lead management

An optimized sales pipeline helps organizations cut costs in generating leads and increase ROI for lead generation efforts. When organizations use best practices to improve sales pipelines, it increases their chances of success as leads are likelier to convert into customers.

In this article, we’ll unveil ten game-changing tips to optimize your sales pipeline, boost your performance, and unlock unparalleled growth. Let’s get started.

Tip 1: Streamline Lead Management with Tech

Efficient lead management is the key to a thriving sales pipeline. There are several ways to streamline your lead management but the most effective one is to use technology.

Technologies like CRMs allow you to effortlessly capture, organize, and prioritize leads, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks. Some tools are provided to help you nurture prospects, track interactions, and maximize conversion rates. An example of this is drip email marketing which helps you engage leads further until they make a purchase.

Tip 2: Use Sales Analytics

Knowledge is power, especially in sales. That’s why gathering data and using sales analytics is important as it helps you gain valuable insights into your pipeline performance.

Sales analytics also allow you to track key metrics, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your sales strategy and drive revenue growth.

Tip 3: Automate Task Management

Say goodbye to tedious manual tasks and hello to increased productivity. Saphyte’s task management features enable you to automate repetitive sales activities, such as follow-ups and reminders. Stay on top of your to-do list, prioritize tasks, and focus on what matters most: closing deals.

Tip 4: Optimize Deal Tracking

Using tools, you must track your deals from start to finish so you can keep a pulse on each opportunity and take advantage of them. You can also update your deal stages and collaborate seamlessly with your team so you’ll never miss a beat and move closer to sealing the deal.

Tip 5: Embrace Collaboration

Sales success is a team effort. That’s why your lead management must encourage collaboration and seamless communication within your sales team.

Promote a culture where team members can quickly share insights, assign tasks, and stay connected with their colleagues. Use tools that can maximize teamwork and accelerate your sales cycle.

Tip 6: Leverage Sales Automation

Sales automation lets you complete repetitive tasks like email communications and document generation without breaking a sweat. Automation allows you to save time, reduce errors, and focus on more important tasks to build relationships with your prospects.

Tip 7: Personalize Customer Interactions

To optimize your lead management, it’s important to tailor your sales approach to each customer’s unique needs. You’ll need to access customer data for this. Some tools allow you to track interactions so you can deliver personalized experiences at every touchpoint.

Personalization helps you build lasting relationships and earn customer loyalty in the long run.

Tip 8: Maximize Mobile Productivity

Sales never stop, and neither should you. That’s why your lead management should take mobility into consideration. Use tools that allow your teams to go mobile, where they can access your sales pipeline anytime, anywhere.

Tip 9: Consider Integrating Other Platforms

When using tech, consider using platforms that allow you to integrate other tools and platforms, so you can enhance your existing ecosystem.

Tip 10: Continuously Refine and Improve

A successful sales pipeline requires continuous refinement. Continuously adapt and evolve your sales process as your business grows. Embrace feedback, analyze results, and continuously refine your approach to stay ahead of the competition.

Optimize your lead management now

With Saphyte as your sales ally, optimizing your sales pipeline has never been more exciting or rewarding. From streamlining lead management to harnessing the power of sales analytics, Saphyte equips you with the tools and insights you need to close deals confidently.

So, buckle up, implement these ten tips, and watch your sales pipeline soar to new heights. Start your journey to sales success with Saphyte today and experience the difference for yourself

Learn more about optimizing your lead management from our experts. Book a FREE demo below.

Picture this: You’re a business owner with a never-ending to-do list, limited resources, and barely enough time to breathe. Sound familiar? Well, fret not because in the world of customer nurturing, there’s a secret weapon that can help you achieve remarkable results with minimal effort. 

Enter drip marketing, a game-changing strategy that can revolutionize how you engage and nurture your valuable customers. And with tools like Saphyte by your side, the possibilities are endless.

What is Drip Marketing, and Why is it Effective for Customer Nurturing? 

Drip marketing is like having your own personal marketing assistant that works tirelessly in the background, delivering targeted messages and valuable content to your customers at just the right moments.

It’s a strategic approach that involves sending automated, personalized messages to nurture leads and guide them along the customer journey. 

