As your business grows, keeping track of your prospect and client data across multiple tools and spreadsheets becomes an impossible task. This is not only time consuming, but also allows for important data to slip through the cracks, leaving both your customers and your team disappointed.
A CRM is more than just a digital filing cabinet, it’s a way for you to access, understand and monetise your customer data, painting a true picture of possibilities and assisting you in making effective business decisions.
The data gold rush
Data on its own is useless. For data to be effective, it needs to be collected, stored and harnessed in such a way that it becomes valuable with minimal maintenance. For example, having all the names of anybody showing interest in your business over the last eighteen months can be helpful. But how about knowing who was just browsing, who is ready to buy, or even who is ready to buy AND checked two or three other boxes critical for making a sale?
By better understanding your data and working smart, you can ensure the right messaging gets to the right people at the right time without labour-intensive or prospect-annoying processes. Targeting has also become more sophisticated, meaning that ads are now less interruptive and more informative — so sophisticated, in fact, that we now take for granted the quality of the ads we get served in our Instagram feeds and YouTube videos.
The old ways don’t work anymore
Contemporary digital marketing has changed from its first inception 20 years ago. GDPR, privacy, savvy prospects, and even huge corporations like Apple redefining data mining have all had a profound impact.
Sound familiar?
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Buying data lists |
Mass email sends with misspelt names |
Cold calls without consent |
Spam SMS messages from random numbers |
You probably even still see some of them, and we're not talking about the occasional ‘Hi {first name}’ greeting mistake every marketer dreads sending. We’re talking about the data-scraping, privacy-invading, industry-shaming practices that gave us all a bad name.
Any company relying on these practices today would seem ancient by comparison, but the uncomfortable truth is many businesses STILL market like this.
But why?
In most cases, companies are so excited to get their message out there, they forget the blend of science and craft that comes together to create great marketing. They forget they sit on a goldmine of prospect data offering powerful insights into behaviour, predilections and desire.
Say hello to the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
A CRM is a system that holds the data of your customer. It can be as simple as a spreadsheet or as powerful as a constantly evolving AI single source of truth. And when used correctly, a CRM has the power to drive more revenue and delight prospects at every stage of the buying journey.
Leveraging your CRM for experience-driven marketing
The marketers who get ahead today are hyper-focused on the customer experience, putting their customers at the centre of everything they do.
Leveraging your CRM is the secret to experience-driven marketing. Experience-driven marketing isn't just a buzzword -- it's your secret to growth. Forrester Research found that companies who said they were focused on experience grew 40% faster and increased customer lifetime value by more than 60% versus those who weren't.
Very few marketers have all of their tools and tactics tightly integrated into a CRM -- which often leads to disjointed customer experiences, siloed data, and an inability to know what's working.
This is why HubSpot is investing so much effort in tightly integrating HubSpot's Marketing Hub with the CRM -- to give your team a unified view of the customer experience, which allows you to create truly personalised experiences across all channels, and to help you properly measure your success as a marketer.
How Huble Digital can help create your customer experience programme
All of this can be a lot to take on, but it’s the essential difference between delivering a good experience for your customers and guaranteeing an outstanding one.
Get in touch with our team to explore your needs and get a personalised quote, or find out more about our HubSpot Marketing Hub Onboarding here.
