How to Optimise Your CRM’s Marketing Automation

You've invested in a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and armed yourself with the how-to of marketing automation. So, how do you make sure you're maximising all your potential benefits?

The first concept to understand is that a CRM differs from marketing automation software. These two systems serve different purposes - a CRM is used primarily for sales and managing customer data, while marketing automation manages lead generation and repetitive tasks.

These two types of software become very powerful when used in tandem, providing a better customer experience and strengthening your brand. By integrating your CRM and marketing software, your marketing and sales team can work together to understand your customer better and increase conversions.

Therefore, it's essential that your CRM has robust marketing functionality such as email capability, SMS, and design templates, or it integrates easily with other platforms.

Keep Your Database Clean

In the world of lead generation, quality wins over quantity. The foundation of good marketing automation is good lead segmentation (a task for your marketing automation software). While random EDM campgains may generate leads, a finely tuned, targeted campaign will bring quality leads more likely to convert. 

Learn more about lead generation in this on-demand webinar.

Your database's overall health and hygiene is cruicial to maintaining your brand reputation. Sending emails to disengaged users who flag them as spam may end up harming your deliverability. By ensuring your database contains active and engaged users, your messages are more likely to be received and opened. Make sure you eliminate any duplicates after the integration of the two systems. 

Integrating your CRM and marketing automation software can also give you clear insights and a complete picture of your customer's journey and how they engage with your products and services. By using data generated by your systems, you can get into your customers' minds, address their pain points, and serve valuable content at the right time to help inform their buying decisions.

The more detailed data you can glean on sales, the more information marketing has to understand what converts and what doesn't. Teams will waste fewer resources on disjointed tactics that don't delivery results. 

Build Your Automation, or Use a Robust Template Library

If you're still finding your feet with the ins and outs of automation, it can be helpful to make sure your CRM has a library that has existing templates to use, with the option of customising your own templates later.

Stick to Your Brand Voice

Communicating to your customer with a consistent voice will keep your marketing messages slick, professional and instantly recognisable. Potential customers trust communications that have both style and substance. While a consistent brand voice with clear communication will seem effortless to the customer, it requires the correct workflow with the right tools.

Integrating your CMS and marketing automation makes it much easier to manage the flow of communications, putting the necessary quality control in place to ensure you are talking to your customers with one voice, no matter which team they receive communication from. All teams can view and adapt to changes when you update your brand style.

Find Automation That Works for You

Every business needs different marketing strategies and tactics to succeed, so it's essential to ensure your CRM is right for your target audience and channels.

For example, targeting leads generated from online listings with EDMs will be a high prioroty if you are primarily digitally-based. Likewise, your boutique, community-based agency may thrive on walk-ins. In that case, marketing automation that supports the creation of physical marketing assets may be more important. 

To help find the right automation for you and your team, read our Real Estate CRM Checklist, which includes everything you need to consider when selecting an automation.

Commit to the automation

Making sweeping changes to the tools an organisation uses can be challenging. Committing to new processes requires time and patience. Make sure everyone on the team is on board, holding regular training on the how, when, and why, and set up processes to iron out any issues that may arise or fine-tuning that needs to happen.

Once the benefits of marketing automation start to kick in and the team can utilise less time spent on laborious tasks, leading to more converstions and ultimately happier customers - the many benefits of marketing automation should speak for themselves.

---