Guide To Picking A CRM

hello and welcome back to the digital
marketing podcast my name is Kieran
Rogers I'm Louise Crossley and I'm
Daniel rolls and today we have a guide
to picking a CRM
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so let's start by saying what a CRM is
I'm sure most people know but it's a
customer relationship management system
which fundamentally means it's where you
store your customer data you can store
you know who your existing customers are
who your leads are all that kind of
information about them what they've done
previously but most of them will go
beyond destroying a bit of data now the
reason we're kind of doing this is I
think we get more questions about this
than pretty much anything else of which
CRM should we go for it's such a pain
Point yeah it's because it really now
impacts your ability to do decent
marketing because without it you can you
can do stuff but you don't know much
about your target audience we've spoken
about it in a couple of previous
episodes about this loss of third-party
data so targeting ads is not going to be
as precise until some new technologies
come along so the more first party data
you can collect directly through your
website about your audience the more
power you've got basically to do good
and effective and personalized marketing
and actually a decent CRM will allow you
to do that so the general thing that
what they now do or something can do is
that a lot of crms will have a bit of
code that then goes onto your website
and that then will track people within
the website what they're doing
and if they've ever signed in so you've
got their email address it will then
start to record right we've got this
person's email address but we know what
they've done on the website we know what
forms they filled in we know what pages
they've been to what they've downloaded
and you can kind of build a profile and
a picture and then you can start to say
what do I want to do with that you might
already have this information as well
normally but using so many different
plugs plugins that the information is on
one app and then it's on a different
software and it really brings it all in
together yeah so this idea of uh SCV
single customer view becomes really
important and single customer reviews
saying I got that in one place so I can
use that as a whole to then trigger
things okay now the things I might
trigger they might be emails just
sending certain things to certain people
it might be changing my website content
so you and I might see a different thing
on the same web page because we've got
different interests it can be chat
interaction so conversational design the
idea of making chat Bots more useful I
can make a suggestion now I could say oh
you've done this previously you might be
interested in this and that would be a
bit more useful than the kind of help or
you know are you interested in this out
of the blue but I can also go through
and I can build ad audiences so I can
take all those people and I can put them
into some sort of online ad or a social
ad to Target stuff at people as well so
we are going Beyond what's a basic CRM
we're actually getting into there's a
lot of three Affiliates are happening
here I love this so it's a CRM quite
often they're also an ESP an email
service provider they're quite often a
CMS a Content management system as well
maybe we should just invent some new
phrases for this what could we make
castrel manage
that sounds awful yeah so so I think
that it's working out what functionality
you need so with like anything with this
what you want to do is start by taking a
step back and saying what you actually
need to achieve with this what are your
objectives look at your user journey and
we've got that template that you built
here and you did it on the C think do
care and we used it for Designing
actually what we wanted to track into
ga4 but equally you could go through and
go what's our objective at this part of
the funnel and actually therefore what
do we need to be able to put into our
CRM system what do we want to do with
that have we got the capability of doing
it yeah yeah we use that because see
think do care
that makes logical sense so if I'm going
to set up a customer relationship
management right I build it around all
stages of the customer interaction
because even at the top you want to get
people in so you can collect their data
in the first place right so you could
you can build out your plans around that
I think very often one of the problems
is that we get kind of paralysis by the
opportunities that are out there like
because actually all of this is possible
the reality though is
particularly when you first start out
you won't be using much of this data at
all in fact I'm very often I come across
organizations where you know they've
started up they've opened up an
e-commerce store they're on Shopify
they've maybe integrated something like
javio and that is their CRM like between
Shopify and clever but you get to a
stage when actually you can't answer the
questions you want to answer and you
can't sort of find and mine those
opportunities and there is but there is
a ton of plugins that you can plug in
that extend that but Louise to your
point earlier you end up stuck in a
place where oh yeah but that doesn't
talk to that and then most of your time
trying to marry up
you do and that's where you know a bit
more of an all singing all dancing CRM
