Tag: Marketing CRM

Best Small Business CRM ConvergeHub- The #1 CRM for SMB

Though CRM solutions plies on their bells and whistles for attracting customers, in reality, there are a few core functionalities that all best CRM features, which have the most impact on your business. Therefore, while you examine your possible options for adopting a CRM, focusing on these features can prevent you from getting distracted by functionalities, which in spite of appearing interesting or even promising, will not be able to do the CRM assisted heavy-lifting tasks that your business needs now

 Though easy to use CRM solutions plies on their bells and whistles for attracting customers, in reality, there are a few core functionalities that all best CRM features, which have the most impact on your business.

Therefore, while you examine your possible options for adopting the best Small Business CRM, focusing on these features can prevent you from getting distracted by functionalities, which in spite of appearing interesting or even promising, will not be able to do the CRM assisted heavy-lifting tasks that your business needs now.

What is CRM?

ConvergeHub defines CRM as “Another way of illustrating the various functions of CRM software and what it can do for an organization is based on the following parameters, which includes features related to Sales, Marketing, Service Management applications, and Collaborations with Partners”.

 It provides organizations with necessary customer data, so that businesses can provide products and services that the customers want, provide effective cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, retain present customers, close deals, and ultimately better understand who their customers are.

Why we need easy to use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software?

A easy to use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is the heart of every business. Best Small Business CRM software adoption allows organizations to gain business and customer intelligence with the aim of improving overall productivity and customer satisfaction.
This customer relationship building system also helps businesses to automate day-to-day mundane tasks and time-consuming processes, while improving communication and visibility across an organization.

Therefore, if your company does not have a CRM system yet in place, it might be a good time for you to start looking for one, which has all the best CRM for small business features in it.

How best small business CRM helps business?

The wealth of main benefits that most easy to use CRM system offers are:

  • CRM Sales Automation
  • CRM Marketing Automation
  • Ticketing and Support CRM Features
  • Social CRM Integration
  • Mobility and Field Service

What can a easy to use CRM do for an organization?

Another way of illustrating the various functions of CRM software and what it can do for an organization is based on the following parameters, which includes features related to Sales, Marketing, Service Management applications, and Collaborations with Partners.


It provides organizations with necessary customer data, so that businesses can provide products and services that the customers want, provide effective cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, retain present customers, close deals, and ultimately better understand who their customers are.

According to CRM expert and principal consultant at Third Idea Consulting Marshall Lager:

“Taken as a whole, these features are the core of what CRM is about,” he said. “Without them working together, an organization will wind up with siloed customer information, which is precisely what CRM is meant to prevent. They’re what you need to have a complete view of your customers”.

So, here we detail the features to consider when you are selecting a easy to use CRM application, one after another.

How best small business CRM works?

Briefly the bottom line of Customer Relationship Marketing workflow is:

1. Start marketing activities

Run Campaigns
Generate Leads
Create a database

2. Develop sales

Assign Leads
Qualify Leads
Convert Leads
Track New Opportunities

3. Schedule dispatch of orders

Deliver Products
Create Billing and Invoices

4. Extend support

Provide Service
Manage Cases
Conduct Training
Build up the Knowledge Base

Best CRM features related to Sales

Empower your sales team with Salesforce Automation software. SFA automates the repetitive tasks, which are associated with selling that in turn enables your sales personals to concentrate more on the act of closing their deals. Converged CRM like ConvergeHub also provides a 360-degree view of your valuable leads and customers, which provides your sales reps with precise selling and customer insights. Features like customized Dashboard along with Account, Contact and Deal Management enables the sales team to visualize all information from one application platform.

Dashboard

The dashboard helps you to get real-time snapshots of all your key metrics. It helps your sales managers to understand the latest developments in their sales operations from four different panels:

  • Deals By Expected Close Date
  • Leads By Source
  • Lead Acquisition
  • Deal Acquisition

Customizing the required setting of each panel helps the sales team to get a dynamic view as per their individual needs. For example, clicking on the Summary side panel on the ConvergeHub CRM window also helps in visualizing the sales pipeline at its various stages, like the updated data of the leads, contact, account, and deals.

Many also like ConvergeHub, as users of this CRM can experience easy navigation, which aids in visiting all the important sections in the CRM, through the links, which are present on the dashboard itself.

Account Management Module

Using ConvergeHub CRM’s account management software module, you can enable your sales reps to collectively manage, share, and collaborate with accounts. Being a cloud based CRM system sales reps can also authorize others to access a complete history of each individual accounts from one common database repository.

