Author: GoCRM Team

SMS & Text Marketing Best Practices for Loan Officers

Posted on October 27, 2021 by - Mortgage

Texting templates for mortgage abstraction

Mortgage marketing relies heavily on text messaging. Texting is a sure-shot way to reach potential clients. The number of smartphone users has grown exponentially and this has brought a shift in marketing. Today mortgage professionals prefer reaching out to the audience on their phones. And the results speak for themselves. The ROI is both higher and quicker.

In the US alone, for every 100 customers surveyed, 97 said they use cellphones and an overwhelming majority had smartphones. Customers tend to respond to text messages more than anything else. In fact, text messages have 40% more chances of being replied to and the response time is just 8 to 10 minutes.

Marketing texts or short messages tend to be convenient for both the seller and the buyer. However, to be effective and increase sales, they have to be created just right. What the message contains and how it is structured go a long way in converting leads to sales. Mortgage professionals are better off using proven texting templates to fulfill their clients’ needs rather than wasting the potential of a reliable marketing channel through a few random texts.

Texting Templates’ 2-Factor Design Criteria

There are a couple of factors that go into the designing of the message – personalization, and timing. An effective message fulfills both criteria.

1. Personalization

Content and tone are the two most important features of a mortgage text. What you say (relevance) and how you say it (robotic Vs natural tone) are equally noticed.

• Content

The best texts are custom-made. Short messages meant for mass sharing are hardly the ones to choose for a select clientele. How to make sure you’re sending a text that looks and feels genuine? By resorting to previous communication or taking help from similar scenarios, you can form an effective message body. Emails or call records come in handy. When you give the text a genuine look, the potential borrower is not left feeling like a phone number on your list. They feel valued.

Whether the mortgage professional is trying to make the first contact or attempting to revive a lead gone silent, a short custom message almost always works. It is more personal and will often address the receiver by their first name. That makes a good impression.

• Tone

The tone of the message is another important area. Businesses often make the mistake of designing texts for chat bots, not for real people. You can avoid this error by filtering and refining your responses and automating them with caution. Once again loan originators can turn to previous communications for getting the drift.

2. Timing

‘How soon should I send the text?’ is a dilemma many marketers face. It is more effective to respond with a text as soon as the borrower makes contact. Successful loan professionals are always prompt to respond. Automated responses give you the edge here. Often, getting there first is all that matters. Commonly, when a borrower is looking at your mortgage options, they are looking at your competitor’s options too. Your business has a better chance of winning the client over by being the first to make a reply.

Things to remember while formulating a mortgage SMS are:

  • The text is relevant and addresses borrowers’ concerns
  • The text is short, succinct, and easy to understand.
  • The tone is friendly and welcoming
  • The text is delivered timely
  • It contains a call to action – leading the receiver to ask for more information, schedule an in-person meeting or buy the mortgage.

Loan Text Marketing Stages

There are different types of short messages that are sent by lending businesses. The following is a short list of the most common texting stages:

  1. Introduction
  2. Follow-up
  3. Mid-cycle
  4. After sale

Each of them has a specific structure and every part of that structure serves specific purposes. Let us see how…

Introduction

The potential borrower is usually addressed by their first name. The sender (Loan Originator) includes their name, company name, and other relevant information. It could be a link to a ‘how to video or the mortgage application page on the company website. It also leaves clear details of getting in touch in case the borrower has questions.

Hello, {Prospect’s First Name}, this is {Your Name} with {Business Name}. This is my business phone number; please save it and call me if you have any questions.
Copy To Clipboard
Hello there, {Prospect’s First Name}! I hope you and your family have had a wonderful holiday season full with love and happiness. I’m always available to talk about your mortgage if you have any questions! Please contact me at {Phone Number}. Best, {Your Full Name}
Copy To Clipboard
Hello there, {Prospect’s First Name}. {Business Name}’s {Your Full Name} here. It was wonderful to meet you at the {Event Name} last week. I wanted to provide you the link to the {Topic} we discussed. If you have any questions, I’m happy to assist you. Simply send me an SMS.
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Follow-up

It’s a reminder to apply for the mortgage in a tactful, indirect way. Things like low mortgage rates, limited-time benefits, or a situation that’s an exact fit for the client are usually shared. A call to action may be included. The tone is pleasant and encouraging.

Hello, {Prospect’s First Name}. From {Business Name}, this is {Your Full Name}. Please contact me if you require assistance with your credit score. I’d be delighted to assist. On this number, you can call or text me. Have a wonderful day
Copy To Clipboard

Mid-cycle

This text template usually conveys to the borrower what stage of loan approval they are at. The Loan originator’s name and designation are included as is the receiver’s first name. The design is attractive, the tone, full of enthusiasm.

Hello, {Prospect’s First Name}, I’ve been having trouble getting in touch with you over the phone. Do you have 15 minutes to talk about the pre-approval process tomorrow afternoon? Please let me know when you’ll be available. Thanks!
Copy To Clipboard
{Prospect’s First Name}, I’m pleased to inform you that your application has been pre-approved! Please look for your pre-approval letter in your email and contact me if you have any questions. We’ll talk shortly!
Copy To Clipboard

After-sales

So the mortgage has been sold and the sales cycle has closed successfully. It’s time to express your gratitude to your customer. Let the buyer know you value them and show this appreciation through videos or images.

Texts are also used for building lasting relationships with your audience. In this case, texts do not simply encourage buyers to do business with your company again but add value to their lives. Links to educational media are generally included.

Usually, all these messages carry an Opt Out function just so borrowers can decide when to block the connection.

Greetings, {Prospect’s First Name}. Please feel free to forward my contact information to any of your friends or family members who may be interested in acquiring a property in the near future. I’d be delighted to assist them with the loan application procedure. Thank you very much!
Copy To Clipboard
Hello there, {Prospect’s First Name}! Have a wonderful Friday. I recently released a two-minute video to explain why I believe interest rates will continue to be low for some time. Send me a text if you have any suggestions or questions! {Link} You can unsubscribe from these texts at any time by replying STOP.
Copy To Clipboard

What makes a mortgage text stand out?

Most text templates focus on the typed word and include a smattering of emojis. The idea of what makes a message click with the buyer comes with experience. Meanwhile, take a look at the most useful things you can include in a mundane SMS/MMS to make it more interesting to the customer:

Media

Video links are most frequently added to the message. Videos that play in the message have a higher chance of being watched. Often the best way to introduce your company and its services to the borrower is through visual media. Studies show that over 90% of communication is nonverbal. So, show more and say less. Just make sure the video is quick to load and plays without distraction.

Marketing collaterals

Can you put a flyer in the message? Loan personnel regularly include information about their products in texts in the form of flyers, brochures, and such. Experts suggest it is better to tread with caution here. Although promotional materials give companies a chance to give their audience a closer look at their products or services, not everyone is interested in crunching numbers in a text message, especially if it contains private financial details.

Links to forms and landing pages

Connect your company website to the smartphone of the prospect through the text message. This enables mortgage professionals to set into motion the loan process. If borrowers can access application files right from their inbox, it saves time. You can get valuable insight into your prospect’s needs and steer the sales process accordingly. Likewise, bringing prospects to the company’s landing page gives rise to a great opportunity to sell.

Add some fun

Mortgages are serious business but that doesn’t mean the text has to be grumpy. Keep it light with humorous stickers or witty one-liners. Some prefer adding memes. However, it is important to be in tune with your client’s situation and overall outlook towards the mortgage just to be on the safe side. If they are at a tight spot financially, the fun element might just seem offensive and ill-timed.

Whatever element you add to the text, the overwhelming impression should be professional.

Mortgage Texting Etiquette

Like most things in life, good manners create good impressions in the mortgage business too. Texting etiquette covers a lot of things. From complying with federal laws to treating all applicants equally to identifying the right time to send an SMS, mortgage professionals have their hands full.

Following are the common texting etiquette every lending company has to follow:

Give the prospect a chance to opt out

Even if they have agreed to receive messages from you, they should be free to withdraw at a moment’s notice. Usually, messages contain codes like ‘STOP’ included in the body for this purpose.

Texting with due permission

Telemarketing in the US is governed by various laws and mortgage telemarketing has its own laws to comply with too. Send out a text only if you have the proper permission in place. There are safeguards in place to protect the unwilling consumer from being bombarded with messages.

Keep a record of the SMS you’ve sent

This is necessary in case you need to follow up or require a text review.

💡 Takeaways

Texting is a great way to boost the sale of mortgages. As the smartphone wielding crowd goes about searching for loans, sending a smartly crafted text message could be the beginning of a long and mutually profitable relationship. Your CRM or marketing partner could help you with tools and automation options. These can include:

  • Mortgage texting plans
  • Scheduling texts,
  • Setting up text frequency
  • Linking media, forms, documents
  • Creating Autoresponders
  • Customized messages such as reminders, updates
  • A custom plan to fit your needs.

