Marketing is an industry that is full of acronyms and abbreviations. Mix that in with systems that have similar functions, such as Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Automation, and you have a recipe for confusion. In this blog, we will explain the difference between the two systems, and how their separate and combined functions make them equally as necessary when it comes to growing your business.
In order to understand the difference between this two systems, it is important to know how each system is defined. Below you will find each system broken down to the most basic definition:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): focuses on organizing customer information and tracking interactions that customers have through their lifecycle.
Marketing Automation: focuses on promoting one-to-one communication for obtaining new customers through marketing and sales activities.
As you can see, marketing automation and CRMs have a very symbiotic relationship and integrate nicely with each other boosting the effectiveness of both systems. In order to use marketing automation to its maximum potential, you must have an effective way to track customers. And likewise, to fill in the blanks left behind by your CRM you should implement marketing automation, which offers ways to segment leads and existing customers. While CRM tools help with tracking and managing your current client base, it is marketing automation that allows for one-on-one communication with leads and is responsible for driving them through the sales funnel.
What is the Department Breakdown?
Since the platforms work so well together, both are used by the sales and marketing teams. Daily, your salespeople and account managers will find themselves in the CRM as it was designed with sales in mind and because of the boost it gives to tracking and targeting capabilities within current customer data files. And it only makes sense that your marketing team will be in the marketing automation platform more, as it was designed to help them reach out to leads based off of their behavior and using personalized contact ensuring that the right message reaches a contact at just the right time. However, just because each department has their own system does not mean that crossover does not occur. Salespeople can use the funnel within the marketing automation to learn more about potential leads and how they operate in order to make the sale. The CRM is beneficial to marketers when they need to learn more about a customer and their habits in order to deliver content in the way that is most effective.
Luckily you don’t have to scour the internet looking for the best of each system. Marketing Armor offers a marketing automation platform with a built-in CRM that offers all of the features above and more! Click on the banner below to learn more.
