5 Tricks to Get More from Your CRM

CRM software remains a top priority for IT professionals. According to Gartner, CRM software totaled $26.3 billion in 2015, up 12.3 percent from $23.4 billion in 2014. Businesses are heavily focused on customer satisfaction and customer retention, and this requires a great CRM.

Merely having a CRM for your business isn’t enough—you need to integrate as much automation as possible without compromising efficiency. A CRM is not only capable of contact management, it can assist in marketing, sales and service management as well. Only six out of 10 SMBs are using a CRM for email marketing or for contact management. Not enough businesses understand how powerful this tool can be.

Here are five tricks using which you can take maximum advantage and get more from your CRM.

1. Lead Scoring

Adding contacts in your CRM is a must, but it is imperative to know if your leads are sales-ready or not. To know the difference between your hot, warm and cold leads, you need to automate their score based on their actions. Having a concrete score on your leads will help you better define their purchase intention.

You can use any KPI to score your leads based on your marketing and sales requirements. Your marketing team should look for leads who visited your landing page (or your pricing/product page), subscribed to your newsletter, filled the contact’s form or downloaded any type of content. Your sales team should identify leads that have opened your email, responded to your email, clicked links or asked for a demo. With defined KPIs, you can include web rules in your CRM to add the necessary score whenever a lead performs an action.

2. Retargeting Warm Leads

While scoring your leads, separate them into different categories: hot, warm and cold. Target and contact hot leads first, send an email to your warm leads and end contact if you get a negative response, discard the cold leads.

The information collected on warm leads can still come in handy later when the warm leads are ready for purchase. Your warm leads were not ready for the purchase when you contacted them, but they might be after few months. Businesses change and so do their requirements. Target your warm leads, make use of all the information you already have on your CRM and just give that extra push. Marketer Jimmy Rodela says a sample of your product can incentivize a purchase.

3. Exploit Integrations Where Possible

You need a CRM that integrates with social media, financial accounts, telephone and email. The ability to use third-party services that provide invoicing and account handling is great for handling bills and payments. Telephony integration makes it easier for you to make calls and save all the information directly on your CRM.

CRM plugins allow you to do more with less cost and less manual labor. Exploit options such as WordPress, Twilio, Xero, Freshbooks, Twitter, Facebook and more.

4. Create Email Templates

Marketers who tackle email campaigns in their CRM enjoy the option of pre-defined templates. Many CRMs that assist with these campaigns provide a few pre-defined templates that can be repurposed and customized to fit your needs. Agile CRM features pre-designed templates that can be customized according to your needs, or you can add your own design and save it.

5. Use Contact History

Data collected on your leads can be used by anyone, from sales reps to support reps, to improve their customer engagement. An excerpt from Jennifer Schiff’s article, a tech writer, says, “Everyone should be informed of the benefits of entering information into the CRM system to encourage usage.” Having substantial contact history can help sales reps to better sell the product and service to leads and customers. It also helps support reps to improve their customer service.

Having a powerful CRM for your business is about ensuring that the customer experience is improved. That’s what CRM software offers if you take full advantage of the options. A CRM is not just the sales or marketing tool, it’s a tool that can be utilized by all the teams.