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The use of customer relationship management (CRM) software is increasing across many verticals, as a growing number of marketing and sales professionals are seizing opportunities to streamline messaging and workflows, while aligning departmental goals and objectives to the overall business mission.

In 2020, as customer expectations regarding delivery channels changed in light of the coronavirus pandemic, and as a growing number of businesses shifted to remote workforces, customer experience reigned for CRM focus. We can expect that to continue throughout 2021, but what else should we anticipate in terms CRM adoption, usage, and growth? Here are 7 trends we can expect to see:

In 2019, the global CRM market was estimated at more than $40 billion. In the next several years, that growth is expected to continue, with the marketing increasing more than 14% by 2027. In just the next three year, by 2024, it’s estimated the market will surpass $43 billion.

1. More Companies Will Adopt CRM – and SMBs Will Make Gains

Historically, large companies have led CRM adoption. Back in 2016, for example, more than half of CRM users were large enterprises. While small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) have been a bit slower to adopt customer relationship management software, it’s on the rise. By 2027, if predictions on market size are accurate, that could level off with more SMBs using CRMs,  matching the usage patterns of large enterprises.

2. More AI and Machine Learning

While CRMs help automate tasks and deliver reports and analytics to help us track a variety of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), many busy professionals still struggle with understanding how to use the data their CRM collects. As a result, we’re likely to see continued momentum with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) integrations within CRM solutions. Not only will your CRM be able to gather the data you want, it will be able to help you make better data-driven business decisions by predicting behaviors and suggesting responses. Predictive analytics can help teams pinpoint customers faster, predict their behaviors, and create content and other deliverables that drive leads to sales.

3. On the Go with Mobile and the Cloud

As the pandemic forced more people out of the office and into working at home, businesses have had to rapidly adjust by adopting mobile and other applications that facilitate full business workflows outside the office. The same is true for CRMs, where team members need access to important customer information from wherever they are, any time, day or night. We can expect to see more CRMs adopt mobile-friendly options, as well as cloud-based solutions, to ensure workforces have access to all their CRM functionality whether in the office, at home, or on the go.

4. More Reliance on Automation

CRM automation not only makes jobs easier for your team members, but automation and ease-of-use for products and services delivery is ever-more important to your customers. By using a CRM with integration into your content management system (CMS) for your website and integrated point-of-sales solutions, you can ensure your customers have a simplified and streamlined way to do business with your company, while your CRM – especially if it’s integrated with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution – can automate everything from estimates to billing to shipping and customer service. Internally, process automation within your CRM will help ensure you’re also delivering consistent, approved messages, on-demand, with trusted repeatable actions to facilitate a sales journey.

5. Continued Emphasis on Experience and Personalization

Customer experience will continue to be front and center for resilient organizations in 2021, regardless of industry. A report from Walker, a customer experience management firm, predicts that customer experience will become the leading differentiator for brands, surpassing product and prices. Personalized experiences will continue to be critical to great customer experiences. According to that same report, almost 90% of respondents say customer expectations for personalized experiences continue to increase, up from only 4% in 2013.

6. Silo Breakdowns

As an increasing number of people now work outside of the office, the need to bring down traditional workflow silos has never been more important. CRM will likely play an important role in this in 2021 and beyond. That’s in part due to the insight your CRM can give you across your customer journey — from market lead to satisfied (and hopefully returning) customer. Your CRM can give team members insight into who’s most likely to become a customer and help guide your engagement, while identifying gaps in your processes.

7. Departmental Alignment with Business Objectives

It can be a struggle for individual department leaders to understand how to align department goals and objectives with overall business priorities. The further away you move across your employees, the more challenging that becomes. With reporting and analytics within your CRM, more businesses will embrace this insight resource to help set goals, measure performance, and establish metrics that help gauge success and improvements.

A great customer experience starts with great data. Register for a webinar today to learn how aACE can help you delight your customers and keep them coming back for more.

Learn how you can help your business grow this spring with our aACE webinars. Last month we covered topics ranging from production to shipping and from CRM to accounting. Here's what we have in store for April:

Templates, Campaigns, and Rate Cards – April 6th

Learn how to save time and prevent errors related to duplicate data entry with standardized orders, purchase orders, pricing, and more. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlights on rate cards and campaigns.