You can also add comments, attach files, schedule events, create tasks, and pin notes to the accounts.

ConvergeHub allows you to reach out to your accounts through phone, FAX, email, and SMS.

Refer to all your past deals of the accounts to understand their historical buying patterns, which increase the up-selling and cross-selling opportunities apart from setting up loyalty programs for your present customers.

Contact Management Module

ConvergeHub allows you to add contacts from third party sources using Developer API and Import tool to experience an easy and powerful means to store all your business contacts in a shared and centralized cloud database.

You can also use Microsoft Outlook plug-in to import contact into ConvergeHub or export it to Excel and PDF format.

Allowing your sales team to get a summary of all the communications happened between the customers and your company helps to improve customer service of your brand and organization.

You can also customize the contact management module in ConvergeHub easy to use CRM as per your organization-specific sales processes, which is just another best CRM feature of ConvergeHub.

Deals Management Module

The deals management module in this #1 CRM  for SMB, helps to manage and store comprehensive information about deals and leads that are converted or to be converted, providing a detailed outlook about every single deal through fields like:

-Account name

-Assigned to

-Lead source

-Sales process

-Sales stage

-Deal value

-Deal type

-Expected closing date

-Conversion probability etc.

You can also associate the deals module with contact, accounts, activities, and other modules that will help your sales reps to close more deals and gain further insights into improving future ones.

Best CRM features related to Marketing

While easy to use CRM systems transform sales, marketing-automation completes the storyline by generating leads and managing lead engagements.

According to Matt Heinz, “World-class sales and marketing organizations need both teams to succeed and scale.”

Automated Campaigns

ConvergeHub CRM helps marketers to accomplish smarter decisions with exact information about their customers and prospects, at their fingertips. Increase your marketing ROI by building and running automated campaigns across several channels like email, mobile, Web, and social media to increase footfall and harvest more leads.

As one of the best CRM for  SMB organizations measure your campaign results, mark the fruitful ones and rectify the areas that need improvements.  ConvergeHub also features real-time visibility of all marketing performances with customizable and packaged reports.

ConvergeHub helps you to track campaign results through different fields like:

-Total Sent / Attempted

-Opened / Viewed

-Link clicked

-Unsubscribed

-Bounce / Invalid

You can also find extremely visual and content rich reports of your marketing campaigns on established user roles in Line, Pie, and Bar charts, for quick analysis of your marketing skills.

Create Email Templates

Content specific email marketing templates play a vital role in improving the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. ConvergeHub offers you predefined email templates in 6 different categories like:

-My Templates

-Business Templates

-Seasonal Holiday Templates

-Newsletter Templates

-Press Release Templates

-Showcase Templates

You can also create new or customize your pre-created templates with ConvergeHub Rich-Text HTML Editor.

Create Lists

ConvergeHub the best CRM for small business features the ability to create separate lists from accounts, target leads, and contacts to increase the impact of your marketing campaigns. Creating lists helps in targeting different priority markets through individualized campaigns, by adding segments and criteria in the lists for launching more specific and focused campaigns.

To create a list use the CRM’s advanced search functions to zero in on the recipients of previous marketing campaigns, export the list to PDF or Excel format and send a new campaign targeted to the previous recipients of the former campaigns. If needed, you can also adjust and modify the number of subscribers displayed on the list.

Create Broadcasts

ConvergeHub allows you to create, target and run broadcast campaigns from one interface across 4 mediums like:

-Email

-Direct Mail

-Social Media

-SMS

You can also perform cross-channel campaign tracking, identify the most profitable channels, modify your marketing efforts, and so find a noticeable improvement in your ROI.

Best CRM features related to Service Management applications

Use ConvergeHub to streamline organization-wide Customer Support processes. Instead of handling Sales and Post-sales support from two different platforms, integrate both under ConvergeHub. This facilitates you to provide quick resolutions to increase customer satisfaction and boost cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Some of the features in ConvergeHub that make this happen are:

Case Management Module

Manage all your customer cases from a centralized database, for effective and on-time resolution of your customer issues. You can route and assign your support services to your help-desk agents across multiple communication channels like phone, email and the Web.

While resolving an issue support agents can attach relevant files from their computer or from the ConvergeHub Library.

You can also analyze the performance of your customer support agents through impeccable analytical reports.

For frequently complains about known support issues you can use the Knowledge Base of ConvergeHub for providing faster resolutions by submitting or editing through canned messages stored in the system.