Use text templates that work for loan officers. Request your free GoCRM demo today.

How Much Should You Be Paying for Marketing Automation?

Posted on July 22, 2021 by - Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation - How much should you be paying

Marketing automation is becoming the future of marketing. Right now, about 75 percent of businesses use some form of automation in their marketing efforts, and that number is likely to grow.

Using automation to save time on routine tasks makes it possible to improve the productivity, efficiency, and transparency of your marketing efforts. But how much of your budget should you devote?

To help you decide, we have put together this guide. Read on to learn more about what your marketing automation budget should look like.

Consider current averages

A good place to start when deciding how much to pay for marketing automation is to see what other businesses are putting toward their own automations.

This number has grown steadily over the past several years. In 2014, most businesses spent only 3%-5% of their marketing budgets on automation. Today, however, you may want to spend more, since marketing automation has become more widespread, and there are more automation tools available.

While it may seem counterintuitive, smaller businesses often spend more of their budgets on automation, since their budgets, and their manpower resources, are smaller.

Individualize your automation budget to your needs

Averages are useful, but your business needs should ultimately determine exactly how much of your budget you spend on marketing automation.

One of the first steps to take when setting your marketing automation budget is to determine what your sales and marketing goals are. Once you know your goals, you can choose the automation tools that will help you reach them.

For example, say you want to increase your sales by 10 customers a month. You know that 4 percent of your qualified leads turn into sales. That means you need 250 more qualified leads per month.

From there you can decide whether you need to automate your emails, create drip campaigns to reach cold leads, embrace a new marketing channel, create new follow-up workflows for interested website visitors, or embrace other automation strategies in order to capture more leads every month.

Focusing on automation that helps you reach your business goals gives you the ability to choose the tools you need and set a realistic marketing automation budget.

Consider all potential marketing automation expenses

Many marketing automation solutions come with additional fees. These fees can include expenses for any of the following:

  • Onboarding and training of your staff
  • Integrations and add-ons
  • 24/7 or specialty support
  • Consulting services
  • Monthly fees in addition to the startup fees
  • Additional contacts (The more contacts you have, the more you pay)

You will also need to consider the type of marketing automation you choose. For example, third-party marketing automations, such as Hubspot, tend to be more expensive, as are agencies that provide marketing automations.

With a full picture of how much your chosen automations will cost, you can begin to put together a realistic budget for your business.

Consider marketing automation an investment, not an expense

The right automations won’t just save you time and money. They will generate revenue in the form of an improved ROI for your business.

Consider, for example, the impact of automated workflows that target cold leads. If those workflows generate even one or two new customers, they could bring in more income for your business than you pay out per month for your automation tools.

While the costs of automation tools are important, the financial and time-saving rewards of these tools more than make up for the money you pay–Plan not just to spend money on these tools but to earn money, time, customer loyalty, and employee morale as well.

💡 Takeaways

GoCRM can help you access affordable and robust marketing automation tools while setting a realistic and achievable marketing automation budget. As part of a comprehensive and customizable CRM, GoCRM also allows you to accurately evaluate the impact of your automations, maximize your ROI, and nurture leads throughout the entire sales funnel.

Let us show you how our tools can help you work smarter, no harder, and improve your bottom line, all without breaking the bank.

Top 10 Tips to Choosing a Marketing Automation Platform

Posted on June 17, 2021 by - Marketing Automation Basics

Choosing a marketing automation platform

Investing in marketing automation is one of the most effective steps you can take to increase your productivity and your ROI while saving your marketing and sales teams time.

The right software can give your teams tools to automate key lead engagement, nurturing, and conversion tasks to increase conversions.

Do not just settle for the first platform you come across, though. Use these 10 tips to identify the one that will work best for your business.

1. Don’t sacrifice features or usability

Never make compromises with your marketing automation platform. You can have robust features AND an intuitive user interface.

The right user interface can take the many features of a powerful software and translate them into easy-to-use navigations that simplify staff onboarding and day-to-day use.

With the right features for your business and a seamless user interface, you will enjoy:

  1. Improved team buy-in on the technology, and
  2. Improved marketing and sales activities, as you embrace all of the advantages that automation has to offer your business.

For the best combination of features and usability, consider GoCRM. Our solution is designed for simplicity of use, with drag-and-drop features and a centralized dashboard that you can begin using right away.

At the same time, we offer hundreds of customizable features to ensure that you enjoy automations tailored to your business needs. Form AND functionality: You can have it all, so never settle for less.

2. Choose a platform that has all the features you need…and none that you don’t

Your business has unique sales and marketing needs. Chances are, a one-size-fits-all automation software will leave you with some features you cannot use and without others you wish you had.

Do not settle for a cookie cutter solution that may or may not have what you need. Choose a marketing automation platform that provides customizable features you can tailor to your business.

For example, GoCRM allows you to craft automated workflows that follow your best practices and target your preferred audiences.

Plus, choose from our array of features to build the automations that fit your business with every functionality you need, and none that you do not need.

3. Integrate marketing automation with your CRM

Marketing automation and CRM integrationImprove the power of your marketing automation, and get real insights into its effectiveness, by choosing a platform that integrates with your CRM.

By integrating your automated processes with your CRM, you allow your sales and marketing teams to collaborate in meaningful and effective ways.

Imagine the possibilities if marketing and sales could do the following:

  • Tailor marketing campaigns based on the performance of previous campaigns.
  • Visualize every lead’s entire journey.
  • Pinpoint lead origins
  • Automatically nurture leads along the sales funnel
  • Assign an accurate ROI to each marketing effort.
  • Qualify leads for appropriate follow-up
  • Align marketing campaigns across channels for cohesive messaging
  • And more

With GoCRM, you can easily integrate all of your automations with your sales and marketing team’s communications and campaigns. The result is a cohesive approach that builds collaboration and effectiveness throughout your organization.

4. Go beyond marketing automation with integrations

Marketing automation on its own can be powerful. Combined with a CRM, it can be life changing. An automation solution, however, becomes an irreplaceable part of your organization when it integrates with the tools you already use.

GoCRM integrates with hundreds of apps so we can deliver seamless automations, tracking, analytics, and data importation no matter where you interact with your leads. Comprehensive integrations make customizing your automations simple and easy.

5. Focus on scalability

Since effective automation will make it possible to earn and nurture more leads, growth is the natural result of a successful platform.

The technology you choose should be flexible enough to meet your needs even as your business grows.

Choosing a software solution that can grow with you makes it easier to incorporate the changes you need as you grow.

Look for automated marketing programs, like GoCRM, that can add features and capacity as needed, that do not lock you into a certain package for the long-term, and that do not require you to move to a different system when your business reaches a certain size.

6. Think ahead when choosing your automation technology

Related to scalability is the need to think about your future marketing requirements and to choose an automation technology solution that fits those needs.

Choosing future capability does not mean choosing every possible feature. It does, however, mean anticipating changes in your marketing and your business over the next 3-5 years and building features into your system that will serve those needs.

With GoCRM’s wide array of customizable features, you can create a tailored platform that simplifies your present and future marketing campaigns.

7. Use your automation platform to reach your business goals

As you consider your future automation needs, you should also use the software you choose to meet the goals you have for your business.

For example, you can use automatizations to achieve any of these goals (and more):

  • Increase your teams’ productivity.
  • Improve your overall ROI.
  • Earn more leads.
  • Better track and nurture leads.
  • Acquire more customers

Automations, particularly a robust, CRM-integrated solution like that offered by GoCRM, makes it easier to reach these goals while spending less time and money on pursuing them.

8. Prioritize customer support

You know how important customer support and service is for keeping your own customers happy. Do not settle for less than stellar customer support from the automated marketing tool that you choose.

The best programs provide comprehensive customer support that makes it easier to handle issues such as onboarding your teams, answering questions, setting up features and tools, solving technical problems, and more.

Look for an automation software that provides the following features as part of their customer support:

  • Multi-channel customer support options
  • Rapid responses to inquiries
  • Knowledge-base resources for self-help
  • Flexible support hours

9. Choose an automation solution that offers training

Sometimes is best not to try to figure out how to use your marketing automation software yourself. Instead, choose an automation technology that provides in-depth training. For example, GoCRM will assist with the onboarding of your sales and marketing teams to ensure that you understand how to use the tools at your disposal.

In addition, you can access a library of resources that you can consult at any time. These resources can answer commonly asked questions, provide insights, and offer a constant source of education to help you make the most of your platform.

10. Make sure you can track your automations

Automated marketing only works if you can see its effect on your leads and your ROI. That is why the automation solution you choose should automatically track the impacts of those automations. In particular, look for a software that can deliver the following metrics:

  • Lead origination
  • A/B testing
  • Lead activity and history
  • ROI for each marketing campaign
  • And more

💡 Takeaways

Choosing the right marketing automation platform allows your business to thrive. If you need a software solution that integrates with a CRM, delivers endless features and integrations, and allows you to customize your automations to your needs, then choose GoCRM. Schedule a free demo today to learn more!

