Connecting Your Website With Your CRM

Most business do their marketing in a straight line

They get an enquiry and it either converts into a sale or it fails. This is a flawed plan. Not only are details not tracked, but following up effectively and efficiently is a near impossible task. Without your enquiries automatically being passed into your Business automation CRM or equivalent system, it’s likely your conversion rate is far lower than it should be. In order to bring it up, you need to know at which stage of your sales process your prospects are dropping off. For instance: If you are getting the enquiries but not sending that many proposals, it’s likely your initial follow up is weak. If you’re putting lots of proposals out there but not getting many sales, this is probably due to your proposal not demonstrating the value, or you’re marketing to people who can’t afford your product. Without tracking each stage, you are completely flying blind and have no idea which area of the process to improve. The best way to start the process is by having your enquiries go directly from your website straight into your system. Think about it as a closed loop rather than a line: This cycle repeats itself indefinitely either by re-selling the same product, or by up-selling them the next item in the series. In this example, it’s dots 7 and 8 we’re concerned about. When you start re-marketing to your existing clients again and driving them back to your website for round 2 in a well thought out and meaningful way, that’s when you see serious results.

An Example Using a Printing Company

Take a printer for instance. Their cost of winning business is so high, they must take advantage of the customers they do win, yet they never seem to. I’ve used many printers in the past and honestly, Lulu.com, the company we use to print our books, are the best by far at re-marketing to me. They’ll send me an offer for another round of books roughly in accordance with how many I’ve ordered. They make it quick and easy by telling me all my artwork and book PDF is already uploaded, I just need to choose how many I want. They sweeten the deal with a coupon for 25% off usually and a big obvious call to action. Brilliant! I’ve never been re-marketed to for a repeat order of business cards. I frequently order brochures from printed.com yet I never get an email saying “Do you want anymore of those brochures, you must have gone through them all by now. Here’s 10% off if you order today”. How hard is that really? How effective do you think it would be if you emailed all your customers a TARGETED, informal and friendly offer with an easy call to action? I’m predicting a pretty solid response. Not re-marketing usually comes down to a lack of technology and systems.