What is a CRM?

Hundreds of customers. Multiple amounts of processes. Increasing demand for our time. Navigating through the world of marketing is difficult. Not only do you have to grow your business and manage your team, you also have to nurture your relationship with your clients. Especially with every single industry fighting for the first spot of ‘Company with the best customer service’. This is where CRMs come in.

Customer Relationship Management Software, also known as CRMs are powerful business tools that combine your business processes with managing your customer base. This system helps to ease and manage many business and marketing processes. The central hub of a CRM is a key tool in reducing time spent on tedious tasks everyone hates, as well as giving your team that boost in productivity. A CRM is not just limited to everyday business tasks. They have a broad spectrum of tasks across different departments:

• Marketing: From automation to gaining specific details about your audience, you’re able to create meaningful and personalised campaigns. This will also help you save time so you have time to scroll through Instagram and TikTok (for market research of course!).
• Sales: CRM systems can help you better manage your leads. You’re able to store and manage important contact information from one central hub, making it easier for your sales team to personalise their interactions with you and your customer. 
• Customer service: Having trouble with your customer service? CRMs can act as a secondary channel to help manage your interactions with customers. You’re able to implement a ticketing system which helps you to manage customer inquiries and complaints. Many CRM systems also offer a tool where customers can directly book and schedule a call with you without having to go back and forth to find a suitable date.
• Finance: Invoicing and billing have never been easier. With a CRM system, you can create and send out invoices, track payments, as well as automate payment chasing.

Importance of CRM in marketing:

• Put more energy into your customers with minimal effort: Marketing puts your customers at the forefront. And having a system that helps with that is a marketer’s best friend. A powerful CRM system empowers you to seamlessly integrate a customer-centric approach by collecting insightful data about your audience. Having this data in your back pocket can help you craft much more targeted and personalised marketing campaigns without using that much effort.
• Customer retention: A CRM is not just about acquiring new customers. It’s also about retaining existing ones. Nurturing your relationship with existing customers will increase customer loyalty and make sure they’re never leaving you for your competitors. Whether that’s through gaining their feedback or customising your service according to their preferences a CRM will no doubt be a useful tool.
• Streamline the marketing process: As marketers, we’re all too familiar with the pain of doing those tedious tasks everyone hates. Whether it’s sending follow-up emails, tracking leads, or switching between spreadsheets, we can agree they are just way too time-consuming. Thanks to a CRM system, you’re able to create automated workflows that automate all these tasks for you. This helps you focus on other parts of marketing so that you can stay ahead of the curve.
• Gain analytics and reports: As much as I hate to admit it, but marketing is a numbers game. These numbers are extremely useful in understanding whether your marketing campaigns are successful or not. Metrics such as CTR, conversion rate, and open rate, are just some to name a few. CRMs are a powerhouse in providing valuable insights through analytics and reporting, which allows you to create data-driven decisions. 
• Segment your audience: A CRM goes beyond just storing and managing your business contacts. Once you’ve collected enough data about your customers, you can then use this data to segment your customers into lists, which allows you to send the right content to the right people. It also helps avoid the whole ‘Am I sending them too many emails?’ crisis that goes through every marketer’s head. Tailoring messages to specific segments is key to making sure you don’t overload your audience.

CRM tools and features

Customer Feedback and Surveys: 

CRM systems often include tools for gathering customer feedback and conducting surveys. These tools are great for gathering information and understanding your customer satisfaction levels and areas for improvement. Being able to create customised surveys helps you dive deep into your customers’ brains, giving you the opportunity to keep up with the latest trends and patterns within your own target demographic.

Workflows: 

Ready to free up your schedule all with just a bunch of clicks? Introducing your new marketing best friend; workflows. As I mentioned above, CRMs have the power to streamline your marketing processes. Many, if not all CRMs give you the opportunity to work more efficiently through the power of automation. And this is done by combining a bunch of tasks together in what’s called a workflow. This special feature can help streamline your processes as well as reduce the need to carry out those tedious tasks everyone hates. My favourite type of workflow is the ‘Welcome Email Workflow’ This is where you set up a welcome email to automatically send out as soon as a customer has been added to the CRM. These workflows aren’t just about efficiency, it’s also about reducing your workload, freeing up your schedule, and pleasing your customers.

Third-party integration: 

Picture this: all your marketing tools in one platform. When your CRM includes third-party integrations, you now have the ability to merge all your marketing efforts in a centralised system One of my favourite CRMs, Zoho One, includes:

• Social media integration: Connect your social media accounts, and start scheduling your social posts straight away. There’s also a section in which you can view reports and analytics for all your different social media platforms.
• Email marketing integration: Upload your contacts, segment your contacts, and send email campaigns with the Zoho Campaigns tool. You’ll also be able to generate reports for all your different campaigns. It syncs with your email address, so any replies from your email campaign will go straight to your inbox.

Project and task management: 

We all know the saying work smarter, not harder. And the project management tool helps you do exactly that. As a marketer you’re probably juggling through a range of different projects and tasks. Keeping track of the status and progress of projects is hard, especially when multiple members of the team are working on them at the same time. Leave all your project management hassles to the CRM. With a CRM, you can track your projects, and automate task management in a way that helps you work smarter not harder.

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Best CRMs for marketing:

Zoho One CRM:

Zoho One is an all-in-one business platform that combines the power of automation to help you boost your marketing. The all-in-one tool is an absolute game-changer for customer management, sales, and marketing success. It’s a central hub that’ll make marketing so much easier.

Imagine having an all-round view of your customers. From their contact information to their support queries, Zoho CRM is a tool that helps you personalise customer experience from a brand new lens. But it doesn’t just stop there. Zoho CRM seamlessly integrates with Zoho’s marketing automation tools. Your marketing campaigns are automated, leads are tracked, and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is measured to perfection. Zoho also comes with customer support and ticketing features that turn your customer concerns into smooth experiences.

Numbers don’t lie, and Zoho CRM knows this well. It offers robust reporting and analytics, giving you a peek into your marketing results and customer behaviour. You can also tailor Zoho CRM to your needs with the use of custom fields, workflows, and automation rules. Zoho CRM definitely has your back when it comes to your marketing.

Dubsado:

Dubsado is the go-to when it comes to CRMs for small businesses and freelancers. The price combined with its unique features makes it perfect for those trying to up their client relations game while staying on a budget. 

First off, let’s talk about client management. Dubsado comes with a  bunch of features to keep all your client information in one place. It equips users with tools to manage client information, contact details, communication history, and project-specific data. This means better tracking of your client interactions and requirements.

And it doesn’t just stop there. You no longer have to stress about invoices and payments. With Dubsado, you can generate professional invoices and get paid online. It’s compatible with a range of different payment gateways, providing you and your clients with convenience when it comes to settling payments.

But wait, there’s more! Project management has never been easier with Dubsado. You can set up workflows, automate tasks, and even handle project timelines so you’re keeping on top of all your projects.

Say goodbye to back-and-forth scheduling chaos. Dubsado lets you book appointments straight from your website, quickly turning one-off website visitors into high-paying customers. No more headaches from scheduling conflicts – just smooth sailing.

Dubsado also supports integration with third-party marketing tools like email marketing tools and calendar apps, so you can keep everything in sync.