Guest Webinar: aACE+ ReadyCloud Shipping Integration – April 13th

Hear from our guest presenter, Brandon Batchelor of ReadyCloud, on how the aACE+ ReadyCloud ReadyShipper integration can help you revolutionize your shipping process. Before the webinar, check out our aACE+ ReadyCloud demo video and read our success story on Southwest Auto Accessories to learn how a real aACE customer has reaped the benefits of our partnership with ReadyCloud.

Shipping and the aACE Pick App – April 20th

Now that you've seen aACE's ReadyShipper integration in action, join us to learn more about how aACE streamlines the pick, pack, and ship process. You'll get an in-depth look at our Pick App and see how our shipping integrations flow into aACE.

Guest Webinar: aACE+ The BPR – April 27th

Learn how The BPR can help you quickly, easily, and accurately document your company's unique workflows and customized features in this guest presentation from our friends at Optimum Output.

We look forward to seeing you in our April webinars! Register now to reserve your spot.

Business is changing fast. A continued push for more technology adoption — from the desktop computers in our offices to applications for our smartphones and tablets — can sometimes feel overwhelming for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) with limited staff, resources, and finances. How do you decide what you want? How do you separate wants from needs? How do you get the most bang for your buck?

And how can you compete with larger enterprises who have the ability to purchase the latest and greatest in tech when you’re still trying to figure out how to improve your current workflows to reduce burden on overtaxed staff when you may be falling behind on the tech curve?

The answer isn’t continued piecemealing of every tech recommendation your department heads bring to the table. You may be surprised there’s actually a single solution out there—one that can help you do the work you’re already doing right now—faster, more efficiently, and with fewer human errors—leading to happier employees and customers, all with the scalability to grow with you, without breaking the bank.

It’s called enterprise resource planning (ERP), and it’s a great solution for businesses of all sizes, especially SMBs.

What’s an ERP?

An ERP is a software solution you can use to integrate and automate your core business workflows — for example marketing, sales, operations, and accounting — to improve operational efficiencies; decrease the need for manual, repetitive tasks; automate basic functions that free up your staff to tackle more important tasks; and give you insight into all of your operations from an easy-to-understand dashboard.

Process Automation

ERPs are all about processes. Regardless of your industry vertical or how large or small your organization may be, you have core processes that keep it running efficiently.

Unfortunately, sometimes SMBs struggle to find process consistency and efficiency for these workflows. It’s often the result of a growing business that starts small, where a single employee creates a process that works based on his or her tasks and experience. Over time, as the company grows, those processes are passed on verbally or by demonstration, with no real control mechanism to ensure that everyone is doing the workflow the way that’s approved and authorized by your company. It’s like that old game of telephone, where the lead whispers something into one person’s ear and by the time it gets to the end, it’s nowhere near the original intent.

That’s one of the many benefits of using an ERP for process automation, and it’s also why an increasing number of SMBs are turning to ERPs to improve workflow efficiencies.

In one recent survey, for example, almost 60% of respondents (57%) said the goal of automation is to support human performance and improve productivity. Another 24% said it can help decrease costs with 15% using automation to help decrease mistakes.

Automation, often referred to robotic process automation, can help improve the way your company handles common business tasks, often those that are manual and repetitive and aren’t generally complex. If that sounds great to you, you may not be sure where to start or how to do this effectively. Here are a few quick tips.

1. Understand your workflows

Before you can effectively implement an ERP for process automation, you need to understand all of the core operational workflows for your organization. If you have more than one site or location you’ll need to take a look at all of them, not just the ones in your home office. Look for workflows across all your core departments, from marketing and sales, to operations, to production, over to supplies and delivery, accounting, and customer service. These workflows will be unique to your operation.

2. Determine which workflows are most critical for resiliency

Once you’ve outlined your core workflows, determine which of these are most critical for operational success. You might want to consider a business impact analysis (BIA) to help better understand the roles of these workflows in resiliency and what would happen if there were errors, disruptions, or failures.