Why is it so effective? Well, think of it as a slow and steady marathon rather than a sprint. You build trust, establish authority, and ultimately drive conversions by consistently staying top-of-mind and providing relevant information.

How Can a CRM System Facilitate Automated and Personalized Customer Communication? 

Now, let’s talk about the magic behind the scenes. A robust CRM system like Saphyte takes drip marketing to a new level.

Advanced automation capabilities allow you to set up intelligent workflows that trigger targeted emails, SMS, or even social media messages based on specific customer behaviors or predefined time intervals. You can segment your customer base, create personalized content, and let the CRM handle the rest. 

The result? Automated and highly customized communication that makes your customers feel heard, valued, and understood.

What Insights and Analytics Does Saphyte CRM Provide for Effective Customer Nurturing?

In the realm of customer nurturing, data is king. Saphyte empowers you with a treasure trove of insights and analytics to optimize your nurturing efforts. It tracks customer interactions, email open rates, click-through rates, and more, giving you a comprehensive view of each customer’s journey.

With these valuable metrics, you can make data-driven decisions, identify bottlenecks, and refine your nurturing strategies for maximum impact. Saphyte puts the power of knowledge in your hands, enabling you to nurture customers like never before.

Nurturing customers with little effort is now a reality. With drip marketing and the robust capabilities of Saphyte, you can effortlessly build lasting relationships, drive conversions, and propel your business forward.

So, wave goodbye to the days of overwhelming manual tasks and limited resources. Embrace the power of automation, personalization, and data-driven insights. Start nurturing your customers with finesse, and watch your business thrive.

Remember, in the race of customer nurturing, it’s not always about the fastest sprinter but the one who paces themselves wisely. Let Saphyte be your guiding companion, and together, let’s nurture customer relationships effortlessly.

Want to learn more about drip marketing using Saphyte? Book a FREE demo below.

How can marketing help with profits during an economic downturn? What must businesses do to get started? Read on to find out.

The current economic crisis is prompting businesses to change directions. Many are now focusing on qualifying and converting leads and delivering value to existing customers. What’s more, with the pandemic accelerating digital transformation, businesses are now more equipped to understand their customers better to achieve the aforementioned goals.

How can businesses use marketing to improve their profits, especially amid an economic crisis? What steps should businesses take to get better results? Check out our tips below.

Reexamine your lead scoring strategy

Your lead scoring strategy is what helps you qualify your leads and determine which potential customer is most likely to make a purchase. Lead scoring is a critical step in lead conversion strategy. 

Messing up with your lead scoring can impact your lead conversion results. This is why it’s important to reexamine your lead scoring strategy and check if it’s working well.

Some companies automate lead scoring so their sales and marketing teams can focus on more important tasks. By automating using a system, sales and marketing teams can automatically identify which of the incoming leads they need to focus on.

Focus on converting qualified leads

According to surveys, more than 25% of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) do not get a follow-up from sales. This is a wasted opportunity for driving sales. And in an economic downturn, every dollar counts.

To prevent this from happening, it’s important that, as previously mentioned, you can screen out the leads that are more likely to make a purchase, so you can focus on them and help them make a purchase as soon as possible.

You can generate qualified leads with content marketing, conduct follow-ups, connect with them through email marketing, or use positive customer testimonials and reviews to help speed up their purchase decision.

Work on your CTAs

Your CTAs are also crucial in your lead conversion strategy. CTAs may make or break your marketing campaign. If a CTA doesn’t match the customer’s needs or preferences, they may end up exiting from your website or from your other sales and marketing channels.

For example, having “Learn More” as a CTA may discourage customers that are looking to make an immediate purchase. “Buy Now” may not be effective if the customer needs more information about your product or service.

The point of CTAs is to convince users they need to take action immediately or you risk losing them, but this only works if the CTA matches the stage of the buyer in the buyer’s journey. 

Assess and evaluate your value chain

The final thing that you should remember is to add value for your customers. This can be done only when you understand how your value chain works and determine whether they’re giving value to the end users (your customers).

You can conduct a value chain analysis by doing the following:

• First, identify all your value chain activities. You can do this by having a list of each activity in your company that is essential in the creation of your company’s finished product.