View Case History

Click on the Issue History section in ConvergeHub to find a quick snapshot of your customer’s case history. You can get a detailed insight into your cases from important details like:

-Total number of previous cases

-Assigned customer support agents

-Case resolution status

-Case closure date

You can also comment on the issue history, if needed, as per your specific requirements.

Web to Case

ConvergeHub, in order to accelerate the resolution process, allows the system to capture customer support request from the website to include them in the system’s Cases module.

As one of its best CRM features, the case is automatically validated and assigned to the appropriate customer support agent.

ConvergeHub users do not need the help of software professional to build the web-to-case form. You can just drag and drop the required fields and select your customer support agent. Once you have set the form header, form description, button label, form completion message and redirected URL, all that you need to do is place the embedded code into your website.

API Integration

The ConvergeHub Application Programming Interface (API) allows your developers to integrate our CRM into any other application or system that you use. This signifies you can transfer and share data between your systems, which helps in building more effective business processes. Using ConvergeHub API you can connect to any other web-based applications, such as your in-house systems, website, and a myriad other cloud computing products. ConvergeHub’s API is a Representational State Transfer (REST) API that can accept your requests in either XML or JSON formats.

Best CRM features related to Collaborations

ConvergeHub helps you to collaborate with your employees, customers, and partners on sales opportunities, lead generation, service case, and marketing campaigns. Simplify your workflow by sharing winning practices, capturing new ideas with ConvergeHub online collaboration tools.

Library

Use ConvergeHub document management module to store and manage all your important files. Provide viewing and editing permissions of all your documents like presentations, brochures, case studies, and collaterals to employees based on their organizational hierarchy.

Use tags to make all your documents more searchable in the Knowledge Base and be notified when a new version of any file is uploaded, to keep all your information updated.

Calendar

Use ConvergeHub calendar to get reminded about upcoming events. You can synchronize your Google Calendar with ConvergeHub Calendar by downloading Google Calendar from the ConvergeHub Apps Store. You can also export your ConvergeHub Calendar to a third party source as per your requirements.

Partner

To improve partner relationship and increase channel partner sales, use ConvergeHub to directly communicate and share important documents with your channel partners for better collaboration on deals.

Notifications

As another best CRM features, get an instant view of all important notifications on your ConvergeHub dashboard.

As a round-the-clock communication channel, use your easy to use CRM also to send notifications to your business associates on client updates, reminders on upcoming sales and marketing events or meeting rescheduled dates.

Best CRM features related to Platforms used by a CRM

Office based CRM systems are undoubtedly powerful tools, but as competition increases, it is important for your sales team to be on the top of the game. Using mobile CRM helps your sales reps to show up in a meeting with all the information needed for closing the sale.

Mobile

Whether you are traveling within the city or on a business tour, ConvergeHub mobile CRM platform helps you to manage your business from your phone 24×7.

ConvergeHub is available both on Android and iPhone devices. Hence, update your sales opportunities, monitor the latest lead developments, act on customer complaints, get social insights, share files, and track your team’s activities anytime and anywhere using ConvergeHub the #1 Mobile CRM for SMB.

Takeaway

Now that you are aware of the best CRM for small business features, use ConvergeHub, join our team and we can help you to make your business smarter- for we believe that an integrated business is always a smarter business.

What Is CRM Marketing and How It Can Boost Your Marketing Plans

The answer to the question what is CRM marketing lies in the process by which marketing managers can track customer’s interests, record their behavior, watch the customer’s interaction to the campaigns to ensure campaigns and marketing messages are meeting their needs in the best possible ways.

Many in marketing and sales industry are familiar with the word CRM; however, few understand what is CRM marketing, as customer relationship management is often illustrated as a sales tool.

CRM as we know generally helps to track the outreach of your sales team, provide in-depth information about each prospective and current customer, and help your sales representative plan out strategies to close the deals.

However, CRM marketing is a newer breed of technology, which is developed to facilitate relationship-building activities for the marketing team, and often at a much larger scale, permitting both B2B and B2C organizations to plan and track interactions with their customers.

With the ability to track customer interactions across multiple channels and customize marketing plans according to those data, multichannel CRMs marketing (also known as Social CRM or SCRM) are essential for building a real 1:1 customer relationships at scale.

Therefore, the answer to the question what is CRM marketing lies in the process by which marketing managers can track customer’s interests, record their behavior, watch the customer’s interaction to the campaigns to ensure campaigns and marketing messages are meeting their needs in the best possible ways.

However, since every customer’s interest and behaviors are different, using personalization in campaigns leads to increase the conversion rates and encourage happy customers to stick to your brand.

CRM Marketing is most needed today as nowadays consumers are bombarded with all sorts of offers and messages that springs out of every corner of the business world.

