Elena Kardapoltseva, project manager of the CRM and Integrations unit at Completo , spoke about how companies can retain and attract customers at every stage of the sales funnel with the help of automation, and also analyzed the main trends in their construction. How Not to Lose a Client at Every Stage .
CRM as a guarantee of long-term cooperation with clients
Customer retention and lead generation are local marketing email list becoming increasingly complex and challenging tasks for companies.
When talking about sales funnels, it’s important to remember that the starting point is the nature of the leads.
Leads are potential customers who show interest in your product or service.
And it is important to qualify them extremely quickly in order to reduce the risk of losing a client.
As research from InsideSales shows , connecting with a lead in the first five minutes increases conversion by 8 times!
Of course, sometimes 5 minutes is not enough, so aim for 30 minutes, or at worst 24 hours, but the client should definitely get feedback from you so that he understands that you have not forgotten about him.
CRM systems can help in lead applications in the midst of digital marketing qualification because they play a key role in this process.
CRM system is a kind of heart of customer management, which:
- combines sales and marketing;
- prevents customer loss by tracking what stage they are at and how they interact with your product. In case of inactivity, it allows you to return the current or potential buyer to the funnel;
- helps to select effective channels for each stage of interaction.
This cycle allows you to create a foundation fresh list for long-term cooperation. And building trendy sales funnels strengthens it.
Trend #1: Multichannel
We understand that you may have a large flow of clients, and there is a chance of missing an appeal.
To prevent this, several ways of contacting the company are added: a call, an email, a message in a messenger or a chat on the website. And the manager, who can get lost in the abundance of channels for interacting with clients, is helped by multichannel .
With it, all customer requests are combined in one place, which means that they will definitely be registered, and a specialist will be able to respond promptly.
It turns out that multichannel is a trend that allows you to be present where it is convenient for the client and managers.
Multichannel approach in CRM marketing
CRM systems support interaction via email, instant messengers, social networks, push and SMS.
In B2B, for example, they can be used to send personalized offers via messengers or email, and in B2C, push notifications about urgent promotions or letters with general offers.
Important: it is necessary to use those channels that are convenient for customers.
In the absence of CRM, there may be a possibility and problem of losing customer data.
Example: a wholesale clothing supplier from Yekaterinburg. It had two managers who worked in channels convenient for them. There was no centralized management of interaction with clients. One manager suddenly quit, and this led to a partial loss of clients assigned to him.
Why did this happen? The second manager ignored the channel his colleague worked in (Telegram), so the clients’ questions either remained unanswered or were answered a week or two later.
The initial implementation of a CRM system would have avoided this situation, and the business would have been able to manage all points of contact with customers.
How could multichannel manifest itself? Let’s imagine that the company from the example implemented a CRM and configured it to suit its needs.
The image below shows on the left all the tools that are use at different stages of the classic sales funnel, and on the right is the functionality of the CRM system.