Topic:

crm tool

5 Factors You Should Consider Before Investing in a CRM

< 1 min read

Investing in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can be one of a business’s most critical decisions. There are many different CRM systems on the market, each offering unique features and capabilities. But understanding what each plan provides is essential to making an informed investment decision that is right for your business.

Before investing in a CRM system, it’s essential to consider the following:

Business Needs

Identify your organization’s current and future needs to ensure you select a system with features and capabilities that will meet them. Consider factors such as scalability, user permissions, and customization options before making a final selection.

Cost & Budget

Evaluate how much you are willing to invest in a CRM system. Determine what features and capabilities you cannot live without and compare different strategies in terms of cost versus feature sets.

Integrations

Make sure the CRM system you choose works with existing or planned applications and services, such as marketing automation software, email providers, accounting systems, etc.

Data Security & Privacy

Understand how the CRM system will store, protect and use customer data before investing in it. Ensure that any security measures are taken and meet industry compliance standards to ensure your customer’s data is secure.

User Experience

Pay attention to the user experience when selecting a CRM system. Consider factors such as ease of use and navigability from an administrator and user perspective.

Conclusion

Investing in the right CRM system is critical to your strategy’s success. By taking the time to research these factors before investing in a CRM system, you can be sure that you are making an educated decision that will enable your business to thrive.

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How 2021 Redefines Customer Experience (and What You Can Do About It)

2 min read

The pandemic has redefined what customers need and expect businesses to do. Check out these essential tips for businesses this 2021.

The way businesses and customers interact has drastically changed since the pandemic began. The massive move online benefitted businesses that prepared for it, leaving those that refused to digitalize for the past years rattled and shaken. However, the year 2021 has given businesses enough time to study how customers behave, what they need now more than ever, and what they expect businesses to do.

Customer experience has been redefined. But as a business, do you know what you can do about it? Check out these tips to take advantage of the shift and trends of customer experience.

What is customer experience

Customer experience is anything that deals with how customers feel about your business during the consumption process and what they do about it. It involves their thoughts, how they perceive your brand, and what they plan to do with you in the future after any direct or indirect contact with you.

How 2021 redefined customer experience

The year 2020 has been a rollercoaster ride. This year, we’ve seen significant changes and improvements in terms of COVID-19 responses. Vaccination programs have been rolled out and we’ve come to understand the disease better than before. But the changes that occurred during the worst months of the pandemic are more likely to stay.

These are the changes (in terms of customer experience) that experts have noted will likely stay throughout the year:

Customers will expect smooth digital services from companies.

Customer experience will become a crucial competitive advantage.

In a digital environment, customer trust is paramount. Hence, cybersecurity should be top priority.

Automation will give companies an advantage in terms of customer experience.

Businesses must exert efforts to bring about social impact across all marketing channels.

4 Essential tips to deal with the post-pandemic customer

The change in customer behavior that the pandemic has brought about will likely last long, even after the crisis is gone. So how can businesses deal with this change? What should they do to take advantage of it? Check out these four simple but impactful tips below.

Create a smooth digital experience for the customer

Customers are moving online to make their purchases. And a bad digital experience may dissuade them from buying from you again. It’s simple really. Ensure that you can provide a fast-running website (or app) where they can make their purchases easily.

Make sure that your product and service lists provide the necessary information so customers won’t have to do the guesswork when buying from you.

Add curbside pickup and delivery options, if necessary

While vaccination has been readily available in some areas, many customers still aren’t too willing to mingle with others in store spaces. Practicing physical distancing will become a long-term habit to some. That’s why adding curbside pickups or even delivery options will remain essential so you can cater to this type of customer.

Create customer confidence across all marketing channels

Customer confidence is hard to win these days— be it in assuring that you’re implementing health and safety policies or in providing cybersecurity.

It’s best to communicate all your efforts to customers (through newsletters, prints, or trust marks on websites) so you can win their trust from the get-go.

Listen to your customers

With so many changes going on lately, even experts can’t fully predict what customers want without conducting a study. And when it comes to studies, information is key.

Gather feedback from your customers regularly and reward honest participation. Gain actionable insights from them using tools. Make appropriate adjustments based on these insights so you can achieve customer satisfaction at the end of the day.

Generate a customer feedback loop automatically. Ask us today.

Gain the advantage by using tools to upgrade your customers’ digital experience. Get started with Saphyte.

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19 Stats for Online Education Platforms in 2021

2 min read

Online education platforms have been on the rise, especially since the pandemic started. Find out how this industry is doing with these 19 stats.

Online education platforms have been developed even before the pandemic started. The industry made it possible to connect and link educators and learners from around the world. Online learning platforms such as Udemy, Skillshare, MasterClass, Coursera, EdX, and Udacity are among the biggest names out there.

The pandemic has only accelerated the adoption of online education platforms. In fact, many analysts predict that online learning will become the future of learning.

How is the industry doing? Will it remain relevant post-pandemic? Check out these 19 stats for online education platforms in 2021.

The future of online education platforms

Online education platforms are one of the preferred modes of learning for many students around the world.

By 2022, the global e-learning industry is projected to surpass $243 billion. (Statista)

It is also projected to reach $336.98 billion by 2026. (Research and Markets)

As the quickest growing market in the education industry, digital learning has grown 900% since 2000. (KPMG)

Growing adoption in the US

The platforms have seen an increase in adoption even before the pandemic. A growth explosion in the industry is expected post-pandemic.

