Wondering whether your current CRM needs an upgrade? The CRM industry is rapidly expanding, with an expected growth rate of 14 percent between 2021 and 2025. Every modern business benefits from incorporating CRM software into its operations, and many firms already have CRM software.
Whether you’re using it for better data organization or improved customer retention, there’s every reason to hop on the CRM bandwagon. Imagine how much more your business can attain when your CRM is automated to work even better and accomplish more.
What is CRM Automation?
Doing the same tasks repeatedly can become monotonous and tedious. The repetitiveness of functions is among the reasons many employees become frustrated with their jobs; thankfully, automation provides a way out.
CRM automation means using tools to automate important repetitive or day-to-day manual tasks for better productivity. Many CRM systems can automate various functions, such as sales and marketing activities, making these tasks easier to accomplish. CRM automation has become especially popular as more companies embrace remote work. It makes managing customer interactions and building client relations easier for a business. It also doesn’t hurt that they free up time, and allow you to focus on strategic work that requires human expertise.
Forms of CRM Automation
Marketing Automation
Automating marketing is a popular form of CRM automation focusing on the middle and top sections of a sales funnel. It allows businesses to use data collected on customers’ activity to target them with personalized content and offers.
Here, CRM automates recurring tasks involved in marketing during a customer lifecycle. It applies automated email drip campaigns, lead generation and management, and using email campaigns for retargeting, to mention a few. Marketing automation integrates with other CRM activities seamlessly to improve the marketing department’s efforts for better campaigns and higher profits.
Salesforce Automation
CRM automation activities in Salesforce help your sales team manage its processes and convert leads by improving and monitoring repetitive administrative activities. Automated tasks include creating lead acquisition records, creating approval requests, meetings, calls, and tracking customer interactions.
Salesforce automation ensures no crossover between the sales and marketing team’s efforts but both teams’ lead converting efforts are in alignment. CRM tools can automate tasks to trigger other actions when one is completed, such as assigning tasks to sales reps when a prospect moves forward in the sales funnel.
This helps the sales team spot areas for improvement and track information about customers that could be helpful. This allows sales agents to focus on and become better at closing deals while manual tasks are executed faultlessly.
Customer Service Automation
Customers are often more sold on a company and willing to continue doing business with them based on the experience they provide. Tasks that can be automated to improve customer experience include frequent communication channels like chatbots using AI-powered automated responses. Other customer self-services that can be automated are FAQ pages.
All of these contribute to bringing down the number of manual tasks included in customer service and make solving customer issues easier for better customer satisfaction. Automation also benefits customers, as studies show consumers prefer chatting with live chatbots about product-related questions since they get quicker responses with pre-programmed answers.
Why you need CRM Automation
Keeping track of leads and clients. CRM automation makes it easy to track clients as all customer information is stored in one place. They’re easily sorted into portfolios and categories, so automating time-based follow-up activities according to their customer journey takes little to no effort.
Automates routine tasks. As mentioned earlier, one of the key features of CRM software automation is that it makes everyday tasks easier to accomplish. It’s often challenging to complete multiple tasks effectively, so avoid wasting employees’ time on completing tasks that are easily automated and maximize your business’s time and resources by letting CRM automation handle manual tasks.
Efficient engagement with customers at each touchpoint. Lead nurturing is a complex process that involves frequent engagement with customers. There are countless opportunities to communicate with prospects, and manually sending a message at each touchpoint gives room for errors which may cost your company in the long run. CRM automation helps engage customers after meeting triggers or sending the following message in an email sequence when a customer completes an action. For example, sending a welcome email when a prospect signs up for something.
Managing multiple campaigns. It’s not unusual for businesses to run multiple campaigns simultaneously, and managing them efficiently can be challenging. Most CRM systems make running multiple campaigns easier, allowing you to compare criteria, such as how many steps are involved in each campaign. Seeing them side by side can aid in visualizing your sales and marketing efforts, allowing you to ensure all essential strategies are covered.
Hub for data and analytics. CRM features tools that make it easy to understand customer data and gives you insights on how to use it. Built-in capabilities allow the software to interpret and break down data into meaningful metrics, such as demographics, email open rates, and more. Analytics like these help you understand marketing campaigns’ performance and spot areas for improvement.
Zopto’s LinkedIn automation features easily integrate with your business’s other CRM automation tools for better lead generation and management. Setting it up is also effortless thanks to our dedicated support team ready to help your business succeed. Contact us today to get started.