Marketing automation and CRM are two distinct concepts, linked to different IT tools. This article should help shed some light on their respective usefulness. You will also learn how these marketing automation and CRM tools are increasingly used together in business.
What is CRM?
It is necessary to dissociate the CRM, which is a
concept whose definition is given below, from the CRM tool, which is a software
allowing to increase the profitability of a structure.
CRM definition
CRM is an acronym for “Customer Relationship
Management”, an expression that translates into French as “client relationship
management”. In management science, it is considered that any client of a
company, and prospect by extension, maintains a relationship with the structure
concerned.
This relationship, like any human relationship, can be
made of trust and satisfaction, or on the contrary of mistrust and frustration.
Managing the customer relationship, for a structure, involves establishing a
strategy that promotes the creation of a healthy relationship base. It is on
this relational basis that loyalty and the chances of future purchases are
developed.
However, the relationship of a company with a customer
is defined by all the past interactions between it and him.
To best meet their current needs, desires, concerns or
frustrations, a company must therefore have an overview of past interactions
with their customers. This means having kept track of it somewhere, especially
when you have to manage relationships with hundreds or even thousands of
different customers. This is where CRM software comes in…
Why use CRM software?
CRM software centralizes the data which is distributed
in the various applications of the teams in charge of customer relations, in
particular marketing, after-sales service and the sales team.
This centralization of data facilitates team
cooperation. Indeed, traditionally, the exchange of information is done by
email. Company employees must therefore often record information by hand, which
is time-consuming and confusing.
With CRM software, the transmission of information is
automated. This frees up time and allows you to be more responsive, resulting
in better customer satisfaction for the same effort.
For example, thanks to a CRM tool, the after-sales
team can see in real time which offers the customers who contact them have
purchased. No need to ask them or call the sales teams, since the CRM already
has the information in its database. In this way, the after-sales service team
can respond more quickly to customer expectations, and in a personalized way.
Another example: thanks to the CRM, the marketing team
keeps a real-time overview of the main causes of customer tickets sent to the
after-sales service. The marketing team could then notice that a function of
the product sold poses difficulties of use. It will then be able to respond
upstream to these difficulties by creating an educational support. This will
increase customer satisfaction, relieve the after-sales service, without the
latter even having to create a report or enter his hierarchy.
There are many CRM tools on the market. HubSpot and
Salesforce are two of the most famous solutions to date.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is a fairly broad concept, which
brings together several different practices. We say that a company does
marketing automation as soon as it automates part of its marketing process. The
goal ? Gain in productivity.
Marketing automation for emailing or SMS campaigns
On the one hand, marketing automation can concern
email newsletters or SMS promotion campaigns. In this context, we can use
marketing automation software, capable of collecting and processing data on
your contacts. All you have to do is program action scenarios that the software
will execute autonomously, based on the data collected on the behavior of each
contact.
For example, through tracking, marketing automation
software can know which contacts are spending time on your website and visiting
product pages. It will then be a question of asking your software to send email
campaigns focused on the call to purchase to these specific contacts. With a
large contact list, automation is needed to personalize the messages sent to
everyone. However, personalizing marketing messages both in terms of content
and sending timing can increase sales conversion.
Marketing automation for social networks
On the other hand, marketing automation can concern
the content strategy in connection with social networks. Imagine q whether you
have multiple accounts affiliated with the same company on different networks.
However, you know that the optimal time for performance of your posts varies
depending on the network.
In this case, you would benefit from scheduling the
creation of your future posts in advance. This will save you from having to
think about it during your work day, and it even allows you to post when you
are on the go or on vacation.
Other marketing automation practices…
While the two aforementioned practices are the most
common, marketing automation also comes in other forms. For example, it is
possible to automatically segment contact lists, so that your company's offers
evolve in real time.
It is also possible to automate the transmission of a
lead to the sales teams, to make a phone call at the most appropriate time.
This leads us to talk about CRM, and its link with marketing automation…
You can even automate the sending of loyalty gifts by
generating a request by API or file sent by FTP to your router partner for
sending branded gifts. This type of scenario can be based on the anniversary
date of the customer who has already made an order volume greater than such
amount, on the anniversary date of the last order, etc.