In the US alone, online student enrollment has been increasing for 14 years in a row vs. the overall US college enrollment, which has been declining over the last 10 years. (Taylor and Francis)

Around 63% of American high school students use digital learning tools daily. (Statista)

For American elementary students, around 45% of them use digital learning tools daily. (Statista)

And 64% of American middle school students use digital learning tools on a daily basis. (Statista)

More than 30% of American students report having enrolled in at least one online course. (Taylor and Francis)

Corporate E-learning

Online education platforms are not exclusive to students alone. Many corporations believe that training their employees via e-learning platforms will lead to improvements in performance.

  • Globally, the corporate e-learning market is estimated to grow by USD 38.09 billion during 2020-2024 and will be one of the biggest drivers of the e-learning industry. (Business Wire)
  • Around 42% of companies reported an increase in revenue after implementing e-learning. (SHIFT)
  • What motivates employees to continue with e-learning are individual learning pace (95%) and no traveling (84%). (KPMG)
  • Target groups of corporate e-learning include middle management, junior executives, high potential individuals, and senior management. (KPMG)
  • Corporate e-learning reportedly resulted in an 18% increase in employee engagement. (SHIFT)
  • And a $30 value of increased productivity for every $1 invested in e-learning. (SHIFT)
Massive open online course (MOOC) stats

MOOCs are courses aimed at providing “unlimited” participation to learners and open access using the Web. Examples of the largest MOOCs are:

Introduction to Computer Science (Harvard / edX)

Learning how to Learn (UC San Diego / Coursera)

Machine Learning (Stanford / Coursera)

Justice (Harvard / edX)

The Science of Happiness (Berkeley / edX)

Intro to Artificial Intelligence (Udacity)

In 2019, the global MOOC market was valued at $5.16 billion. (Mordor)

By 2025, it is expected to reach approximately USD 25.33 billion. (GlobeNewswire)

The global MOOC market is projected to have an annual growth rate of 29% from 2020 to 2025, the quickest growing market in the education industry. (Mordor)

However, around 73% of students remain unaware of MOOCs. (eLearning industry)

Out of the top 25 universities in the US, 22 now offer online courses for free. (Mordor)

See how your online education platform can grow

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6 Email Marketing Tips in the Digital Era

3 min read

Wondering how to email leads and customers to help you reach your marketing objectives and goals quickly? Check out our six email marketing tips to get you started.

Email remains as one of the powerful platforms companies can work with to engage potential customers as well as existing ones. Contrary to popular belief, it is still one of the most effective lead generation machines for companies. In fact, in 2019, there were about 3.9 billion email users, according to Statista. This is set to grow to 4.3 billion users in 2023.

What do these numbers mean? These numbers signify that more and more people will continue to use emails as a way to communicate with other people— and that includes businesses. And as long as there are email users, the potential for sales remains in the platform.

So how can you engage leads and customers through email? What can you do to increase their chances of opening your email and click on your CTAs? Here are six email marketing tips that you can use in the digital era:

1. Know your goal

It’s easier said than done. But knowing your goal is one of the most important parts of a good email marketing strategy. The next steps that you are going to take will be based on your sales and marketing goal.

Examples of email marketing goals are:

To have an increased open rate

To have an improved click rate

To have an increased monthly sales

To establish brand awareness

To automate the campaign

To personalize the customer journey

To connect with subscribers

To ensure the emails are accessible

To interact with readers

These are just some of the examples of email marketing goals. As a business, you need to determine what you want to achieve at the end of the day and why email marketing is the best way to get that.

Check out how you can let a software perform your email marketing campaigns for you, so you can focus on more important tasks.
2. Use tools for automation

In the digital world, tasks that are performed manually are frowned upon. These boring, repetitive tasks have no place in a world where tech is readily available. To save yourself some time, energy, and resources, make use of tools such as digital ecosystems or CRMs that allow you to automate email marketing tasks.

What do these tools do?

They allow you to gather information from your leads, such as their name, address, email address, and mobile phone number so you can engage with them anytime.

You can automate your workflows. For example, you can set up the software to launch an email marketing campaign when a specific condition is triggered (e.g. when a website visitor signs up for a newsletter or when a customer made a recent purchase).

You can track the user’s journey based on historical transactions.

You can gather data about your campaign and perform adjustments to make your campaign more successful.

3. Make data-driven decisions

The world is full of data— and so are businesses. This means that anything that goes in and out of the business can be interpreted as data. And you can analyze this data to measure your business performance.

When a business understands data and knows how to make data-driven decisions, it tends to perform better. It knows which actions to continue and which actions to stop. In the context of marketing campaigns, data lets you know which specific email is performing well and which one is a dud.

This tells you what content you should release, when you should release it, and who is more likely going to respond well with that specific content— allowing you to optimize the campaign and avoid wasting resources on those that are doomed to fail from the start.

4. Make use of the power of brand identity

Brand identity is often defined by what people “see” in your brand that makes it distinguishable from the other brands. Elements such as your color, design, and logo would make an impression on your readers’ minds.

Even with email, your brand identity has the power to win or lose potential customers. So make sure what people “see” in your email is consistent with your brand identity and is optimized to encourage readers to take the desired action.

5. Always “go mobile”

Always make sure your emails are mobile-friendly. Why? Because according to reports, around 47% of people use a mobile application when checking their email. That’s about half the potential market— and 81% of these half prefer to open emails using their smartphones.

You don’t want to lose this number of people because your emails weren’t optimized for mobile users. So always make sure that your campaigns— your email marketing campaigns— are good for mobile-phone users.

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6. Prioritize customer retention

Customer retention is one of the most important business goals now. With the environment nowadays, it’s easy for customers to check what your competition is offering and switch loyalty to them. To avoid this, always keep customer retention in mind when establishing sales goals.

In email marketing, customer retention can be done by sending emails that are designed to impact customers’ lives and provide valuable information through personalization. Some retention strategies include providing incentives to customers that stay and continue to make purchases.

