CRM was developed to assist businesses in keeping tabs on their customers and the interactions those consumers have had with the company. It does this by gathering information about a client’s previous purchases, interests, time spent on your website, and other factors. It then uses this information to provide personalised messages likely to resonate with the customer. Keeping your clients up to date on any new offerings or products you have available for sale is another way CRM can assist you in developing a more personal connection with them. It is taken a step further by data-driven marketing, which makes use of analytics provided by social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Analytics to monitor what people are saying about a business online and participate in the conversations that are already taking place about that business. As a company expands, it quickly becomes apparent to the owners that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is critical. So which makes it easier to streamline your business operations, including customer contacts and sales processes? A well-executed customer relationship management system (CRM) that consolidates data on prospects, customers, and employees is the unsung hero of every profitable enterprise. In customer relationship management (CRM) software, interactions with customers, vendors, team members, and other company relationships can be stored. A customer relationship management system, or CRM, can be an application or service your team utilises to manage accounts and connect with customers. Certain CRMs do not offer all of the functionality of other CRMs. However, there are three distinct types of CRM software that you need to be familiar with to make the most out of your investment in a CRM system.
3 Types Of CRM
Customer relationship management encompasses a wide variety of solutions because the advantages above apply in some capacity to virtually every CRM. However, the many CRM solutions differ in terms of their features and areas of concentration, and they can be organised into three primary groups.
- CRM systems that are operational
- CRM systems with analytic capabilities
- CRM tools that encourage collaboration
Operational Crms
It is a form of customer relationship management software utilised in processes such as the management of sales enquiries and problem enquiries. It is a piece of software or a product that allows for creating various tickets, and most people use it for activities related to assisting or making sales. These kinds of CRM are typically used in front offices, which are the areas of a company where employees have direct contact with new and old customers. However, the operational kinds of CRM can be broken down even further into the following three categories:
Marketing CRM
Marketing CRM, or customer relationship management, refers to products primarily focusing on marketing. However, there are still potential customers in the market who have yet to make a purchase, and these are the people to whom you want to get in touch and offer your services. As a result, you will want to convince them in such a way that they will come to you so that they may take advantage of your services. Take, for instance, the fact that you maintain a website that highlights your organisational abilities and expertise. After that, you can upload a whitepaper to your website or publish a newsletter. Customers interested in comparable goods and services may visit your website to submit their information for a whitepaper or a newsletter subscription. The CRM will collect the email address of the potential lead when they sign up for the service. After that, you can send the potential lead frequent promotional articles, newsletters, or offers. By giving your customer material regularly, you can ensure that you are always in his line of sight. This way, the customer will immediately be reminded of you whenever the product is to be bought or the service is to be purchased, whether it be the product or the service.
Sales CRM
After the marketing duty has been completed, actual sales activity can begin. The next step, presuming the consumer is interested in your services, is for him to contact you and send you an enquiry. At this point, the goal is to successfully convert each enquiry into a customer. However, in practice, this occurrence is quite uncommon. Therefore, it is possible that some of the enquiries you receive will not result in conversions since the people who make them might not find your services acceptable for their needs. This procedure is called Opportunity Management or Management of the Sales Pipeline. Each time a new enquiry is received, a Ticket or a Case is immediately created in response to the question. After that, it is the responsibility of your sales team to follow up on it in a conscientious manner. They should always communicate with the client and work diligently to close the deal.
Service CRM
It is a subcategory of Operational CRM that, in a perfect world, would come after Sales CRM. However, after the Sales have been completed, there is a possibility that some problems will arise with the product that has been sold, such as some post-sales support requests, some flaws in the product that you have sold, and so on. All of these concerns need to be addressed immediately. This CRM category categorises, in general, the after-sales or service requests made by existing customers. This kind of CRM enables users to create cases or tickets, manage potential solutions, and send emails containing those potential solutions. It is also possible to possess capabilities similar to those of a knowledge base to which your customer care representatives can refer for information. For instance, you are assisting the Samsung Galaxy phone, and a question comes in stating that there is an issue. What do you do? Therefore, there may be a knowledge base inside the CRM that can direct the CRM agent on the tasks that must be taken.
