Integrated marketing and sales from InTouch CRM
Ask anyone running a small business where their customer data is and there’s a high likelihood that what they say actually means ‘it’s all over the place’. It’s in their head, it’s in spreadsheets, it’s in Outlook and email systems, and so on. Just sometimes they may say that it’s in their CRM system, but probe deeper and it may just be a glorified contact management system, which at least is a good start.
Likewise ask them about their marketing and sales processes and they’ll probably say something which means ‘they’re informal, random or even chaotic’. Ask what they do when they get a new contact details, say a business card at a networking meeting or a new registration on their website. There may be an ad-hoc follow-up, a phone call, maybe add them to the email newsletter circulation. But rarely is there a joined-up sequence going through from initial contact to second sale and beyond, supported by technology.
And in fairness there have been few marketing and sales applications that run right through the cycle. Yes, there are great contact management and very good email systems, that are up there in the ‘best-of-breed’ category. But at the entry level there are few that combine the two areas and more into one seamless application to provide a great ‘best-of-suite’ application.
Until InTouch CRM that is.
InTouch CRM was designed to combine email marketing and contact management into a seamless application, and to provide many other marketing and sales capabilities too.
For example:
- Multi-channel marketing – emailing prospects and customers is one thing, the ability to also send the SMS, Surveys and postal communications from the one system with integrated tracking is pretty unique for an entry-level system.
- Social Media integration – since Twitter has become so widely used InTouch is up with the market leaders in including the Twitter ID stream from contacts into their contact record. So if you’re taking a call or planning a visit you can easily see what your contact has been Tweeting about very recently.
- Activities like Phone calls, meetings and events – keep a log of customer contact alongside the email communications to build up and have available a 360 degree view of the customer or prospect.
- Support and tasks – link in after sales activities and internal activities too, so it’s not just marketing and sales people who can record and access information, bust the project and customer service team too.
- Dashboard, pipeline and reports – you need to keep your finger on the pulse so there is a configurable dashboard, a pipeline view and many standard reports available as a starter for ten to manage the pipeline and activities of you and your sales team.
A major strength and USP of InTouch in my view is that it allows and enables a sales person to stay in control of their clients and the relationship development going on. This is ideal for a smaller organisation or solo entrepreneur, especially when building and managing a client portfolio, Having visibility and control of the multi-channel marketing and the contact management from the same place and working on the same data is incredibly powerful.
If your role combines marketing and sales and you haven’t yet found a system that provides a great suite of capability from initial contact, such as getting a business card, through to second order and ‘delighted customer’ then check out InTouch CRM.