Prioritizing customer retention can reward you massively. According to studies, loyal customers can comprise as much as 80% of your sales.

Additionally, it’s easier and it also costs less to make customers stay than acquire new ones.

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THE BASICS OF DRIP MARKETING

4 min read

Marketing professionals are quickly adopting business automation to assist them with their email marketing campaigns and nurture new subscribers and potential leads. One of the top tools in the market for such an objective is that of Drip Marketing.

Drip email marketing, or commonly known as drip campaigns, can do the trick of automating for you based on your customers purchase journey. Drip emails are a set of marketing emails that are sent out automatically on a schedule. For example, one email will go out when a user signs up on your website; then, you can schedule the next one to be sent out after three days and more on the following weekend.

Or you can send your emails based on triggers or actions that a recipient has performed, like signing up for your service or making a purchase. These are often called behavioral emails because these types of emails often rely on the actions of their recipients.

What is a Drip Campaign?

Knowing what drip email marketing is, is one thing; learning how to compile a drip campaign is another. So what are drip email campaigns?

A drip email campaign is an automated set of emails based on specific timelines or user actions. These campaigns enable you and your team to stay in touch with groups of people based on particular events, like when a user signs up for an account or how often that user visits your site.

Each time you deploy a drip-email campaign, it comes from a line of already-written emails, thus eliminating the need to write and send each one manually. You can even personalize your emails with your contacts’ names, company info, and more.

Simply put, drip emails are all about giving your customers the correct information at the right time. The great advantage of a drip email is that it happens automatically based on the triggers and user segments you define.

Are Drip Campaigns Effective?

Yes. This marketing strategy works like a charm – every time. Here are some numbers to prove the effectiveness of drip email marketing.

Open rates for drip campaigns are about 80% higher than single send emails, and average click-through rates are three times higher.

Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rates compared to mass email blasts.

Companies have seen a 20% increase in sales after using drip campaigns to nurture leads.

Relevant emails sent through drip campaigns drive 18 times more revenue than generic emails.

Businesses that nurture their leads experience a 45% increase in lead generation ROI when compared to companies that don’t.

With these numbers, it’s clear that drip emails can greatly enhance your business’s email campaign.

When to Use Drip Email Campaigns?

There are plenty of ways you can use your drip email campaigns to your advantage. Here are some of the most practical and effective applications of a drip email marketing campaign for your business.

Nurturing Leads

Leads, as you know, they’re your prospective customers – people who might buy your product or subscribe to your service in the future. To reach that goal, you need to nurture them and build a customer relationship – until they’re ready to buy from you.

This type of campaign can take many forms. You can start by educating or creating brand awareness, helping them to learn the use of certain features, or offering free trials. Doing these without automation on a manual basis can take a definite toll on you and cost you valuable hours you don’t have to spare.

You can’t hand-hold every lead to discovering and purchasing your product. That is why it is most advantageous for you to use drip campaigns as the emails are automated and pre-set, saving you time with more successful results.

Welcoming

Welcome emails add a human touch to your business. Yes, you may have hooked your leads to buying a product or subscribing to your business – but how can your new customers learn more about your product and its unique features?

Welcome emails can be the best solution to ease your customers into your business. Welcome emails can act as messages around the company’s top content and introduce your product.

Onboarding

Pageviews and trial users might be nice, but you do want and need your users to sign up or purchase something from your business eventually too. An onboarding drip strategy can come in handy during these situations.

In connection with welcome scenarios or scheduled newsletters, onboarding drip emails introduce the customer to your business, and ultimately to your brand and your values. Onboarding emails offer targeted “sells”—or minor goals in getting them using and paying for your product—to your customers.

Abandoned Shopping Carts

For those in the ecommerce sector you’d be surprised to know that 67.45% of shopping carts are abandoned on most e-commerce sites. That’s quite a significant number, and with that your bottom line will undoubtedly be affected.

You can begin to remedy this using an automated drip campaign. This campaign allows you to re-engage those customers who are still unsure of your product and lead them back to that precious “buy” button.

Whenever users leave unpurchased merchandise in their cart, you can use a drip email to follow up and verify that the product is still available and encourage them to act on their original interest.

How to Implement an Effective Drip Campaign

Drip marketing emails can be daunting at first sight, but they’re not that hard to do. Here are some of the basic things you need to implement for effective drip email marketing.

Figure out the end goal of your campaign.

Plan and create your content – conscientiously.

Deliver the information that your leads need to make a decision or action.

Set the timing and frequency – deliberately.

Segment your campaigns according to your campaign goals.

Monitor and measure results.

Find the Right Digital Ecosystem Partner

No matter how great and meticulous your whole campaign plan is, it’ll all crumble down if you don’t partner up with a reliable drip email solutions partner. Looking for one? You’ve got Saphyte in your hands.

Here are some of the reasons why Saphyte can make a great partner for implementing your drip email marketing campaign.

Email Marketing Templates

Setting up your whole digital marketing team is a challenge. You need an entire army to set up and get your whole campaign started. With Saphyte, you can remove one less problem from the list, with its edit-as-you-go templates at your disposal.

Drip Email Marketing

Engage your prospects and customers more efficiently than before. Create emails triggered based on a particular action to give you a better chance of getting an interactive and genuine response from your prospects. Easy to set up and easy to implement. Watch how this feature can turn your leads into paying customers. 

Centralized Storage for Data

You don’t have to send your drip campaigns manually and switch from one platform to the other. With Saphyte, you can have a more centralized and more streamlined platform to execute all your marketing plans. No more manual efforts, and goodbye to switching platforms daily.

Additional Features

Whilst Drip campaigns are a brilliant marketing form for any business, Saphyte offers more than just this one feature. As a marketing professional you undoubtedly focus on more than just email as your channel for lead nurturing, so why not make use of the full suit of smart tools and features available within the ecosystem.

