To generate, manage and convert leads, you must triangulate your client relationship management (CRM) tool, social media, and email marketing. Here’s how to complete each leg of the triangle.
Social Media and CRM
Help your firm genuinely listen and respond to clients by using these tips to combine social media and CRM capabilities:
- Become part of the conversation - Become part of the conversation - Don’t just listen; engage. This helps you track leads from Facebook posts and Tweets so you can move them into the inbound marketing funnel via your CRM tool.
- Engage your social influencers - Social media listening tools help to identify who is striking up conversations about your firm and generating interest in your brand. Make a conscious effort to demonstrate your appreciation and stay in touch.
- Educate and empower employees and clients to engage - To do this, generate social media policies, create tools to track engagement, and teach employees how to use social media correctly. This means holding authentic and relevant one-on-one conversations to connect with clients. Employees should be encouraged to let their personalities shine through when participating in an exchange. Verify that social employees know and follow the firm’s guidelines and goals.
- Add social media profile information to contact records: Rich demographic and psychographic information can be found on prospect and client social media profiles. Mining data from social profiles will provide your marketing team with tremendous insight into how to target campaigns and identify trends that will help refine future campaigns.
- Provide a single location for client records and communications: A single repository will allow users to obtain an all-inclusive picture of a contact and help solve problems quickly. The result is a more timely response and acknowledgment that your clients are top-of-mind.
CRM and Email Marketing
Your CRM database has detailed, copious client and prospect notes. You’ve segmented your contacts based on several criteria, including industry, role/position, geographic region, and behavior. It’s time to combine your CRM tool and email marketing efforts into a unified action with the following tips:
- Improve visibility - Your email marketing team has insightful access to client behavior. By combining information about opened emails and click-through rates with your CRM tool, your marketing team can tailor its efforts to each prospect’s interests.
- Streamline campaign efforts - An integrated email marketing and CRM system lets you update records with information on demographics and pain points so when the next campaign goes out, you can be confident all the information is up-to-date.
- Enhanced team collaboration - Email marketing and CRM systems are more effective when working together. This theme rings true when marketing and business development efforts are in sync. For example, when business development interacts with clients or prospects, they will update the CRM system. If the marketing team is armed with active contact demographics and CRM data, campaigns will be more targeted, relevant, and effective. Adversely, the group is far more effective when business development is informed about active marketing campaigns and when marketing knows when to pass leads off for follow-up.
- Eliminate redundancy – Anytime you manage multiple disparate systems, errors will happen upon transferring contact information from one application to another. Therefore, if you integrate email marketing and CRM, you reduce the time, error, and grief associated with data transfer and can focus on developing a targeted, refined message that generates results.
Email Marketing and Social Media
Did you know that email marketing and social media platforms can actually complement one another. Use them together with these tips:
- Include social icons in your campaign emails - Encourage social interaction with big, bold social icons in your emails. Email marketing is a closed system meaning the recipients know you and the content you provide is not offered to the public. In your email, point out what type of interaction you want. Brief text next to the icons might say, "share this email" or "follow us." You should provide an incentive to get people to follow through.
- Promote email sign-up on social networks - Recruit new subscribers on Facebook and Twitter. Unlike email marketing, social media is an open system; in effect, posts are available to the public Web. You should ask a question and state how signing up for your email newsletter can answer specific questions they may have.
- Send a targeted email campaign – Cross-pollinate the two platforms to flower engagement between the two. A targeted email campaign that is regular and consistent will further your community relationship. Encouraging social media sharing will generate activity from their polarity. For example, you can let your readers be the first to share pivotal information with their communities. Empower them to be better influencers through sharing great content.
- Promote email sign-up via social networks – Give your social media communities a taste of what they can expect by signing up for your firm’s newsletters by posting a sample. This information can be searched and found by publicizing your firm’s newsletter.
For more information about combining CRM, social media and email marketing, contact Colosi Marketing.
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