Increase your CRM maturity: 5 benefits of having automated marketing campaigns.

More and more companies use automated marketing processes. This is not surprising when considering that employees who work in a marketing department will devote 16hrs/week performing repetitive tasks. Automating these actions will make the company gain some precious time. A potential client has subscribed to your newsletter? Your CRM will immediately send them an email! Not bad, right? But is automation as profitable an investment as we make it seem? It all depends on how you do it. When combined with an effective marketing strategy, automation is the most powerful tool to help you achieve your sales objectives. Continuing our series on practices that improve the CRM maturity of your business processes (customer service, sales, etc.), this third article will provide 5 benefits of using automation to optimize the management of your marketing campaigns.

1. Increase efficiency by automating your campaigns

Imagine how it could be if your marketing team spent less time on repetitive activities such as answering the same questions. This can become a reality if you identify the triggers that motivate your prospects and use them as a foundation to plan your automated actions. When should you follow up with a customer who has not yet opened your email and what should be the next step for the customer who has opened it?➤ The combination of a good campaign plan and automation, will make you more efficient and enable you to:

• Customize when an email should be sent and what its content should be according to the profile of each customer.
• Decrease how much you depend on the availability of your team
• Increase the quantity of emails sent and the number of recipients
• Reduce low value-added time dedicated to repetitive send outs

2. Strike while the triggers of your prospects still have value

A prospect has visited your web page, clicked on one of your email links or has shared your video on social media? Strike while the iron is still hot! The value of these triggers will be different depending on if they happened now or a month ago. Companies that reach out to potential clients within one hour of the interactions are 7 times more likely to convert them into qualified prospects.➤ By automating your campaigns, you will enable your CRM to:

• Match the message to the current interests of your prospect rather than having a random answer.
• Follow up with your prospects the moment they show interest in you.
• Identify the people who trigger your mailings by using demographic criteria (e.g. so that your employees do not receive a response after being on your website)
• Add restrictions so that the same prospect does not receive several emails or text messages on the same day

According to a survey done in 2011 with the participation of over 2000 American companies, most companies waited for more than 24hrs before responding to their prospects.[/caption]

3. Learn to better prioritize your prospects (4 times more qualified prospects)

Prioritizing prospects according to their degree of maturity, requires planning and follow-ups. Automation makes it possible for your CRM to process some of these interactions. More importantly, you will get better results! Companies that automate their processes would get 451% more qualified leads. ➤ With automation you can:

• Assign scores to your prospects, according to their behaviour on your different touch points (pages visited on the website, social networks, emails, text messages, etc.)
• Better assess your chances of closing each opportunity
• Know where to put your efforts and optimize your rate for winning opportunities

4. Customer experience no longer varies according to the number of visitors

Has there ever been a time when your friend who usually replies instantly to your text messages, did not reply after 48 hours? You might have felt worried or annoyed, avoid putting your prospects and customers in this situation. Different response times can make your customers feel insecure.➤ Implementing automation to your CRM will allow you to:

• Monitor delays according to each stage of your sales cycle
• Accustom your prospects and customers to a standard time frame that allows them to predict the progress of their customer journey with your company.

5. Better measure your results to continuously optimize your processes

How do you identify the most successful actions of your campaign? Your CRM cannot measure this for you on its own. But by integrating automation into your CRM, you will increase your data and better distinguish between strategies that have proven effective and those that need to be rectified.➤ With this measurement tool you can:

• Adjust your strategy continuously
• Optimize your processes according to the evolution of your results.

Marketing automation and the evolution of the 5 CRM maturity stages[/caption]Remember to evaluate your CRM maturity level before launching automation. Whether you are implementing a self-service portal or perfecting your pipeline management, taking short cuts and skipping steps to move forward will jeopardize the success of your implementation. Want to know more about automating your marketing processes? Do not hesitate to contact one of our experts, who can provide you with personalized advice. Please note, this article is a more detailed article made to complete to our online tools that help you identify the stage of CRM maturity reached by your company. If you have not already done so, refer to our 5-step maturity matrix and measure the progress of the different types of processes in your company.