You might’ve got the perfect marketing strategy ready to go, but do you have the right data to make it really come alive? 

Relying on guesswork and assumptions won’t do – you must truly understand your customers’ needs and behaviors to craft the perfect campaign. 

That’s where CRM software can come in to save the day. 

Traditionally these data-driven tools have been considered a sales team’s domain. But, virtually all departments can benefit from the insights, visibility, and lead qualification a CRM provides. 

Marketing teams, especially, will find that using a CRM to track customer interactions and journeys can provide invaluable data to help craft the most effective campaigns. With this 360-degree view, marketers can go beyond surface-level segmentation and target customers with greater precision and personalization. 

So if you’re ready to supercharge your marketing with CRM, read on! We’ll be looking at all the cool things CRM software can do for your marketing efforts and how you can make the most of it. 

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in! 

What is a CRM?

CRM stands for customer relationship management. And as the name implies, CRM software helps companies manage their relationships with customers and prospects.

In practical terms, CRM is a system that stores, records, and analyzes customer interactions with your business. Among the data are things like customer information, purchase history, transactional data, communications, service tickets, and more — all in one central database.

CRMs then allow multiple verticals and departments within the company, like sales, accounting, or marketing, to access and analyze this data to get insights into customer behavior and preferences. Thus, allowing them to make more informed and strategic decisions. 

To better illustrate how all the CRM pieces work together to facilitate customers down the sales funnel, here are some examples from different industries:

E-Commerce Businesses: Highly focused campaigns

For e-commerce businesses, the customer journey often begins with a simple search, browse, and purchase process. But the real challenge starts when cultivating long-term relationships with these customers. 

Using CRM data, e-commerce businesses can build detailed profiles of their customers to fully understand what they like and what triggers their purchase decisions. This is invaluable information that companies can use to drive repeat purchases, refine product or service offerings, and create more personalized experiences. 

Professional Services: Streamlining processes

Professional services firms often deal with complex customer interactions that require a high degree of detail and precision. They use CRM systems to streamline the customer experience and automate processes.

For example, a law firm might use a CRM to track client engagements and organize relevant documents, like contracts, invoices, and other agreements. This allows the firm to effectively manage its existing clients and bring on new clients with ease. 

Coaches/Mentors: More effective client journeys

As a coach, your goal is to help your clients reach a particular outcome. To do so, you must design a comprehensive and logical journey leading up to the desired result. 

CRM systems can help you do this by providing a centralized hub for all client info. You can then use this knowledge to refine each piece of your program and tailor the experience for individual clients — ensuring that no one falls through the cracks. This will also help you develop more targeted and niched signature coaching frameworks and marketing campaigns that better meet your prospects’ needs. 

Brick & mortar businesses: Better customer service

Brick & mortar businesses have the additional challenge of managing customers in a physical space. Here, CRMs can help companies to enhance in-store experiences while also providing a better customer service experience. 

For example, you can use CRM data to improve store products’ layout and display. This is especially useful for businesses that rely heavily on impulse purchases. Additionally, the data can help employees better understand customers’ needs and provide tailored recommendations that may result in more sales.

CRM for marketing

Arming your marketing team with a CRM’s powerful features and insights will help them create better, more tailored campaigns and experiences. Here are some of the standout benefits associated with using CRM in marketing:

Design accurate customer persona

A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal consumer. It helps you define who your business is targeting and how best to market to them. Yet, in many cases, this persona is built on hunches and gut feelings. 

Using CRM data, however, you can build accurate personas based on real customer data. This approach will help you create more relevant marketing content.

Streamline marketing channels

Since CRM is a single source of truth for customer data, it eliminates the need for your marketing team to manually sync customer data across multiple platforms. 

This gives different departments within your marketing team access to the same up-to-date information — which makes it much easier to create cohesive and consistent campaigns. 

Maximize your marketing dollars

Not all companies have the resource capacity or budget to launch extensive marketing campaigns. Some companies have no choice but to outsource their marketing efforts to third-party firms, which can be costly if you don’t know which prospects to target.

By tapping into a CRM’s data insights and lead-scoring capabilities, you can better identify your most profitable customers and allocate your human resources and dollars more efficiently. Doing this ensures that your assets are put to the best use, helping you get more bang for your buck.

Ways to use CRM for marketing

Now that you’re familiar with what CRM is and the sorts of benefits it can bring to marketing, let’s dive into some specific ways you can use this tech to boost your marketing efforts.

Better segmentation

Segmentation allows you to break your target audience into smaller, more manageable groups that have similar interests and behaviors. This breakdown makes businesses 60% more likely to understand their customers’ needs and challenges and 130% more in tune with their intentions. 

A CRM system allows you to create customer profiles and segment customers into different groups according to a variety of characteristics. As a result, businesses are able to target particular customer segments with personalized marketing messages that speak directly to their needs.

For example, if you’re a retail business, you can use CRM to target customers likely to purchase certain products by segmenting them according to their past purchase behavior. 

Or, if you’re a service-based business, you can use CRM to segment customers according to their particular interests or preferences and then create marketing campaigns tailored to those interests. Relevant campaigns like these allow for more effective marketing and lead to better engagement rates.

Personalized experience

Today, connecting with customers requires more than just generic, cookie-cutter content that plagues most inboxes. In fact, more than 70% of customers feel frustrated when their experience doesn’t feel personalized. 

Modern customers expect a more personal touch to their marketing experience, and CRM enables businesses to deliver on that expectation. 

From bespoke automated emails and personalized discount offers to product recommendations tailored to each customer’s preferences, CRMs allow businesses to put their customers first and provide a far more fulfilling experience.

Automating marketing processes

Most top-of-the-line CRM solutions come with robust automation capabilities. And CRM automation can save marketers a great deal of time and energy by streamlining marketing processes like lead nurturing, customer segmentation, and event-driven campaigns. 

For instance, with CRM automation, you can set up trigger emails based on customer behavior or segment customers who have responded to a particular campaign or offer. Or, automatically send follow-up emails to leads that have been inactive for a set time period. Or eliminate tedious manual tasks like data entry or recording social media interactions.

All of this automation takes the burden of laborious tasks off marketers’ hands and allows them to focus on more strategic and creative marketing endeavors.

Crank up your marketing game with CRM

If you want to amplify the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, then adopting a CRM system is one of the best ways to do it. CRM systems can help you track customer behaviors, target campaigns more accurately, and get insights into your customers’ reactions. 

With just a few clicks, you can have a comprehensive view of your entire customer database and ensure that every marketing effort is laser-focused on the right audience. That’s the power of CRM! So what are you waiting for? Get your hands on a powerful CRM and take your marketing to new heights!