track of notes, needs, discussions, contact information, and interactions, which can be helpful in the future when implementing new ideas.
But if CRM is cloud-based, it will enable the management to update the data regularly. As a result, the team can easily access the data anytime to make important decisions.
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Personalized Communication
CRM allows the business to secure detailed information regarding customers enabling their interactions to get more personalized. With a CRM system, a business starts to collect and secure insights and data about the customers, target audience, industry, and market. It helps in generating personalized and relevant messages.
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Proactive Outreach
CRM systems also play a role in notifying the https://www.osmoscloud.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/header-cover-1.jpg and encourage them to take an action. For example, they will notify when a client’s birthday is around the corner, management has to schedule a call with the client, or an account is about to expire soon CRM helps in providing perfect reminder to the customers.
Therefore, when the customer service and sales are educated and proactive, it saves the business by making the potential clients feel special and valued.
What Is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation helps make the business’s advertising better with the help of automation technology. Standing out in any marketing campaign is now more difficult than before since customers receive the marketing messages from every other business. However, marketing automation helps the business identify potential clients and automates the nurturing process of those leads.
Marketing automation eases the process and brings the leads to the point where they can be directly sent to the sales team to close them and start a long-term relationship. This effective process improves the sales funnel and helps turn the leads into satisfied customers speedily. Marketing automation supplies valuable content that builds satisfaction, trust, and respect for a specific brand.
Benefits of Marketing Automation?
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Relevant Custom Communication
Marketing automation promotes improved communication with the customers. It enables the business to store all the necessary information about the consumers and delivers it to sales staff so they can conveniently access it. As a result, the collected and accessible data will help the sales team use it in the most effective ways possible.
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User Segmentation
User segmentation is one of the most crucial aspects of marketing campaigns. No matter what services a business is selling, it will receive multiple customers behaving in different ways. The marketing automation process introduces the https://www.osmoscloud.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/header-cover-1.jpg segmentation that helps divide the customers and leads into different categories concerning their behavior. It would make it convenient for the management team to access the leads and convert them.
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Automated Emails
Marketing automation lets the business automatically send emails at the exact time when a lead is most interested in the services. Businesses can also set up a scheduled email series in the form of drip campaigns to keep the business at the top of the prospects’ minds.
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Improved Leads
Marketing Automation enhances the quality of leads for the business’s sales team. It is understandable that leads with the poor quality only waste the money and time of the staff. Therefore, marketing automation helps in the production of high-quality leads. Ultimately, it provides the sales team with strong opportunities to improve the bottom line of the business.
Key Differences between CRM and Marketing Automation
Primary Concern
The primary concern of the CRM is to help the businesses while providing the opportunity for automation, sales funnel, contact information, and management. On the other hand, the primary concern of marketing automation is to convert the manual marketing procedure into an automated one.
Strived Solutions
CRM system comes up with the strived solutions to create new relationships with the potential clients. Not only this, but it also helps in growing and enhancing the previous relations with existing clients. Besides CRM, Marketing Automation helps generate the leads and convert them into potential customers with the help of numerous marketing activities.
Primary Focus
CRM systems focus on the sales or marketing of qualified leads. It mainly works on the leads that are in the bottom or middle of the sales funnel. As compared to CRM, marketing automation focuses on the top and middle of the sales funnel. It includes leads, email subscribers, trials, and site visitors.
Departments
Numerous business departments use the information that the CRM system derives. Some of these departments include customer service and sales departments. Other than that, there’s only one department that uses marketing automation tools, and that is marketing itself.
Insight
CRM system provides the firm with insights into customers’ engagement with the business’s services allowing it to find tunnels for improvement. Meanwhile, marketing automation provides the firm with insights into marketing activities. It lets the business know-how initiatives perform their roles so the firm can enhance its performance.
Final Thoughts
Businesses can integrate marketing automation with the CRM system when required. Most of the marketing automation tools enable the firm to sync their data with the CRM system. As a result, all the customer’s activities can be monitored with the help of a single platform.