Analytical CRM systems
Analytical customer relationship management systems are designed to assist you in analysing the customer data you possess to get valuable insights. Acquiring vast amounts of data is much simpler because of the proliferation of digital tools and platforms. But performing data analysis, which is the step that is necessary to turn that data into something beneficial for your firm, is a challenging task. According to some estimates, more than half of the information that is gathered by businesses is never put to any use. This is because your client data are much too precious to be used in that manner. An analytical CRM, on the other hand, will give tools that assist you in making use of the data to detect patterns in the behaviour of your clients. As a result, you will have a better understanding of the steps that lead to the most successful sales, how to boost customer retention and the most typical challenges customers face due to having this information.
Collaborative CRM systems
The elimination of functional silos is a primary goal of collaborative CRM systems. For instance, the marketing team, sales reps, and customer service agents are frequently located in separate departments, which might lead to disconnection among the employees in larger companies; each department has sub-departments based on criteria such as the geographic places it serves, the channels it focuses on, the products it prioritises, and the skill specialisations it requires. However, to deliver a seamless customer experience across the entirety of the customer’s journey, you need a method by which information can be shared across the entire organisation in real-time. Collaborative customer relationship management systems ensure that all teams, regardless of their department or channel, have access to the same up-to-date customer data. Customer support, for instance, gets access to all of the information that marketing and sales have collected when engaging with prospective customers. However, employees working in a call centre have access to data that has been updated regarding client interactions that took place via email. In addition, customers are spared the agonising experience of having to elaborate on their situation each time they speak to a new contact because of the synergy across various departments and communication channels. Instead, each employee they encounter can quickly and readily pull up a record of all previous interactions with the customer to reference it and learn any pertinent information.
7 Benefits of Using CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions may benefit your company, regardless of whether you run a brand-new e-commerce startup, an established technology company that develops software, a brick-and-mortar clothes store with a single location, or anything in between. This article will highlight the most important advantages of customer relationship management (CRM) systems and show how they may assist you in organising all of your sales and customer data, establishing long-lasting relationships with your clients and customers, and increasing sales performance while enhancing customer loyalty. (Note: If you are unfamiliar with customer relationship management (CRM) software and are unsure of what it is or what it accomplishes, check out our CRM Guide for Marketers to learn how CRM tools function and how they can assist you in understanding audience data, growing your business partnerships, and improving your marketing and sales efforts.)
CRM Benefit #1: Target and build relationships with new customers
You get a commission whenever a customer purchases from your online store, registers for your newsletter or clicks on one of your advertisements. They supply you with important fresh information about your audience. And once you have all of that information stored in a CRM platform, you can begin using it to make informed judgements about who your target audience is and how you can most effectively communicate with them. Advertising on social media platforms is among the most powerful methods at a company’s disposal for luring in new clients and customers. You unlock a powerful new social media advertising option when you store all of your customer information in one place (like Mailchimp’s all-in-one platform, for example). It is because most social media platforms will allow you to advertise to people based on certain factors, such as keywords they use in their posts or profile, their interests, or their industry, to name a few. You can leverage your existing customer data in Mailchimp, for example, to generate lookalike audiences of your most devoted customers and largest followers when you produce an advertisement for Facebook or Instagram through the platform. After that, you can direct an advertisement to that new audience, advertising either your products, services or any component of your brand that you believe has the potential to appeal to that demographic. You may make your advertising budget go further and build your audience simultaneously if you focus on those more likely to enjoy your company’s products or services. You will be able to identify new customers quickly, start a relationship with them, and send them follow-up emails, thank you notes, or anything else that could help you start a relationship with them when they are entered into your CRM database as soon as they interact with your company in any way, whether by making a purchase, signing up for your mailing list, or doing anything else. You can use their information to help generate the next lookalike social media audience you promote once they have become great fans of your brand and loyal consumers. It’s like the circle of life regarding marketing, and it’s one of the most important advantages of CRM software!
