How CRM and Digital Marketing can go Hand in Hand?

Taking the decision to invest in a good quality customer relationship management system can be a game-changer for your business. It does not just help in automating tasks like payments, invoicing, and messaging, but the online CRM systems also help in playing an important role in planning a suitable marketing strategy.

The fact is that a customer relationship management system is one of the most critical components of a successful digital marketing campaign. CRM forms the foundation for the sales and promotion of a product or an idea. In essence, CRM is a set of applications that you can use for managing things such as customer databases, customer interactions, customer leads, customer satisfaction, and all else that pertains to the customers.

Improving sales requires a business to improve customer relationships. The customer service has to be impeccable in case you wish to keep customers happy because that is the only way to grow a business.

CRM Helps in Converting Online Leads

The primary goal of all digital marketing campaigns is to boost e-commerce sales. A considerable number of people shop online these days. However, more often than not the buying habits of these people involves researching a product, company prices, and taking some steps before finally making a purchase.

In other words, only because a customer is interested in one of the products, does not mean that the customer is going to buy it immediately. In fact, most of the customers rarely make it past the first step of the check-out process.

With the use of lead tracking software like CRM, it is possible to find when a customer researched the product while allowing the marketer to place targeted ads on social media and other platforms for maintaining the best interest.

The internet is anyway full of content which is why businesses must take steps that remind a customer that they are looking into one of their products or services. A CRM tool enables you to implement a marketing strategy that makes achieving the goal of engaging a customer much easier.

Digital Marketing Strengthens Customer Relationship Management Efforts

Digital Marketing plays an important role in ensuring a successful implementation of customer management. With CRM, you can establish more visibility, enable employees with relevant and timely insights, manage long-term goals, execute things flawlessly, etc.

Marketing is focused on establishing visibility, educating prospective buyers, and converting prospects.  A comprehensive understanding of the buyer’s needs, shopping behaviors, and other pain points helps the marketer to truly personalize conversations across various channels. Capable digital marketers know how to capture customer feedback and data on multiple channels while segmenting customers and drilling customer experiences.

With consistent monitoring of customer data and capturing of buyer insights, it is possible to develop a unified and reliable view of the buyer’s journey. CRM also helps with accessing relevant and timely data needed in the marketing wheelhouse. In addition, the marketing automation tools and access to data analytics help in capturing the customer’s drivers and behaviors while tailoring conversations with buyers.

Association Between CRM and Digital Marketing

1. Tailored Digital Marketing Strategy

Different kinds of customers are exposed to different kinds of marketing. For instance, some customers are more than likely to encounter marketing content through social media than on the web. On the other hand, some others may be subscribed to an emailing list while some others are more likely to find relevant marketing content when an online search is being performed.

The bottom line is that the CRM tools help in understanding the journey of every customer in a different manner. You can encounter how each customer interacts with a marketing campaign with the help of a CRM tool. This also allows you to target each potential customer with marketing content designed to reach them.

Using CRM is important in this sense as it helps in personalizing a marketing strategy that tends to result in more sales and much better brand loyalty in the long run.

2. Better Services and Happy Experiences

No brand can win over customers by the product and price alone but it happens by offering the services and happy experiences as well. A customer who has been happy with the services received is more than likely to be loyal to the company and he will probably be ready to ignore some defects over the superior quality of service as well.  

Anytime you have a happy customer, you can be sure that with time that customer will refer many more customers from his social media friend circle and his family too. This can sometimes work as a double-edged sword too because if the customer is not happy with the experience, he/she can talk ill about the company and the product to his friends and family.

In this regard, when a brand creates an e-commerce platform and chooses to promote the products and services then paying attention to the customer relationship management system becomes very important. Brands can use e-commerce as their sales engine while focusing on wider markets and volumes of prospects and customers as well.

With an increase in the volume of sales, there is a need to create the necessary backend process and e-enabled system infrastructure that can cater to the after-sales service and the customer relationship management as well. 

Customer behavior has changed largely in the present time because of widespread use of the internet and superior services are expected almost immediately. Since the delivery and service expectations have gone up, servicing a large customer base in a relatively shorter span of time can only be possible with robust online CRM systems.

3. Cost Reduction

An effective marketing campaign helps in delivering a reliable return on investment. A brand may want to achieve some goals such as boosting sales and increasing brand awareness, but more than that one must also be sure that the revenue yielded by a campaign exceeds the cost.