3. Understand what’s suited for automation and what’s best for people

After you have a good understanding of your workflows and their impact on your business, now is the time to assess which ones can be handled effectively with process automation and which ones need more attention and should be handled by a person on your staff. It’s important to ask yourself here, of all your workflows, which ones will likely have the highest return on investment if you focus automation there first?

Here are a few ideas of some of the many processes you can automate with an ERP:

• Marketing tasks such as emails and newsletters and social media posts
• Sales tasks such as appointment reminders, scheduling, sales follow-ups, and point-of-sales transactions
• Operational tasks such as human resource needs, for example scheduling and time tracking
• Accounting tasks such as cost estimates, purchase orders, billing reminders, routine payment processing, or commission tracking
• Warehouse tasks such as inventory management, inventory tracking, shipping tracking, and reorders
• Customer service and customer relationship management (CRM) tasks such as inquiry response and database management and updates

While these tasks are great examples of ERP efficiencies, there are other tasks that may be better suited for personal interaction, for example, checking the accuracy of invoices and sending them, among other tasks.

4. Prepare for Automation

Once you’ve determined which tasks you can automate, now it’s time to prepare for automation. While this step doesn’t have to be complicated, it should be well thought-out. It’s more than just setting the steps in your ERP for each workflow. Before you begin, you should evaluate your existing processes.

• What are you doing that works well?
• Where do you have performance issues?
• Where can you resolve these issues with automation?

5. Establish Best Practices

After reviewing your existing workflows and evaluating deficiencies, create “best practices” for each workflow you’re going to automate. Test those best practices and ensure they work. It would also be beneficial to document these practices and, if your company uses change management, be sure to get appropriate review and approval before finalizing. Don’t forget to talk directly with the team members responsible for these tasks. You’ll want to hear from them what works and what needs improvement. This is also the time to talk with them about the benefits of automation to bring them onboard with the idea of adopting a new solution or a new way of doing things, reminding them it will help make their jobs easier and give them the opportunity to put their talents to work on more meaningful engagements.

6. Find the Right Vendor

There are a lot of ERP vendors in the market. Once you’ve determined which processes you want to automate and have an understanding of how you want to automate them, look for an ERP vendor that will enable your company to achieve both your short- and long-term automation goals. You’ll also want to review the vendors licensing and pricing models, talk with other clients who use the software, and ask to try the software before you commit to a purchase. Does it work for you in reality, not just in theory? You may find it helpful to work directly with an advisor who understands the ERP market who can help guide you through all the decisions you’ll need to make before finalizing a purchase.

7. Implement and Adopt

Once you’ve selected your ERP, it’s time to implement it and set up those workflow automations. But effective ERP usage isn’t just set-it-and-forget-it. Earlier, we talked about how important it is to engage the employees responsible for these workflows. Now that you have the solution in place, take the time to properly educate them on how it works and how it will make their jobs easier, improve accuracy and efficiencies, and help the company scale and improve over time. Periodically solicit feedback. Does the system work as you intended? Does it need notifications to work better? Are there other workflows that could be automated in the future?

If you think an ERP solution may right for your SMB, register now for an upcoming webinar to see aACE in action and hear from our knowledgeable presenters about some of the many unique benefits that can help your organization today – and as you scale.

Customers want what they want, and while they might not always be “right,” making them feel valued, respected, and heard are important pieces of great customer service.

In today’s digital world, personalization plays an important role in customer service, too. Whether that’s delivering customer-specific content or facilitating speedy ways to engage more frequently, communication is key for attracting and retaining loyal customers.

And customer service is quickly evolving past just meeting customer needs. It’s also all about the total customer experience — everything from what they perceive about your brand and reputation, to how they feel when they engage with you.

In one recent survey, almost 50% of respondents said that customer experience is the top business priority for the next five years, outranking both products and pricing.

Whether you’re a small company gaining new customers or a large enterprise trying to respond to an increasingly long list of customer needs, figuring out how to deliver the best customer service can be challenging, even for customer service pros.

And great customer experiences are increasingly important in today’s competitive markets. One customer experience survey indicated that some 32% of respondents will walk away from a company after just one bad customer service experience. That same survey also revealed that 73% say customer experience is important for purchasing decisions, but sadly, they say less than half (49%) of companies actually provide a good customer experience.

