Customer Relationship Management (or better known as CRM) software helps business owners track and engage with current customers, prospect new business leads, and drive overall sales growth. CRM software is also essential in facilitating better communication between team members, and providing real-time insight to the current state of sales pipelines. But, what if you don’t have time to regularly engage with those current/potential clients while monitoring your ongoing sales functions? Good news – marketing automation tools help busy business owners save valuable time by automating tasks and enabling them to better serve and stay connected with their customers. Uniting a robust CRM system with marketing automation software will yield your business the greatest results and facilitate sales success and long-term growth. Let's examine just some of the benefits of linking CRM with marketing automation:

1. Make More Informed Decisions

We hear a great deal about big data nowadays. However, what really counts is the quality of your data. A survey by Syncsort revealed that sub-optimal data quality has a negative impact on business decisions. When you integrate CRM and marketing automation, you not only collect data faster but you can improve the quality and relevance of your data. This, in turn, helps you make more informed decisions in every area of your business including marketing, product development, and customer service. It's crucial for businesses today to be agile and able to respond swiftly to changing conditions. When you have access to quality data and your systems are automated, you can make more intelligent, data-driven decisions in every area of your business.

2. Improve Targeting and Personalization

All of your marketing tools are ultimately meant to help you run your business more efficiently and better serve your customers. CRM helps you identify the most relevant information to send prospects at every stage of the customer journey. This lets you create more targeted and personalized content to prospects, which works better than treating everyone the same way. Marketing automation helps you speed up the process and ensure that people are contacted in a timely manner. Timing can have a great impact on your conversions – and in a fast-paced world, when people don't quickly receive the information they need, they're likely to seek out a competitor.

3. Gain a Better Understanding of your Customers

More and more businesses now understand how crucial it is to collect accurate data about prospects and customers. This includes demographic data as well as information gathered from polls, focus groups and other methods. It also includes analytics gathered from customers on your website, social media sites, email lists, and other platforms. Integrating CRM and automation tools help you collect relevant data quickly so you can better meet your customers' needs. For example, email marketing analytics show you which topics, subject lines, and offers bring the best results. Email automation lets you schedule newsletters, email campaigns, and e-courses to educate your audience.

4. Better Internal Communication and Teamwork

If your CRM and marketing automation tools aren't integrated, you'll be dealing with separate data that can be confusing. You may have team members from different departments collecting different types of data that are hard to put together in a useful way. In some cases, salespeople may find it challenging to interpret such data when they use it to analyze leads. When you integrate your marketing automation and CRM platforms, you'll be able to work with consistent data that's easier to interpret and act upon. Integrating CRM and automation tools also makes it easier for team members to communicate from different locations.

5. Make Better Use of Your Leads

Both marketing automation and CRM are useful for generating and nurturing leads. However, by combining these tools, you'll be able to get even more return out of your leads. When you automate lead-generating tasks, you'll be able to quickly assign value to leads and determine the best way to contact prospects. You'll be able to gain deeper insight into your prospects' needs, giving you and your sales team a better platform to connect with them.

If you're not syncing your marketing automation with your CRM, you could be missing out on a powerful system for growing your business and strengthening your relationships with prospects and customers. Are you looking for a solution? Try Act! Growth Suite for free - the comprehensive sales and marketing platform.