• Second, calculate their costs. Costs such as rent, utilities, and manpower often play a role in value creation.  By identifying your value chain activities and their costs, you can see an overview of how your company is running and which parts are taking so much of your dough.

• Third, determine what your customers perceive as value. This is where it’s important to gather data and feedback from customers to help you understand them better. To get you started, gather data related to why and how your customers make purchase decisions. This helps you understand their intent and what they perceive as valuable.

• Fourth, compare with your competition. Understand the marketing effectiveness of your competitors. Compare how your competitors carry out tasks, what their business strategies are, and their revenue (or other performance) outcomes.

• Lastly, decide on a competitive advantage. After making your comparisons, you’ll already know which parts you are performing better compared to your competitors. It can be the cost, the perceived value of the brand, or the accessibility you provide to your customers.

Gather data from your customers now

Do you want to know how you can effortlessly gather data from your customers to understand them better? Book a FREE demo with our sales and marketing experts now to learn more.

Email metrics are important to assess whether your email campaigns are working to your advantage. Read on to find out more about email metrics and how you can improve your lead conversion with them.

Email marketing is one of the most used strategies nowadays. It helps businesses engage customers and keep the brand on top of mind. The problem is: many businesses don’t know what to look for to know if their emails are working.

That’s why in this article, we’ll list the most important email marketing KPIs you need to watch out for and how you can improve them.

1. Open Rate

The email open rate refers to how many people opened your email out of the total number of recipients. This metric is important in determining whether your subject line is catchy enough to capture the attention of your target audience or whether your brand is trusted by your target audience to open your email.

According to a study, the average email open rate for all industries is 21.33%, so if you score a better rate, that means your campaign performance is above average.

To improve your email open rates, we suggest A/B testing your subject lines, determining the best time to send emails according to your target audience, or conducting email segmentation for your customers.

2. Click Rate

Click rates refer to how many of your delivered emails resulted in a click. This metric is important in determining the number of recipients who clicked on at least one link in your email.

The average click rate globally is 1.27%, so if your result is lower than that, then you might want to try the following:

• Optimize your email content by making them more timely, relevant, and responsive to your target audience’s needs and interests. 
• Testing a more catchy and responsive headline.
• Segmenting your audience
• Changing your lead generation strategy to attract more qualified leads— those interested in engaging with your brand.
  

3. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate refers to the number of recipients who have completed the desired action in your email— clicking on a call-to-action (CTA) button, making a purchase, etc.

There are a number of ways to improve your conversion rate, which include improving your mailing list, making your email content more targeted, or designing a more appealing landing page, as mentioned above.

4. Email Open Time

Email open times refer to how long your audience is taking to open your emails. The shorter the time, the better. This metric allows you to understand if your audience is eager to interact with your email.

To improve your email open times, try determining the best times for a particular segment (ex: customers segmented based on location or job positions).

5. Email Read Time

Email read times refer to how much time your recipients are spending reading your email content. This is important in determining the relevance of your content to your target audience. The longer the time, the better. 

Improving this may require some time and effort (trial and error). But you can start by experimenting with email structures and content types, and by integrating personalization.

6. Email Marketing ROI

Email marketing ROI refers to how much your business is getting from the resources it spent on email marketing like ad spending, manpower, etc. This metric is important to determine whether you should continue with email marketing as a marketing strategy in general.

To improve your email marketing ROI, you need to improve your other email marketing metrics as well. You can also use tools that allow you to implement smart automation. 

This means that the tools will handle the email marketing for you such as sending emails based on schedule or when certain conditions are triggered (e.g. a new subscriber).

This reduces the resources necessary to run email campaigns (i.e. you don’t need to hire additional manpower to perform email marketing tasks), which leads to better email marketing ROI.

Better email marketing with Saphyte

Want to learn more about tools to improve your email marketing performance? Talk to our experts now. Book a FREE demo here.

Content marketing is a way for businesses to attract leads, convert them, and keep them engaged. Read on to find out why it’s important to do it in 2022.

Articles, e-books, videos, and any information you get from a brand— whether entertaining or educational— can be called content and it’s designed to make you aware of the brand and keep you engaged.

Some forms of content remind you that the brand is there on the market. Other forms of content motivate you to make an on-the-spot purchase.