How to Create a Marketing Automation Campaign that Works

Posted on June 9, 2021 by - Marketing Automation

How-to-Create-a-Well-Performing-Marketing-Automation-Campaign

Marketing automation has the potential to boost your profits and fine-tune your marketing strategies–All while saving you time.

Understanding and realizing the benefits of a marketing automation campaign, however, are often two different things. How can you take the tools that allow you to automate important marketing tasks and use them to work smarter, not harder, for your business?

We have created this guide to help you transform your company’s marketing efforts into profitable and effective campaigns by using the right automation tools in the right way.

When is the right time to invest in marketing automation?

Not every company needs to invest in marketing automation right away, but automation tools and strategies can benefit many businesses thanks to their scalability and responsiveness.

The key to knowing when to choose investment in marketing automation is to understand when your ROI can benefit from these tools. If your business is in a position to capture and convert more leads through automation, then the investment required to fine-tune the automation to your particular business needs can be a smart, and profitable, choice.

Choose automation if your business fulfills any of the following criteria:

Abundant and Diverse Leads

Marketing automation works best when a company is already enjoying an influx of leads from an array of marketing strategies.

In these situations, businesses often need a way to

  1. Track the origin of their leads,
  2. Manage lead follow-up effectively, and
  3. Accomplish repetitive tasks efficiently.

In these cases, better lead management through marketing automation helps by taking over certain tasks to get more done in less time.

A Struggling Sales Team

If your sales team is beginning to struggle with the lead nurturing process, or if you notice leads falling through the cracks, it may be time for marketing automation.

The right automation tools capture and nurture leads through lead assignment, drip campaigns, or automated workflows.

The result is that your sales team focuses on the highest-value leads without losing track of the other leads who come into the sales funnel. And, with marketing automation assisting with lead nurturing, your sales team will find it easier to bring leads all the way to conversion.

Multi-Channel Marketing Approach

Multiple marketing channels add complexity to your campaigns. You may need marketing automation to help you manage, track, and accomplish successful marketing throughout each of these channels.

Analytics Gaps

Marketing automation assists businesses who need to know the:

  • Sources (and channels) of leads
  • Relative success of specific marketing campaigns
  • Messages that best speak to the target audiences, and more.

Marketing automation utilizes tools (such as dynamic number insertion) to accomplish these tasks and provide real-time data that guides ROI-boosting efforts.

Consumer-Focused Marketing Needs

Marketing automation is particularly useful for businesses that want to provide an interactive experience for consumers. Automated marketing that personalizes communications and engages with leads saves time without sacrificing the sense consumers have that your business cares about THEM.

Steps to Creating a Marketing Automation Campaign

If you feel that your business is ready to benefit from automated marketing, here are 5 concrete steps you can take to create campaigns that work.

1. Prioritize based on highest needs

You do not need to build automation into every part of your revenue cycle at once. Instead, examine your process to see where you need to improve the most: Lead generation? Lead nurturing? Sales and marketing alignment?

Once you identify your areas of greatest need, you then begin crafting automated campaigns that meet those needs first.

You can always expand your automation over time to encompass more of your marketing and sales work, but targeting your highest-need areas first allows you to see the greatest improvements in performance and ROI right away.

2. Define your goals

2.1 Be specific when defining your marketing automation goals.

In order to make the most of your investment in marketing automation software, you need to create specific, actionable goals for your marketing automation campaigns.

For example, say you identified lead nurturing as your area of greatest need. What do you hope to achieve by adding automation to your lead nurturing process? Re-engaging cold leads? Capturing more leads through retargeting campaigns? Educating leads on your products and services?

Once you know what you want to accomplish, you use marketing automation to implement specific steps to reach those goals.

2.2 Set up marketing automation workflows.

Once you have specific goals in mind, you create automated workflows that help you integrate individual marketing activities with those goals.

These workflows use if-then logic to turn individual tasks into a part of your overall marketing plan.

For example, say you want to re-engage cold leads to boost your lead nurturing process. You create a workflow that anticipates every potential response from these cold leads:

  1. If a lead has not responded in 30 days, then they receive an SMS message.
  2. If a lead does not respond to the SMS message within 48 hours, then they receive an email with a link to additional information about the products they were interested in.
  3. If a lead does respond to the email, then they receive a personal phone call from a member of the sales team.
  4. If the lead does not respond to the email within 1 week, then they receive a follow up SMS.

As you can see, these workflows use specific actions (e.g. sending an email with a link) to accomplish your specific goals (To re-engage cold leads and improve the lead nurturing process).

In addition, the workflow lets you see the big picture, so you see how specific actions affect costs, revenue, and ultimately, ROI. These are insights that include but go beyond simple metrics like how many people visited your website.

2.3 Adjust your goals as needed.

One of the benefits of marketing automation is the ability to use small pieces of information collected at each touchpoint to adjust your goals for each workflow.

For example, when you get more precise and give them a deadline, your goals will look like this:

Objective Strategy Goal
Bring in more sales-qualified leads Expanding subscription forms and content gating helps you acquire more data. But the workflow, on the other hand, will show you how to balance the amount and quality of leads by increasing or decreasing the amount of required form fields. Bring in 500 more sales-qualified leads in 2021
Increase sales You experiment with different email subject lines, landing page layouts, and copy to see how they affect conversion rates. However, you’ll eventually want to be able to drive visitors to your site and track sales. Increase sales by 10% on a monthly basis
Improve customer retention Keep track of engagement to discover if the content you’re providing is of interest to your target audience. Create long-term relationships with your customers by interacting with them. Increase customer retention by 15% next year

3. Earn quick marketing wins

Developing a sophisticated marketing automation campaign that addresses every stage of the sales funnel will not happen right away. You need time to learn about and integrate all of the features of your marketing automation software.

Fortunately, you begin to see improvements in your marketing and sales efforts right away by using automation to target some basic tasks.  These tasks deliver quick wins for your business while you build up a more extensive marketing automation strategy.

  • Automate SMS/email/phone call sequences 

This is a great way to introduce the value or added-value of your latest product or service offering.

  • Set up analytics for new targeted landing pages.

Conduct automated A/B testing to see which designs and messages work best.

  • Set up trigger emails based on specific consumer actions. 

E.g. Abandoned carts, online form submissions, appointment reminders, and more.

  • Automate lead assignment and task reminders.

Ensure that your sales and marketing teams connect with every lead by assigning each lead to specific team members and by implementing reminders for tasks such as meetings and phone calls.

  • Set up a welcome email sequence for new subscribers.

Use these emails to connect new subscribers with useful resources and earn ongoing engagement.

In addition, you create resources to target consumers at every stage of the sales funnel.

  • Hold a webinar discussing how to handle a common problem.
  • Develop a case study to showcase how your business overcame a problem for a consumer.
  • Write a blog post about a new product or service you are offering.

These resources become tools that you integrate into your automated marketing to quickly improve the engagement and conversions you earn from your campaigns.

4. Automate existing workflows

Chances are your marketing and sales teams already utilize workflows to accomplish tasks like nurturing leads, following up after appointments, reaching out to cold leads, onboarding new customers, and more.

You easily integrate marketing automation into your business by automating these workflows.

Start by creating a list of the routine marketing activities that your business already engages in. Then, turn these activities into automated activities that save you time and help your teams focus on exercising creativity and taking care of more urgent tasks.

Ideas could include the following:

  • Sending reminder emails to consumers who have appointments
  • Sending welcome emails to new subscribers or customers
  • Engaging cold leads
  • Following up with leads who request information on particular topics or products

5. Segment your lead database

Your lead database is a valuable source of information that you use to create automated marketing campaigns.

One of the first steps to take when creating automated marketing campaigns is to segment this list based on the demographics that work for your business. Suggestions include any of the following:

  • Lead source
  • Profile information
  • Place in the sales funnel
  • Latest activity
  • Areas of interest
  • And more

Once you segment your lead database you use these segments in your marketing campaigns.

For example, you may choose to create an automated workflow that targets leads who have abandoned carts, visited a particular landing page, live in a particular geographic area, or have failed to respond to your organization within a certain period of time.

With segmented databases, automation becomes simpler and faster to implement.

💡 Takeaways

Marketing automation can be quite complex and advanced, but you do not have to start there. Instead, begin with simple workflows that address tasks your teams already need to accomplish.

For example, use automated workflows for the following simple but repetitive tasks:

  • Following up on form submissions with an email
  • Sending content on a related topic to someone who visited a landing page
  • Reminding leads about scheduled appointments
  • Welcoming new customers to your organization

Simple automated workflows are fast and easy to implement, quickly free up time for your sales and marketing teams, and accomplish your goal of getting quick wins from your automation.

Creating a well-performing marketing automation campaign does not have to be time-consuming or confusing. Prioritize your needs. Define your goals. Focus on quick marketing wins. Segment your lead database, and develop simple, automated workflows.