Takeaway

Drip marketing might be challenging in hindsight, but all you really need is an excellent tool to partner with. With Saphyte, your basic drip campaigns will become effective, streamlined, and help you deliver outstanding results.

Call us now to book a free demo or start your free trial today.

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5 Best Practices for Insurance CRM

4 min read

Insurance companies have seen an increase in relevance lately. With the COVID-19 pandemic, their products and services are used to cancel or at least mitigate the impact of the virus to the lives and businesses of their customers. This means an increase in customers, or at least, the need to increase the number of insurance policyholders to cushion the impact of rising medical costs to insurers.

But the increase in customers could challenge the existing practices of insurance companies. What’s more, when customers are dissatisfied with the level of service they receive during the pandemic, their impression about the company could last even after this global crisis. That’s why it’s important for businesses to consider their strategy in approaching the market during these times, as it could determine their success in the future.

So what role do insurance CRMs play in the marketfield right now? Why is it necessary for businesses to create a CRM strategy? What could they do to maximize their CRMs?

What is an insurance CRM

An insurance CRM is a software designed and developed to streamline the work processes of insurance companies. Their features are made to make the tasks of insurance companies— particularly those sales and marketing-related— more efficient.

Tasks such as lead generation, lead and customer engagement, and lead and client management usually follow a specific workflow. With insurance CRM’s automation features, these tasks can be cut short or at best, eliminated, with the CRM “working for the company like a trusty assistant.”

Insurance CRMs are also known for increasing teams’ productivity, reducing companies’ operational costs, and driving sales growth. When used properly, they could give companies competitive advantage and could lead them to long-term success.

Role of CRMs in Insurance Industry

Insurance companies need to regularly get customers (or policyholders) to succeed. This helps increase the pool of resources and mitigate the risk for all policyholders. They also need to encourage existing customers to pay on time and even avail of other products and services through cross-selling or upselling.

What CRMs do is help sales and marketing teams of insurance companies perform all their tasks quickly and more efficiently. For example, sending out promotional emails can be done towards targeted segments through CRM’s automation features. Meaning, in just a few clicks, customized promotional emails will be sent to targeted leads, depending on the stage they are in during the buyer’s journey.

CRMs also help insurance companies with the documentation— pictures, important information, contracts— which are necessary to verify policyholders’ identities and for insurance companies to conform to legal processes.

In fact, in 2020, CRM in the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industry is worth $12.86 billion globally. They are primarily used for Marketing and Sales Automation, Customer Management, Lead Generation and Customer Retention, Customer Support and Contact Centre, and Analytics.



A proper and automated system for documentation and analytics is the future for insurance companies

A proper and automated system for documentation and analytics is the future for insurance companies.

Five Best Practices for Insurance Companies

Below are five best practices for insurance companies:

Gathering more customer information to improve personalization of product offerings

Delivering timely and responsive services

Being tenacious — managing rejections and identifying sales opportunities

Understanding your position as an insurance agent — and that of your client’s

Practicing innovation and exploring new ways to engage leads and customers

1. Gathering more customer information to improve personalization of product offerings

One important thing that businesses must do is gain a deeper insight about what their customers like, need, or are potentially interested in. This can only be done smoothly when the business has a system to follow. To make it look less intrusive, businesses are advised to send out forms for their customers to fill out in exchange for a benefit— like a product discount or even a freebie.

When the business gains important data from their customers, this data can be used to generate analytics and form a more accurate buyer persona. It helps them personalize their product and service selections and future engagements with their customers.

2. Delivering timely and responsive services

In business, time is of the essence. Any delay can cause customers to stop buying from you and turn to your competitors for help. To deliver timely and responsive services, businesses must always be on their toes serving customers what they need even before they ask for it. This also applies to leads— some just need a little nudge, a little reminder, or persuasive message to make their first purchase.

Here, it is highly suggested for businesses to use CRMs and other tools to have a “round-the-clock, reliable assistant” that reminds you of what needs to be done or even automates your tasks for you (meaning, they can do your tasks for you on schedule or when certain conditions are met) without having to be reminded. This is a groundbreaking technology that provides companies a competitive edge that they should not miss out on.

CRMs can send personalized messages to target customer segments on schedule or upon triggering certain conditions (such as when a lead makes their first purchase or when a lead subscribes to the newsletter).
3. Being tenacious — managing rejections and identifying sales opportunities

In business, some “no’s” might eventually become “yes’s” and these are what insurance agents should keep in mind. As long as a lead is willing to be part of your newsletters, keep them informed of what your products and services can do for them— how they would benefit them and how they’d be needing them in the future.

Cover stories about how some customer’s insurance premium helped them navigate a world looming in uncertainty— and how it would help them traverse the post-pandemic world. Show them how your products provide value to the lives of “real people” and how they could be part of these people in the future.

Remember, a persuasive content or material could be the only step remaining for a lead to finally convert into a customer.

4. Understanding your position as an insurance agent — and that of your client’s

Sometimes insurance agents miss out on sales opportunities because they’re too sales-driven. Remember to put clients first, before sales quotas. And this begins with understanding your positions as an insurance agent and that of the client’s.

Determine how you should frame the value of your products and services and how it would impact the life of the client. Identify what the client needs, how much they can afford, what they prefer to do in the short-run and in the long-run, and what they prioritize right now.

This helps you trim down your action plan into something more simple yet beneficial to the client. This eventually translates into excellent service— one that the customer would definitely recommend to others.

5. Practicing innovation and exploring new ways to engage leads and customers

As the world is shaped and reshaped by technology, insurance companies must find new ways to engage potential customers as well as existing ones. This means that companies in this industry must be keen in innovating, integrating technology into their workflows, and create fresh and impactful ways of improving the customer experience and welfare.