So what is content marketing and why is it important in 2022?

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the use of articles, videos, and other forms of content to attract, engage, and convert leads into customers, and retain them.

This approach helps the brand do the following:

Promote brand awareness and top-of-mind awareness

Establish credibility in the market

Encourage purchases to drive sales

Motivate leads to make their first purchases

Businesses often use search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and email marketing to forward their content to their target audience.

Talk to us to know more about content marketing and what tools to use here.

Why Is It Important?

The following are reasons why content marketing is an important strategy that businesses should use in 2022:

Content marketing works. According to 42% of B2B marketers, content marketing works and they’re effective in producing results.

They bring in necessary traffic. According to content marketing leaders, they experienced a 7.8x higher year-over-year growth in unique site traffic when content marketing is done right.

They help you get more leads. Businesses with blogs report getting 67% more leads than other companies.

Content determines buyers’ next steps. According to a report, 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content first before engaging with a brand’s sales rep.

Content helps build loyalty, nurture audiences, and drive sales. According to a report, 78% of successful organizations use content marketing to build loyalty, nurture leads and audiences (64%), and generate sales and revenue (57%).

Content marketing can help you establish and nurture your relationships with your prospective and existing customers. When the recipient of your content thinks of your company as credible, trustworthy, and responsive to their needs and interests, they’re more likely to choose you among your competitors when it’s time to buy.

How Content Marketing Works

Every buyer has a different set of needs and expectations at every stage of the buying process. Knowing the right content to send helps you nudge them to move forward to the next stages.

For example, a buyer at an awareness stage may need to know more about how your brand’s products and services can address their pain points, challenges, and questions. A buyer at a consideration stage may need to know more about the specific features or functions of your products and services and how they differ from what’s available on the market. A buyer at the closing stage may need to know how choosing you can benefit them in the long run.

Sending them the right content at the right time is crucial in closing these deals. Some tools are built and designed to help businesses automate this process.

Here’s an example of how you can engage your leads and customers through email with ease:

How to Get Started

To make content marketing easier, here are things to take note of:

Know your audience. The first step to making a content marketing strategy is to know who you want to reach and how to reach and engage them effectively. This requires you to determine their needs, preferences, and interests, among others, so you’d know what type of content to send them.

Get a team. Hire professional writers and editors to make your content for you. Remember, a small error in content, typography, or grammar can make you lose your credibility and discourage prospective customers.

Determine your distribution strategy. Know where your target audience is hanging around, when they’ll be most active, where they’re more likely to click on your content, and what type of content works best for them.

Use tools. To make the entire content marketing process easier, use tools and technologies designed for it. Some can help you distribute your content automatically with just a few clicks.

Automate your content marketing now

Want to know more about content marketing and how you can automate it? Talk to us and click here to get started.

To achieve business goals, marketers need to develop a content marketing strategy that is designed for their organization’s needs, as well as their audiences’. Read on to find out how to start making yours.

Many businesses plan to write blogs, post on social media, and send bulk emails to their target audience. But many also don’t know where to begin.

It’s understandable. According to a report, 74% of companies observed that content marketing increased their lead generation results. Those with a content strategy also achieved 27.1% higher win rates and 18.1% higher quota attainment.

That’s why 90% of marketers continue investing in the channels they focus on using a content marketing plan.

In this post, we’ll talk about what content strategy is, why it’s important, and how you can develop your own content strategy that is designed for your unique business needs and your target audience. Let’s get started.

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a plan of action or policy that uses content (blogs, articles, videos, among others) designed to help organizations achieve their business goals.

Most business organizations use the content for the following:

• To increase brand awareness in the market
• To attract and generate more leads
• To engage leads, nurture them, and convert them into customers
• To remind customers of the brand and make a repeat purchase
• To retain customers and reduce customer churn

A successful content marketing strategy will help businesses achieve their targets and goals, like those mentioned above.

Why is it important?

A content marketing strategy is important because it ensures that the content that you’re sending out is doing work.

Remember, it’s not free to produce content. It requires time, energy, and company resources to write articles or publish videos. That’s why a strategy is important to make sure that they work.

It’s also important to note that your competition is sending out content too. Your strategy should take this into account because the first content the customer receives may lead that customer to ignore all other options and make their first purchase.

