Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation
The customer relationship management and marketing automation field are vast. Working through the terms, the offers, and the many marketing automation tools available, you have to begin with understanding what a customer relationship management (CRM) solution is. Knowing how a marketing automation tool can improve the marketing process, you use to find new customers, win their business, and keep them happy is essential.
In today’s business world, utilizing a CRM is a critical component of any business.
A CRM helps businesses build a relationship with their customers that lasts a long time, creates loyalty, and increases customer retention.
Customer retention is directly related to increasing profits in any company.
A challenging and actual fact is customer retention drives profitability because it costs five times more to attract a new customer than it does to turn an existing customer into a long-term customer.
A long-term customer is a loyal customer. Loyalty to your brand increases profits by encouraging repeat business, generating referrals, decreasing the cost of sales teams trying to convert potential customers into forever customers, and creating a reasonable price premium.
Loyal, long-term customers may be willing to pay more for your product or brand than they would from a competitor because they are engaged in your business.
Customers want to be a part of the business they purchase from and frequent. An engaged customer is a potential long-term customer and eventual increase in profit.
Customer Relationship Management(CRM) is critical for any business.
The CRM is a database that organizes and stores information about customers, which can be drawn on to improve customer relationship management and enhance the sales efforts by the sales team. Sales and marketing teams can work together to use the marketing automation tools to focus on converting new customers to longer-term customers or nurturing existing customers, so they shop often.
CRMs that include targeted marketing automation via web or mobile avenues equates to sales force automation on the go. Salesforce automation can improve your sales team’s ability to move a prospect into the sales team pipeline.
Marketing CRMs significantly impact how you as an owner build stronger relationships with your potential customers and grow your business faster.
The CRM system is a system that will help your business track all interactions and communications with new customers. A marketing system that uses an automated approach replaces multiple spreadsheets, databases, and apps. These antiquated systems come with human error and prospects slipping through the cracks.
In the past, the marketing and sales team used these tools and patched them together to meet the needs of their customers, and the approach was clunky and time-consuming.
Today, lead generation can be accomplished differently and more efficiently to convert potential consumers to paying customers efficiently and consistently.
Start With Evaluating What You Are Doing Now
First, you have to look at how you currently manage contact data and what sales and marketing process is used.
Excel spreadsheets, databases, paper forms, and files gather information. Maybe you have come up with a marketing process that collects data and stores it in a spreadsheet.
You can manually manipulate the information, and there is always the human error concern. These systems are often stored in different business areas and may be cumbersome to use.
The sales and marketing teams are trained in how to access the information. But do the spreadsheets back up your data, and are they available to both your sales teams as well as marketing?
Older systems were used in the past, but a more efficient automated marketing system is available today.
Second, you have to look at the cost of converting leads into long-term customers.
The lead-to-sale conversion rate measures your company’s effectiveness in converting a lead into a customer. Leads are potential consumers who may have an interest in your product and, because of their interest, have decided to take action towards engaging in your business.
You can gain insight into customer behavior, sales efforts, and marketing efforts if you understand how to determine the cost associated with lead conversion. To do so, convert leads divided by the total lead volume and multiply it by 100%.
Calculating your conversion rate is essential in increasing profit. A reasonable conversion rate is between 2 percent and 5 percent.
Even a tiny jump in conversion rate makes a big deal.
But how is conversion affected by using manual processes versus an automated process?
There is higher operational efficiency when you use a CRM platform!
If you are gathering data about customers manually, entering the information in the spreadsheet you have designed and used, and then going back to this spreadsheet to short and consistently nurture leads to convert them, it takes time and money.
Third, research and learn about different CRM software and the pros and cons of each product.
Free CRM
There are free CRM platforms like Hubspot. Like any CRM solution, it pulls potential customers to you with engaging content, collects data about the lead, and has marketing tools to push products at them. Some CRM platforms work better with a specific small or growing business type.
Pawn Leads CRM Platform
Pawn Leads is a CRM platform designed with the needs of pawnshops in mind. Sam Reading and co-founder Lex Case identified that some CRM solutions offered some of the everything pawnshops need in and marketing automation tool, but they typically fell short with integrating marketing automation and data analytics pawnshops required to see business growth.
The team decided to design a pawnshop CRM system that offered all the lead management, marketing automation, and CRM tools, email marketing campaigns, text messaging, target messages, and CRM data storage necessary to convert leads and target existing customers for long term loyalty with pawnshops in mind. Being user-friendly, sales reps can also use the system to help nurture new leads.
The Pawn Leads CRM system features are easily integrated with Bravo and point-of-sale systems.
CRM Integration
When researching a CRM solution, understand how the system integrates marketing automation with your current process. CRM integration is the act of connecting a CRM system with other systems and means that a business’s customer data can be seamlessly integrated.