This starts with investing more in their own research and development, or by partnering with third-party software companies and drafting a blueprint that provides the company more edge in online engagement and in other non-traditional channels.

Find out how you can be more with an insurance CRM

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The Rise of the Digital Ecosystem

4 min read

COVID was the pivotal force that only fast-tracked the process of digital transformation for most parts of the world. Currently, executives are looking for ways for their companies’ digital transformation has become more urgent than ever.

Companies now face an urgent choice: to either go digital, or go bust. Digital transformation is essential now to gain footing and to make a complete business recovery. Digital transformation and adopting platform-based business models will define the shape of organizations’ recoveries and having a platform to execute your recovery plan through digitalization is important.

This is where the rise of the digital ecosystem takes place.

What is a Digital Ecosystem?

With the result of the recent pandemic the world no longer functions on the one-solution-fits-all approach. Thus, giving birth to a newer business model – the digital ecosystem.

A digital ecosystem is a dynamic, interconnected network that necessitates reliable communication among its customers and trading partners. An ecosystem is an adaptive, interconnected network of features that provide a holistic solution to streamlining business processes and effectively managing customer relationships.

What are the Benefits of an Ecosystem

As cliche as it may seem but with a solid digital ecosystem, the possibilities are endless. An ecosystem allows you to create a holistically connected, cross-device system that helps automate the processes of your business. An ecosystem that does not depend on external applications for it to fully function. Here’s how an ecosystem can benefit your business overall.

Sales

An ecosystem can mitigate your sales team’s workload by creating a visual system that allows them to manage their sales pipelines and current and future deals in just a few clicks. This shortens your entire sales cycle ensuring that your team can focus on making sales. When you’re in the right focus, you can secure clients as soon as possible, reducing the threat of competition.

Marketing

You can accelerate your marketing strategy through an ecosystem’s campaign management, marketing automation, email marketing features, and more. These features allow its users to personalize, organize, and automate their marketing campaigns without even breaking a sweat.

You can augment your online presence without having to fuzz over the process. Now, you can focus on creating content that adds value to your campaign that leads to conversions.

Teams and Connect

Have visibility over your team and have better insights on the breakdown of your tasks with an ecosystem’s team and workspace, and connect tools. Through these features you can promote team building, and ensure that your tasks are moving forward and are getting done.

A team that works together, creates better endless opportunities.

Tools and Integration

Better tools for better business. There are plenty of external apps that you can integrate to your ecosystem, such as personal apps, PSP apps, live chat apps, and identity verification apps.

What are the challenges of Migrating to a Digital Ecosystem?

Manual tasks may seem harmless upfront, but in reality they do more harm than good. Studies show that office workers spend 69 days a year on administrative tasks, costing companies $5 trillion a year.

Still not convinced yet? 45% of current paid activities can be automated by today’s technology, that is an equivalent of $2 trillion in total annual wages.

Manual tasks create more room for errors. The more manual tasks you have, the more you need to reinvent your entire process. Why? Out of every 100 steps, a human is likely to make 10 errors, even when carrying out somewhat redundant work.

Moving out from your manual methods does not come easy. But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Here are some of the challenges you might face when you move out from your manual methods.

Convincing Your People to Change

Getting Approval from Management

Handling Data Migration and Security

Leaving Favored Programs and Software Behind

Dealing with the Time and Cost of Implementation

Trusting the Technology

Choosing the Wrong Ecosystem

Lacking Scope Clarity

Managing Integrations

How Saphyte helps you deal with these challenges

Saphyte is one of the best digital ecosystems for businesses who are looking forward to making the change.  Saphyte has gone beyond being a three-dimensional CRM and has become a full-fledged digital ecosystem that allows its users to streamline their sales, marketing, and lead generation through its network of features.

So what are the features that users can take advantage of if they decide to partner up with Saphyte?

Always on-the-go? Saphyte has the tools for you

Getting your team up and running smoothly requires features and tools to make it happen. Here are some of the features that Saphyte has for your sales team.

Sales Pipelines

Companies with effective pipeline management had an average growth rate of 5.3, a 15 percent increase. Even more interestingly, companies that mastered three specific pipeline practices saw 28 percent higher revenue growth.

Quotes and Invoice Management

Time is an integral matter that shouldn’t be wasted. Hence, the need for more streamlined and straightforward solutions, rises. You can now stop manually creating quotes, switching from one platform to another, and sending them to clients. With Saphyte’s Quote and Invoice Management, you can effectively remove unnecessary steps and be more effective at the same time.

Email Marketing

Did you know that email personalization generates a 26% increase in open rates? With Saphyte you can personalize your email with our email templates and automate your whole email marketing campaign in one platform.

Landing Page Builder

The average conversion rate for landing pages is 9.7%, because 90% of your visitors who read your headline will also read your call-to-action (CTA). If you think getting yourself to build one requires prior technical knowledge, Saphyte has got you covered. All you have to do is choose a template, edit the content, set your domain, and publish it live. Easy, straightforward, and no hassle.

Drip Email Marketing

Open rates for drip campaigns are about 80 percent higher than single send emails, and average click-through rates are three times higher. Drip email campaigns trigger actions based on a certain action give you a better chance of getting an interactive and genuine response from your prospects.

Marketing Automation

56% of marketers think their companies can’t keep up with marketing technology evolution. If you’re one of them, then Saphyte can simplify it for you. With Saphyte you can automate your marketing processes using uncomplicated automation tools with Saphyte. You can create and deliver personalized and highly targeted messages to your leads and nurture them for sales readiness – all with automation.

