If you are running digital marketing campaigns you might be working with multiple subscriptions to cover each digital medium – sending emails, scheduling social posts, and sponsoring ads. And your website forms might not be connected to a CRM. If these are true, your data is probably disconnected, making it a nightmare to track your leads and get a holistic view. Do you experience:
- A lot of time wasted learning different applications and dashboards and training your team? This can be very exhausting.
- Excessive manual tasks transferring data back and forth between applications?
- A loss of productivity with a lack of real-time information updates?
- Overspending on monthly subscription costs?
It doesn’t have to be this hard!
Data integrity is paramount. While it can be difficult to determine the best solution to connect everything, there are good options. Zoho applications can work well for small businesses, but there are other options that may be better, depending on your needs.
If you aren’t in a place where you are prepared for a total overhaul of your current setup, there are steps you can take to keep your marketing stack lean and agile:
- Connect and integrate your applications – Find out if your service providers can integrate with other solutions. For example, most email marketing vendors can connect to a CRM solution. This allows your sales team to see the engagement results from a campaign in real time and take immediate action to convert leads into customers.
- Collect Data into a central hub – Data coming from your website, ads, email, and any other sources should flow into a central hub. A CRM system will start creating customer profiles based on the information it receives from all applications. Implementing a CRM means you’ll always get the most updated customer profile. Once you have your CRM in place you will know which accounts require your immediate attention, making it efficient and saving on time.
- Use automated workflows – Eliminate manual data transfer to save time and prevent missing an important step. A simple trigger will transfer the website data into your CRM. An email service provider will ensure the most updated list has received your company updates.
- Go lean – If you are fairly new to the game and your current data size is small, consider utilizing a platform that helps you combine most of your activities in a central location. For example, Zoho One has 40+ applications, covering almost all marketing and sales functions at a reasonable cost.
Data integration and automation are the future of marketing to achieve omni-presence across all digital channels. As we continue to adopt new technologies to reach our goals, let’s keep in mind these best practices to keep marketing activities as cost-effective, connected and productive as possible.
If this all sounds familiar but you are still having trouble making effective changes feel free to reach out. I’m happy to help.
