In many ways, your company is defined by the software that it uses. Whether you’re using a custom CRM, an off-the-shelf MIS, a modified ERP, or any of thousands of other software solutions, these technologies allow your company to operate more efficiently. Helping to move customers along your sales pipeline, software empowers your sales team. It provides them with crucial data about your customers that helps to identify prospects, track leads, and share information. But, what about your web sales? Or the leads generated by your website? Does your web software communicate with your sales software? Without full website integration, you’re jeopardizing your efficiency and bleeding opportunities.
With software integration, you establish a consistent stream of data between your online and offline sales systems. By unifying these systems, you establish a single, centralized source for your data. This lets you promise your customers more accurate inventory counts, faster response rates, shorter delivery times, and lower costs. For you, this translates into reduced overhead and increased sales. While it may sound difficult, the process is simple. An integration specialist can ensure that you’re reaping the benefits in no time. More importantly, they can work with you to develop an automated process that boosts your company’s sales efficiency.
Real-time access to accurate sales data
After completing your website integration, you’ll have immediate access to the most accurate, most up-to-date data. Absolutely seamless, you’ll be able to instantly view your customers’ most recent activity, purchases, and communications. With this information in hand, you can make informed decisions that better leverage the strengths of your marketing efforts and customer relationships.
An extensive, all-inclusive view of your sales activity can also help you identify patterns and develop more effective ways to sell. By better understanding how your marketing activities perform off- and online, you’ll be able to tailor your customers’ experiences based on how they prefer to shop. And, with increased engagement, you’ll begin to gain a clearer picture of what your customers want and – more importantly – how to deliver it.
CRM integration aids customer profiling
The first step in selling is understanding what your customer wants. And, if your sales data is split between a CRM, a website, and a point-of-sale system, you’ll never have a full picture of your customers’ interests. With website integration, you can view all of your customers’ activities, from their initial contact to their most recent purchase. As this information is collected from all of your company’s diverse software sources, it is a compilation of everything you know… and everything you need to know. Because of this, you’ll have a well-documented understanding of your customers’ behavior, preferences, and buying habits.
Increase the effectiveness of your marketing
Accurate customer profiles open a lot of doors. Simply put, when you know what your customers expect, you can better meet their expectations. With consistent data gathered from all of your software sources, you can better target your marketing campaigns. If you know that your online shoppers rely on Google to find you, you can use pay-per-click advertising to attract them. Conversely, if you’ve found that your in-person customers expect discounts, you can appeal to them with coupon-based mailers or in-store promotions.
Your marketing efforts shouldn’t rely on taking stabs in the dark. The Internet’s most successful companies rely on mountains of data to inform their marketing decisions. You should know that every dollar you’re spending will yield a return. Because, trust us: your competitors do. With software integration, you’re taking your first steps toward dethroning Internet giants and establishing yourself as a serious, mindful company that is in tune with its customers’ needs.
Deliver a better customer experience
At the end of the day, success online boils down to creating memorable customer experiences. Your company’s website, social media, local listings, and promotional materials should all work together to anticipate – and meet – your customers’ expectations. Your company should be present at every stage of your customers’ journey. You should be an integral part of their experience. When they envision your products – and similar products sold by competitors – their understanding should be shaped by the language, grammar, and imagery of your company. Every step of the way, you should be utilizing the information you’ve gathered to provide them with a hyper-personalized experience that they’ll never forget.
Improve your customer retention rate
With website integration helping you quickly address inquiries, your customer satisfaction rate is certain to improve. Since most customers are lost due to perceived indifference, every positive interaction you have with them helps to secure their future business. Whether you’re using an integrated CRM to automatically send out confirmation emails or you’re using your customer database to reach out for feedback, regular communication makes your customers feel seen, heard, and appreciated.
Best of all, by linking your communication platforms and your sales platforms, you can easily track customer satisfaction and factor it into your profiling. In this way, the entire process becomes cyclical: better profiling leads to happier customers, happier customers lead to more sales, and more sales lead to better profiling.
Want to learn more about software integration?
At Creative Marketing Group, we believe that your marketing, your sales systems, and your online properties should work together. Aiming to streamline the entire customer experience, we work with our customers to harmonize their efforts. More importantly, we strive to identify opportunities to maximize – and improve – the technologies that their companies use. We’ve worked to integrate customer relationship management systems, international shipping calculators, inventory management software, and much more. No matter the size of your company, the scope of your project, or the intricacy of your implementation, you can be confident that our team can help you boost sales efficiency and increase revenue. So, if you’re tired of bouncing between systems to maintain your company’s data, contact us today to discuss our capabilities.