A CRM, or customer relationship management software, is an essential tool that many businesses use to organize and systemize their contacts in to a centralized hub. This includes potential leads, current customers, past customers, and more.
But what is a CRM, really? A CRM is more about just collecting data. It’s also about analyzing it to improve operational efficiencies. With a CRM, a company can analyze data from a variety of communication methods including phone calls, emails, digital marketing efforts such as PPC and paid social, online contact forms, and more. Normally, there would be no way to bring all of these disparate communications from together, but a CRM allows you to collect all of this different data and analyze based on both individual customers and segmented lists of customers.
For companies that like to work with data, a CRM is an excellent option to collect, store, analyze, and ultimately apply this data. Once this data is collected, a company can use a CRM to store this data. If the data is already a digital file, the CRM can be integrated with the digital platform that the interaction took place on and then directly imported. For example, many CRMs are able to integrate with email platforms such as Mailchimp or Convertkit. However, if the interaction took place in a non-digital space, such as a phone call or an in-person event or convention, then that interactions need to be digitized and put into the CRM. This can be through the use of a CSV file in a program such as Microsoft Excel.
Once your data is stored in your CRM, you can then use the capabilities of a CRM to analyze it. Using a CRM, you can easily track marketing KPIs such as campaign revenue, cost per lead and customer lifetime value. You can also track sales KPIs such new leads, lead conversion rates and average revenue per sales account. To visualize this data, you can us the capabilities of a CRM to generate specific reports and display this data in dashboards. You can also customize these reports to analyze the data that is important to your business.
Once these reports are set up, you can then use the data from them and apply it to your business. In order to make practical use of this information, you’ll want to distribute it to your sales, marketing, and customer service teams. With a CRM, you can democratize this information and make personalized dashboards so that each team can have access the data they need to better serve your customers.
Overall, a CRM is a great tool for businesses that need to get more organized. Organization is the key to growth, and being able to harness your customer data and realistically structure your revenue goals is an essential thing for any business. Furthermore, a CRM is an excellent way to manage customer information and make sure that no customer gets left behind or is left unattended. What a CRM does, more than anything is allow operations to track and mange their customer interactions to improve customer experience and retention rates.