If you need a marketing automation software that helps, consider using GoCRM. We help you improve your ROI and capture more leads without adding tasks to your teams’ already busy schedules. Contact us today for a free demo and to learn more.

HubSpot Alternative – Better Marketing Automation with GoCRM

Posted on May 25, 2021 by - Alternatives

HubSpot alternative for Marketing Automation - GoCRM

So you are looking for the best CRM software to enable market automation and better marketing? We are sure you have heard of HubSpot as it is one of the consistently top-ranked CRM available in the market today. But is it actually the best fit for your needs?

Being a highly rated CRM, HubSpot also comes at a high price which may not be the best fit for your budget. So why should you stop limiting your choices?

GoCRM is a great HubSpot alternative for small and medium-sized businesses looking for a complete CRM and automation solution at an affordable price. GoCRM offers everything a small business needs:

  • Customer management 
  • Sales & marketing automation 
  • Project management
  • Analytics and ROI measurement
  • Full-funnel Tracking 
  • Wide-ranging customization 
  • A sales platform that continuously adapts to expanding business needs.

So, should you choose GoCRM over HubSpot? Well, we will let you decide. All we will do here is provide a neck-and-neck comparison between the two.

GoCRM vs HubSpot

Everyone understands the value of a well-made marketing campaign. But not every platform is able to deliver on its promise. There are business solutions that fail to plug data leaks and loss of prospective leads. Sometimes these are beyond the reach of small businesses.

But done right, these platforms can help businesses break even faster and reduce their dependency on half-baked sales software. Like HubSpot, another automation platform, GoCRM also offers a range of exciting features and services. Here we compare the two platforms so that as a small business owner, you can explore your options.

Email Marketing

Advertising through emails is still a thing. Emails are personal, fast, and reach the clients’ inbox and their homes. But what makes email marketing effective and what should you look for in it?

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
Building and Personalizing Emails
Create and design emails with an editor; manage templates; personalize dynamically.		 ✔️ ✔️
Sending Outbound Emails
Set deadlines, prioritize and set targeted emails to prospective leads on an email list, handle bulk mails.		 ✔️ ✔️
Manage Email Deliverability
Track mail delivery, failed delivery, subscription lists, bounced emails, blocking, broken links, spam alerts.		 ✔️ ✔️
Automated Email Responses
Set up automated replies according to leads, events, and online activities.		 ✔️ ✔️

These features enable small businesses to design and implement the right email campaign. When it comes to introducing your existing and potential customers to your products and offers, new launches, and returning deals, nothing quite works like an email. With automated emailing playing a crucial role, small businesses are doing all they can to create an up-to-date email list.

Emails are proven tools. Few things work as best as emails when it comes to reaching your target audience. Hence before selecting an automation software, such as Hubspot or GoCRM, make sure you read what their email automation feature has to offer.

Tracking

Lead generation is the first big task. The next is lead tracking. What are your potential clients doing online and how to manage them best? Let’s see how GoCRM and HubSpot tracking features compare.

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
Call Tracking & Recording
Monitor how customers interact with your business and how they find your business in the first place. Automatically log calls for maximum efficiency and control.		 ✔️ ✔️
Email Tracking
Understand email open rate, click rate, deliverability, engagement and more.		 ✔️ ✔️
Multi-Touch Attribution
All of a contact’s interactions up to a key point in their journey are measured and assigned a value.		 ✔️ ✔️

Lead Management

Generating leads is not enough. Enthusiasm for your business has to translate into sales to give meaning to your sales campaigns. To manage leads effectively, your CRM needs an accurate database of leads and enhanced lead nurturing. Things like tracking client behavior virtually, automating alerts, and bringing all leads in one place go a long way in reducing costs and improving conversion. So how do GoCRM and HubSpot lead management features compare?

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
Marketing Lead Database
Find your potential clients here – emails, clicking on links, client visit history. Keep all your client data updated.		 ✔️ ✔️
Segmentation
Group your leads according to campaign parameters like demography, location, and lead behavior or any other criterion set up by the business.		 ✔️ ✔️
Lead Scoring and Grading
This allows you to find out how interested leads are in your products and services, as well as automatically assign them a score to pass along to your sales team.		 ❌ ✔️
Lead Nurturing
Connect with your target audience, make sales calls, and send targeted messages to draw them further in. Drip-marketing style to the rescue.		 ✔️ ✔️
Automated Alerts and Tasks
Schedule tasks among team members and generate automatic notifications through emails, mobiles, or RSS.		 ✔️ ✔️
CRM Lead Integration
Maintain a centralized lead database and enrich the CRM with up-to-the-minute stats for both existing and prospective customers.		 ✔️ ✔️

Campaign Management

Automation campaigns usually start with planning around a sales concept or idea. With dedicated CRM, sales figures look better. The customer management software not only helps you implement campaigns effectively but also monitors them closely. Social media, surveys, print media, and promotional giveaways – a lot of things need careful management. Let’s look at HubSpot vs GoCRM campaign management features.

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
Program Management
This feature helps businesses manage all online campaigns – ads, video promotions, social media releases, and virtual events, and so on. You can manage promotions across channels, optimize investment and reduce wastage.		 ✔️ ✔️
Event / Webinar Marketing
By keeping the event and webinar on a specific landing page, the full customer experience can be tailored to the individual.		 ❌ ✔️
Calendaring
Create a calendar that syncs with Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar, to simultaneously log a meeting into your CRM, create a meeting calendar event for that meeting, and send invites to guests.		 ✔️ ✔️

Marketing Automation

Automated sales and marketing is a useful feature of any CRM. It helps businesses create focused marketing drives for select clients. It could be ‘welcome onboard’ emails and messages, exclusive deals and offers, reminders about dormant shopping carts, and the like. Now while GoCRM provides these services by default, HubSpot promotes these are add-on features.

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
Automating Direct Mail Marketing
Existing and prospective clients are mailed according to an optimized mailing list. They are built, scheduled, and released according to a calendar.		 ✔️ ✔️*
Building Direct Mail Drip Campaigns
Drips emails are sent out periodically to leads as part of the marketing cycle.		 ✔️ ✔️*
Automating Voicemail Marketing
Voicemails reach the lead’s inbox and build a close connection with interested prospects.		 ✔️ ✔️*
Building Voicemail Drip Campaign
These scheduled voicemails go directly to the phone numbers provided by leads.		 ✔️ ✔️*

* Requires addon

Reporting & Analytics

Lead performance is crucial to every campaign. From monitoring active lead by month, campaign and source, small businesses can optimize marketing plans. Emails, social media, and website performance are valuable markers. These reports can be subscription-based and accessed by CRM and sales teams. Let’s compare HubSpot vs GoCRM reporting and analytics features.

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
Basic Reporting
Build lead reports by integrating all sources including: emails, paid ads, signage, website forms, etc.		 ✔️ ✔️
ROI Analytics
Automated software makes it quick and easy to track and analyze ads across multiple platforms.		 ✔️ ✔️
Custom Funnel Reports
Create custom funnel reports to view how leads and deals are converting, whether in a lifecycle, deal pipeline, or a custom event funnel.		 ✔️ ✔️

Platform

Customer relationship management functions at different levels. Whether your business is grappling with onboarding your sales reps, multiple agents, or different use cases, GoCRM or HubSpot platform features will give a measurable boost.

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
User, Role, and Access Management
Control access, distribute leads and manage operations seamlessly.		 ✔️ ✔️
Workflow Capability
Optimize team performance, manage workflow, meet deadlines, and deliver the end result.		 ✔️ ✔️
Notifications
Keep your teams notified of the performance of different marketing drives.		 ✔️ ✔️

Integrations

Integrations helps businesses sync multiple sources with your main business software. It helps you manage tools for buyer data analysis, automated marketing campaigns, and customer relationship software. Let’s see how both GoCRM and HubSpot compare.

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
WordPress
In a nutshell, marketers can create complex campaign process flows and automate all stages of their marketing funnel. Once the CRM is integrated with WordPress, it allows you to create customized automation.		 ✔️ ✔️
Outlook
Integration between Microsoft Outlook and CRM allows you to access all your CRM data via Microsoft Outlook.		 ✔️ ✔️
Gmail
For CRM users, Google Apps provides comprehensive tools for tracking and managing sales leads and opportunities.		 ✔️ ✔️
Zapier
Marketing automation is the new way to boost your business. For example, with a Zapier integration you can set a schedule for your business emails and direct messages.		 ✔️ ✔️
APIs
An API provides a developer program to allow outside companies to create software that works with an existing platform. In the case of a CRM, this allows for an integration with various other programs and services a company may be using. This means that through third-party developers, CRM data can connect with other useful third-party programs, thus improving the efficacy of the marketing team and making it easier for a company to accomplish its goals.		 ✔️ ✔️

Agency Alternative

Marketing agencies and consultants can be relieved of having to build a CRM from scratch, whether to be used by them or for their customers. Agency alternatives provide businesses with customizable marketing automation software that is easy to implement, yet empowering all user types and needs. Look how GoCRM and HubSpot compare.