Key Features of Marketing Automation and CRM
The roles played in the company by the CRM tool and by
the marketing automation tool should now be clearer to you. Let’s summarize
their respective characteristics:
Key marketing automation features:
- Automation of marketing processes, such as editing content or sending email campaigns
- Increased productivity within the strict framework of marketing
- Personalization of the messages sent to each prospect or customer
- Based on the creation of action scenarios upstream
- Consideration of data from external sources (tracking, cookies, etc.) to adapt in real time to the behavior of each contact
CRM Key Features:
- Centralization of data disseminated between the applications of the teams in charge of customer relations.
- Automated transmission of information.
- Increased synergy and cooperation between teams
- Optimization of customer satisfaction, with equal effort
- Global view of front-office performance
Main differences between marketing automation and CRM
From the characteristics of the two tools, their
essential difference emerges:
- The marketing automation tool automates marketing actions.
- The CRM tool automates the transmission of information between all the teams in charge of customer relations (including marketing), but requires regular human actions to be useful.
From this essential difference arise distinct
functions:
Marketing automation for the conquest of prospects
(leads)
As we mentioned in the first part, the marketing
automation tool intervenes upstream of the CRM in the customer journey. Indeed,
a marketing automation tool can be used to create content on social networks,
and post it at the optimal time and place.
The marketing automation tool thus makes it possible
to attract a new audience, and to convert part of this audience into leads, for
example by subscribing to a newsletter. It is only when an auditor becomes a
lead that he enters the CRM database.
The CRM to qualify or disqualify a lead
At the other end of the customer journey is the
intervention of the sales team. In many companies, the role of the latter is to
call to establish a privileged contact with each lead. However, the outcome of
a phone call leads to qualify or disqualify a lead.
Either the latter clearly shows his disinterestedness,
or he is interested in the company's offer but is still thinking about it, or
he has decided to buy and thus becomes an active customer.
Without a CRM, the marketing team cannot know the
outcome of the phone calls made by the sales team. With a CRM tool, on the
other hand, she is informed in real time. This allows him, depending on the
qualification of each lead, to send the appropriate messages, by email or SMS.
For example, if there has been a purchase, the role of
marketing will be to inform the new customer about additional offers, to send
him a satisfaction survey or educational support to better use his product.
If, on the other hand, the prospect is still being
considered, you must continue to send him messages to remove potential objections,
or offer him an exclusive price reduction.
If finally, the prospect has shown his
disinterestedness, it will be necessary to think of presenting him another
offer, why not in affiliation with a partner structure.
More instant marketing automation in customer events
The marketing automation tool also makes it possible
to respond quickly to customer events. We call The "customer events"
all actions relating to a purchase that can be tracked: add to basket,
checkout, validation of the order, etc.
While a CRM tool can immediately inform front-office
teams of these events, the CRM tool is not designed to respond to them
independently. However, if you want, for example, to catch up with a customer
about to abandon his order after an addition to the basket, you must act
quickly. The marketing automation tool allows you to have a quick response to
this event, even on weekends or when your teams are on vacation.
Marketing automation at the service of CRM
It follows from everything we have mentioned so far
that the action of the CRM tool and that of the marketing automation tool are
not so dissociable. One continually feeds off the other. Thus, the marketing
automation tool deploys its full potential when it relies on the data contained
in the CRM tool by the sales teams and the after-sales service.
Indeed, it is possible to program scenarios to
automatically send promotional email campaigns reserved for leads who have just
been contacted by phone. It is also possible to program the automatic sending
of educational support by email to new customers. These marketing automation
strategies are based on the integration of the tool with a CRM platform.
In the same way, the CRM software itself feeds on the
data transmitted to it by an integrated marketing automation tool. For example,
it can centralize the opening rates of email campaigns, contact by contact, so
that the sales teams target in priority the most active or the people who have
reacted to a newsletter by clicking on a given product without going to the end
of the purchase.
From then on both play their part both in the
conversion of the acquisition and in retaining existing customers.