system comes into also by equally I see
lots of people I've got HubSpot and
Salesforce and you can do everything
with these things yeah yeah but are they
no no I mean they're so powerful some of
these tools
we use HubSpot I'm a big fan of HubSpot
okay uh Salesforce used it loads of
times brilliant tools really good um
lots of depth quite complicated to have
that point of view you've also then got
things like Microsoft Dynamics
um you've got Ella coil that will go
with Salesforce you've got all these
kind of different things
and you can have loads loads of power
but not be able to utilize it unless
you've got the time and the training to
do that okay so there's a there's a
hidden cost of that as well some other
hidden costs as well we used a
particular platform which I'm not going
to name and shame we invested lots of
money into it and we never got it
working on our website properly it just
wasn't tracking things and then we've
got HubSpot and it worked out of the box
pretty much so and there's a free
version of HubSpot as well as the
painful versions
these tools can get expensive though
because you you go well I want that yeah
and then I want that functionality and I
want oh it's an additional monthly cost
each time and we spend tens of thousands
of pounds on this this every year
um the other thing is you might miss out
is
integration with your existing
technology stack how complicated is that
going to be to do but there are tools
out there like zapier and stuff like
that that might help with these things
plugging things into each other
but the the big hidden one for me a lot
of the time is your active marketing
users and this is an increasing thing so
you might say uh I guess here on this is
you can have unlimited users in your
database oh that's brilliant because
I've got like 20 000 people that have
been on the website or registered or
wherever it might be okay cool it's
unlimited oh nice uh but if you want to
actually engage with them like send them
an email oh they're an active marketing
user you've got limits oh okay and
there's two stumbled across this a few
times oh we stumbled across this
spectacular oh it's this is epic yeah so
we our developer built something and
accidentally triggered everyone that was
in our database I think it was 30 000 of
them for the API to be marketing users
and I got an 18 000 pound building I was
like what that's a fairly lumpy Bill to
get right and we got it and what's going
on and luckily thank you HubSpot they
went yeah you can reverse that right but
don't do it again please I've seen
exactly the same thing with Salesforce
and they are quite good like yeah they
give you a little bit of like
understanding now now we've just
mentioned those those are the two you
know two of the leaders there's things
like Sugar CRM there's some free ones
out there you can actually use WordPress
or Shopify with some plugins and that
will give you fairly decent CRM as well
I mean it can be problematic yeah I mean
I wouldn't recommend you could use
mailchimpers yeah you can yeah I
wouldn't I wouldn't recommend using
Wordpress just purely because you're
storing a heck of a lot of customer data
in something that's
yeah hacked a lot should we say I'm not
saying that but if you don't keep up to
date with all the latest like releases
and update all of your plugins that can
open up data like holes and if you get
it once hackers get in if they've got
access to your full CRM like that's
something that's that's really bad also
the other thing we found is that you did
lots of different plugins within
WordPress they all tend to use one table
in the database to store the data
there's user meta I mean it's changed a
little bit now but what we found is when
you're trying to untangle the data there
is this one table and it had tens of
millions of lines in it which was
slowing down the entire system because
every plugin is trying to stick stuff in
some place that it's kind of shouldn't
be putting it so I I think you're better
off not going down that route if you can
what you have to think about though is
vendor tie-in
so say you've gone down the route of
using a particular system and they
suddenly go we're doubling our costs or
we're doing a change you need to rebuild
your system you might go well no thanks
I don't want that because most of these
are SAS their software as a service you
are tied in and the great thing is you
get the latest updates you get the
upgrades automatically you don't need to
I remember the old bad days you'd buy a
bit of software install it in the office
somewhere and then you'd have to keep
upgrading it and it would break the
website and all those kind of things so
big problems but now the problem is if
you want to move to a new system you're
going to find yourself in a situation
where it's actually a bit more
complicated than you'd like and you kind
of get tied in I think but the cost you
know like anything above 20 30 grand my
eyes start to water but like actually
you just need to think about this in a
different way like you wouldn't think
twice if you need it about hiring an
additional member of the team that's how
I Justified it that's what you have to
do you have to sort of go do you know
what yeah but look how much time it
would save and look how much more
capability it would give up like we can
focus on the target audience instead of
fiddling around the technology yeah and
you you know you wouldn't so for less
