A survey on The Effects of Marketing Automation on Sales and Marketing Alignment, has revealed organizations that invest in an integrated marketing automation and CRM systems are more likely to be satisfied with their sales and marketing efforts.
The survey received more than 400 responses from sales and marketing professionals of whom less than a third have integrated marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which is surprisingly small given that the purpose of marketing automation is to deliver more qualified leads to salespeople .
There was also 18% of organizations who do currently use marketing automation have still yet to integrate it with their CRM!
It also highlighted that those who integrated the two systems rather than a non-integrated approach were 30% more likely to be satisfied with the results of their marketing automation
Better collaboration
Respondents with integrated systems were 14% more likely to be satisfied with collaboration between departments than those without. Of those dissatisfied with sales and marketing efforts AND dissatisfied with the way marketing and sales collaborate, 73% do not have integrated CRM and marketing automation systems.
Some of the reasons respondents gave for being dissatisfied with marketing were that efforts were disjointed and there was not enough strategy, leads, or lead qualification. Those dissatisfied with sales efforts felt that not enough leads were converted, and reporting and integration with marketing needed to be improved.
Integrated marketing and CRM systems should tackle these frustrations, by facilitating collaboration between teams and supporting the workflow of both sales and marketing. Integrated systems provide a complete picture of activity and allow information to be shared, so everybody knows what they are responsible for.
Improve strategy execution and reporting
With integrated systems marketing and sales people can act on information immediately, taking into account marketing campaign activity and sales interactions. Companies can achieve a much higher output of newsletters and mailings because it takes less time to prepare lists and to personalize content. Businesses can also see which sales and marketing activities actually result in revenue and there is no need to rely on a proxy measure, such as the number of leads generated.
Single platform
The survey also found that respondents with integrated systems were 30% more likely to be satisfied with their marketing automation vendor than those without integrated systems.
While there are a very limited number of vendors, such as SalesSeek, that support the whole of sales and marketing, this market is set to grow as companies begin to see the benefits of integration. Marketing automation software provider, HubSpot, recently announced plans to officially launch an integrated CRM system this year.
Be careful when choosing a platform, as integration means different things to vendors. For SalesSeek integration is within a single platform, so sales and marketing teams work in the same system. Some marketing automation vendors claim to be integrated, when in fact they offer import and export to and from marketing automation and CRM systems. This will hinder productivity, as marketing and sales people have to switch between applications to access data.
Questions to ask potential vendors include: Can sales and marketing people access “smart” lists of prospects without having to import and export static lists? Can marketers select prospects and clients for mailing based on sales activities or non-activities? Can you attribute marketing costs directly to closed deals? Can marketing see which deals are expected to close this quarter?
SalesSeek includes all of these features within a single, intuitive application for sales and marketing.
Take advantage of a 14-day free trial of SalesSeek. Start your free trial with SalesSeek today.
