One of the most common words in sales and marketing is the CRM, which in the last 30 years, is the software to manage the customers and the sales over the sales cycle.
During the years, some platforms have added new features related to automation, such as email sequence, drip, scoring, lead connectivity. However, this industry has evolved and changed dramatically in the last 7 years.
If you insist on sticking with only the CRM, pretty soon you will not be able to ask your team to perform as expected. The new arena, which is tied to the CRM is the Marketing Automation Platform (MAP). The MAP has become vital to all sizes and types of organizations today.
The MAP (Marketing Automation Platform) appeared at the market in the first decades of this millennium (2006-2008) and broke out at the beginning of the last decades when ExactTarget acquired Pardot for $95 million (2010), and Salesforce acquired ExactTarget for $2.5B few years after that.
This eventually led big players into the MAP race, hence, the platform back those days was way expensive for mid and small organizations.
In the last five years, with the easy way to implement AI software solutions and some variants, MAP becomes affordable to almost any size of companies and can start with as low as the US $400 per month.
MAP provides each of the departments (Product-Marketing-Sales) with measurable data which only provide insight about their performance but connect to all pictures and take into consideration all the channels and how each enhances the procedures, in order to increase performance and conversion.
What does it mean to connect all the dots?
When we understand the marketing, sales, product and customer success, as a whole, one unit, in which all the parts have to work as one in order to move the deal forward.
We connect the dots with Automated procedure, which means every action your Prospect will take on every channel will affect the next step your team will engage with him.
The ability to react in real-time with the right message and while addressing his issues and needs is one of the most important points.
The diagram below presents the features you may expect to have from your MAP, and how those solutions support one of the procedures on the full marketing wheel. And this is all about and why you need MAP and not only CRM or Email Automation.
It is not just to have it, it's the ability to connect those features/solutions on the individual level in one spot and place. While reacting with the right follow up from any of the departments in real-time.
Why do I need MAP if I have CRM and Marketing Email platform?
With the rise of the social media, as marketers and sales, we can’t avoid it anymore, the ability to target a contact or buyer per his preferences on multiple channels becomes essential to any type of deal. “A whopping 94% of B2B buyers use online search as they make purchase decisions — and 70% entirely complete their research before reaching out to a potential vendor partner”.
You need it because:
If you are not connecting all the dots, you will lose your prospect’s eyeball, which will be on other messages and might even be on your competitors.
Provide you the opportunity to make the follow-up call at the right time with the right messages after this contact engaged with your company via one of your channels.
The only way to connect the dots between the marketing-sales-product-operation and in real-time, to see each contact or buying group as a sales group. (Read more Account Based Marketing-ABM strategy).
The best way to centralize all the data and the actions were taken by an individual (Contact) and the buying group in one Workflow.
Create an arena and set the PoT (Point of Trigger) per each individual, and even more important per each one of the Buying Group, to trigger a sequence of events following the type of engagement the Contact has made.
The cost to combine all of the features with multi-type Platforms via API or tools (like Zippier) will be more expensive and even then, not all types of connectivity will be available.
MAP is not replacing your CRM, but the CRM is one of the modules of your MAP, just like you may find on the SharpSpring platform.
The only way to build a full workflow funnel per stage and segments that includes all the channels and react based not the Contact action.
When the Automation on the MAP is set up correctly, eventually, you may triple the conversion rate and increase the sales by 80% in a short time and even more than double in 18 months.
Account-Based Marketing Strategy is the most rewarding strategy for B2B organization in the last years. If you want to participate in this, you must have MAP in place.
SO, CONNECT THE DOTS to be ready for the Inbound Marketing in the 2020 decades.
We at THE RiCH are a SharpSpring partnership and will be delighted to assist you in the process to integrate MAP in your organization, we succeed to triple and even four times increase revenue to our clients while we have built the suitable funnels which includes the right channel and engagement.