User Friendly
A CRM solution should be user-friendly. As a business owner, your sales team and marketing team can use the system; it is useless. Marketing and sales efforts will only be enhanced if the CRM solution provides an easy-to-use, efficient process to convert leads.
Marketing and Sales Analytics
A CRM solution should include a process for you as the business owner to access marketing and sales analytics. This information will help you determine what lead generation tools you need to use to increase conversations, complete sales with each interaction, and which marketing automation tool seems to be the most effective.
An analytical CRM solution finds patterns and uses this information so you can dive deeper to determine what customer segments offer the best business opportunities. This will direct your sales and marketing accordingly, and this data is held with identifying future products and service offerings.
CRM and marketing automation need each other.
Using an automated CRM platform turns mundane tasks in managing customer data into automated tasks so you as a business owner and your sales team and marketing team can be reassigned to do high-value work.
This results in high efficiency.
Additionally, automated CRM platforms create consistency for your sales and marketing teams in reaching out to leads and converting them.
The CRM system works together with marketing automation tools so your sales team and marketing teams can craft targeted campaigns, email marketing, automated marketing campaigns, and lead magnets to help the customer travel down a customer journey they will find engaging.
The automation helps marketers automate processes such as sending text messaging, email campaigns, and posting social media posts. These systems also help with producing and promoting content. Additionally, CRMs include reports and analytics so this data can improve customer retention and improve business growth.
Lead retention is based on customer satisfaction and knowing how to engage in effective customer interaction and build relationships with your leads, so they build trust and loyalty to your business and product.
Contact Management (CM)
The primary purpose of contact management is to record and organize contacts. All verbal and email communications can be documented in a CM system, and this makes it easy to see who you’ve talked to and what you’ve talked about.
Having your customer information readily accessible makes marketing campaigns more fine-tuned and has a higher ratio of leads closed. As marketing becomes more personalized with customer interactions nurtured, they will return to your business for more.
The marketing team can be linked with sales teams by customer data, tasks, and communication being brought together into one central hub. Linking the teams together will help your marketing teams; sales teams work together to keep customers happier by streamlining the marketing and sales process.
For example, a customer searches for the product you sell. They find your Website, do a quick search, and are prompted to fill out a contact form with their information in a customer database.
The lead form integration helps convert website viewers into contacts.
These contacts can be segmented according to pre-set filters. A chronological record of every interaction a prospective customer has had with your business will allow you to deliver relevant communication at the right time. Lead form integration can be accomplished by promoting a new lead to sign up for a demo or a newsletter.
This information is then used to build nurturing activities to improve customer retention. Tools like automated text messaging responses, follow-up emails, notifications of sales, and savings all add to its desirability.
Contact Management can manage customer data and streamline the delivery of lead nurturing activities to gain more leads and convert them into customers.
Lead Generation and Personalization
Suppose your company needs more marketing qualified leads. In that case, investment in marketing automation software is the key to distributing content, helping with building landing pages, designing sales pipeline processes that work, completing targeted messaging, and using email marketing campaigns.
CRM software will include basic marketing features and need to have advanced features like customization, third-party integration, customer service, employee tracking, social media management, and access to real-time data.
Pawn Shop Apps and CRM and Marketing Automation Tools
Pawnshops are unique as small businesses and national chains. They have apps they use like Bravo, Pawnmate, and Pawn Master that are necessary to bring in and track sales, buys, and loans. These systems need to interface with the CRM and marketing automation tools pawn shops use.
Pawn Leads CRM can integrate with apps typically used by pawnshops. The owners realized that a CRM with marketing automation was key to business growth. When CRM software works together with marketing automation, they provide a seamless journey for customers.
An effective CRM platform like Pawn Leads works by tracking the actions of active potential customers through social media accounts, emails, website visits and uses lead magnets to gather information about the customer.
By building trusting customer relationships with leads, customers are more inclined to engage in activities that get them to come into your business.
Pawn Leads is primarily focused on Pawn Shops in the USA and offers our Pawn Leads CRM system (2-way texting, reviews, email marketing, etc.), Website builds, progressive mobile websites that add to your current site, web hosting, and custom development as needed/required.
Pawn Leads offers Google Ads, SEO, and dedicated marketing support (flyer creating, holiday marketing, etc.), Website Builds, Text Pay, 2-Way Texting, Bulk Messaging, Web Chat, Call Tracking, Call Recording, Auto Text Response to Missed calls, and so much more through the Pawn Lead CRM services and marketing and sales teams working together with your team.
Pawn Leads brought the services needed to the pawn community. An automated marketing system could be used to meet the needs of pawnshops where all data on prospective leads, customer interactions, and user behavior could be stored and analyzed. Pawn Leads is where you, as a pawnshop owner, can automate your marketing processes and test, measure, and optimize your marketing return on investment and how to encourage business growth.
Pawn Leads leverages the latest technology, sales automation, pipeline management, marketing automation platforms to increase lead generation and generate more traffic and more profit.
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