Everyone is marketing these days.

Have you ever noticed how many times you receive promotional emails every single day, from a brand that you signed-up for? And more importantly, how frequently do you actually read them?

So consequentially, it has never been as difficult as it is now, for marketers to win customers, as everyone is on social media and everyone, as said before, is marketing their brands.

The rate of content generation is simply incredible these days. According to a report published by Science Daily, it has been suggested that more than 90% of all the data that is found on the internet now has been generating in these last few years.

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google has been quoted as saying that more content is created now in 48 hours than it was ever produced between the advent of internet technology up until 2003.

Since everyone now has a blog so, all can comment and share their ideas. According to WordPress, every minute WordPress users alone posts 347 blogs in their platform.

So, this mind-blowing acceleration of information affects the way we go about marketing in this digital world.

Bid Goodbye to One-Size-Fits-All Approach

With the spread of social media channels as a natural outcome of the rapid boom of modern technology, customers have become tech-savvy, discerning, and increasingly fussy. Modern customers are well aware of what they want, have wider choices and so they cannot be fed with just anything. Instead, modern buyers want personalization and demand ways of engaging with their desired products and services.

Hence, the good old method of targeting everyone with one message does not work anymore. According to a survey done by Gartner, it has been found that 78% of online consumers get irritated with the website and promotional email contents, ads and offers when they have nothing to do with their interests.

There have also been many instances when customers got so frustrated with irrelevant contents, that they were also willing to leave the site forever.

So what do all these mean for marketers today?

This means- RELEVANCE.

Now, that we need to discuss what is CRM marketing, we must understand the rise of highly individualized content marketing approach, which is primarily driven by data and technology, and it only a CRM system that can aid marketers to stay on the top of this game.

Hence, let us take a look how customer relationship software can help the marketers to improve their activities and create better marketing campaigns.

Focused Targeting

One of the toughest tasks for marketers is to look through all the customer data. In order to receive a response from potential customers and find out what they are most likely to buy, marketers must send messages that appeal exactly to them.

CRM software helps marketers to sift through thousands of contacts and find out the potential customers who will be interested in buying the products. It aids in targeting potential customers. As CRM contains several information on the customer behavior and buying preferences it allows the marketers to take informed actions, which results in improving prospect awareness and customer satisfaction.

Segmentation

It is a clichéd saying that those who can predict, instead of reacting, win. This is very much true for marketers as to sell online marketers need to observe common buying trends before offering anything to the customers.

Today marketers not only need to segment their customers only by industry, job, or age, but they also need to be aware of such factors like the customer’s recent activities, their purchase history, their personal likes and dislikes, emails opened and replied, social media activities and others.

Hence, the sharper and focused is the potential customer’s profile; greater are the chances and opportunities for personalized marketing messages, which can bring sales for the organization.

So segmenting customer profile and email subscriber’s database with the help of a CRM system, not only aids in growing revenue but also improves the metrics in email marketing.

Personalized Contents

Once you have segmented the CRM database into meaningful groups and know whom to target, it is the time that you must individualize your marketing messages.

Mass marketing is outdated today. Today’s CRM allows markets to address their potential and existing customers by their name. You can even impress your customers by knowing what industry they work for, which will consequentially help you to tailor your email campaign messages according to their likings and needs.

Therefore, CRM marketing can shape the entire communication strategy in such a way that it can suit a particular customer or a group of customers who have one or more than one things in common.

Personalization of content helps in improving response rate, creates a stronger brand perception, and increase revenue.

Knowing what is CRM marketing, hence helps online marketers to focus more on the customers rather than on products.

Recycling The Process

Using CRM software marketers can analyze whether their campaigns were successful and they yielded any results. For once, you can find which content performed best; you can recycle the content and that email campaign’s template for converting new contacts and customers.

Hence, instead of starting from the scratch when you remarket your ideas, taking out all opinions and guesswork, you can curb your leads to marketing costs but focus on resending campaigns that performed the best.

Use ConvergeHub CRM for FREE

Hence, marketing CRMs are more than the just inert database and market automation tools, because marketing CRMs helps in putting everything together for a truly personalized marketing effort. ConvergeHub’s founder and CEO Shampa Bagchi, speaking of CRM technology, sums it all up like this:

It’s been about propelling at the speed of mobile, digesting information and humanizing the data for the marketing team, building up the scale, and developing a product that conforms to the requirements of the marketer in this ever-connected digital world.

If you want to know more about how a CRM system can support your marketing efforts, please write to us in the comments below.