Looking at improving the quality of your email marketing? Thought about CRM integration but not sure what you can do with it? We’ve created a list of the 7 essential CRM lists and reports your marketing team should be using once this integration is in place, according to our CRM Consultant. Maybe it will spark some ideas of what your marketing team could achieve…
Target priority list #1: your confirmed data
With information such as who, what and where your contacts work (I.e. location, job title and contact details) being fed into your CRM from GatorLeads, you can create a marketing list to send highly tailored content based on what you know. For example, send location specific events or job function-related guides. It’s all about hyper-targeting your email campaigns, and using this information is how you can go about it.
Target priority list #2: your secondary data
You might not have contact details, but account level information fed into your CRM instead. The name of the company, revenue, company size…etc. You can base specific top-target campaigns against the companies that match your key criteria, but you will still need to try and gather more data points if you want to make hyper-personalised email campaigns.
Target priority list #3: your purchased data
Purchased data can be a good way to help you expand your pool of prospects, but it is important that you are careful how much you personalise any email campaign based on this data. Some of the information may not be accurate, unverified or out of date, so make sure to work with a reputable data provider. Then provide general, rather than specific, information within the emails themselves so you don’t end up sending incorrect information out in your email campaigns.
Target priority list #4: email addresses
If you’ve got no data to hand except their email address, you will need to do some more work on generating data. You can usually gather their first name or initial, last name and company name from this. But you will need to search for their company information and relationship based on name with the likes of LinkedIn.
Report on: relationship building emails
Take our last target list, for example. You want to generate more CRM data for this account so you can send them into one of the higher priority lists. How can you achieve this? By sending and reporting on relationship building emails.
Typically, these emails are less formal and sent from a specific sales person. The response goes directly back to them and the result is two-fold. First, the salesperson can upload the information they’ve learnt into CRM. Second, it opens up the chance for a sales conversation.
Report on: revenue building emails
For any of the above lists, you’ll want to gather further data on what is working. Are they clicking on more product A or product B links, for example? Report on email interactions and use these to tailor your marketing and sales communications moving forward to get them closer to a sale.
Report on: support building emails
Now, this report is more for customer marketing than prospect marketing, but still equally as useful. Asking for feedback on products, services, recommendations and net promoter scores will give you a good indication of where your marketing is a hit and miss. Use this insight moving forward, in both your customer and prospect marketing lists, to make email campaigns that successfully convert and upsell more opportunities.
For more on how to build successful email campaigns, take a look at the 5 considerations when building a marketing workflow whitepaper.
Better yet, why not combine this advice with other parts of your company to help build an over performing sales team?
How a CRM glues the relationship between sales and marketing
Sales and marketing is the foundation of any business. It’s imperative they are on the same page and agree on what’s what. The glue to our sales and marketing teams working seamlessly together is our CRM integration. Let me tell you why:
1. One single view
Having all your sales and marketing activity under one roof is an absolute god send. Being able to see what each team is producing is essential for effective lead management.
Sales can see what marketing are up to, vice versa and everyone can see what their leads are up to. Having the right tools and processes in place creates a powerful ‘smarketing’ storm, enabling both teams to work together.
2. Sales & marketing alignment
It’s a rocky process, but once you’re there the possibilities are endless. Sales and marketing have many cross overs in the B2B pipeline.
From generating and qualifying, to contacting and closing leads. There’s an argument to be had at each of these stages if your teams do not agree on what a lead is in the first place.
Our technology aligns sales and marketing teams to achieve all the above. Eliminating time spent arguing over what each team is providing for the other.
3. The benefits of ‘smarketing’
It’s both sales and marketing’s responsibility to bring in more revenue for the business. So, having those two teams work against each other is a recipe for disaster.
87% of sales and marketing teams (Corporate Executive Board Survey) across the UK, do not see eye to eye. Are you one of them? Companies with strong sales and marketing alignment get 20% annual revenue growth (Aberdeen group, 2010). So it’s much more than creating a harmonious workplace.
Your sales and marketing teams need to thrive off together, throw ideas around and at the end of the day, get sh*t done.
Having the same goals and progress as well as exposure to each other is the key. Enter, seamless CRM integration into your marketing platforms. Ending all sales and marketing feuds and spreading peace across the business.
