What you’ll read: Three signs you’re ready to invest in CRM Marketing.
Any business can benefit from CRM-based personalization — one report found that sales consistently increase anywhere from 5 to 15%. Using these techniques effectively, however, is not without challenges. Depending on your chosen platform, current project, and how many profiles need integrating, it might take anywhere from three months to an entire year to implement CRM tools for each department.
While personalized content is easy to scale once everything is integrated, there can be significant time and resource costs to reach that point. So how can you be sure that it’s time to make the leap?
Become the best CRMer you can:
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You’re working with too much customer data
If your business is flourishing, customer numbers will increase along with it. Yet at a certain point, that lead flow is too much to handle without automation or a streamlined workflow. In short, if you’re spending all day sifting through unwieldy spreadsheets to find the information you need, it’s probably time to rethink your database.
One major benefit of CRM platforms is that they centralize data, which makes it more accessible to everyone in an organization. They also include tools for automating marketing communications to generate relevant offers or simply include personalized information. Many organizations continue to tackle these projects by hand, but if you’re trying to reach customers at scale, CRM is the best way to streamline your database.
Your departments are getting too large
Setting aside customers for a moment, business growth usually contributes to larger teams — both within and outside of the marketing department. Sales and support teams will have their own reasons to interact with leads, and as departments grow, it becomes harder to get everyone on the same page with a quick email or conversation.
CRM marketing tools are especially helpful when it’s time to streamline communication between departments in an organization. For example, instead of manually preparing lead data for handoffs, any authorized employee can review customer interactions across many touchpoints. With these tools, everyone can collaborate and serve customers that much more effectively.
You’re managing several high-value accounts
As your business grows, many accounts will require a special touch. Perhaps they have a unique need or are so high-value that you spend more time on their account. Whatever the reason, it’s essential to prioritize these communications alongside everything else you intend to accomplish.
Managing these interactions is far easier with the right CRM platform. As mentioned above, it can consolidate all client interactions to ensure every essential detail is accounted for. More importantly, CRM can help you rank accounts and highlight ways to increase their value. Finally, email management tools let marketers personalize communications while ensuring they aren’t trapped behind spam filters.
CRM personalization techniques have a high return for marketers who take advantage of them to serve customers at scale more effectively. So if your team is showing any of the aforementioned signs of growth, you should be doubling down on your CRM tools to ensure you’re getting every possible benefit.