The Merger of eMarketing & CRM – A Meaningful Integration – Part 2
When exploring eMarketing and CRM systems and integrations, here are a few more features and other important things to consider:
Analytics
More firms are finally starting to rely on metrics to help refine the content they send. The eMarketing system you select should have out-of-the-box reports for measuring the success of mailings and the quality of mailing lists, as well as identifying which individuals received, opened and clicked on an email. This information empowers system users to follow up personally with those contacts, which enhances opportunities for business development – and drives CRM adoption as an added benefit.
Bounce-backs
After a campaign, being able to identify and report on contacts with bad email addresses from within CRM is vital to data quality. Additionally, since bounced emails most likely will get suppressed from future mailings by your eMarketing system, it’s important to have a way to automatically remove those contacts from the suppression list when their email address is updated. Without a good integration between the two systems, this is impossible.
Automation
Some eMarketing systems have the ability to automatically send new related emails to a contact based on their reaction to previous emails they have been sent. But if you want to automatically send an email based on data in your CRM system, the eMarketing system must be able to access that data. Without a tight integration, your only option is to manually upload the data from CRM to eMarketing, which is time consuming and inefficient.
Event Management
The right eMarketing system, working in tandem with the CRM, can make event management easier and more effective. Once an invitation is created from a custom template, lists can be quickly and easily updated by professionals or assistants and then flow into the eMarketing system for distribution. The RSVPs then flow back to the CRM where they can be recorded and reported on. The eMarketing system will also automatically create activities in CRM to provide an ongoing history of touches with key contacts that can be analyzed to identify business development opportunities.
Don’t Do It Alone
Whether you’re evaluating an eMarketing or CRM system for the first time or re-evaluating your existing systems, CLIENTSFirst can help you select and implement the right products to provide value and return on your technology investments. We can also help you come up with a CRM and eMarketing success strategy and define efficient processes to streamline your marketing technology tasks.
Read “The Merger of eMarketing & CRM – A Meaningful Integration – Part 1”
For more than 15 years, the team at CLIENTSFirst Consulting has been helping professional services firms and other organizations successfully select and implement CRM and eMarketing systems to maximize value, adoption and return on investment. If you need help achieving CRM Success, please contact us at 404-249-9914 or Info@ClientsFirstConsulting.com.
