Marketing leaders are exploring opportunities to deliver better customer relationship management (CRM). Businesses need a data-driven strategic partnership to improve the organization’s bottom line.
Enterprises that design and enforce CRM optimization strategies to get a competitive edge. Businesses can monitor the sales funnel through pipeline management tools to optimize CRM.
The organization’s sales funnel starts with the marketing departments. Businesses need to optimize the entire customer lifecycle to enhance the CRM processes. It is crucial to monitor the sales funnel from the user being a lead, becoming a prospect, and converting them into customers.
Many marketing leaders struggle to implement an effective CRM optimization strategy. In this article, let’s explore the best strategies to optimize CRM.
Best Strategies to Optimize Customer Relationship Management Practices
Following are a few ways that CMOs can consider making their CRM practices better:
Keep the Customer Information Updated Real-time
The success of a CRM solution will depend on the quality and accuracy of the data fed into the system. The success will also depend on how updated the customer data is.
For instance, if the changed information of the client’s company or contact details are not updated. In such cases, the marketing campaign might be less effective.
Hence, organizations must ensure that all the customer data gets updated in real-time.
This approach helps the revenue operations team to have accurate client information. Keeping the customer information updated helps to make strategic changes to the sales approach. Additionally, it is one of the most effective ways to optimize CRM.
Analyze Purchase History to Identify Upselling Opportunities
Upselling to the current customer base is much simpler than acquiring new customers. Businesses can boost their sales performance by optimizing their CRM. Decision-makers can evaluate the current customers buying history to identify their purchase patterns.
CMOs can design and enforce a marketing plan to upsell to existing customers. For instance, a client recently bought a product from the brand. They can upsell the additional services that come along with the product.
Businesses can customize their CRM code to identify such opportunities and close them. This CRM optimization strategy is effective in increasing the profit margin. Furthermore, it also helps to streamline the client’s processes and facilitates repeat business.
Automate The CRM Processes
The majority of CRM-related tasks are tedious and monotonous. Business leaders can automate manual tasks like data entry to optimize CRM processes. RevOps teams must make the most out of workflow automation capabilities in CRM apps.
Automating multiple CRM touchpoints will reduce tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming functions.
CMOs can customize a CRM that automatically sends welcome emails once the lead adds to the system. Automatically drafting and sending follow-up emails will help to achieve CRM optimization.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are available to draft emails automatically. Business leaders can integrate generative AI tools into their CRM solutions. It is an effective approach to enhance the customer experience.
Following are a few workflow automation that CMOs can consider to optimize CRM:
- Developing an email list
- Scraping customer data
- Lead magnet sending
- Customer grievance FAQs
- Welcome emails or messages
- Customer onboarding emails and steps
- Follow-up email on an abandoned shopping cart
Make Strategic Data-Driven Changes Based on Analytics
The CRM tools integrated with AI and machine learning can evaluate customer trends & behavior.
For instance, there is a surge in demand for particular products and services during a season. Business owners can identify such trends to stay prepared for demand fluctuations.
Additionally, CMOs need to utilize the CRM tool to evaluate the performance of email campaigns. If a particular email campaign yields better results, businesses can use CRM to understand the reason behind the success.
Businesses can use this valuable information and replicate them in other email campaigns.
It is crucial to use customer data to change the customer interaction approach.
RevOps teams can suggest products based on the client’s needs and preferences for higher conversion. Enterprises need to make the most out of customer data to optimize their CRM strategies. Organizations that fail to do so will have restricted growth opportunities.
Seamlessly Integrate CRM with Other Enterprise Tools
Seamlessly integrating CRM with the other enterprise tech stack tools is essential. Incorporating CRM with other tools like accounting software will make it more powerful. It will enable the organization to collate customer and financial data. This approach will reduce the need to enter data manually and offer insightful customer reports.
Ensure Accessible CRM Support
Businesses must integrate a CRM solution that offers 24/7 support.
Once the businesses integrate CRM, their entire business operations rely on the tool. The entire business operations will suffer if the system glitches or has downtime. Hence, selecting a vendor with reliable after-sales support is crucial to optimize CRM practices.
Another factor to consider is that the CRM vendor should ensure data security. Furthermore, they should also update the software constantly to fix bugs. CRM vendors should also train resources on using complex CRM functionalities. This step is essential to optimize CRM tools’ use and functionalities.
It would need active participation from resources, stakeholders & vendors to achieve CRM optimization. Businesses that want a happy customer base must implement the right CRM tools that add value.
Personalize the Sales Funnel
Most CRM solutions offer a template funnel setup. It usually segments leads based on research, interest, negotiation, conversion, or deal lost phase.
However, sales funnels might differ from this and will be more complex. In the B2C industry, the sales cycle will be shorter and less intricate. In a B2B landscape, Sales cycles are longer, intricate, and more decision-makers get involved.
Hence, it is crucial to customize the organization’s sales funnel based on their needs. Businesses need a shorter sales cycle, but they cannot skip on necessary steps to optimize CRM.
Also Read: Must-Have CRM Integrations
Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
All the CRM optimization efforts will be in vain without setting the right KPIs. Businesses must better understand their goals before they embark on a journey to optimize CRM. Setting KPIs will help to track the CRM optimization goals and the results. Businesses can monitor the following metrics including:
- Number of leads,
- Number of closed sales,
- Number of customer grievance tickets,
Businesses can make strategic decisions to optimize CRM workflows based on the results.
Integrating a CRM platform can offer tremendous benefits to any organization. Many organizations have a CRM integrated into their MarTech stack but cannot make the most of it. Businesses need to have the best strategies to optimize the use of their CRM. Decision-makers can consider this guide to achieve CRM optimization in their organization.