7 Essential Parts of a Content Marketing Strategy

What should your content marketing strategy be made of? Here are seven essential elements to take note of:

1.   Your target audience

The most important element of your content marketing strategy is understanding your target audience. Who are they? How do they behave? Getting the right idea about your target customers lets you decide what to do in the next steps so you can get your message across effectively.

2.   Their needs and preference

Of course, each customer has a need that they have to address. Understanding each customer’s needs and preferences lets you provide an offer that is relevant and responsive to their unique situation.

3.   Your competitive edge

You need to know how to market your unique selling proposition (USP). What makes you different from the rest? Why should the customer choose you among the competition?

Knowing your competitive edge allows you to drive your message home— telling the customer to ignore all other options and just focus on your brand.

4.   Your content format

Not all customers respond positively to blogs and articles, some prefer the video format. Choosing the right content format for the right customer is critical to getting them to consume your content.

5.   The channels to focus on

This is extremely important especially when you market on social media. Understanding which platforms your target customers is likely to use lets you optimize your content performance, especially when you choose to run paid ads.

6.   Your team

The success of your content marketing strategy depends on the team executing it. Choosing the right people to implement tasks and run workflows is an important part of the strategy.

7.   The evaluation

Last but not least, evaluating your performance lets you spot what needs to be corrected in your strategy and what needs to be retained. Use the right tools and metrics. Learn from industry peers and be ready to adapt.

5 Steps to Develop a Content Strategy

Now that you know what elements to focus on when developing your content strategy, it’s time to make one! Let’s dive in.

1.   Set a goal

Goals are what would determine what your plan is going to look like and how it’s going to be implemented.

There are many goals to choose from. When planning their content marketing strategy, many businesses aim to:

• Generate more leads
• Establish brand awareness
• Drive sales
• Retain more customers

2.   Know more about your customers

Clearly defining your content’s target audience also allows you to be more specific about your content marketing strategy.

It lets you produce more relevant and valuable content that they’ll want to consume and which will, later on, push them to become customers.

Customer profiling helps you know more about your customers:

3.   Choose your tools

It’s going to be hard to run a content marketing strategy, especially if it’s your first time. Choosing the right tool makes the job easy and also helps you become more efficient in your tasks.

Tools like Saphyte’s Drip Marketing lets you send emails automatically on schedule to your target customers.

4.   Determine your content

There are several content formats to choose from and your content will largely depend on your target audience. Among them are:

• Blogs.
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Emails
• Case Studies
• Ebooks
• Lead magnets

5.   Explore and experiment

The success of many content marketing strategies today can be attributed to their willingness to explore and experiment. Evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. Try something new and see how far it goes. The sky’s the limit.

Want to know more about content marketing tools?

See how Saphyte’s tools can reinvent the way you engage with your leads and customers. Talk to us and get started here.

Relationship marketing plays a crucial role in increasing customer lifetime value, the amount of value a customer contributes to your business from their first purchase towards their last. Read on to find out the things you should know about relationship marketing and why you should consider this approach.

Focusing on building valuable and lasting relationships with customers improves retention. And customer retention is becoming more important these days, especially when businesses aspire to grow.

Multiple studies found that improving customer retention by at least 5% helps in increasing revenue by 25% to 95%. It’s also more cost-effective. Engaging existing customers for retention has been shown to be at least 6-7x cheaper than acquiring new ones.

What do these numbers mean? All of these mean that in order for companies to increase their sales, cut their expenses, and grow their profits, they should find ways to build customer loyalty and reduce customer churn. And one proven way to do this is through relationship marketing.

What is Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing is the process of building long-term personal, individualized connections with customers. It focuses on providing value and relevance through content, product, and services for a continuing, lasting relationship.

Companies that implement relationship marketing seek to get to know a customer better to improve their experiences with the company. They do not stop after a deal is closed.

In fact, they continue to reach out to the said customer by sending relevant content, personalized offers, and discounts to encourage repeat purchases and consequently increase the chances of customer retention.

The way relationship marketing works is often illustrated with customers going through a lifecycle process. They start by discovering the brand and end up becoming advocates of that brand.