Feature GoCRM HubSpot
Whitelabel
A customized white label solution for agencies which means agencies can bring their own branding and visuals, but it runs on top of the same technology.		 ✔️ ✔️
Centralization
Connecting even your leads’ leads. Yours, as well as your clients’ leads and deals live in the same place.		 ✔️ ✔️
Multi-User Access
Grant different access levels to your team and partners, as well as to your clients and customers.		 ✔️ ✔️
Journey Analytics
Discover which marketing assets are most effective by looking at the entire customer journey.		 ✔️ ✔️
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Implementing an ABM strategy will help boost marketing ROI, increase attributed revenue, increase conversions and eligible leads, and coordinate sales and marketing efforts.		 ✔️ ✔️

💡 Takeaways

Internet marketers are constantly on the lookout for cutting-edge software solutions. While HubSpot has its own fan following, GoCRM is the brand to watch out for. Its strongest features are related to building a personalized, robust campaign with stress on sales and marketing automation. It gives HubSpot quite the competition in terms of popularity and customer satisfaction. Request your free demo today!

What is Direct Marketing Automation and How Does it Work?

Posted on May 12, 2021 by - Marketing Automation Basics

What is Direct Marketing Automation

Direct marketing is an effective way to boost sales and convert leads by allowing businesses to create targeted marketing efforts that get results.

Along with direct marketing, however, comes repetitive, often time-consuming, work that can drain the resources of small businesses.

That is where marketing automation for direct response can help-Automating many of these tasks can save time and effort while boosting results.

What is direct response marketing?

Direct response marketing is any type of marketing that targets a specific audience and invites an immediate response. Its goal is to quickly generate leads and conversions.

The world of direct marketing is a large one, consisting of strategies such as the following:

  • Direct mailings
  • Emails
  • Landing pages
  • Targeted display ads
  • Sales calls
  • Print advertising
  • Social media advertising
  • And more

As long as the marketing is directed at a particular individual or group of people, with the intent of getting them to take a particular action, the effort qualifies as direct marketing.

What is the difference between direct and indirect marketing?

Direct marketing is a straightforward approach that addresses the consumer directly with requests for conversion.

Indirect marketing is a set of more subtle strategies designed to build trust and brand awareness among potential consumers.

Indirect marketing strategies can include the following:

  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • News articles
  • Community partnerships and sponsorships
  • Online reviews
  • Referrals
  • Social media posts
  • Blog posts
  • And more

Additionally, there are a number of significant differences between direct and indirect marketing measuring techniques:

Measurement Direct Marketing Indirect Marketing
Timeline Direct marketing is designed to garner an immediate reaction from consumers. Indirect marketing is a long-term approach that seeks to build a brand’s reputation over time.
Goal The purpose of direct marketing is to earn leads and conversions quickly. The purpose of indirect marketing is to build relationships with potential consumers.
Approach Direct marketing targets audiences based on factors like age, location, income, interests, pain points, and more. Indirect marketing makes information about a business available to anyone who wishes to read a blog post, follow a social media account, etc.
Cost Direct marketing tends to be more expensive than indirect marketing. Many indirect marketing channels, such as content creation or SEO, are low cost (You pay only for the time and expertise used to implement these strategies).

Elements of Successful Direct Response Marketing

Not every direct marketing approach is created equal. Truly successful direct marketing contains certain elements that make it a powerful tool for your business.

🌡️ Measurable

If your business enjoyed a record number of conversions in one month, would you be able to tell which marketing effort drove the influx? Can you tell which of two flyers is more appealing to your target audiences? How do you determine which social media ad to run again and which to retire? These questions can only be answered if you can measure the results of your direct marketing campaigns.

🎯 Targeted

One of the essential elements of direct marketing is targeting–Every direct marketing campaign needs to reach a specific audience (e.g. Visitors who did not purchase from your website, individuals in your community who meet certain criteria, etc.)

🪡 Personalized

Direct marketing addresses the consumer in a straightforward manner. As such, the most successful campaigns personalize their message to the consumer.

Personalization often works best if you can use the consumer’s name, particularly if you are sending an email or making a phone call.

However, you can also personalize your direct marketing for efforts such as print advertising or display ads by creating messaging and graphics that appeal to the particular audiences you hope to reach.

👌 Specific

Every direct marketing campaign needs to make a specific offer (e.g. 20% off bouquets for Mother’s Day, free consultations this weekend) to the target audience because the goal is to elicit action from the consumer.

As a result, every direct marketing campaign should include a clear call to action that encourages the individual to take advantage of the offer.

Consider using your direct marketing to create calls to actions such as the following:

  • Sign up now
  • Buy now
  • Save today
  • Learn more
  • Call now
  • Order online
  • Book now
  • Join our club
  • Start shopping
  • And more

How to Automate Direct Marketing

There is one other element to truly successful direct marketing: Automation. Marketing automation that encourages a direct response can save you time and effort while giving you full control over your campaign.

A robust CRM like GoCRM can give you the automation tools you need. Here is a look at some of the most useful features:

✔️ Automate your analytics.

Get full visibility for your direct marketing campaigns and save your team hours of time with automated, and detailed, analytics.

With GoCRM, you can track a marketing campaign’s impact throughout the entire sales funnel.

All of this information comes to you automatically through real-time analytics that are available whenever you need them. Making smart marketing decisions is easier, and less time-intensive, than ever with the right analytics tools.

✔️ Create automated drip campaigns.

Gain full control over your direct response marketing campaign and save time with automated workflows.

Use these workflows to implement direct marketing drip campaigns that trigger automatically based upon the parameters you set. Use emails, SMS messages, and even sales calls to create a campaign designed to elicit a direct response from your target audiences.

Target your desired audiences with carefully crafted messages that you only have to create once. GoCRM will send out these messages on the timeline you choose, to the people you choose, and send notifications to the right team members so they can make the phone calls you need.

GoCRM will even personalize the messages for you, making it easier than ever to connect with your target audiences.

✔️ Build email campaigns.

Build and implement powerful email marketing campaigns using GoCRM’s automated processes.

You control the message with the right email, and you control the audience with the parameters you desire.

GoCRM does the rest, sending out the emails to your desired list, tracking responses, and even following up with automated workflows to begin the lead nurturing process.

You can even create emails that are triggered by specific consumer actions (e.g. Submitting an email sign up form, turning in a contact form, or viewing a certain product on your website).

No more worrying about reaching every potential lead with your emails or spending hours crafting messages. Just fast, simple, and effective email campaigns directed at the people you want to reach.

✔️ Automate personalization.

Personalize your direct marketing efforts and improve your chances for success with automation that saves you time and effort.

  • Adding recipients’ names based on the information in GoCRM’s central database
  • Sending messages from a team member’s personal account
  • Allowing recipients to respond directly to the appropriate team member
  • Sending marketing materials to recipients based upon pre-determined parameters

✔️ Create automated task notifications

Your marketing team may need encouragement to remember to complete tasks such as making sales calls or sending out direct mail pieces.

GoCRM can ensure that these tasks do not fall through the cracks by creating automated task notifications.

For example, GoCRM can schedule sales meetings or phone calls in the appropriate team member’s calendar and send reminders to the team member’s phone number or email when necessary.

As a result, GoCRM makes it easier to stay on top of these tasks with automation that provides essential reminders on time, every time.

Direct Response Marketing Examples

Want to get a clearer idea of how GoCRM can help you automate your direct response marketing? Consider these three examples:

1. Email Campaigns

Promote your most recent sales, offer special discounts, request sign ups, or encourage other actions through automated email campaigns.

You create the offers and messaging. You choose the audiences you want to reach. GoCRM can do the rest, helping you target, send out, and track the performance of these emails for total visibility and control over your campaigns.

Newsletter email marketing campaign example

2. Drip Campaigns

Use drip campaigns to capture leads, focus attention, and drive action through a series of phone calls, emails, and SMS messages.

Use automated drip campaigns through GoCRM to accomplish a variety of direct marketing tasks throughout the sales funnel:

  • Re-engage cold leads
  • Onboard new customers
  • Promote new products or deals
  • Advance leads through the sales funnel
  • Earn leads
  • And more

Drip campaign example

3. Referral Campaigns

Get happy customers talking about your business through automated referral campaigns that create incentives for consumers to refer friends and family to your business.

You create the incentive and the message. GoCRM can send those messages (through email, SMS, or even phone calls) on your behalf.

Schedule your referral requests to send after a client completes a transaction, provides positive feedback about an experience, or schedules another job with you.

The possibilities are endless, and the potential to earn new leads through your current customers is too good to pass up.

If you want to make the most out of your direct response marketing efforts, try GoCRM. Our CRM platform is designed to automate many direct marketing tasks so you can accomplish more with the less time and effort.

