Beginners Guide To Marketing Automation & CRM

While CRM systems and marketing automation relate and complement each other, they do have their differences and I’m going to give you a complete guide as to what they are.

I have been asked this question many times and so I think it is time to put it down in writing for all to see.

I am going to go through everything including what each of them is, the differences between them, their goals and their benefits.

By the end of this article, you will be able to understand better which one your business could greatly benefit.

What Are They?

To be able to determine whether your business can benefit from a CRM system, marketing automation or both, you need to understand what each of them is.

Marketing automation is a newer concept than CRM and there is still a lot of confusion as to how the two differentiate from each other.

The heart and soul of both of these are for you to be able to manage better your client relationships and will give you deeper insights into your sales funnel.

Let’s go into each one in a bit more detail.

CRM

Image Source: ZOHO

CRMs, otherwise known as customer relationship manager systems started to grow when businesses realised just how much information they can gather from clients.

This information can be entered into a CRM system to trigger them notifications for follow-up phone calls with prospects, schedule quarterly meetings with clients and to stay in regular contact with prospects and clients.

These notifications will help your sales team and customer relationship team stop leaks from your sales funnel by managing the workflow better.

There are many features with CRM systems including sales and client relationship management, lead scoring so as not to waste time on unqualified leads, task tracking so as to not miss proposals or reporting deadlines and many more.

Marketing Automation

Image Source: Marketo

Marketing automation grew when online businesses realised the great detail in information that can be collected from landings pages and lead capture forms.

Information such as birthdays, recent purchases and content they’re interested in can help us send personalised and automated emails to our clients.

Gathering this information and managing it would traditionally be very time-consuming but marketing automation allows for this process to be fully automated by using your online marketing efforts to combine with your marketing automation system.

Having marketing automation will customise communications with prospects based on their behaviours as seen in the below image.

Surface Level Differences

Upon first glance at the two systems, you can certainly see the similarities and surface level differences; however it doesn’t fully tell us the purpose of each system and their benefits.

I will carry on going into further details into the goals and benefits but for now, I want to give you an idea of how they both look from different viewpoints.

Overall Business Viewpoint

From an overall business point of view, CRM systems are great for managing relationships with existing clients as well building relationships with prospects in your sales funnel.

On the other hand, marketing automation is great for making one-on-one communication with prospects in the early stages of the sales funnel and for determining which leads are qualified.

As you can see, both systems are useful for different stages of the sales funnel; from scoring them when leads first enter the funnel so time can be better spent on qualified leads to managing client relationships to retain their customer.

Sales and Marketing Viewpoint

From a sales point of view, the CRM system is more suitable as it helps them stay on top of prospect communication and continue to build relationships with existing clients to reduce the churn rate.

From a marketing point of view, marketing automation is more suitable as it helps them tailor their marketing messages in order to determine which leads are prospects to pass through to the sales team.

As you can see, both of these systems can work in perfect harmony and keep communications between your marketing team and sales team clear and consistent.

This can result in a more effective and efficient sales funnel.

Technical Viewpoint

From a technical point of view, a CRM is more of a database that holds the information you have gathered from your clients and sends your sales team notifications to contact prospects or clients for the sales team to execute.

With marketing automation, however, the system itself performs the communication while the marketing team feeds it information and rules.

It can also hold information about prospects but mainly how they engage with the emails, you send them.

The two systems are similar but you can see that they both have their differences in their purpose that I will go into more detail now.

Their Goals

Now that we have had a look at the different viewpoints from your business, it is time to look at the viewpoint of the CRM and marketing automation systems themselves to find out what their goals are.

Knowing this will help you sync these objectives with your business goals.

CRM

The goal of a CRM system is to help client relationship managers keep track of their communications with clients and target opportunities that will keep clients with them for longer.

It was also designed to help the sales team keep track of their prospect communication so they can thoroughly nurture prospects into paying customers.

Overall, the system is there to free up time otherwise spent doing administration tasks so your sales and client relationship teams can be more efficient.

Having a CRM system in place can also give you great insights into how your sales and client relationship teams are performing; what is the loss rate and win rate?

How long does it take for a prospect to become a paying client?

If you know exactly which stages in the sales funnel are losing sales, you will be able to plug that leak more quickly.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is a communication platform that makes the lead nurturing process more efficient by automating personalised emails to qualified leads.

Think of it as sending one-to-one emails but in bulk.

You may be thinking what the difference between email marketing is and marketing automation?

Marketing automation is behavioural, where as email marketing is just sending campaigns to your list.

Make sense?

When you send mass emails to your email list, it is usually with the same message.

With marketing automation, the content of emails sent to your email list will depend on their behaviour.

This is the best solution for the middle stages of your sales funnel to nurture better leads into prospects.

The sales team that those prospects are then sent to will have a history of behaviour insights to better understand how to convert prospects into paying clients.

Their Benefits

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of the differences between CRM systems and marketing automation and their goals.

To put it bluntly, though; CRM is mainly for the sales team and marketing automation is mainly for the marketing team.

They can, however, complement each other to create a seamless sales funnel.

Salesforce, a CRM provider, says it is “a strategy for managing all your company’s interactions with current and prospective customers”.

While Marketo, a marketing automation provider says it “allows companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows”.

Let’s take a closer look into the specific benefits of these two very clever systems.

CRM

Some of the main benefits of having a CRM system in place are:

1. You and your sales team can clearly see which stages prospects are at in the sales funnel that can help your sales team close deals.
2. Having a history of communication with prospects will help your sales team alter communication methods and target pain points to each prospect.
3. Having a history of communication from paying clients can help your client relationship team build stronger relationships with clients to boost retention rates.
4. Both your sales team and client relationship team will never forget about prospects and clients with notifications to call.

Marketing Automation

Some of the benefits of having a marketing automation system in place include:

1. Your marketing team will be able to segment easily email lists based on behaviours, interests, purchases and more.
2. More of an efficient and effective lead nurturing process with personalised emails being sent to contacts based on triggers when they are most engaged with your brand.
3. Detailed insights into how leads engage with your emails for your marketing team to score which leads qualify as prospects.

Which One to Choose

Infographic Source: Pardot

Asking what are the differences between CRM and marketing automation is like asking what is different between your sales team and marketing team.

These two systems have different purposes, goals and benefits and complement different stages of your sales funnel.

For this reason, consider having both systems in place to create a sales funnel that is streamlined.

Do you need help determining which system will most help your sales funnel at this current time?

Let me know by leaving your comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them all.