But there is good news. Good customer service not only works, customers say they’re willing to pay more when they have a great customer experience.

So what can you do to improve your customer experience and improve your company’s approach to customer service? You may be surprised to know you already have a great tool in your arsenal, and if you don’t, it’s easy to add it to your operations and get on the right track.

What’s the linchpin? It’s your customer relationship management tool (CRM).

First, what’s a CRM?

CRM stands for customer relationship management. In modern business operations, this is usually a software solution that meets a range of functions, from managing your customer database to delivering customer-specific marketing and sales information.

Beyond serving as a contact database, most companies use their CRMs to manage their customers’ journeys, where everyone starts as an inquiry or lead with the goal of eventually being nurtured into a customer, and, if done well, a returning customer for the long-term.

Insight Leads to Success

CRMs give companies insight into their customers — from demographics to other relevant buying and relationship data — that just can’t be obtained through other client management processes, like simplified email programs or databases.

A CRM is more than an address book. It helps you automate processes, from identifying your relationship with your customers to establishing a persona — or buyer type — for each customer. Knowing who your customer is and what your customer wants and expects from you is a solid foundation for building your customer relationship over time.

Here are 9 ways your CRM can help you deliver exceptional quality customer service:

1. Team-wide customer journey insight: Have you ever worked in a company where one of your top salespeople is working a great lead, where you know about it because he or she shared information in a recent meeting, but, other than tracking that person down, you have no idea where how the lead is being nurtured or where it is in your sales journey? What happens if that sales team member gets sick or gets promoted or leaves the company? How do you get insight into all the emails sent, phone calls exchanged, and meetings set? Understanding that relationship, and what has been communicated to the customer when, is critical for great customer service. A CRM means that anyone with your team's established permissions can check on a customer’s status, and, where appropriate, jump in to take the sale over the finish line as needed.
2. Company-wide sales data: Sales are more than just financing your company. There are a lot of related moving pieces, like purchase orders and billing, accounts receivable, and shipping. A CRM with integration into your business management solution (BMS) can give all of your related teams insight into the status of all your sales, from leads, to processing, to successful deliveries, and even reorders. That means, at any time if a customer has a question and needs service — for example, did you receive payment? — anyone on your team can get the data they need to respond and keep your customer happy.
3. Eliminate redundant tasks and duplicate entries while decreasing human error: As a customer, have you ever patiently waited for a product to arrive, only to be frustrated when it never shows up? You know your order went through because you received a confirmation email and then someone followed up to confirm your order and let you know it would go out soon. When it never arrives, you follow up and realize that when the person who processed your order entered your shipping information into the shipping software, they swapped two numbers, so your product got lost in transit. A CRM with BMS integration can keep your customers (and your employees) happy by eliminating the need to duplicate manual entries throughout disparate systems and automatically share relevant data within all of your related systems — like orders, payment, and shipping.
4. Always in stock: Customers are happiest when they get exactly what they want when they expect to get it, so integrating your CRM into your enterprise resource management (ERP) solution can also help improve your customer experience. By integrating sales information, for example leads and a historical perspective of sales over time, with your ERP that manages inventory, you can feel confident you’ll always have the products you need on hand, when your customers want them. 
5. Respond in real time: Because most CRMs have a gamut of automated communication features, you can improve your customer service by using your CRM to handle a range of customer service issues. For example, look for a CRM that will integrate with your existing website. Instead of having customers open up an email, send it in and wait for a response, you can use your CRM to embed a customer service form right on your website. Then, by setting a range of parameters within the CRM, (for example, if and when rules) you can automatically generate a response for some of your most common customer service issues. You can even use it to automatically escalate more difficult service needs and communicate across a variety of platforms like email, social media, text, chat, and more.
6. Send customized communications: Like the customer service widget we mentioned for response, not only can you speed up communication delivery with a CRM, you can also personalize your communications. By automating and personalizing your emails, for example, you can pull data from a variety of database combinations to deliver customer-specific messages to your leads and clients — you can ensure customers are always delivered relevant and timely information to help them along on their customer journeys.
7. Reports and analytics: One of the greatest benefits of using a CRM is the ability to see and report on customer metrics that matter to your organization. Not only can you use the CRM to see how many new customers you have, where they are in your pipeline, and how you’re doing on retention, you can also use your CRM analytics for insight into your customer experience. Did your customer email a question that’s never gotten a response? Did your customer place an order and it wasn’t received? CRM analytics can give you real-time insight into your entire customer process, enabling you to identify and resolve any gaps or issues long before your customer gets frustrated and complains.
8. Ensure consistency: Even if you prepare your customer service teams with scripts and role-playing exercises, there are commonly varying customer experiences for people based on which employee they engage with. And, regardless of training, it’s difficult to ensure consistent communication and experiences when they’re primarily person-led. Instead, your CRM can help ensure consistency by automating tasks for your employees (for example, sending a pre-approved email) and tracking your required processes with insight and reporting capabilities.
9. Track meetings and other important dates with reminders and alerts: Your CRM can also help ensure customer satisfaction by ensuring you never miss an important date. For example, if you promise a customer you’ll return a call or send a reply email by a certain data, you can use your CRM to send you reminders (or automate the response) so you can be sure you never miss an important task and don’t frustrate customers.