Form Builders

Did you know that real time leads data captured into an ecosystem can provide you with marketing insights and better converse and service your customers. This feeds into customer retention rates as well which can be improved by 89% when adopting an omnichannel approach. Forms are the best way to start your marketing approach.

Wrapping Things Up

The rise of the digital ecosystem sprung out of necessity. Customers are becoming more informed and more skeptical about their purchase decisions. That is why you need a tool that not only offers sales intelligence but also the ease of use. Saphyte understands and delivers both these needs.

Aside from the ease-of-use experience, users can also avail practical pay-as-you-go subscription plans. Each subscription plan is inclusive of a free demo. No set-up fees, no extra or hidden charges, no maintenance fees, and a 24/7 expert local customer support availability for businesses in Dubai.

Equipping your business with the right ecosystem is the best way to start your recovery. If you’re ready to start, give us a chat or call, and our digital ecosystem experts are ready to help you get started. Book a demo with us today or start your free trial now.

Send automated emails now

Level up as a manufacturing company and start generating leads for your business now through automated emails. Book a demo with our sales team now and see how our CRM can help you grow.

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How to Create Your First Email Campaign as a Manufacturing Company

4 min read

Email marketing is a great way for manufacturing companies to convey the value of their products and services to prospective buyers. It can help them reach their target audience fast, show them available products and services, and encourage prospects to make their first purchases. But these can all get slow and dragging— especially if companies are unable to personalize their messages according to prospects’ manufacturing preferences.

So how do you guarantee that your prospects would read your emails? How do you turn your emails into lead generation machines? How do you launch a successful email campaign as a manufacturing company? Read on to find out how.

What you should know:

An email campaign (or an email marketing campaign) is a planned series of emails that is designed to increase sales. It is done by engaging audiences and turn them into customers over time.

Around 92% of manufacturing companies implement an email marketing strategy to generate leads, improve customer retention, and overall manage customer relationships.

Manufacturing companies often use tools such as CRMs and email marketing software to launch email campaigns.

What is an Email Campaign?

An email campaign (or an email marketing campaign) is a planned series of emails that is designed to generate interest, turn audiences into leads, and convert them into customers over time.

It is usually sent to multiple recipients at once, based on schedule (such as every Monday of the week) or set of conditions (such as when a prospect clicks on a Call-To-Action (CTA) button). Tools such as CRMs and marketing automation software enable businesses to launch campaigns with ease. These tools are designed to send emails to specific audiences (or segments) automatically, based on schedule or upon triggering certain conditions.

Overall, they help companies achieve their marketing objectives without the need to hire more manpower or exhaust more resources.

Role of Email in Manufacturing Industry

Having an email campaign isn’t new in the manufacturing industry. According to reports, around 92% of manufacturing companies implement an email marketing strategy. Often emails are sent via marketing automation tools or CRMs to help prospective customers research and accelerate the buying process.

In 2020, it was estimated that the manufacturing industry’s use of CRM was worth $3.31 billion globally. For the MENA region, it was worth $414 million in the same year. Most companies report using CRMs for their marketing and sales automation features, as well as for customer management, lead generation, and customer retention purposes.

Email marketing can give companies an average ROI of 3,800% as this strategy can be successfully implemented without companies having to spend more.

How to Create an Email Campaign for Manufacturing

Launching an email campaign can be confusing and intimidating to beginners. But you can follow these six easy steps to launch your first campaign without breaking a sweat:

Identify your goal

Build your list from scratch

Determine the type of campaign you’re launching

Launch it

Measure results

Adjust accordingly

Let’s first start with the most important step— identifying your sales goal.

2. Identify your goal

Just like in any other campaign, the most important part of this strategy is identifying the reason why you’re doing it and what you want to achieve at the end of the campaign.

There are a number of goals a company may have— increasing monthly sales, improving the daily lead generation rate, enhancing sales conversion rates, or improving yearly customer retention rates, among others.

The goal that you will be setting from the start will determine what actions you will take afterward.

2. Build and segment your list

The next step, which is building and segmenting your list, will depend on your sales goal. But regardless of your goal, you must consider the following:

Importing a list of known contacts

Adding to your list newly generated leads

You can incentivize your existing customers to provide their contact information such as their email address. You can then import these email addresses into your CRM to build and segment your list. Segmentation can be done according to the stages of the pipeline such as new leads, warm leads, existing customers, or customers with repeat purchases, etc. Or you can segment customers according to their demographics such as their sex, age, or job titles. Again, the lists you’ll be creating along the way will be entirely dependent on your sales goal.

You can also set up your websites to pull information from visitors and migrate the information they’ve provided into your CRM so you can start sending them emails as part of your email campaign.

https://www.saphyte.com/drip-email-marketing-crm

CRMs make it easy for companies to launch email campaigns and turn website visitors into long-term customers.

3. Determine the type of campaign you’re launching

Below is a list of campaigns that manufacturing companies commonly launch:

Newsletters

Marketing offers (Latest services, discounts, and special offers)

Announcements

Event invitations

Newsletters are emails that are regularly distributed to a wide audience. They are generally about one main topic of interest and may contain news and updates and anything useful for the reader. Manufacturing companies usually would like to keep in touch with their existing customers and use newsletters to maintain their business relations. This type of email campaign will keep the sender’s brand top of mind and drive customers back to the sender’s website.

Emails may also contain marketing offers such as the latest service options added by the company or discounts and other promotional offers that may benefit existing and new customers. Remember to always think from the perspective of your recipients— how will your email benefit them and what is its added value?

