What is a CRM for?
The concept of CRM is one of the great terms in marketing and management with customers. A tool that is fundamental at the moment that the company starts to get clients and wants to keep them over time. But before knowing what a CRM is for, or knowing the most popular, it is important to know what we are talking about. As an expert in web positioning and in the relationship with clients, I know the importance of knowing how to manage all the data of them.
What is a CRM?
When we talk about a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) we refer to a software or computer program that offers a solution to manage customer relationships. It normally manages 3 basic areas, commercial management, marketing and customer service. In this article I will talk about the part that I know, the marketing part.
The CRM as a Marketing tool
One of the main answers to the question of what a CRM is for is simple, make profitable and optimize the information of the clients. With the arrival of digitalization, a marketing team has an infinity of data, with a good use of a CRM, we can know what to do with that data. Today there is a maxim in the world of marketing, a loyal customer is much cheaper than a new customer. Data analysis and segmentation are the cornerstones of any marketing strategy.
The correct use of this type of tools will give you the ability to segment your leads or clients in as many groups as you want. This segmentation is fundamental for example for email marketing. Most CRMs include an integration with some platform like Mailchimp, to facilitate this task.
From the study and analysis of the information collected with the software it is possible to know everything we want about the client. Observe that customers are more profitable to us, and invest more budget in them.
What are the most popular CRMs?
Today there are a lot of softwares aimed at customer satisfaction. I will talk about the most popular and interesting market, but there are a lot of them, for companies of all sizes.
Salesforce: without a doubt, the most popular and powerful market. Intended for large multinationals and companies with giant databases, in the aspect that offers a lot of features, that a small or medium company can not take advantage of. It allows total accessibility for the correct coordination of all tasks. It has a high level of customization and allows you to keep track of each event and task, being its only counter, its high price.
Base: You will have at your disposal a large number of tools to perform all the tasks of your day to day. It has a high configuration, from automatic call records to the integration of actions. Its great disadvantage is that the import of information from another CRM is complicated.
Microsoft Dynamics: its great advantage is the integration of the most social media aspect of communication. This tool is specially designed to take marketing to the next level. Its great disadvantage is, as with Salesforce, its high cost and its learning. Therefore it is recommended for large companies, companies that are going to get the most out of the tool.
AllProWebTools: it is not the most popular, but its great advantage is its price. It is an alternative to keep track of your potential customers and the relationship with your current customers. It is integrated with a large number of tools, includes marketing reports and allows the sales team to call directly from the system.
Why should I use a CRM in my company?
The use of a CRM as a tool is part of a strategy aimed at customer satisfaction. In this way the satisfaction of the same with the company will be improved, and therefore the relationship between both parties will be strengthened. With a tool of this magnitude you can take full advantage of the information that customers bring to your company. Below I show, from my point of view, some of the tasks that are optimized with the use of this type of tools:
- Loyalty: the possibility of maintaining a long relationship with the client. Offering advantages to be part of your community, such as discounts or facilities.
- Cross selling: knowing what products our customers have, we can get to know what products they will need.
- Increase in productivity: knowing the customer, it is easier to guess what to offer. That was one of the problems of communication in the past, offering the same products to all customers. With good data management, we can get to know what each client needs at each moment.
There are many reasons to have a CRM in your company. In a world as globalized as the current one, with so much information, it is necessary to be able to use the data for the benefit of the company. The more you know about the customers, the more interesting products you can offer them, thus increasing your sales number. So once you know what CRM is for, I think it’s time to start looking for the one that best fits your company, for services and budgets.
See you in the next article!