CRM Benefit #2: Strengthen relationships with your current customers
According to research, acquiring new consumers can be five to twenty-five times more than retaining your existing clients. Consequently, even while reaching new audiences is crucial, you should also strive to keep your existing customers active and engaged. It is easy to track who is buying your products, interacting with your marketing campaigns, and who might need a nudge or two to get them back on track when you integrate your customer data into a CRM platform. You will always have the information you need to build and send marketing campaigns that make your existing consumers feel appreciated and keep them coming back to buy more of your products if you do this. You can develop unique and individualised marketing campaigns for your clients using the data collected in your CRM solution. Include, for instance, their name, content catered to their particular areas of interest, and a personal statement expressing gratitude for their support and patronage over the years. Imagine that you are utilising the Marketing CRM offered by Mailchimp. If this is the case, you could also add personalised product recommendations based on each customer’s purchase history and use our send time optimisation function to send your emails at times of the day when people are most likely to interact with them. You can also utilise the information about your sales to contact former customers, update them on your most recent offerings, and encourage them to shop with you again by providing an incentive, such as a price cut or free delivery. You will also access tools like purchase likelihood and customer lifetime value when you use Mailchimp. These tools will allow you to determine which of your customers are most likely (or least likely) to make additional purchases from you, obtain a rough estimate of how much money they will spend, and target your marketing efforts accordingly.
CRM Benefit #3: View your audience holistically
No matter what kind of company you run, a customer relationship management system will allow you to monitor all of your contacts inside a unified audience dashboard and then arrange them in a manner that is appropriate for your company. For instance, organise people into groups according to their behaviours, such as their participation level in your most recent campaign or the items they purchased. You can accomplish this with a CRM. You might also want to organise people into groups according to their location, birthday, or demographic characteristics such as age and gender. You can accomplish the same thing with a CRM. Because a CRM gives you an aggregate view of the data relating to your audience, it is simple to sort through all the information and use the information you already have about individuals to forge closer connections with them. You can apply custom tags to your audience using many customer relationship management systems. Tags are one-of-a-kind identifiers that assist you in including additional insights for particular members of your audience that might not have otherwise been included within your data. Consider the case of a customer who has purchased from your establishment and opted to receive your marketing after doing so. In such a situation, you will already be familiar with the customer’s purchasing preferences, purchase history, name, and possibly even their location and demographic information. But there are other things that your current data might not automatically tell you, such as whether they are a well-known social media influencer, if they are a prospective client that you met at a trade show, or if they volunteered at one of your recent events — and tags can help you with all of these things. When you use tags to add additional information to your contacts, you will always have that information readily available whenever you require it. Tags can be found in most contact management systems. And if you use MailChimp as your marketing CRM, you can even segment your contacts and send targeted campaigns depending on the tags you’ve generated. These can include automated email campaigns that start when you add a certain tag to a contact in your database. In addition, Mailchimp provides features such as tags, groups, and segments that can help you better manage your audience.
CRM Benefit #4: Show appreciation to your best customers (and grow your business)
You may need to become more familiar with the name of the Pareto Principle. Still, there’s a good possibility that you’re familiar with the notion that it supposes: it claims that, for many occurrences, 80% of the consequences arise from 20% of the causes. Again, it’s likely that you’re familiar with this concept. When applied to enterprises, this idea says that only 20% of their clientele is responsible for 80% of their company’s revenue. Every consumer is important, but the top 20% of your clientele are the ones who are most likely to remain loyal to your brand. It is because they are the customers who make the largest purchases, do so with the greatest frequency, and are also influential when recommending your company’s product or service to others. Therefore, maintaining solid relationships with these individuals is of utmost importance. When you store your customer data in a CRM, you can quickly identify your biggest spenders (and most frequent buyers) or lead generators. You can then reach out to these customers with special offers, exclusive discounts, and other incentives, enabling you to make better-informed decisions to improve the quality of your customer experience. If you connect your online store to Mailchimp, you can divide your clients into groups depending on the products they like to buy from you. Then, you can demonstrate your gratitude to your most valuable customers by extending an invitation to a unique event, sending them a one-of-a-kind coupon or discount code, or even providing them advanced access to the products you have just released. You can even leverage our best customer automation to automatically reach out to people based on their purchasing or spending by sending them emails or text messages. This will allow you to improve customer interaction without switching marketing software.
