Today, we’re going to talk about the connection between CRM & Marketing Automation platforms. Why one cannot go without the other? Why the update of sales data is key to optimize its marketing automation campaigns? And who better than Stéphane Couleaud to talk about it. Stéphane is the President of the French marketing automation and CRM software publisher Webmecanik. He shares his experience with us. Testimony:
EverReady: Why an up-to-date CRM allows you to optimize your Marketing Automation campaigns?
SC: An up-to-date CRM provides the data and information you need to create targeted and personalized campaigns. With real-time data, you can understand when your prospects and customers are most likely to interact with your campaigns. By integrating their behavior and preferences, you can send messages at the right time, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
Additionally, with access to real-time data, you can A/B test and optimize your campaigns on the fly. You can quickly see what works and what doesn’t, beyond your hunches, and make adjustments accordingly.
Finally, a CRM with reliable, up-to-date data allows you to automate your campaigns with confidence, saving you time and resources. You reduce manual interventions, and focus your skills on high value-added customer relations.
EverReady: Why having an organized CRM allows you to better know your prospects?
SC: The purpose of CRM is to centralize all customer data. It can store all contact information, demographic data, purchase history and interactions with your brand. It is the cross-referencing of this data that determines their preferences and helps you understand their expectations. You identify trends and sales models that work to stay ahead of the competition.
Personalized communication is the key to building trust and increasing engagement. And best of all, this information allows you to create more effective sales strategies and close deals faster.
EverReady: Do you think that the combination of a CRM and a Marketing Automation software will be essential for all companies?
SC: We often notice that the customer base contacts are not necessarily integrated in the acquisition campaigns. They are managed separately, with a different process, even with different tools. You might wonder why some customers are in the CRM but not in the marketing automation software.
The potential for syncing the two solutions is huge. Because just as we can increase the rate of new customer acquisition, and decrease the length of sales cycles, we can also integrate the discovery of other solutions or services to do add-selling and cross-selling on existing customer bases. When we know that in the B2B sector, the average transformation rate of opportunities on customer accounts is 2 to 3 times higher than for a prospect, it is very interesting to increase the value of customers (Lifetime Value).
EverReady: Why should users of Webmecanik Automation and Webmecanik Pipeline software benefit from EverReady?
SC: Webmecanik offers an all-in-one solution with Webmecanik Automation and Webmecanik Pipeline, which ensures the consistency and traceability of a lead throughout the many customer journeys. It is an investment that enhances the brand and the company.
But the key to a successful CRM & Automation deployment is to have an up-to-date database with the right contacts, their email addresses, phone numbers, job function, or shopping cart history. Often this information can be split up in several different databases such as ERP, billing, support, or even Excel, etc. But often the most up-to-date data is simply in the emails that are exchanged between employees, partners, and customers. EverReady allows, without manual input, and therefore without error, to update essential data, and to carry out a “data driven” strategy.
Stéphane Couleaud’s advice for optimizing Marketing Automation campaigns:
When a contact who is a user of your services and products changes universe, he or she is likely to recommend you in their new roles. According to an Adobe study, the conversion rate of referral marketing is ten times higher than that of traditional inbound and outbound sales.
The feedback of essential weak signals such as a change of position or company of contacts is an opportunity to activate a referral marketing automation scenario and automatically notify the account manager via the CRM to organize a call.