Work smarter, not harder, and watch your marketing efforts soar with the total control and visibility you can enjoy with direct response marketing automation. Schedule a free demo today to see exactly how we can help you!

7 Deadly Sins In B2B Marketing Automation

Posted on May 3, 2021 by - Marketing Automation

Deadly-Sins-B2B-Marketing-Automation

Almost every marketing activity involves a data journey where the customer contact or lead is taken through various marketing funnel stages to reach the desired goal. Process automation takes care of all these processes with the help of marketing automation software (such as GoCRM) and sets up the related instructions and workflow steps.

What is B2B Marketing Automation?

B2B marketing automation is the process of using relevant software technologies (think of CRMs) to automate, streamline and track B2B marketing operations and workflows. A marketing automation CRM streamlines all kinds of business-to-business marketing operations across multiple channels like email, direct messaging, phone calls, landing pages, online/offline ads, billboards & signage, and more. Data at each stage is automatically recorded, thus better tracking and measuring the campaign’s effectiveness.

Automation saves time and helps marketing professionals derive more insightful analysis from their data and find ways to optimize their marketing campaigns. However, all is not well with B2B marketing automation.

Why B2B Fears Marketing Automation?

As is the case with any new technology, automation, too, can bring in a disruption to how marketing campaigns are carried out traditionally. The resistance to change can come from two main underlying reasons:

1) Lack Of Technology Expertise

While B2B marketing automation does involve the use of new software and technologies with a learning curve, it is still built on top of conventional marketing expertise and knowledge. Understanding that automation is only a tool, albeit a more powerful one compared to your traditional manual efforts, could help you be more welcoming of it.

2) Difficulty Quantifying Costs

Many small to medium-sized businesses could be reluctant to adopt B2B marketing automation considering the investment costs and training costs that go into adopting advanced marketing software. But in reality, these are reasonable investments as marketing automation stands to save you a lot of time and costs otherwise spent on many of the manual grunt work involved with marketing.

Your team would now be free to work on the more pressing matters and be able to strategize your marketing efforts quickly. A report by Salesforce says that companies that adopt marketing automation have had a 53% higher conversion rate leading to better lead management.

How To Use B2B Automation To Align Sales & Marketing

B2B marketing automation lets you streamline your marketing activities across all your major marketing channels like email, SMS, direct mailing, and phone calls.

By integrating with a unified data platform provided by your CRM, you can easily set up workflows that let you split or overlap each channel and accurately track the progress of your marketing campaigns. You can maintain consistent messaging, tone, and information across all your channels. CRM also lets you personalize these messages, thus helping you to reach out to your customers better and have better conversion rates.

7 Deadly Sins in Marketing Automation for B2B

Having emphasized the importance of employing B2B automation, it is our duty to also make you aware of the possible pitfalls and wrong routes you might take with automation. Here are the 7 deadly sins you must avoid to achieve the best out of your marketing automation implementations.

Sin #1 – Not Having A Strategy

Jumping into marketing without a strategy is more or less the same as skydiving with a faulty parachute. Do not have vague or all-encompassing strategies that have little to offer anything in terms of proper directives. You need to have a well-defined strategy with precise goals supported by real data.

Create proper plans for all your marketing campaigns, establish the metrics and benchmarks to measure your progress, and keep optimizing your strategies.

Sin #2 – No Alignment Between Marketing And Sales

Many organizations either fail to demarcate marketing and sales activities or lack proper cooperation between the two departments. Both situations can be hurting your business.

Encourage cooperation between the marketing and sales team to implement and make use of marketing automation effectively. Make a note of any cultural differences and communication gaps and try to bring in a healthy collaborative environment.

Sin #3 – No Content

The value of content for content marketing is indispensable. Without content, you have no way to communicate with your customers, no matter how good a strategy or plan you employ. Keep generating quality content that will support your marketing efforts.

Sin #4 – No Personalization

Email marketing is considered to be so far the most effective way to reach out to your target audience and connect with them personally. But simply sending loads of emails with no relevance and personal message will do little to boost your sales. Craft personalized messages in your email marketing campaigns and reach click-through-rate nirvana.

Sin #5 – Not Having An Omnichannel Marketing Presence

One other mistake that is most often made by businesses is that they fail to enhance their cross-channel marketing operations. By not streamlining the marketing efforts across multiple channels like email, phone calls, and direct mail, you stand to lose a huge potential for better sales. You need to use advanced marketing attribution to get a 360-degree view of data and workflow management.

Sin #6 – Not Using Workflows

Workflows based upon the buyer’s journey allow you to engage your buyer personas and address their concerns at each point of the buyer’s journey. In most cases, your workflows should derive from your marketing strategy. Hence, it is crucial that you use workflows to enhance your B2B marketing automation efforts.

Sin #7 – Not Focusing On The Right Metrics

You need to go beyond the default figures like open rate, click-through rate, conversion rates, and more to be able to assess your marketing efforts accurately. Look into all necessary and applicable key figures like marketing expenses, customer experience scores, and more to understand the effectiveness of your marketing operations.

💡 Takeaways

As is evident, marketing automation is the ultimate recipe to success that your business might need. However, it is essential to steer clear of all the mistakes that most companies end up making. Finally, using a marketing automation platform such as GoCRM allows you to track all your marketing activities, from lead to closing. Don’t let your leads fall through the cracks! Contact us today and request a free demo.

What Is Marketing Automation And What Can It Do For Your Business?

Posted on April 26, 2021 by - Marketing Automation Basics

Marketing automation 101

You may have heard about the power of marketing automation, but still wonder: What exactly does marketing automation do? And how can it save you time and money?

Automating many of your repetitive marketing tasks is one of the easiest and most effective ways you have of improving your productivity. Here is a look at what marketing automation is and what it can do for you.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation uses software to automate many of the repetitive tasks your sales and marketing teams currently complete manually.

From drafting emails to sending appointment reminders, these tasks eat up time that your teams could be spending nurturing high-value leads or pursuing new clients.

The possibilities of marketing automation are almost endless. With a strong platform like GoCRM, you can take automation beyond basic tasks like scheduling appointments and make automation part of the process of capturing and nurturing leads.

What Marketing Tasks Can Be Automated?

Marketing automation can streamline almost every stage of the sales funnel, from capturing leads’ attention to helping nurture them toward conversion.

Here are some of the biggest tasks you can automate with the set of tools provided by a robust platform such as GoCRM.

Emails

Chances are, your sales and marketing teams write many emails every day that the GoCRM system could deliver on your behalf.

Simply create the email template you wish to send, tell the system what parameters to use when choosing who should receive the email, and activate. GoCRM will automatically send the email for you, from the email account of the correct team member.

Use automated emails for tasks such as the following:

  • Confirmation emails (e.g. Appointments, form submissions, etc.)
  • Marketing emails (e.g. Alerts, resources, and promotions to your email list)
  • Reminder emails (e.g. Upcoming appointments, account reviews)
  • Delivery emails (e.g. Send out paperwork, onboard new clients)
  • Request emails (e.g. Ask for a review)

Lead Engagement and Nurturing

Marketing automation can also streamline the process of engaging and nurturing leads through customized workflows.

In GoCRM, you build each workflow using your business’ best practices and target audiences to reach and nurture potential customers.

Each workflow consists of a series of emails, SMS messages, and phone calls written by you and sent according to the timeline you set, from the personal account of the assigned team member.

All you do is build the workflow, write the emails and SMS messages once, and activate the workflow. GoCRM then works to engage and nurture leads until they respond to one of the messages.

At that point, your sales team can take over the process, providing a seamless transition to a personal connection that makes it easier for your team to close the deal.

Use automated workflows to accomplish tasks such as the following:

  • Engage cold leads.
  • Nurture leads earned through ads or form submissions.
  • Alert leads to new promotions, discounts, and information to get them interested in your business
  • Onboard new clients
  • Retarget previous website visitors
  • Engage previous customers
  • And more

Using automated workflows allows GoCRM to nurture leads until they move further down the sales funnel, giving your team the time they need to focus on the most promising and highest-value leads.

Lead Assignment and Qualification

Assigning leads and determining the value and intent of each lead can take hours of your sales and marketing team’s valuable time, while receiving poor quality leads from your marketing team can create tension between your sales and marketing departments.

Automated lead qualification, such as that provided by GoCRM, can eliminate hours of labor and keep the pipeline full of high-value leads.

All you need to do is to set automated lead assignment. Set lead assignment by lead value, geographic area, position in the sales funnel, or simply use a round-robin style of assignment.

You can also set the parameters for qualifying a lead. For example, a lead that does not respond within 30 days may qualify as a cold lead, while a lead that fills out an online request form about a particular product may qualify for immediate follow up from a sales rep.

With GoCRM helping to assign, qualify and sort leads, your teams can focus on tending to the most important leads without taking time out of their day to evaluate every lead that comes through the pipeline.