than the cost of a you know a junior
marketing assistant you can get you know
some really great Tech that just is a
game changer and gives you well it just
gives you a place at a table like if all
your competitors have got this yes
they'll be running rings around you
that's exactly what we did so we were
looking at this and we were relatively
small business at the time grown a lot
since then but we were looking at going
this is going to be 30 000 pounds A Year
Without 25 30 000 a year in total
um we can't really justify that and then
we're like well let's take on the sales
but a one minute that's going to cost
forty five thousand pounds here and I
can probably get most away there with
this so that was our trade-off and it
worked and and that gives you a lot more
capability a lot more results we could
track it we could identify a lot more
things as you go through so the other
thing I would do is speak to people that
are using that platform and you will
kind of get the Walton all kind of
opinion on what's kind of going on the
other thing is functionality requests
this could be a real frustration so
a really interesting one recently we
like to put like pop-ups and not pop-ups
but like pop-in forms things that go
onto the page to say by the way we've
got this thing
um little calls to action ctas around
the website and it was really limited
within HubSpot what you could do in this
particular type and it was like okay
well we could go off and get something
else
that'll mean adding a plugin to the
website and it's going to add load time
in the JavaScript I really can't we just
rebuilt the website it was super lean I
didn't really want to do that and I was
it was a bit of a trade-off we'll trade
off the fact that we can't have so much
functionality but it'll be fast and then
literally the next day and I think
people have been asking for this for
four years
um it popped up and they've got this
really really interactive call to action
Builder that you can use but if that was
as lucky it just happened to be launched
when we wanted it that can be the thing
you can really need some functionality
and the all senior dancing system might
not have it
so really check what it is you want and
that's where you go back you look at
that Journey you work out what you need
to do and you work out can the system do
those specific things there's nothing
worse than going down the customer
service route and being told oh yeah we
don't do that but it is on our roadmap
yeah we're like yeah and that's that's
it it's not going to cut it exactly it's
just someone it amazes me actually
because it when I go through and a
system is I've got no expectation that
I'm gonna pick up the phone and say I'd
like you to build this Salesforce or
HubSpot and they're like sure we'll do
it now why not this is not realistic
right whereas our big clients think that
of us so we'll have these big Global
corporations that go yeah could you just
customize it to do this and we're like
but I think you've got realistic
expectations of what you're going to get
from that point of view as well so go
into this starting of what you need to
achieve so you want a list of we have to
have this we'd like this this would be
great in the ideal world but it's not
entirely necessary and then you can help
select what you get from that as well if
you've got there are free trial versions
of a lot of these things as well you can
play around with but it's really hard to
test it out so ask them for a demo
account
because you can access demo accounts and
you can go and play around them and see
all it like and I think this is one of
my last bits on this but usability
I've had some really really powerful
crms that are so tricky to use there's
only experts on the team who can do it
and it then it boils down your vendor
specific and certain style specific
whereas if you've got something that's
really useful and that's what I love
about HubSpot it means that you can go
through
let's get stuff done I want to focus on
the creative I want to focus on getting
the email campaigns I want to focus on
the copy all that kind of stuff I don't
want to be spending hours on fiddling
around in the system to try and get the
trigger set up properly and so on as
well so the easier is to use the more
you're probably going to do with it
um as well from that point of view
um so we'll put all of this stuff into
the show notes we'll put that see think
do care template with the objectives and
like the stuff that we created for ga4
in there as well but we'd like to hear
from you if you are a CRM vendor give us
a shout we can get you on the podcast
but also tell us what you love and your
horror stories about crms as well I have
seen them bring people to tears they can
be so frustrating so let us know your
story so Target internet.com forward
slash podcast and we have got the
toolkit Awards coming up so if you are a
CRM or you've got one you love nominate
it July sorry June the 23rd the
nominations are open uh get those crms
nominated there is a category
specifically for this stuff and you'll
be able to get the recognition and
rewards that you deserve and also you
can vote and if you particularly don't
like something you don't need to vote
for you can vote for the others as well
so as ever thank you for listening to
the digital marketing podcast and we'll
see you next time
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