Are you one of those people who thinks that your CRM is just a place for storing data? Well, we’re here to give you some inspiration! We sat down with our CRM consultant to share the 9 things most B2B companies aren’t doing with their CRM. Discover what you could be doing with your CRM data once you integrate it with your marketing automation platform…

Number #1: Create dynamic sales lists

You want your sales team to call website leads who are ready first, right? So use website lead scores as a field in CRM and create sales lists based on these scores or any other specific criteria you want to set. For example, we have one called ’20 point movers’. Sales know these leads are website active and more inclined to talk to someone, so they focus on this list first.

Number #2: Automate your email sends based on sales activity

Say your salesperson has tried to call a prospect three times and hasn’t got through every time they’ve tried. Did you know that you can set up your CRM so that they tick a box saying ‘tried to call, no response’ and an automatic email gets sent instead? Do this and save your salespeople some time on dead calls!

Number #3: Send hyper-targeted email campaigns

Dynamic content is not just about including first names from CRM anymore. With all the CRM data at your disposal, you can base your dynamic content on topics or products prospects have interacted with or what they’ve clicked in previous emails. Talk about hyper-personalised and targeted, huh?!

Number #4: See your full pipeline within your CRM

One of the single best parts about CRM integration is the ability to see your entire pipeline in one place, which stops those age old arguments between sales and marketing. Now, sales can see which emails their prospects have engaged with and marketing can see which leads have been successfully converted.

Number #5: Gain valuable customer insight

With all your marketing information being fed into your CRM, account managers will also be able to see who, which campaigns and when their customers have engaged with your marketing communications. Upsell opportunities, anyone?

Number #6: Segment your audiences

A lot of people engage with your marketing. Prospects, customers, partners, competitors. With a clear divide in your CRM for each group, you’ll be able to see which group responds to which marketing campaign in the easiest and most effective way. After all, you don’t want to call up a ‘lead’ and find out they were a customer!

Number #7: Track cross-channel marketing

Previously, managing all your marketing campaigns across emails, events and social was a nightmare to keep track of! But, once you integrate with your CRM you can get all your marketing activities reported back into one area. Making it easy to see historic customer buyer journeys, what works and what doesn’t.

Number #8: Forecast future campaigns

With marketing always changing, it can be hard to predict what will work. We’re not psychics after all. But with your click to close all being reported within CRM, you can use your historical CRM data to forecast trends and target future opportunities as accurately as humanely possible.

Number #9: See how many emails you are really sending

With multiple marketing campaigns running at once, it can be difficult to judge how many communications any one prospect or customer is getting at any one time. With everything reported back into your CRM, though, it’s easy to analyse if you are sending too many communications or the same message over and over again.

So, there you have it! Nine things you may not have known you could do once your marketing automation platform is integrated together. If you’re interested in seeing how CRM integration can actually improve results, find out what happened when Gamma integrated their NetSuite CRM with CommuniGator.

Better yet, why not take a look at the list of CRMs that we integrate with, can you see yours on the list?