There are a lot of CRM solutions on the market. How do you know which is right for you? How do you know which has the most (and best) integration capabilities with your existing systems, services, and applications? If you need help selecting a new CRM or think your existing CRM is struggling to keep up, register for an aACE webinar today to learn how we can help.

You don’t have to be a veteran e-tailer to understand the value of loyal customers. They’re not only repeat purchasers, but they have higher average order values than one-time buyers. They’re also brand advocates who consistently refer new customers to your online store. And they increase your average customer lifetime value. Considering all these benefits, it’s no wonder why e-tailers are looking to boost loyalty amongst their customer bases.

With 20% of your customer base driving 80% of your revenue, increasing your number of loyal customers will make a massive impact on your bottom line. Here are some powerful ecommerce tools that help improve long-term loyalty.

Improve Customer Service with Live Chat

Customer service is a core function of every ecommerce business, and it should be an area you aim to improve whenever there’s an opportunity. Your customers can provide valuable feedback about your products and their experiences shopping with your brand. It’s also more cost-effective to focus on retention rather than acquisition — up to 25 times more economical, in fact. In the long run, focusing on the customer has massive benefits for e-tailers.

So, how can you go about improving customer service? Consider adding live chat to your site. It’s quickly becoming the top choice of support channel with 41% of consumers preferring it to phone or email support. Shoppers love the convenience and immediacy of digital chat, which lets them skip the instrumental hold music of a phone call but still communicate with a human representative. Adding live chat to your site is as simple as installing a widget or plugin, and you’ll see a major return on investment.

Personalize Experiences with Artificial Intelligence

Personalization is the name of the game in ecommerce, where there are no face-to-face interactions like in a brick-and-mortar store. Today’s consumers are looking for a way to get that same recognition, and e-tailers are responding by curating personalized experiences. Everything from emails to product recommendations are tailored to each shopper, and the results are overwhelmingly positive. Eight in ten shoppers are more likely to buy from a brand that offers personalization, and 44% will become repeat buyers after having a curated experience.

Artificial intelligence will help you bring this ecommerce personalization to life and improve long-term loyalty. It’s a broad category that covers everything from chatbots to “smart” search results, and it’s already changing the game for e-tailers. There are plenty of tools available to personalize your customer journey and digital marketing, so do some research and determine what’s right for your business.

Boost Consumer Confidence with Returns Software

Purchasing from an online store always comes with a bit of risk because shoppers can’t touch or try out products before buying them. They have to rely on photos, descriptions and product reviews to get an idea of whether they want to make a purchase. Sometimes orders arrive damaged, or the e-tailer sends the wrong items altogether. Like we said, there’s a risk, especially when ordering from a brand for the first time.

E-tailers can assuage this consumer uneasiness by offering shoppers a forgiving returns policy and hassle-free process for sending items back. Studies have shown 58% of consumers want a “no questions asked” return policy, and a whopping 92% said they’d buy again if returns were easy. Thus, hassle-free returns are your key to long-term loyalty. The simplest way to revamp your returns system is with ecommerce returns software, which gives your customers an intuitive self-service portal and streamlines the back-end once returns are initiated. And everyone gets to breathe a sigh of relief knowing the days of jumping through hoops to return an order are behind them.

