CRM features Marketers should lookout for

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and refers to the management of customer relationships, and sales process management on a single platform. Every industry uses the CRM program to keep track of sales and marketing, customer support, and project activities. CRM software helps with activities like sales, client and team interactions, daily client visits, daily-monthly tasks, public relations, documentation, and email records – all of which are maintained in the CRM. CRM allows you to keep track of your present clients as well as prospective sales opportunities. 

It’s all about leaving a lasting impression on your consumers in the business. It keeps customers interested in your products or services and encourages them to return for more. Customers like it when you recall their names and preferences. However, having a solid CRM at your service will allow you to provide this degree of personalized attention. 

The appropriate CRM solution for your company will enable you to personalize your marketing communications to meet the demands of all of your clients. It will also support you in keeping track of all consumers, assisting with smooth onboarding, and sending timely automated marketing communications. 

This is why CRM software solutions are so important, especially in the marketing area. Today’s businesses are going worldwide, and as a result, their consumer base is growing as well. 

With all of these challenges, your personalized marketing techniques may be readily implemented on even the main client datasets on the market today provided you have some help from your CRM platform. 

So, whether you’re a marketer seeking the best software for your profession or a business owner looking for the best CRM for his marketing team, here are a few key elements to look for in the appropriate CRM for your company. 

Essential Features of CRM: 

A strong CRM will provide your marketing teams with all of the relevant information, such as customer interactions, purchase breakdowns, support tickets, inquiries, and any other conversations they may have had with your personnel. 

When you use excellent CRMs for marketing, you may automate processes and develop stronger relationships with your customers. 

1. Workflow automation 

By automating your workflow, CRM software can make your life simpler. To support you and your team be more productive, look for software that allows you to create custom rules and includes sales force automation. You can arrange your CRM software to conduct a specified action automatically depending on triggers or events. When a potential customer fills out a contact form on your website, the CRM software routes the message to the appropriate sales agent or department. When a salesperson gets a message, the CRM software sends a pre-programmed response to acknowledge the communication. If a lead, prospect, or opportunity doesn’t react to your message or proposal within a certain length of time, such as 48 hours or two business days, the CRM software automatically sends a follow-up message. The CRM software automatically counts hours and maintains track of all conversations when a sales professional makes calls or sends messages to a contact. The CRM software automatically submits completed tasks to supervisors and top management for performance reports as sales managers complete them. Workflow automation can also save time and effort by automating time-consuming sales operations including order processing, order tracking, and inventory control. 

2. Contact Management 

In a database, it stores contact information such as names, addresses, and social media profiles. Contact Management enables businesses to efficiently gather and manage client data. It keeps track of leads as they move through the sales funnel and make their first transaction. It keeps track of client profiles, connections, and previous communications. If your CRM includes a pipeline management tool, this will allow you to connect files, link invoices and quotations to customer profiles, and set activity reminders as needed. You can simply obtain a brief overview of a potential client’s profile and develop the proper message to catch their attention by having all of this information about them on a single page. It will make your sales team’s life a lot simpler. 

3. Sales 

You can learn about your clients’ path to your business by tracking the source of your leads. You can create targeted and personalized marketing campaigns using this data. This will also make it easier for you to deliver appropriate sales materials to potential consumers. Let us correct you if you thought this was all about Sale tracking. Sales tracking data can be used to help you filter your pipeline by lead source. You can also track how well leads from a certain source convert into paying clients. When a lead is qualified by the business, it becomes an opportunity. A potential revenue-generating contact or account is referred to as an opportunity. If a company does not properly nurture its relationships or accounts, it will miss out on sales opportunities.  Sales Management helps businesses to manage and monitor their sales funnels, as well as provide the information required to finish the sales process. 

4. Campaign Management 

Simply put, campaign management is a key to any company’s success. Remember that launching a marketing campaign is the first step each company takes to reach out to potential consumers with products and services. As a result, it must be faultless.  By automating marketing processes, CRM improves the efficiency of marketing campaigns. It lowers the cost of campaigns, analyses data from campaigns, and anticipates future marketing strategies. 

5. Task Management 

Customer and employee management are strongly linked. When you want to provide better service to your consumers, you should first improve your employee management. When a client’s request is left unattended for an extended period of time because your workers are unsure who should handle it, the customer experience will never improve. It’s essential to allocate and finish jobs on time and within budget. Businesses can automate the task management process by using CRM. It develops and distributes assignments to employees depending on their skill set, availability, and location, among other factors. 

6. Email 

A CRM with an email function keeps your salespeople organized and productive. They may sync their calendars to plan appointments and communicate with prospects and customers. Another excellent email feature is the ability to automatically pull in email templates, which saves representatives time when it comes to creating email content. You can use this functionality to generate a variety of email templates, including the following: 

• Basic firm information, broken down by industry. 
• After you’ve made a phone call, follow up. 
• After you’ve sent one email, follow up with another. 
• Follow-up on a proposal that representatives are awaiting feedback on. 

7. Documents 

If you have a large staff working in your marketing and sales funnel, document management is a must feature in the CRM tools. A centralized source for important documents can go a long way toward ensuring that everyone on your team is up to date, as well as providing a seamless, uniform experience for your consumers. Collect, upload, store, and exchange documents in a single area to make information more accessible to all parties involved. 

8. Quote Management 

When a consumer expresses an interest in purchasing a product or service, the salesperson prepares a quotation that includes all key information. When any consumer agrees to purchase it at the price indicated, an order will be produced. If this is not the case, the salesperson either cancels the quotation or revises it to satisfy the customer’s needs. CRM streamlines and automates this process for businesses. It boosts order processing speed, sales visibility, and client relationships. 

9. Forecasting 

This tool in a CRM forecasts future sales based on information from your present pipeline. Based on the sales forecast, you may need to adjust your marketing strategy. For example, suppose you expected your toy company to sell a lot of girls’ dolls over the Christmas season, but sales forecasting revealed that building blocks are more popular, you may adjust your marketing strategies appropriately. Forecasting sales can also assist you in predicting market movements and lowering your company’s risk. 

10. Reporting 

is the function that combines the outcomes of your sales and marketing activities, and it’s included in all of the CRMs we look into. The more sorts of reports you have access to, the better: 

• The number of leads received in a certain period of time. 
• The total number of sales made in a certain period of time. 
• Which of your sales representatives closed which leads, and how many did they close in a given period of time? 
• The number of calls you make outbound the efficacy of your emails 
• The point at when your leads converted, which might help you spot possibilities to close leads faster. 

CONCLUSION 

If your marketing team has all of this information and can simply search it, they can create and execute some excellent marketing campaigns that will produce a huge number of leads. These amazing CRM tools gather data that allows you to give highly targeted discounts, make customized suggestions, and provide actual value to your customers.