4. Launch it

After finalizing the design and content, there’s nothing left to do but to launch your first campaign. But before that, take note of the following:

Make sure your email is easy to read

Use images to boost engagement

Personalize your emails

Add easy-to-spot CTA buttons

Strategically schedule your emails

5. Measure results

Get any data as much as possible regarding the results of your campaign. Check out the following:

Open rates

Unique open rates

Click rates

Bounce rates

Abuse reports

Unsubscribes

6. Adjust accordingly

Based on the data gathered above, adjust your strategy accordingly. Did you send the email too soon? To the wrong person? Was the content irrelevant? Or just plainly bad? The numbers that you have gathered from measuring the results will tell a story— what types of emails to continue and what to avoid sending again to your target audience.

Send automated emails now

Level up as a manufacturing company and start generating leads for your business now through automated emails. Book a demo with our sales team now and see how our CRM can help you grow.

Send automated emails now

Level up as a manufacturing company and start generating leads for your business now through automated emails. Book a demo with our sales team now and see how our CRM can help you grow.

Book a Demo

DATA AND IT’S EVER-GROWING BUSINESS VALUE

3 min read

Data is worth more than what one thinks. Data has become a key input for driving growth, enabling businesses to differentiate themselves and maintain a competitive edge. Today, gathering data to help you better understand your customers and business is relatively easy. In fact, it’s become so easy there’s the danger of having too much data to deal with.

A survey from Deloitte noted that “49 percent of respondents said analytics helps them make better decisions, 16 percent say that it better enables key strategic initiatives, and 10 percent say it helps them improve relationships with both customers and business partners.”

However, to take full advantage of data and analytics, you need to know how to get the most value from your data. However, what does it mean exactly? This means that you first have to understand the potential of data and its value for your businesses.

So what are the benefits of data for businesses?

Data helps you make better decisions

Respondents from the same Deloitte survey mentioned above have made clear that even small startups generate data. Any business that has a website, online presence, or accepts electronic payments of any kinds collects data about their customers (preferences, demographics, habits), web traffic, and more. Data has the potential to make your business bigger, only if you know how to get at it.

Whilst there are plenty of factors to consider when you’re making a decision, none of them would matter if there is no data to back it up. When you use data the the right way you can easily make decisions around:

Finding new customers

Increasing customer retention

Improving customer service

Better managing marketing efforts

Tracking social media interaction

Predicting sales trends

Data helps you solve problems

How does one respond to a slow sales month or watching a poor-performing marketing campaign? Do you badger your customers or have to redo your marketing efforts?

The sensible step to make is finding a solution around the problem – not throwing away sales opportunities. Remember, all your leads matter.

The next step would be to track and review your data from your business processes to help you uncover breakdowns of your performance. This allows you to gain better insight and understanding of each part of the process, which parts need further improvement, and which parts are performing well.

Data helps you understand and improve performance

Data allows businesses to predict demand trends and plan the deployment of human and financial resources. This allows you to meet the demand and fulfill their orders on time and on budget. Data also encourages collaboration in between departments and teams.

Collecting and reviewing data can show you how everyone is performing, and more. Having an insight as to your current team’s performance allows you to adjust, refine, and even retain some of the processes along your workflow. When you have better information, the more you can strategically position your team for success.

Data helps you improve processes

Data helps you understand and improve business processes so you can reduce wasted money and time. Every company feels the effects of waste. It depletes resources, squanders time, and ultimately impacts the bottom line.

With data showing how different marketing channels are performing, however, you can see which ones offer the greatest ROI and focus on those. Or you could dig into why other channels are not performing as well and work to improve their performance.

Data helps you understand consumers

Without data, you will have no knowledge of who your customers are. Without data, you will not know if your consumers like your products. Without data, you won’t know if your marketing efforts are effective. Without data, you won’t know how much money you are making or spending.

Data is the only key to understanding your customers and market. Data allows you and your business to understand the purchasing decisions of your target consumers. Having the insight concerning your customer’s preferences, habits, and demographics can give you a competitive advantage and eventually cultivates better customer relationships.

CRM Software is the Key to Processing Big Data

Using data to run your business is table stakes. If you’re not using data to uncover important insights to help your business into the future, you will become a business of the past. Fortunately, the advances in data processing and visualization make growing your business easier than ever and there are tools available to do it.

This is where a CRM software functions well. A CRM software like Saphyte, enables your business to process larger amounts of data. As your business progresses, your data quantities will progress too. Without a tool to process the amount of data you’ll be collecting, you’re essentially putting your resources and efforts to waste.

Here are some of the benefits of Saphyte CRM when it comes to data management and data processing.

Better data collection

Placing all your data collection efforts in one place is the best way to start refining the quality of your business data. A CRM like Saphyte allows you to build landing pages to which you can steer online traffic, forms to fill-up and gain real-time insights or email, even if you have no prior technical experience.

You can even automate the whole process from the collection of data to storing it in the CRM’s system. This helps take the burden off of your employee’s plate and allows them to spend more time on sales-generating activities.

Better segmentation

Dealing with a faceless crowd is a dangerous road to take. When you have a clear view of your audience, you can do better for your business by segmenting your contacts.

Manually segmenting your contacts takes time and resources. With a CRM, you can segment your contacts quickly and with ease. With segmented lists you can run specific customer marketing campaigns and account-based marketing campaigns, analyze your sales process and lead pool. All without having to switch from one software to another.

Better Option in Protection of Data Privacy

Data as much like any other thing in your business, is vulnerable. The primary benefit of CRM, aside from saving you a lot of time and effort, is securing data privacy. Most CRM softwares are compliant to UAE’s data protection law.

A CRM system can help your business obtain and document your contacts’ permission to store and use their personal details (with consent, of course), send notifications automatically to all new contacts informing that you would like to store their data, manage your customers’ subscription to email communication preferences, and even set up rules to update personal details for groups of contacts – all at the same time.

Wrapping Things Up

Building, storing, and securing your data should be at the forefront of your priorities for your business this year. Create more value to business and start by properly implementing data.