Analytics Tracking

Your sales and marketing teams thrive off data that helps them segment audiences, target audiences, evaluate efficacy, optimize productivity and maximize ROI.

Deliver this information into their hands in less time with automated tracking from GoCRM. Our automated system can track and evaluate data in all of these ways:

  • Import data from hundreds of integrations
  • Record phone calls
  • Centralize information in the database
  • Track lead origin and journeys from any source, including phone calls
  • Evaluate the value generated by each marketing campaign
  • Implement dynamic number insertion and call tracking
  • And More

With real-time data available, your sales and marketing teams can more efficiently earn, engage, nurture, and convert leads.

What Are The Benefits Of Automated Marketing?

Marketing automation can take over many time-consuming tasks, and in doing so deliver an array of benefits to your sales and marketing teams. Here are a few of the biggest benefits you will enjoy with automated marketing from GoCRM:

Never miss another lead.

With busy teams and lots of leads, it can be easy to overlook a lead. With GoCRM, however, you never have to miss another lead because the system nurtures the lead for you while you focus on more important tasks.

For example, automated workflows can nurture cold leads, while automated lead assignment ensures that every lead is immediately assigned to a specific team member.

Maximize your ROI.

With every lead promptly captured and properly nurtured, you can expect to win more customers, and that is good for your bottom line.

In addition, automated analytics tracking can help you focus on marketing strategies that are most effective for your target audiences. That means you can spend less money and earn more results. No more money thrown away on marketing campaigns that just do not work.

Personalize the customer experience.

Leads are more likely to become customers if they feel as if your business is invested in them. Automated marketing can help by personalizing the experience for the customer.

For example, personal names at the beginning of emails and texts, a personal connection to a real team member, and communications personalized to their pain points and needs all make the lead feel as if your business understands and respects them.

Personal connections lead to real relationships, and those relationships translate not just into customers but loyal customers who are likely to come back again and again.

Work smarter, not harder.

Marketing automation earns you more results, and leads, without actually making you and your teams work harder.

Instead of spending time nurturing cold leads, for example, you can focus on customers who are willing to buy right now, while GoCRM connects with your cold leads for you. Instead of tracking down information on a lead’s last communication with your business, you simply check the central database for all the relevant information.

With smart work, not harder work, you can take hours off your team’s workweeks while boosting their productivity and your ROI. That makes marketing automation a clearly good choice for your sales and marketing departments.

If you are ready to see what marketing automation can do for your business, contact GoCRM. We would be happy to give you a free demo and start you on the path to more productive, efficient, and profitable marketing and sales.

7 Ways to Automate Marketing for Mutual Funds

Posted on April 5, 2021 by - Mutual Funds

Mutual Funds automation

Investing in a mutual fund requires a lot of trust. Your investors have to be confident in your ability to successfully manage, and grow, their hard-earned money. They expect prompt responses, in-depth answers to their many questions, helpful educational resources, and most of all, your time and attention.

Winning leads and nurturing them through what can be a long sales cycle requires time and money, both of which you may not always have in abundance. That is where mutual funds automation, integrated and implemented by your CRM, comes in.

A mutual funds CRM like GoCRM can transform your sales and marketing efforts, making you more available and persuasive while saving you both time and money. Here is a look at 7 ways that you can use CRM-driven marketing automation to boost your mutual fund sales and marketing.

Call Tracking

Most investors will not entrust their money to a mutual fund without a personal connection. You can expect phone calls from leads, and you need to be ready to handle those phone calls and capture relevant information in order to win over investors.

GoCRM enables you to make the most of your phone calls with a cloud-based VOIP system that routes phone calls to the assigned team member’s phone, so they can answer the call anywhere, anytime, from their preferred device.

GoCRM then captures the important information from that phone call by recording it and importing the data into the central database.

The result? Your sales teams become immediately available to inquisitive investors, and each member of your team can easily access and use the most up-to-date information on leads and clients, without having to manually enter information into the database.

Use call tracking with automation to accomplish tasks such as the following:

  • Nurture leads with relevant follow ups
  • Handle time-sensitive inquiries
  • Set up consultations
  • View client preferences and investment requests
  • Answer questions
  • Cut down on the time it takes leads to connect with a real person within your organization

Mutual Funds Lead Engagement Workflows

The more leads you nurture, the more business you earn for your mutual fund. Make the most of the possibility your leads present with automated lead engagement workflows through GoCRM.

An automated workflow is a series of emails, SMS messages, and phone calls that take place at predetermined intervals and are targeted to specific audiences. For example, you may set up a workflow to engage cold leads, targeted toward leads who may have submitted a consultation request form online but have not engaged with your business for more than 30 days (or whatever time period you set).

Within GoCRM, you can set up these workflows based on your company’s best practices and the preferences of your target audience. Then you write the emails or SMS messages once in a template and activate the workflow.

GoCRM does the rest, sending the emails and SMS messages according to your parameters, and scheduling phone calls in the assigned team member’s calendar. GoCRM will even add the lead’s name to the messages for added personalization.

Automated workflows put many tasks within reach, nurturing and engaging leads without taking time out of your busy team’s schedule. Use them to accomplish any of the following:

  • Create an autoresponder for incoming leads.
  • Automate lead qualification (e.g. Based on potential value, likelihood of investing).
  • Re-engage leads who stopped responding.
  • Respond to website visitors who requested a consultation or asked a question.
  • Nurture leads with industry information (e.g. What is a mutual fund? Or Mutual fund performance over the last 5 years) to engage potential clients.
  • Follow up after a mutual fund consultation.
  • Check in with investors to request reviews, obtain referrals, and determine satisfaction with your work.

Lead Assignment

With many leads and a busy team, potential investors can easily fall through the cracks, unless you use automated lead assignment. A marketing CRM for mutual funds, like GoCRM, can assign leads to team members based on parameters you set.

For example, assign leads based on the lead’s potential worth, level of interest, geographic location, interest in a specific type of fund, risk tolerance, team member seniority, and more. You can also choose to have GoCRM assign leads in a round-robin style.

GoCRM will also alert the team member to their newly-assigned lead, send emails and SMS messages from their personal accounts, schedule phone calls in their calendars, and send notifications and reminders.

Combine automated lead assignment with automated workflows to create a seamless way of engaging and nurturing leads without taking time away from your team’s busy schedule and without losing track of a single potential investor.

Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing has one of the highest ROIs out of any type of online marketing strategy. It is even more effective than social media. Automated mutual funds email marketing can help you maximize its potential for your business.

For example, GoCRM allows you to build email drip campaigns that are as simple or as complex as you wish.

You can also trigger emails based on investor behavior (e.g. Send a “congratulations” email when an investor makes an investment; or send a confirmation email when they schedule a consultation).

Simply create, schedule, and activate. GoCRM will do the rest, even adding the recipient’s name to the email.

Consider using automated emails to complete some of the following tasks:

  • Communicate with your target audience regarding relevant news (e.g. Growth of emerging market mutual funds)
  • Encourage potential investors to schedule a consultation
  • Alert leads to resources and information (e.g. How to ensure a diverse mutual funds portfolio)
  • Re-engage cold leads with information on new mutual funds offerings or no-fee mutual fund options
  • Deliver resources, such as an ebook on investing in a mutual fund
  • Respond to website form submissions and other communications
  • Onboard new investors
  • Follow up with investors

Personalized Marketing Communications

Investors want to feel as if they have your undivided attention. They want you to know who they are, understand their needs, and respond to them personally. Win more business by providing them with this personalized experience through marketing automation.

Personalization can go beyond simply adding names to emails or SMS messages. GoCRM can also send communications from team members’ personal accounts, allowing recipients to respond directly to the team member and making it seamless to connect personally with a real individual.

In addition, GoCRM’s central database makes it easy to view a lead’s entire journey with your business at a single glance. Use this real-time information to personalize communications with leads and clients, saving them and you time and rapidly earning their trust (and their investments).

Simplifying the process of reaching real people, making it easier for your team to connect with leads, and streamlining access to information all creates positive interactions that maximize your ROI.

Automated Mutual Funds Data Entry

If you rely upon manual data entry, chances are your CRM will lack the most recent information on leads and clients. That can compromise your team’s ability to make smart decisions about how to nurture leads and support clients.

Instead, use automated data entry from GoCRM to put up-to-date information at your team’s fingertips, saving hours of labor and frustration.

GoCRM integrates with hundreds of platforms, importing relevant information directly into the central database. As a result, every member of your team can see a lead’s entire history in one convenient online location.

With accurate information available, your team will avoid repetitive communications, missed tasks, and lost leads. Instead, they can successfully provide leads with exactly what they need to move one step closer to conversion.

Analytics Tracking

Analytics provide you with the information you need to identify and use the most effective sales and marketing strategies.