CRM Benefit #5: Track and improve your marketing performance
A customer relationship management system will centralise your audience data, allowing your team to monitor customers’ behaviour closely. It enables you to monitor what is working (as well as what isn’t) and identifies consumers who may want more nurturing moving forwards. It’s a terrific approach to ensure everyone is on the same page. For instance, if you track the number of new prospects or customers you have acquired, you may determine whether or not your attempts to acquire new clients are successful and whether or not you need to modify how you spend your money. Similarly, monitor your overall churn and track the status of your existing contacts (for example, with Mailchimp’s in-depth campaign reports or our purchase likelihood tool). As a result, you will be able to determine whether or not your retention efforts are up to speed and whether or not you need to make additional efforts to ensure that your current clients continue to be satisfied with your products and services. You can also use your CRM to collect and track data about your sales and marketing efforts on both broad and granular levels individually. You will then be able to determine who is spending money, what they are purchasing, and how they interact with your various marketing initiatives. Over time, you will become aware of trends in the data that not only assist you in developing goals for your company that are more precise but also assist you in learning what it is that your customers want and conversing with them in a manner that is wiser and more pertinent. In addition, if you utilise Mailchimp’s Marketing CRM, you’ll have access to consolidated data and insights that you can immediately put into action, all of which will be displayed in one location on your audience dashboard.
CRM Benefit #6: Save time with automation
If you own your own company, the likelihood is that you have quite a few things to take care of, and it probably seems as though there is never enough time to take care of all the items on your to-do list, particularly when it comes to the process of making sales. When you need to pull information, look through sales reports, or work on a marketing campaign, you won’t have to waste time searching multiple databases – maybe even across multiple departments within your organisation – every time you need to do so because a customer relationship management system (CRM) makes it easy to organise all of your customer data and insights in one convenient location. As a result, it saves you a lot of time. After you have organised your client data in a manner that is appropriate for your company, you will be able to use it to automate a large number of your day-to-day marketing operations. For example, some jobs include sending welcome emails, following up on purchases, sending order notifications, and more. You can always send the most appropriate message to the most appropriate individuals at the most appropriate moment if you use Mailchimp since it allows you to build up automated messages to trigger and send depending on specified segments or tags. If you sell products on the internet, for instance, you could set up emails to be sent out to customers whose shopping carts have been abandoned after they have added items to it but before they have completed the purchase. (Hint: sending emails to customers whose shopping carts have been abandoned is simple and very effective. Compared to sending out bulk emails by itself, an abandoned cart email series can result in an average of 34 times more orders being placed by each recipient. Or, if you have a popular blog on your website, you might set up an RSS campaign that enables people to subscribe and receive an email whenever you post something new, ensuring that they know any important new information as soon as it is made available to the public.
CRM Benefit #7: Gain insights to understand your business better
A practical solution for your company would exist even if a CRM did nothing more than assist you in organising and keeping track of the data of your customers, save you time, or make it simpler to form and maintain relationships with others. When all of these factors are considered, a CRM serves an even more vital purpose: it enables you to comprehend better your target demographic and, consequently, your company. A customer relationship management system allows you to do an in-depth analysis of your data, which enables you to thoroughly comprehend your existing clientele and how they engage with your company. You will be able to adjust your marketing and communication tactics once you have that knowledge, and you will then be able to start interacting with people more efficiently, relevant, and cost-effectively. You may even make significant decisions regarding the products or services you offer based on the data collected in a customer relationship management system (CRM).
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SAP a CRM system?
The SAP CRM applications were initially an integrated on-premises customer relationship management (CRM) programme developed by SAP SE. This software was designed to meet the business software requirements for marketing, sales, and service of midsize and large organisations in various industries and sectors.
What is the most successful CRM in today’s market?
SalesForce is the most well-known brand in the CRM sector, and it offers everything that your company could require at any point in time. Its Sales Cloud Professional edition includes functionality like rules-based lead scoring, campaign management, and the ability to create unlimited bespoke applications.
What is an example of a CRM?
Some examples of customer relationship management (CRM) are categorised according to kinds, such as general usage, inbound lead management, sales monitoring, social tracking, and fully integrated systems. Most software solutions can be classified as either one of two or more types of CRM. For example, HubSpot CRM is an inbound marketing CRM, but it also contains more generic solutions and is applicable in other contexts.