Stay Top-of-Mind with Retargeted Ads

How many times have you had a customer make one purchase and then never buy from your store again? If you have good prices and a solid email marketing strategy, it’s probably not your fault. With so many online stores on the market today, it’s easy for your brand to get lost in the noise — and buried in a shopper’s inbox. Instead, try retargeted ads to stay top-of-mind so consumers buy from your store next time they shop online.

Tools like the Facebook Pixel make it incredibly easy to set up retargeted ads. Once the code is added to your website, shoppers get served ads on social media platforms and on other sites they visit. Each ad is a subtle reminder to circle back to your online store, and it can turn one time purchasers into longtime customers. Research backs it up: ecommerce stores see a 128% increase in conversions from retargeting, as well as a 1046% jump in brand awareness.

Long-Term Loyalty Is Just a Few Tools Away!

Even the best e-tailers can use a little help from technology, especially if it helps them win over more shoppers and convert them to lifelong customers. Try these loyalty-boosting ecommerce tools in 2021 to supercharge your bottom line.

About ReadyCloud

ReadyCloud is a suite of connected systems designed to improve the way you work. Shipping, Returns, Growth Marketing and more are all connected through ReadyCloud for better communications from Admin to Operations. To learn more about how aACE+ ReadyCloud can help you accelerate your operations, check out our aACE+ ReadyCloud ReadyShipper video.

Learn how to set your business up for success this spring with our March webinars. Last month, we covered topics ranging from the basics of aACE to transactions and sales orders. Here's what we have in store for March:

Shipping and the aACE Pick App – March 2nd

Your customers depend on you to get them the right products at the right time. Learn how aACE streamlines the pick, pack, and ship process with our Pick App and shipping integrations, and take a sneak peek by checking out our feature highlight and demo video.

Templates, Campaigns, and Rate Cards – March 9th

Learn how to save time and prevent errors related to duplicate data entry with standardized orders, purchase orders, pricing, and more. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlights on rate cards and campaigns.

Production and the aACE Job Shop App – March 16th

Your production process has a lot of moving parts, and your business depends on keeping them all running smoothly. Learn how aACE can help save time and reduce data entry errors with our robust production tools, including the aACE Job Shop app. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight and demo video to get an advance look at the app.

Commissions – March 23rd

Discover how aACE's comprehensive commissions tools can help you incentivize your sales team and reward your affiliates for referring new business.

Made to Stock Inventory – March 30th

If you build products to stock according to anticipated consumer demand, this is the webinar for you. Learn how aACE handles MTS inventory from replenishment to cost application and beyond.

Register now to save your spot! We look forward to seeing you in our webinars and hearing your questions during the presentations.

In 2021, customer satisfaction is no longer just about great customer service: it’s about the entire customer experience. And just when we thought we may have had a handle on exactly what we need to do — and when and how — to improve our customer experiences, along came the pandemic of 2020 and everything we thought we knew went right out the window.

If you’re like most businesses, the coronavirus has changed just about everything that once felt normal. Your offices or facilities may be vacant or at minimal capacity. Your Monday morning water cooler chats may have been replaced by Slack messages and Zoom calls. Your brick-and-mortar storefront likely sees fewer customers, and you’re probably looking for more technology solutions to facilitate sales and transactions while giving your clients more contactless services and product delivery.

In the era of COVID-19, how can you deliver exceptional customer service and improve customer experiences when it’s increasingly challenging to engage face-to-face? How do you make customers feel important — even essential — to your success? If you’re not already using customer relationship management software, or you're not using your existing CRM solution to its fullest capabilities, you’re likely already setting yourself up for a big challenge. That’s because many businesses don’t understand exactly what a CRM is or what it can do for you. Because of that, it can be difficult to know which core features you should look for in a CRM.

What’s a CRM?

A CRM is a customer relationship management tool. It’s primarily a software solution that enables you to automate and manage a number of customer-related functions, from management of your customer database to the ability to create and deliver customer-specific marketing and sales information such as emails, website messaging, social media targeted, call reminders, meeting scheduling, and much more.

Why do you need a CRM?