GoCRM’s automated analytics tracking makes real-time data available whenever you need it. For example, our call tracking system uses dynamic number insertion to assign a different number to each of your marketing initiatives (e.g. Google display ads and Facebook ads).

When someone calls your business, GoCRM can see which number they called and identify which marketing effort led them to you.

Similarly, GoCRM can track lead origins when they visit your website, explore a landing page, submit forms, schedule consultations, sign up for emails, create an investment account with you, and more.

With detailed information on a lead’s journey and how they got there, you can see which marketing efforts generate not only the most leads but also the most ROI, and tweak your efforts accordingly.

By using what works best, you can maximize your ROI and capture more leads than ever before, all without adding more time to your schedule.

💡Takeaways

Marketing automation for mutual funds can transform how you do sales and marketing. Save time and money; work smarter, not harder, and realize a better ROI with GoCRM by using automations that boost productivity and improve communication and personalization. Request your free demo today!

How To Combine the Power of CRM and Email Marketing

Posted on March 29, 2021 by - Marketing

CRM Email marketing

What are your thoughts on having a CRM specializing in email marketing? Sure, you can have a separate email marketing tool independent of your CRM, but it will make little sense not to take full advantage of everything that a CRM can do for your email marketing campaigns.

What is CRM software designed to do

What Is CRM Software Designed To Do?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and gives you access to a centralized database of customer data, including their contact details, past interactions, and several insights into customer behavior. However, CRM tools offer much more than centralized data storage, a good CRM is a powerful tool for streamlining your entire sales and marketing process.

CRM email marketing refers to any effort that relies on a CRM to execute email marketing campaigns. The data from CRM is effectively used to craft better-personalized email content, reach out to the right audience, and get better ROI. But there is more to it. In this article, we will explore email marketing CRM in-depth and help you get started.

Advantages of Combining Email Marketing and CRM

Here are some of the significant benefits of combining CRM email marketing to let you rethink the way you strategize email marketing.

  1. CRM lets you gain a holistic view of customer data and create emails with better positive outreach. As you have access to your audience’s data, you can use it to craft personalized email messages that ought to be more appealing.
  2. Combining CRM and email marketing lets you devise and execute personalized communication journeys for each of your prospects. For instance, if you find a customer has frequently visited your site through your email call-to-action buttons, you can send them more informative emails frequently as they seem to value your emails.
  3. CRM lets you simplify the email creation process with the help of pre-built email templates. For the most common use cases, such as presenting a sales pitch or collecting user data through forms, you can easily set up an email using the pre-made templates provided by your CRM application. This lets you save time and cost that goes into crafting emails for each scenario from scratch.

Additionally, the email workflows provided by some CRM applications such as GoCRM enable you to automatically segment customers as well as provide a full-funnel marketing approach. Meaning, you can seamlessly integrate SMS, phone and automation into your marketing campaigns. Thus, achieving state-of-the-art customer experience without any added effort.

What Kind Of Emails Can You Send?

The primary reason emails are still considered effective is that they let you establish a close and personal connection with your audience and customers. So, you must send emails at the right time and follow up with them appropriately to establish a trusting and loyal customer relationship.

But doing that manually could lead to errors, delays, and inaccuracies. This is where a CRM could help you out by automating your email messages and ensuring they are personalized without discrepancies in the information shared.

There are two main types of follow-up emails that you can send for effective customer relationship maintenance. You can also further classify your emails for each scenario, sales stage, and the personal preferences of your customer.

📧➡️ Pre-transactional

Pre-transactional emails are sent to generate interest in a new product launch, gather leads for a product, or inform the customer of any new development, offers, and events prior to the purchase. You can use them as alerts or reminder emails to keep in touch with your customer and keep them informed of any new offers and deals they might be interested in.

📧⬅️ Post-transactional

Post transactional emails are to be sent once the customer has already made a purchase. It is often a neglected practice that could cost in terms of customer retention. Customers like it when they are cared for. You have to keep them engaged and feel valued. You can send personalized email follow-up messages that give further insights into the previous purchases they made. Post transactional emails can also collect customer feedback and as reminders for further product renewals or subscription extensions.

You can also use these emails to inform your customers about new offers and deals exclusively available for them due to their previous transactions.

How To Combine CRM And Email Marketing?

The very classic way of combining CRM with email marketing is to import customer data and automate your email campaigns.

A lot more can be done by combining CRM and email marketing than just getting access to customer contacts from the CRM database. There is a whole set of optimization and personalization that can be done with automated CRM features.

You can easily collect the lead generation data, segment your email contacts, find qualifying leads with ease and make sure your efforts are focused on high return tasks. The personalization level you can achieve with email marketing in CRM is also relatively high and gives you many options.

Here are some things you can achieve or optimize by integrating email marketing with CRM.

More Effective Segmentation

Customer segmentation is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. It helps fine-tune your user personas and achieve a better personalization level across all your customer-facing business operations.

In normal circumstances, you can only collect limited information about a customer. In contrast, with a CRM system, you get loads of data that can be used to segment and personalize customer interactions easily. Both emails and CRM provide you with immense opportunities to collect data from the user.

Third-Party Software Integration

Have you ever wondered how you can embed email forms and social media features into your email? Now you can do it with ease without necessarily having to add in extra coding or manual effort. You can easily integrate social media tools and other third-party software into your email messages using a CRM. Using tools like Zapier, you can integrate hundreds of apps including  other email marketing software and further enhance the CRMs functionality.

Even if your CRM does not currently offer in-built support for specific third-party integrations, it will let you build it yourself with the help of APIs.

Email Personalization

The more personalized your emails are, the more effective they will be in terms of lead generation. As revealed by HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report 2020, personalization was considered the best tactic to improve email engagement.

Email marketing CRM lets you consolidate data from multiple channels and offers a sophisticated level of personalization. For instance, if your contact has searched for a product in any of your social media handles or has made a query regarding the same,  you can log such data into CRM with ease. You can use the collected data to craft personalized email messages to reach out to the customer and increase your chances of securing a successful sale.

Alerts for More Useful Follow-ups

Do you know an excellent way to increase your sales? Try sending useful follow-up emails that introduce the customer to any related products, better deals, exclusive offers, and more.

With CRM email marketing, you can set up automatic alerts and notifications to be sent to selected email contacts based on an event or a deadline.

Improved Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process by which you gently nudge your customers into the various stages of a sales funnel, from the initial discovery point to the final sales. CRM equips you with the correct information that will help you quickly craft the personalized journey for each customer and make sure the lead nurturing process is smooth.

About 65% of marketers feel that lead nurturing is one of the topmost challenges involved in marketing. Being able to do it efficiently is an excellent advantage that email marketing in CRM gives you.

Customizable Email Marketing Templates

Your CRM application can create pre-defined templates to quickly craft and send email messages. As a step further, you can also customize these templates by using the specific customer data you get from the CRM.

Using the email marketing templates from CRM can also ensure you have a uniform look and feel across all your channels. These templates are also responsive and bug-free, ensuring a high level of reach and quality operation.

Email Marketing Automation

As mentioned earlier, CRM can automate your email marketing communications. You can set up events based on customer interactions, past purchases, product inquiries or engagement workflows. You can set up reminder emails, automate newsletter mailings, send email confirmations and acknowledge each sales activity. Marketing automation can greatly save your time and the way you target your customers.

Mass Email-Sending

Mass email sending becomes the most straightforward task when you combine your email marketing with CRM. You can set up customer segments, select contact lists, and send mass email communications instantly.

Detailed Analytics

With just email marketing in place, you will not be able to track the customer interactions and data collection effectively. When you use it in combination with CRM, you can easily log each customer’s interactions and make sure you make data-based decisions in the future. The ability to collect data and analyze it lets you recycle your most successful campaigns and get to the bottom of what works and what does not.

Better Customer Service

Combining CRM with email marketing gives you the ability to enhance customer engagement. It lets you keep track of all customer interactions and ensure all of your customers are promptly taken care of with timely communication.

What To Look For in CRMs For Email Marketing

If you are convinced of the various benefits that combining email marketing with CRM can bring you, do not wait longer to put it into action.

Get the best email marketing CRM for your needs, and provide a new dimension to your email marketing campaign.

To help you make the right choice, here are a few features you should look out for:

  • SMTP routing
  • Contact list management
  • Email automation
  • Built-in and customizable email templates
  • Drag and drop email builders for customization
  • Email analytics
  • Pre-made content for emails
  • Customer segmentation feature
  • Responsive email design
  • Dynamic email content
  • Email testing for all your email marketing software
  • Third-party software integration

That said, it is essential to mention that our email marketing CRM provides all these features and more. Ah, no, we are not promoting (*wink*), but it does pay to weigh your options well before making a decision.

💡 Takeaways

When you start using CRM with your email marketing, you will realize the power of the data you are presented with. By making innovative use of all available data, you can find newer and better ways to engage your customers and establish an effective and long-standing customer relationship. You can contact us today to get a free GoCRM demo and explore its email marketing features in detail.