Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

What is a CRM anyway?

CRM is so widely used these days to apply to such a broad range of software that it has almost lost meaning. A good CRM system will encompass a broader range of information and functionality than just being a glorified contact database.

Lead Aggregation

Leads can come from a variety of touchpoints but you want every potential customer to have the same experience with your business, no matter where they have come from. With a CRM that is able to integrate with the various platforms bringing you leads, you can track them all in one place.

Sales Force Automation

To get the most out of your salespeople, you need to get them to make contact with a potential customer at the right time and armed with the appropriate information. With sales force automation, a salesperson can follow up a lead and close the loop of information by recording the outcome of the contact. This can then trigger a human follow-up or route back into an automated lead nurturing campaign.

 

Customer Relationships

Customer relationships are more than just knowing how much they spent with your company last quarter. With a good CRM, you can schedule follow-ups to purchases to nip any problems in the bud before they become major issues. Segmented email campaigns can ensure that the customer is receiving relevant information and feels that they are treated as an individual.

Customisability

 A good CRM platform will allow for customisation of objects and the relationships between them. This will allow you to build out a more detailed map of how your leads and current customers interact with your company and can open up avenues for deeper analysis. Depending on the use case, being able to extend your CRM with custom objects can mean not having to add another piece of software to your technology stack to perform a single task.

Automation

Automation can save time and improve performance of all systems but CRM systems especially can benefit from a web of small-scale and focused automations. CRMs get better with the more information they have and automating the flow of information and triggering alerts to users eliminates data entry errors and allows your staff to focus on more important tasks.

Exact Recommends

We recommend Ontraport due to its implementation of custom objects and custom object relationships as first class citizens, meaning they have as much functionality as the inbuilt objects. On top of that, there is a graphical campaign builder which allows for the creation of sequences such as a 6-month follow-up on purchases. All of this can be tied together with extensive automation features. If this wasn't enough, Ontraport is also a marketing automation platform.