CRM applications offer a reliable lead management solution in a way that the marketing campaigns can be reduced by offloading most of the work that other employees have to perform. With the use of tools designed to manage and analyze customer data, the team can focus on other important tasks easily.

With the use of CRM, time can be used efficiently and the need to hire additional staff is also reduced significantly. More than anything, the CRM tools offer the marketers a deeper understanding of their customers and that goes on to help considerably in the creation, implementation, and promotion of lead generation strategies.

4. Segmentation of Customers

Digital marketing enables organizations to get easy access to behavioral activities on social platforms for increasing their information about their customers. This is the way in which organizations can divide their customers on the basis of their interests, behaviors, and attitudes based on age group and locations.

This information allows organizations to easily communicate and send messages to their customers on the basis of different interests, behaviors, and attitudes rather than the demographic location. Hence, the data received from social platforms can be integrated with the information existing with the CRM tools of the organization so that it becomes a part of the actual CRM rather than dividing various customers on social media platforms.

The overlaying of information received from digital social platforms on the existing information with the organizations also offers personalized information about the customers. CRM digital marketing allows companies to send personalized messages to interesting segments of customers. For instance, special treatment can be given to prestigious customers whereas people with a negative attitude can be treated sympathetically so that they get attracted to a company’s products and services.

5. Connectivity With Customers

The ever-increasing popularity of social media platforms has made it very easy for companies to get more and more information about their customers. This information can be integrated with the existing information collected through the traditional CRM tools.

With the improvements made in the connectivity between the companies and their customers, the way of interaction has changed not just for the companies with their customers but also with their companies. Rather than the direct marketing messages, the customers prefer interacting with the companies directly. This has become possible only because of CRM digital marketing instead of traditional CRM which was earlier based on sales alone.

6. Digital Connections

When the brand uses CRM strategies to create data sheets on the present customers and the leads that a brand has on other customers, it becomes possible to approach customers in a one-on-one digital campaign.

Brands can connect with them using preferences to make suggestions on social networking sites so that they see advertisements and are also reminded of the things they want or like. Brands can send emails meant for personally suggesting some products and services based on a previously made purchase by a customer. This is one of the best lead management solutions because it lets the brands create collateral that interests the customers.

Brands can create blogs and articles that address the things a customer may be interested in by looking at the data to confirm their likes and dislikes. Anytime there is relevant information on a page that a customer finds interesting, that page will be visited again by the customer.

7. Increased Satisfaction

When CRM applications are used to create databases about a customer and product, one can also create a database on customer service calls. This database can be used as a reference to offer the customers just the things that make them happy.

Anytime a brand begins to look closely at the customer service calls, what the customer liked or disliked, and what all was done to satisfy the customer, it becomes easy to create a training program for each customer service representative that allows creating satisfied customers out of every call.

8. Lead Capture

The landing pages are a robust lead magnet for the people who are led to a website for the first time because of lead generation strategies. With the adoption of CRM, the contact information of the leads can be captured in an effective way.

Even if the intention of the customer was to not buy anything on clicking, they can be made curious which can further lead them to feel motivated for filling out the form and reaching out to the brand.

CRM For Online Marketing

Customer relationship management software is a tool that companies can use for recording customer data for future references. It enhances online marketing in the following ways:

• Tracking sales figures and determining which promotions are the most productive
• Keeping each member of a sales team updated with customer information, probable client leads, and consistent information needed to close sales.
• Improving follow-ups and gaining customer approvals.
• Connecting members of your sales team to the customers using GPS technology.
• Sharing files and information between sales team members so that when one team member cannot make a follow-up or complete a promise, another team member can come forward and make sure that the customer is happy.

Conclusion

The integration of a CRM with a digital marketing promotional strategy goes hand in hand. In addition to boosting sales, the marketing managers also need to focus on building brand loyalty by using promotional activities that help in engaging with the customers along with enhancing value in the relationship.

The key lies in understanding that this is the digital age of business. People are doing more online businesses including shopping, banking, investing, and researching than ever before. If the brands want to stand out in this stiff competition environment, it is very important to come with lead generation strategies that genuinely help. CRM stimulates digital marketing campaigns significantly while showing quick results in a short time period.

For any more questions on functions and implementation of CRM for better digital marketing, get in touch with our CRM consultants at Encaptechno.