Staying with the alignment theme, marketing and CRM go together like your car and its tires. Without your tires your car isn’t going anywhere. And, without your CRM system you’re going to have a hard time targeting your marketing message to the right audience. CRM is crucial to marketing because data is crucial to marketing and your prospect and customer data resides in your CRM. Your tires are where the “rubber hits the road” and your marketing data is where your CRM system hits the road.
Who’s navigating and driving your marketing database? Their understanding of the system and ability to drive it makes a difference in your success. GoldMine provides you great marketing capabilities including but not limited to: filters, groups, SQL queries and other ways to segment and target your database, a center to store and access your letter and email templates, a knowledge base for marketing & sales information and materials, reporting and analytical tools to evaluate marketing data and activities, a way for your marketing, sales, and administrative support staff to interface, an automated processes center where you can build “drip campaigns” to stay in touch with prospects and customers, and much more.
Unlike stand-alone marketing systems, GoldMine is fully tied in with the activities of your sales force and provides access to the same contacts, companies, etc. Leads are easily distributed to your sales people, even on an automated basis. And, GoldMine provides an easy means for your sales people to collect information that is vital to the marketing side of your business.
Sales and marketing professionals have different roles and responsibilities. However, there is supposed to be a strong synergy between sales and marketing. This is often lacking! But I can assure you that when you align your marketing and sales in your CRM you have surely achieved one of the most significant factors needed to thrive in 2010!
