5 Integrations for Your CRM to Get a 360-Degree View of Your Customers

5 Integrations for Your CRM to Get a 360-Degree View of Your Customers

Customer relationship management software is becoming a hot commodity. A decade ago, CRMs were in their infant stages. Now, they're mainstream.

The industry is experiencing rapid growth, with experts estimating the value of the industry at $40 million in 2017.

What's the purpose of a CRM?

These complex sales tools have a simple purpose: help brands maintain solid relationships with customers to sell more products. CRMs have the ability to track customer movements, collect and store data, attach information to individual customers or segments, and present data in a meaningful way.

A CRM helps you understand who your customers are, what they're buying, and when. Armed with specific data like this, you can drive marketing and product decisions. Essentially, a CRM can provide the insights that brands need to make wise business moves without guessing or making assumptions.

Aside from arming brands with amazing data, CRMs allow you to integrate the tools that you use everyday to streamline your marketing and customer interactions.

The CRM itself is powerful, but when integrate it with the individual pieces of software that you use regularly; you'll create a system that gives you a 360-degree view of your customers along with avenues to communicate with them.

1. Email marketing tools

The majority of brands rely on email marketing to reach customers. Email marketing is cost effective and is a widely accepted form of communication.

Fortunately, most CRMs give you the ability to integrate your email service provider with your system.

When you sync your email marketing platform, all of the data that you collect will flow right into your CRM. For instance, when you deploy email sign up forms on your website, your new contacts will go right into your CRM.

Many email marketers use data collection tactics to learn how to send more personalized messages, which can be used on a broad scale once it's in the CRM for everyone to access.

Tools to consider for integration:

Look for a CRM that integrates with popular email platforms like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor.

2. Lead generation tools

Generating solid leads is often the lifeblood of a company. Companies spend a lot of time trying to identify potential customers and then work to develop a relationship that encourages the customers to buy your product or service.

It's a delicate, time-consuming process.

Back in the day, sales people would go door to door trying to build relationships with local business owners in hopes of selling a product. But, lead generation has come a long way in the digital era. Now, there are a number of tools that can help brands find people that are interested in their product on a global scale.

Having lead generation tools integrated with your CRM will improve your sales process and keep the sales team busy working qualified leads.

Tools to consider for integration:

Tools like Leedfeeder, which reveals the names of companies that visit our website via Google Analytics, and Lusha, a tool that scours the web for personal contact information that you can use to reach prospective clients and build strong profiles in your CRM, are both good choices.

3. Document management

Stop email documents from person to person and integrate your CRM with document management software.

It has a great impact for the sales team as they can create quotes in the CRM, share them with the client, and move the prospect through the funnel that's set up in the system.

You can pull contact names into your documents, collect email signatures, and store everything in one place.

Tools to consider for integration:

Two popular integrations that make document management a breeze are Pandadoc and WebMerge.

4. Customer support

When a customer reaches out with a question, needs technical support, or just wants to sing your praises, it's important to track this kind of communication and the support your company provides for it.

By adding a customer support integration to your CRM you can track customer problems, tag different coworkers in a conversation to get immediate help, and automate a follow-up email to make sure the customer's problem is solved.

Tools to consider for integration:

Zendesk is a popular customer service platform known for helping companies manage inquiries. ServiceCloud is a good option too, which lets you communicate with customers via email, text, phone or live support.

5. Accounting

Accounting is a process. From managing inventory to generating purchase orders, the list of accounting chores is always long.

That's why it's important to integrate your accounting software with your CRM. Rather than having a sales rep call the finance department to place an order, why not let the sales rep do it from their laptop in the field? The process becomes a lot easier with CRM integration.

Tools to consider for integration:

Everyone has a favorite when it comes to accounting tools, but Quickbooks and Sage are popular choices.

Whether you're looking for a new CRM or want to upgrade your current system, these five integrations are vital to your customer relationships.


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