MARKETING AUTOMATION VS. CRM
You may have done research comparing client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation to see which fits your business best. Potentially investing in two different solutions will have you seek the actual difference to make the best decision. In this blog, we point out the differences between the two, provide a comparison sheet below, and demonstrate how you can use the differences to your advantage.
The Difference
To put it simply, CRM manages the sales pipeline process that includes individual emails, lead status tracking, task management, opportunity tracking, and pipeline reporting. Because CRM is opportunity management, it moves leads to opportunities and managing them, not offered by marketing automation.
Marketing Automation primarily focuses on digital email marketing and campaigns. It also manages lead activity tracking and scoring, along with landing pages and forms. Marketing automation’s core executes campaigns and doesn’t focus on tracking activity, form data, etc.
Key Things to Note
Marketing automation can feed information to CRM in the sales funnel. The leads of marketing automation include raw, viable, nurtured, active and marketing qualified leads. This is worked down the funnel to CRM, which includes sales accepted leads, opportunities, and closed/won. It is now possible to sync information both ways so that your marketing team knows what’s going on in sales while the sales and customer service teams know the marketing history of each prospect or customer that is interacted with.
The Advantage of Combining
For most businesses, it shouldn’t be a comparison of CRM and marketing automation to choose one over the other. Instead, it should be used in conjunction. SelectHub states that “one may think that the key difference between CRM versus marketing automation is that each platform manages database contacts at different stages in the marketing/sales cycle. This is no longer true.”
Bottomline
It’s not a question of either/or. You need both. It is critical and necessary to have a combination of CRM and marketing automation. Marketing automation is needed to allow marketing to manage digital campaigns and help prioritize leads. CRM is needed to help sales manage these leads and opportunities.
Here at GreenFox, we know combining CRM and Marketing Automation is crucial. That is why we offer The Marketing Dept. Platform. It literally gives you a full access platform for all your marketing needs. With the platform, users are able to have immediate access to the following from one single location.
