What are the differences between marketing automation and CRM?

You may think that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation are similar. Still, there are vast differences between these two. The first and foremost difference between CRM and Marketing Automation is that CRM is mainly used for sales. In contrast, Marketing Automation is mainly used for Marketing. Well, many businesses aim to integrate their CRM and Marketing Automation software or tools as these would help them with increased business capability and boosted customer experience. While CRM and Marketing Automation might sound similar, there are many differences between them. They do not just have different functions, but they also serve different purposes. Although they are two different software, they render effective results when they are utilized together. Today in this blog, we will unveil a complete guide about CRM and Marketing Automation software and how both of these can be used. Also, many other things will be discussed here in this blog, so what are you waiting for? Let's dive right into this blog to know everything about it.

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

A CRM is a software tool that handles sales and contact management. Not just this, this software also helps to enhance customer relationships as well as increase sales rep's productivity. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software also helps businesses with some other features, such as storing information, which means keeping and tracking a record of all the customers. Along with that, other information such as how long a contact has been a customer for the company, their purchase history, contact numbers, sales, and deals. Furthermore, CRM software is also used to enhance your interactions with your customers, eventually boosting your sales and customer satisfaction. It means that with the help of a CRM tool, you will easily streamline your business proceedings and move towards the path of success in your business. Also, It is the easiest way to use and manage data in a CRM system. Almost all the users and departments in the organization can easily access CRM.

What is Marketing Automation?

Well, a marketing automation tool is a tool that helps to automate business tasks which further helps to streamline, analyze as well and automate marketing tasks for the business. It will help the business maintain its reputation in the industry as well as help in lead generation. The main motive for marketing automation tools is to speed up the business handling process without wasting or doing manual tasks. The marketing automation tool will take care of all the repetitive tasks. Marketing Automation tools help your business to focus on the most important tasks of your business, unlike those repeated tasks that can be automated. It will help create better customer experiences, leading to a nurtured lead generation. These automation tools can be used to increase your productivity levels and track and monitor the customer engagement level with your business. Leads generated through this software can then be converted into customers, eventually boosting your company's efficiency.

How does CRM software work?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps businesses track the actions of active or potential customers through the business's social media accounts, websites, etc. The tool gathers information, sends a triggered email, and records the customer's interest.

How does Marketing Automation work?

As the term only suggests, Marketing Automation works by automation key marketing tasks. The main point of using this software for your business is to free up resources for your business so that they can focus on more important tasks and generate more traffic and leads for your business. This tool not only helps businesses save time but also the money and effort involved.

What are the benefits of CRM software?

A CRM system not only saves your time and effort but also helps to increase your chances of converting your leads into potential customers. Here are some benefits of CRM software:

Boosted sales opportunities

As the CRM keeps track of the purchase patterns of your existing customers, it also provides insights regarding the different trends and themes used to develop marketing and lead generation strategies further.

Everyday task tracking

With the help of automation tools, your employees can save their efforts on daily tasks that do not require much expertise but only repeated tasks. It might be time-consuming and, at the same time, would disable your employees from prioritizing more important tasks. With the help of CRM software, customer engagement can be boosted. Hence, this can make sending consistent and targeted messaging easy to potential customers.

Personalized Communication

Not all, but many CRM systems offer a feature of personalized communication with their existing customers. It means that this will eventually double up the process of lead generation for your business. Personalized targeting plays a pivotal role in bringing leads to your business and eventually converting them with the help of target campaigns.

What are the benefits of Marketing Automation software?

Marketing automation can bring many benefits to your company. A few of them have been listed below:

High conversion rates

Well, with the help of a marketing automation tool, your content is shared only with those interested in your business. It means that this has a higher chance of boosting the conversion rate of your business. One thing that must be kept in mind while targeting customers is that the message sent to them must be highly appealing and, at the same time, relevant to their needs and wants.

Streamlines business processes

With the help of marketing automation tools, you can easily identify problems with your workflow. You can streamline your business processes by tracking ongoing tasks, automating schedules, sending team member alerts, facilitating smooth team communication, and more.

Boosted productive levels

The main aim of all marketing automation tools is to automate all the repeated and tedious tasks of your employees so that they can focus on more important tasks without disruptions. This way, all of your employees could focus on the tasks that require their expertise.

How does CRM and Marketing Automation work together?

While both systems are completely different, their main aim is to streamline the business proceedings so that the company employees can focus on the more important tasks rather than the ones that are less important or can be automated. To understand how a CRM and Marketing Automation tool work together, you first need to understand their differences. As discussed, CRM is mostly used as a sales tool, whereas Marketing Automation is a lead-generation tool. Using them together would allow you to:

• Provide consistent messaging that helps you support and nurture your leads,
• Building a relationship with the customer before sending a lead to sales,
• Helps to see a complete picture of your company,
• Assign lead scores.

How do you integrate CRM and Marketing Automation software?

Suppose you integrate CRM software as well as Marketing Automation software. In that case, you need to ensure that both of these software are aligned properly together so they can accomplish your goals. Here are some tips for integrating both of these software:

Personalize your marketing and sales messaging

Suppose you use CRM software as well as the Marketing Automation software together to personalize your messaging. In that case, this will help your business to target the right audience, which will further ensure the conversion of your leads.

Establish lead scoring

As per research, it is known that the quicker a lead receives a response, the more likely the lead will be converted. Hence, lead scoring via your CRM and Marketing Automation can help make the process faster and more efficient.

Get rid of duplicates.

Well, it is highly important to make sure that the CRM software, as well as the marketing automation tools, are not overlapping tasks. It is because if these are overlapping, customers will be receiving messages in a repeated mode which might make them irritated. Hence, you may lose your brand's credibility as your customers would become doubtful of your authority. Hence, it is crucial to check for duplicates, so your tasks don't annoy any of your customers. It can even lead to the generation of a false report.

Final Words

Integrating CRM as well as Marketing Automation tools is a good decision. Some marketing automation tools let you sync your data with the CRM to keep track of all the prospective activities going on. Furthermore, businesses can also sync the information both ways. This way, the marketing team would know what's going on in sales, and on the other hand, the customer service teams can know what's going on with the marketing.