CRM
To grow with Growth Hacking you must have a creative mind and be able to use conventional marketing tools in unconventional ways. CRM, for example, can be a key to the process of experimentation behind growth hacking. How? We find out in this article. Growth hacking is a method used by start-ups to grow quickly and exponentially. A concentrated timespan and a low-budget approach encourage entrepreneurs to use this method, which was first proposed by Sean Ellis in 2010 and is now widely used by companies both large and small. The growth hacking method is based on experimentation and analysis of performance: this allows a business to limit the budget required to get going and accelerate growth. Another important element of this method is unconventional use of classic digital marketing techniques (email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, etc…) and tools (erp, crm, cdp, etc…). But what does “unconventional” mean?…
Your business data is the lifeblood that runs through your organization. It powers automated workflows, gives customer service reps the full story every time the phone rings, and informs decision-making. Even small businesses can benefit from the rise of big data by optimizing their organization’s data and creating processes to put it to work. According to Experian, eight in ten businesses believe data is one of their most valuable assets. When your business data is reliable and accurate, it’s smooth sailing. But when errors, duplicates, and question marks surface… it’s not so pretty. When you can’t trust your business data, problems quickly arise and multiply in every area of your organization. Businesses lose as much as 20% of revenue due to poor data quality, shares Kissmetrics. Back in 2013, HBR also talked about the ripple effect of unreliable data as part of “Data’s Credibility Problem”: “When data are unreliable, managers…
Proper contact management is essential to keep your business productive and organized. But while technology offers countless solutions to effectively manage contacts at scale, without good processes your contacts can get messy very quickly. Without proper planning, centralized administration, and automated syncing, contacts end up being spread across multiple email accounts and other databases. When your contact management processes break down, some team members may be tempted to go back to paper or DIY solutions, noting down contacts on sticky notes where they inevitably end up getting lost or mislaid. With the extra work required to find the right data and tidy things up, it’s not a recipe for productivity for anyone. Fortunately, with the optimal blend of process and technology, you can improve access to this mission-critical information across the board. Here are five tips to improve your organization’s contact management systems for the smoothest operations, productivity, and reliability.…
Old email addresses, duplicate contacts, misspelled names… these are the bane of your marketing and sales efforts. After all, your CRM and marketing tools are only as strong as the data you’ve got in them. If you have poor-quality data in your databases, you’re setting up to fail in your sales and marketing initiatives. Your customer data is the most valuable asset your organization has, so it’s important to ensure it’s serving your business’ bottom line as much as possible. A solid data quality strategy will not only save you hours of janitorial work, but it makes sure your data is trustworthy – which means that any insights you gain from this data are much more accurate and useful for your business. So, to help you figure out how to have the best possible contact data in your business databases, we’ve put together four tips to clean up your data.…
As a small business or startup, you’ve got a lot on your to-do list: increasing awareness of your brand, converting leads into customers, and supporting customers post-sale. And, of course, there’s all the admin behind the scenes. A big part of that is contact management. To enable your small business to grow successfully and sustainably, you need to have a strong contact management strategy in place. But what does this mean, and how can you get it right? What is contact management? Contact management is how you look after all of the contact data in your business, including contacts’ details, communication preferences, sales history, and customer interactions with your company. It enables every team in your organization to have the information they need to stay productive and have the context they need to deliver personalized interactions. Your contacts may include: Leads (or people who are in your pipeline but haven’t…
Salesforce CRM was originally built to meet the needs of enterprises and large businesses. It’s not surprising, then, that it can feel pretty overwhelming for the little guys. When I was working for what I’d call a small-to-medium-sized company in Barcelona, we had a dedicated Salesforce expert on the team to help the salespeople with Pardot, Salesforce’s marketing automation solution. And this isn’t uncommon. As such a prolific CRM tool, Salesforce offers its ‘Trailblazers’ (customers) the opportunity to become certified Salesforce consultants, administrators, marketers, etc., in order to help businesses get started. But, one has to ask, would it not just be simpler to design a more user-friendly tool, like many of the Salesforce competitors have done? In this detailed exploration into all that Salesforce has to offer, and where its competitors do it better, you’ll be introduced to some excellent Salesforce alternatives for your business. So let’s get stuck…
Salesforce has more products than any other SaaS application I know, so it’s no wonder this company dominates the CRM market. Launched in 1999 in San Francisco by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, together with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. Back in the day, Siebel (which now belongs to Oracle) was the big name among CRMs, however, they failed to innovate and adopt cloud computing. This propelled Salesforce’s growth, which has since skyrocketed to where it is today, becoming one of the most well-known SaaS applications, and more specifically, CRM tools. Let’s dig into the data to find out just how big it is, and who its strongest competitors are. What is Salesforce’s Market Share? Salesforce has a variety of products and services, which all together make up 19.8% of the customer relationship management market share [source]. That’s not anything to be sneered at by any means! In…
Whether you’re a solopreneur or a small business, the likelihood is you have to manage a number of clients and all that relates to them (invoices, emails, orders, contracts, etc.). This can get messy quickly, especially if you have to share this information with other members of your team. Don’t get me wrong, I love the old pen and post-it combo, but there comes a time when one needs a little more organization in one’s life! And that is exactly what a good customer relationship management (CRM) software can offer you. It might not sound very exciting, but you’ll be surprised just how dynamic these tools can be, with colorful drag and drop pipelines and notifications of ‘hot’ leads. In fact, the days of boring gray databases are buried in the past (together with Nokia phones, Windows Vista and dial-up modems). And what’s more, you can now get access to…
Despite HubSpot’s popularity, many people are looking for an alternative solution. And though the Free CRM plan is very appealing, the price tags attached to its paid plans aren’t so attractive for small businesses. But what about ActiveCampaign? How do its prices compare to HubSpot’s and what features does it offer? We’re going to look at all of this and more in this ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot comparison. What’s the Main Difference Between ActiveCampaign and HubSpot? ActiveCampaign is a Chicago-based marketing automation tool primarily targeted towards email marketers, whereas HubSpot offers various ‘hubs’ for sales, marketing and customer service teams. This myriad of features makes it a slightly more diverse product, however, you won’t actually have access to its expansive collection of features unless you put up the cash. Instead, most opt for a single hub or discounted bundle (note that this comes with a 12-month commitment). Though ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer the same kind of…