Our Favorite Things to Automate Between ActiveDEMAND and Zoho CRM
In 2020, companies are using more automation and integrating more of their systems to save time and close more deals. Connecting marketing and sales gives both groups what they need to be successful:
- Sales get better quality leads and marketing back up where they need it
- Marketing gets better buyer persona and conversion data to sharpen their campaigns
- Both departments are better positioned to hit goals and grow the company
So let’s check out what we can do once the Marketing and Sales systems are fully aligned and integrated.
Control automated campaigns from within Zoho
Normally, marketing owns automated email communications with prospects, but sales need that same power to take care of repetitive situations they face every day. Drip campaigns like:
- Recover unresponsive prospects
- Follow up after an initial cold call
- Remind prospects about an upcoming appointment
- Automatically handle an after-sale process
Bulk flagging customers for campaigns
When sales and marketing platforms aren’t connected, marketers frequently have to export lists from their CRM, do a bit of excel magic to filter them a bit better, then upload the list to their marketing database. Nuts to that! With Zoho + ActiveDEMAND integration, you can use Zoho’s built-in filters to narrow targeting down to a specific audience, then flag those contacts to be targeted with a marketing campaign. The two systems can directly talk to each other, so the CSV file download and upload is a thing of the past.
Get better sales close data to marketing
Marketing these days is equal parts art and science. The science side works great if marketing knows exactly whether the leads it’s generating are good or not. With Zoho automatically posting won deals to ActiveDEMAND, marketers are able to report on and understand which kinds of leads close at a higher rate, and at a higher value. This information is crucial to developing a practical marketing strategy that works.
Logging marketing communications to Zoho
In a company with a well-oiled marketing+sales machine, prospects could be receiving communications from both marketing and sales. By logging marketing communications to Zoho, salespeople can easily see whether their prospects received the monthly newsletter, or when a survey went out. That better visibility is super helpful for sales, and they might even start providing some great feedback to marketing on how customers are receiving the communications.
Filter and process prospects before handing them off to sales
Some prospect signals aren’t quite strong enough to hand them off to sales. Maybe they downloaded a whitepaper, maybe they entered a contest, or joined a webinar, but they just didn’t deliver enough of a signal to call them a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). Rather than just shoveling anything that looks like a signal onto sales’ plate, it’s best in these situations to have marketing use automatic nurture campaigns to get more interest out of the prospect. Once the prospects are successfully nurtured, they can be sent “over the fence” to sales.
Display Account Manager information on your website
ActiveDEMAND’s dynamic website content feature helps businesses dynamically adapt their website and email content to customers and prospects. So rather than listing out a million different departments on your “contact us” page or forcing your customers to use “dial by number” or some awful phone system to get to their rep, the website can dynamically show account manager contact info for just their customers/prospects. A direct phone number or email address that’s just shown for their contacts, even if the customer forgets who their AM is, that’s convenient!
Achieving effective sales and marketing alignment is a continual process, even for well-established companies. A good strategy is to determine your goals and start implementing the steps needed to get there. Track and measure your results and continually check that you are actually measuring the right metrics. A good indicator would be if your sales and marketing teams are seeing value in the results. Adjust as required then implement more automation and reporting as needed. Sales and marketing alignment may seem like a daunting task, but with the right platform and a solid plan, the results of your success are well worth it.
If you’ve got a Zoho account, check out the ActiveDEMAND listing on the Zoho marketplace to start a free 2-week trial and get rolling.
About Zoho
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