A CRM can give you insight that’s difficult to achieve with spreadsheets, calendar reminders, sticky notes, and disparate word processing tools, email clients, and contact lists. Think of it as a one-stop shop for all of your customer data and engagement tracking.

CRM Features to Improve Customer Experiences

Here’s a quick look at an example of how you might use a CRM to manage a customer engagement, highlighting some of the key features your CRM should include:

• A potential customer sees a targeted ad on social media, clicks the ad, and goes to your website.
• If your CRM uses tracking codes, you can track the potential customer’s engagement from the ad to your website.
• If your CRM is integrated with the CMS for your website, you can even track your potential customer’s journey through your website. Which pages did the person view? How long did the person engage with your website?
• As the customer clicks through your site, you can use your CMS and CRM integration to deliver a user-specific pop-up message. Because this is the first time this customers’ IP has been logged on your website, you assume it’s a first visit so you can deliver a message featuring a special savings — 15% off the first purchase or services.
• To get the savings, all the person has to do is enter an email address.
• Hopefully at this point, because the potential customer wants that coupon, you’ll get a real email address. Your CRM can now associate that email address with the customer’s engagement as a potential lead.
• Now it’s time to nurture that lead. What will it take to move that customer from a few clicks on your website to a purchase?
• As the customer engages with you more, (opens emails, clicks links, returns to your website) you can use your CRM to gather more data. For example, you could have the person provide you with additional contact information, such as name, address, and phone number. All of this data can be stored within your CRM. If the person moves to a sale, and your CRM is integrated with your invoicing and accounting systems, you can even use that data to help speed up form-filling to ensure you’ve got the right data in the right place to complete everything you need from payment to shipping.
• If your CRM has a lead-scoring feature, you can have it automatically score that person’s engagement with your company along the buyer’s journey. For example, which web pages were viewed, which emails were opened, which links were clicked, which forms were filled out? With a lead score, you can gather more information about how likely it may be that this person will move from a lead to an actual sale.
• Let’s say a person scores high on your lead-scoring metrics. If your CRM has automated reminders and task-setting, you can send an email or text alert to someone on your team to reach out to the potential customer to facilitate the buyer from consideration to purchase.
• With CRM integration into your ecommerce site and point-of-sale solution, once the person makes a purchase, you can update the buyer’s information in your CMS system and then use it to provide customer support, like help desks or FAQs. You can also generate a new email campaign to move the customer to another purchase, upsell, or get feedback about the experience.

One of the great things about using these CRM features and the ability to track your customers’ experiences with your company is that you have insight that otherwise would be difficult to get. For example, you can see which email and marketing campaigns generate the most leads and which campaigns generate the most new customers. This will help you fine-tune your engagements for future scaling.

And if your CRM has reporting and analytics, you can access the data you need when you need it, using easy-to-understand dashboards that help you communicate success and gaps to your team and upward to senior leadership and other key stakeholders.

You can even share data from your CRM across multiple teams enabling cross-departmental collaboration, for example with your marketing and sales teams.

CRMs are also great because with their power of automation, you can always engage your customers when they come to you, no matter what time, day or night. And, you can ensure the messages you’re delivering to their needs are tailored so they have a unique and memorable customer experience.

Are you considering a new CRM for your company or do you think you could benefit from one that has more features to meet your needs?

Here are some other features you might want to consider:

• Can act as a document repository: One of the important components of collaboration and organizational culture is making sure everyone speaks the same language and shares the same message. A CRM is a great place to house and share customer-focused documents, for example, an FAQ or pricing list, so others on your team can access that data and share as needed.
• Enables forecasting: Earlier we mentioned the benefits of reporting and analytics, which are critical, but you may also benefit from a CRM solution that enables forecasting based on that data (and other data integrated into your CRM).
• Ease of use
• Has the features you need now and as you grow
• Has a simplified pricing model that clearly explains user limits, maintenance fees, upgrade costs, licensing, and more
• Security: Data is king and data is valuable. Threat actors know that and they’ll do what they can to get to your data, so ensuring your CRM meets all of your legal, regulatory, and compliance standards for data security and privacy is a must.

Interested in learning more about how a CRM can make your business more efficient? Register now to save your seat in one of our upcoming webinars!