Which CRM and marketing automation tools do you use to automate your business processes?

Vijay Khandekar Product Growth Hacker | B2B SaaS Marketer | Lifelong Learner

March 2nd, 2016

What is the most common pair of Marketing automation and CRM tool new and growing use? How do they manage the data-flow between them?

Scott Lewis GLOBALFOUNDRIES

March 2nd, 2016

In general, this is what I've found. Marketo has a large marketshare and solid tools to support all the integration you'll ever need in a CRM tool but isn't cheap. The gold standard is Oracle's Eloqua from both a price and capabilities standpoint. Pardot is part of an integrated solution with SFDC, but I've only used Pardot as a standalone tool. It worked well and was a very good CRM value at the time but not sure about how it fares together with SFDC. Have heard very good things about Hubspot and at the price, is worth being your first stop.

Ahmed Sorour Agile/DevOps Coach @ Target, Cofounder @ RevampCRM

March 2nd, 2016

A very good question. Nothing beats a tightly integrated CRM and marketing automation. As Faraz mentioned if you are using HubSpot marketing automation, their CRM is the best match. Even if it is not the best CRM in the market, it's definitely the best match for their marketing tool.

However, and based on your business needs, HubSpot may not be your best marketing option. If you sell online, I would recommend you look at RevampCRM. It automated segmentation, sales and marketing under one roof so that you can blend sales and marketing activities in one workflow. A simple example of this would be to dunamically select customers that meet certain criteria and purchase behavior and send them to ta workflow to send emails and based on the response (open, click, unsubscribe, bounce) creat sales tasks or notification, update contact score, retailers contact, etc... Which may result in the customer sent is other workflow to do other steps.

We at RevampCRM, built an intuitive ecommerce tecommendaion plan that comes ready to use with our Shopify plan.

Let me know if I can be of any help!

Richard Camp Richard L Camp / Creative Director / Marketing Strategist / President of Camp Creative & Camp Media Arts

March 2nd, 2016

This is in part a Coke or Pepsi question. Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua, etc. nuanced flavors of the same product/ All the major MA players offer similar features and functionality. Managing the data flow between MA and CRM comes down to what criteria you use to manage specific business processes and service level agreements between marketing and sales. Let the lead genration requirements between marketing and sales lead the technology, not the other way around.

Alessandra Ceresa Content Manager @GreenRope - Complete CRM and Marketing Automation

March 2nd, 2016

There is no doubt that fragmented technology results in fragmented business processes. Instead of attempting to piece software together, you should consider investing in an all-in-one sales and marketing platform. With an integrated system, you avoid any opportunity for data loss. It also increases collaboration amongst your team. With complete sales and marketing integration, the two teams have total transparency into the sales funnel. Marketing can determine what's working and what's not, while sales gains valuable insight into their leads, as well as the most likely to close. GreenRope is an incredible and highly affordable alternative for a CRM and marketing automation platform, not to mention has far more functionality and customization opportunities.

Even though there are many platforms out there, most require third-party integrations and can be quite costly, especially for SMBs. Many also require expensive implementations. GreenRope has an cost-friendly account setup package ($499), which gets you setup with strategy and training.

Along with the CRM and marketing automation capabilities, GreenRope is one of the only platforms with built-in predictive analytics, which means that sales can tackle that low hanging fruit and start closing more deals, more effectively.

Check GreenRope out if you are looking for a completely integrated and affordable alternative.

I hope I could help!

Ahmed Sorour Agile/DevOps Coach @ Target, Cofounder @ RevampCRM

March 2nd, 2016

I would respectfully discourage anyone from paying any setup or upfront fees. System requiring upfront fee have more sales overhead and you will definitely end up with a high cost of ownership. Go for a system that you can configure and operate. No contract (only go month by month) and make sure you can export all your data any time.

Anonymous

March 2nd, 2016

HubSpot CRM is free and very powerful. You can integrate that with their Sidekick for e-mail marketing automations and flows.

Infusionsoft is also a good tool but it's pricey with a high learning curve.

http://www.hubspot.com/products/crm

http://www.infusionsoft.com/

Vijay Khandekar Product Growth Hacker | B2B SaaS Marketer | Lifelong Learner

March 2nd, 2016

Thanks @Scott lewis, @Ahmed Sorour and @Farzad wafapoor :) Really appreciate your insightful answers.

@Ahmed Sorour, as you mentioned you guys built an intuitive e-commerce recommendation plan that comes ready with your Shopify plan, In that case--> do you have an integration between RevampCRM & accounting tools like QuickBooks/Xero?

Because as an e-commerce owner I would want to have my CRM connected with accounting and email marketing tool to learn:

1) The life-cycle value of a customer

2) Which customer has not purchased anything in say last 30 day? Then I would like to send mailers with customized offer depending on his/her purchase history.

I hope I am making some sense here :)

Ahmed Sorour Agile/DevOps Coach @ Target, Cofounder @ RevampCRM

March 2nd, 2016

Vinjay, Yes we integrate with freshbooks and harvest. And yes the scenario you descibed is typical. You should be able to trigger emails recommending products or services (upsell, resell, or cross-sell) based on any customer data. His include purchases, previous communication, zendesk and freshdesk ticket status, etc...

Alessandra Ceresa Content Manager @GreenRope - Complete CRM and Marketing Automation

March 3rd, 2016

Unfortunately, regardless of how 'easy' a salesperson says their system is, CRM is not an overnight happening. You and your team have to be trained, especially if they have never used one before. Why? If not, they won't use it. If they are not comfortable with using the platform, they simply won't. Training and proper implementation are critical to CRM success, therefore it is imperative to go through any training a system provides. It will be more costly to setup a CRM poorly the first time and then have to go and re-invest in a platform that does provide implementation and training.

Frank Gartland Product & Marketing Leader | Technical Readiness & Online Engagement Expert | Vision/Execution Blender

March 2nd, 2016

In the end, as you grow it will become more and more (and more) important for all your audience information (data) to be centralized. While I continue to hear people say things like "it's just data, you can move things around later if you want to," those exercises are always more complex, more expensive and more headaches than you would think.

As a result, I believe it's hard to beat Salesforce.com. Not only is it a fantastic CRM that most sales people love (this is critical), there's just an amazing number of native products available on the AppExchange for about whatever you might need as you grow. I will say that if you need/want a fantastic ERP (accounting, billing, etc.) system AND a great CRM, I think NetSuite is a great choice, too. Much better than the Salesforce/FinancialForce (etc.) combo options in my experience. If you go with NetSuite, I think looking at Hubspot for some complementary marketing automation makes sense.

In terms of marketing automation, Marketo is fantastic. Judging from what a myriad of marketing pros have told me (ranging from my own teams at startups and turnarounds to a variety of folks at Microsoft), it's the best. I would definitely choose Marketo above the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (aka ExactTarget). Hope this is helpful...

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