Want to get your data building started? Book a demo with us today. Our experts are more excited to learn how we can help you build your business up.

Want to get your data building started?

Our experts are more excited to learn how we can help you build your business up.

Book a Demo

THE PRICE TAG OF MANUAL BUSINESS

3 min read

Manual tasks are often used to copy and paste data between internal and external systems. This data can be extracted from websites, portals, enterprise applications and legacy systems.

Though the world is advancing, many organizations are still reliant on manual tasks to collect, review and input data. More often than not, these repetitive, remedial tasks require workers to log in and out of multiple systems. This situation is often referred to as the “swivel chair integration.” It is best illustrated with employees reading or copying data in one computer screen and keying it into another.

These activities might seem harmless upfront, but they’re actually costing your business money, time and resources. Here are some interesting facts about manual processes.

45% of current paid activities can be automated by today’s technology, an equivalent of $2 trillion in total annual wages.

A study by Unit 4 revealed that globally, office workers spend 69 days a year on administrative tasks, costing companies $5 trillion a year.

Contrary to popular belief, multi-tasking can be counterproductive and costs companies 40% of lost productivity simply due to constant task-switching.

Professionals, on average, take 18 minutes to locate a document manually––20% to 40% of their time––and spend 50% of their time searching for information.

These numbers can affirm that doing business manually is indeed more expensive. But, let’s stop at the ballpark estimates and let’s discuss what the actual price tag of doing your business manually costs or what its downsides for your business may be.

The Downsides of Doing Business Manually
1. Reduced Productivity.

A survey from IDC states that businesses with 1,000 knowledgeable workers lose $10 million a year from poor productivity tools in search alone. Cognizant says that 22% of an employee’s time is spent on repetitive tasks. From the same document of IDC, 40% of a knowledge worker’s time is spent looking for and organizing information.

Repetitive manual tasks can actually slow down your employee’s performance. Your employees have to copy data from one system and paste it into another to approve an application or answer a customer question. Imagine multiplying this repetitive activity by the number of times they do this in any given day or week, it quickly piles up and eventually results in lots of wasted time.

2. Data entry errors.

Contrary to popular belief, manual data entry is more prone to errors and can be costly in the long run. The more manual tasks you have, the more you need to reinvent your entire process.

Let’s take the logistics sector as an example, you may have this scenario:

Customer emails a shipment request.

Customer service representatives (CSR) monitor email, print and file the shipment request when received.

CSR logs into your scheduling systems and manually enters the shipment details.

CSR logs into the shipper’s portal and manually re-enters the pickup date, location and time.

Making mistakes is only natural, in fact, out of every 100 steps, a human is likely to make 10 errors, even when carrying out somewhat redundant work. However, if it becomes a common occurrence in your business, it could cost you plenty. All of this manual repetition causes errors that eventually lead to delays and unhappy customers. And we all don’t want unhappy customers.

3. Increased labor costs.

Manual and paper-based processes during a typical onboarding process can cost up to 20 times more than computer-assisted, electronic document processing.

You have to factor in training, payroll, facilities, equipment, and benefits. You’re essentially paying a lot for people to copy and paste data. According to a study, labor represents a median of 60% of the total costs of invoice processing. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as rework and data re-entry caused by manual errors can slow your whole operation down, leading you to hire more people just to keep your operations moving.

4. Inconsistent workflows and lack of visibility.

Every employee has their own workflow. Reconciling these workflow variations across dozens or hundreds of employees can be costly.

Manual variations and errors within critical tasks such as claims processing, mortgage lending, accounts receivables, and shipment tracking can directly impact your profitability.

When your workflows are inconsistent, there is no visibility as to what is happening around your business and its operations. There is no clear and complete understanding between your teams or departments as to how the process works and who the people involved are.

Furthermore, if there is no consistency, all stakeholders are out of the loop, eventually decreasing transparency and leading to lack of accountability.

5. Lack of business elasticity and innovation.

Manual tasks can slow you down if you’re trying to rapidly scale up. When repetitive tasks depend on human workers to complete them, scaling up during seasonal or peak times is extremely difficult to manage from a resource and cost perspective.

You must find, hire, and train new employees – taking time to guide them throughout the learning curve. You may lose growth opportunities due to a lack of trained staff or the inability to quickly adapt to changing demands.

This eventually renders your business unable to innovate. Mundane administrative work takes time away from your employees and knowledgeable workers, more valuable business building, customer oriented and strategic activities.

Taking Advantage of a New Ecosystem

Reports have stated that  70% of business owners said they haven’t taken advantage of new technology. This means that they’ve been stuck with the same solution for a long time, unable to move forward.

If you’re a part of the 70% of business owners who have been stuck with the same process since time memorial – it’s time for you to take advantage of Saphyte’s Ecosystem.

What is Saphyte?

Saphyte is a digital ecosystem, designed and engineered to be highly scalable and flexible, adapting to the unique needs of its users as they grow. This allows them to continue making powerful, impactful connections with customers around the world.

A cloud-based, centralized platform designed to support sales and marketing operations seamlessly and streamline through automation and intuitive tools. Through this leading-edge technology, businesses can now take a holistic approach to innovative and proactive marketing and sales strategies, that can future-proof their business.

Saphyte has plenty of features that can easily automate your administrative and repetitive tasks. Allowing you to spend on sales generating activities that add value to your business.

Saphyte can also be customized to suit your business’s unique needs when it comes to workflow automation, marketing, and sales. This allows your business to be more scalable and flexible without breaking the bank.

If you’re ready to take the next step in making your business more flexible, scalable, and innovative, you can book a demo or you can chat with our ecosystem experts.

Call us today and let’s take your business to another level.

Book a Demo