When it comes to iconic couplings, we’ve got Beyonce and Jay-Z, peanut butter and chocolate, and… marketing automation and CRM.

Yes, just like the perfect matches that have come before them, sparks fly when marketing automation software meets small business CRM. How do we know? Because this collaboration is the edge that gives our platform the ability to bring small businesses more and better marketing capabilities (as well as achieve a better work-life balance) — and we’ve seen firsthand what a difference that can make.

Having CRM software integrated into your marketing automation platform is a best of both worlds scenario. Once you use it, you won’t know how you ever survived without it. Here’s why these two tools work so well together and why they really are each other’s better half.

What do CRM and Marketing Automation Tools do?

Before you can look at the reasons behind why CRM software and marketing automation software complement each other so well, you have to look at what each of these tools brings to the table on their own.

CRM

Customer relationship management software tracks and stores customer data. It provides your sales reps with important information about prospects, clients, and their history and relationship with your brand.

Your business’s CRM platform comes in handy in a lot of different situations, but it’s primarily about providing each customer (potential and otherwise) with the smoothest possible journey through the funnel. Examples of the types of information that your CRM makes easily accessible for you include contact and demographic data, past purchase records, communication history, email engagement, and customer service history.

For a deeper dive into CRMs and what they can do for your business, check out our CRM article roundup

Marketing Automation

On the other hand, a marketing automation platform streamlines the process of nurturing your leads through content and emails.

By removing a lot of the rote tasks that go into sharing your content and monitoring engagement, marketing automation serves to disseminate your content more efficiently — all while ensuring that you can keep a close eye on how it’s performing and what’s making the biggest impact with your audience.

Let’s Reduce These to Their Simplest Definitions

A CRM helps you better understand leads so you can be more tactical in how you engage with and convert them. Marketing automation enables you to use that knowledge to nurture leads and turn them into customers. Are you starting to see the power in what can happen when these two work together?

Benefits of Integrating Marketing Automation and CRM

We can talk endlessly about the importance of marketing and sales working together. Combining marketing automation with CRM is a sort of picture-perfect encapsulation of why these two departments succeed when they work in collaboration and a reminder that more is better — at least when it comes to making use of your data.

Both CRM and marketing automation offer a ton of value on their own. But neither can fully realize their potential without the other. And given that organizations that tightly align their sales and marketing efforts see 36 percent higher customer retention rates and 38 percent higher sales win rates, it makes sense to bring these two tools together to create a true power couple.

If those stats aren’t enough, here are some other major benefits of combining marketing automation and CRM.

Your Email Marketing Campaigns are More Effective

Successful email marketing requires both personalization and audience segmentation. A CRM is essential for figuring out where contacts are in the funnel and what types of content are most likely to drive conversions. The result: emails that are opened and engaged with more and are more successful at moving customers to the next stage of their journey.

Your Sales Process Gets Shorter

Clients can tell when you’re just taking shots in the dark. If you want to show how much you value your relationship — and thus how much value you can provide to them as a product or service provider — you need to be able to show, and not just tell, that you’re paying attention. CRM and marketing automation integration can help you do exactly that. Since you’re tapping into your CRM to understand their needs, you can eliminate tons of back and forth, providing them with resources faster and shortening the sales process.

Your Data Management Approach Improves

When you silo your data, you run the risk of missing out on key patterns and trends. Bringing these two tools together allows you to unify your approach and make more meaningful connections — all to the betterment of your lead nurturing efforts. You can track things like whether there are certain points in your nurture campaigns where engagement tapers off. Or, you can more clearly identify when customers are ready for an upgrade or adjustment to their package or service offering. Marketing automation and CRM data provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions regarding your sales approach, customer service, product offerings, and entire business.

Your Messaging Stays Consistent

Trust and reliability are important if you want prospects to seal the deal and keep coming back for more. And while a lot goes into making those things happen, consistent messaging that stays on point and treats your leads like people (instead of just nameless entities) is crucial to conveying your brand’s authenticity.

There’s no magic bullet for brand success. There are, however, obvious advantages that you can and should be capitalizing on if you want to compete in your field — and CRM and marketing automation integration are one of them.

Don’t make things harder than they have to be. If you want to turn more leads into customers — and more customers into satisfied brand loyalists — make sure your CRM and marketing automation tools are joined at the hip.

Interested in learning more about our email automation tool? Check out a quick tour for a behind the scenes look.

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by Benchmark Team