BAASS Insights Technology Blog

Customer relationship management (CRM) can become all-too predictable. Sales use it to track leads and opportunities. Marketing uses it to send newsletters, updates, and promotions. But what do your customers think about all this? Can you use your CRM system in new ways that surprise, delight, and inform your customers?

Is your sales team working at optimum efficiency? Are they following up on every lead? Do they have the information they need to answer customer questions and present appropriate products and upgrades?

It’s that time of year when many companies clean their files, organize their data, and clean out the old in preparation for the new. The last fiscal quarter (if your company is on a calendar year) closes out the books in many companies and places a reference point in the year for year-to-year comparisons. This is a great time to add one simple task to your system: a CRM checkup, cleanup, and tune up.

There’s a new term creeping into the CRM lexicon: social CRM. Social CRM refers to using your CRM system to engage with customers through their favorite social media channels. It’s integrating CRM into both traditional sales and marketing communications, such as email marketing, as well as social media platforms.

It’s the dream of many sales and marketing managers: a seamless multi-channel customer experience so that no matter where a customer chooses to contact your company, or how they choose to interact, they receive the same care and attention as they would via another channel.

Social media provides a gateway for both B2B and B2C companies to connect with their customers. Tracking both connections and communications used to be separate from CRM systems, but newly developed integration allows users to take information from both sources and generate useful analytics.

Developing a thorough knowledge of your customers allows you to create marketing strategies to target their specific needs. You may be wondering where you can store customer-related information in a functional and easy-to-use way. Using a customer relationship management (CRM) system is a great tool to do just that. 

Were you less than thrilled with the results of your latest marketing campaign? Compared to all of the time, money, and effort spent, are you pleased with the return on your investment? If you aren’t fully satisfied with the results of your marketing campaigns, perhaps it is time to explore the possible reasons why. Although it is possible that there were problems with the marketing campaign, the methods, the offer, etc. the reason for its poor performance may stem from a different reason all together.