Learn more about relationship marketing here: ​​What is Relationship Marketing and Why is it Important?[1] 

Examples of Relationship Marketing

The following are examples of how relationship marketing works:

1.   IKEA

IKEA is one of the few companies that focus on relationship marketing as a primary means of growth. It is considered the world’s largest home furnishing retailer and has more than 400 stores worldwide.

The company is famous for using demographic, psychographic & geographic segmentation to provide personalized experiences to customers and offering value at every stage of the buyer’s journey. It gives importance to customer retention, establishing loyalty, and building long-term relationships with its customers.

To “deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its product,” IKEA uses a combination of experimental marketing, customer engagement and content marketing, and digital marketing and social media engagement, among others.

2.   Starbucks

Starbucks didn’t just rise to the top because of good coffee. The company has been known to provide excellent customer experiences that make it easy for them to be the topic of conversation.

Starbucks starts with providing customers with comfort and peace at their stores— a different feeling that customers don’t commonly get elsewhere. A personalized product option is then offered to every customer— whether they want 2 pumps of syrup, soy milk to replace dairy milk, a scoop of java chips, or anything else added to their drink.

Starbucks communicates with its customers via text, email, and direct mail. There, they provide content to customers and also open accessibility for purchase. Starbucks also allows customers to turn their mobile phones into electronic rewards cards to redeem free drinks, a birthday gift, or a free sample menu item.

3.   Amazon

Amazon’s success story rests primarily on its ability to provide a customer-centric experience to its over 300 million customers.

The company built its own Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to collect customer data, such as location, searched items, and previous purchases, to instantly modify and personalize users’ on-site experience.

Amazon uses email to connect with customers and keep them purchasing. They also have the ​​Prime customer loyalty program where customers get free and fast shipping, free cloud storage, and free streaming services, among others, by paying extra for membership.

6 Things You Should Know About Relationship Marketing

When talking about relationship marketing, here are six things that you should know about:

1.   Personalization is key

Personalization is the process of crafting an experience or message to match a recipient’s needs, interests, and other factors, based on the data the company has gathered.

For example, if the customer has searched for hair products in the past few minutes, it’s likely that the customer needs a hair product or is interested in buying one. Having this data allows companies to offer relevant product recommendations which increase the chances of the said customer making a purchase.

Personalization is key to a relationship marketing’s success. Companies need to be able to offer relevant and valuable information for customers to continue to interact with them. When a brand’s product and services do not match the customer’s needs, interests, or preferences, it’s likely for a churn to occur.

2.   Repeat customers are more likely to spend more

A study found that repeat customers spend three times more per transaction compared to non-repeat customers. They’re also easier to sell to, which means that in relationship marketing, retaining customers is more important than anything else.

When repeat customers become advocates of your brand, they’re not just there to make repeat purchases. They’re also there to influence others to make a purchase, spreading good word-of-mouth marketing to promote your brand and increase your sales revenue.

3.   Technology is an advantage

Improving customer relationships through personalization would be impossible without technology. Technologies like CRM software allow companies to seamlessly collect and sort customer data for instant use.

CRMs help inform sales and marketing teams what a customer needs, what they’re likely to purchase, and what to do to encourage them to make a purchase. With CRM tools and features, companies can also automate tasks involving personalization such as email marketing, catalog offering, and customer profiling, among others.

4.   Everybody loves incentives

To keep customers engaged, companies need to keep sending content that helps customers maximize the use of their purchased products or encourage them to browse for other products for enhanced use and experience.

But nothing engages customers more than incentives. Incentives can take the form of discounts and freebies.

Many companies incentivize their customers through a loyalty program, where customers gain points with every purchase. These points can be exchanged for free items and products.

Each purchase allows the company to gain more details about the customer— their needs, preferences, and other information that can be used to provide a more personalized experience to the said customer.

5.   Customer feedback and insights are game-changers

Building a good relationship is a two-way street. Companies guestimating what customers need wouldn’t suffice. Customers also have to contribute and inform companies what they think, feel, and experience when using their products and services.

To encourage customers to provide real feedback, companies have to find ways to reward honesty, make providing feedback accessible and convenient, and be transparent about how the feedback would benefit the customer.

6.   Provide a multi-channel experience for every type of customer

For companies to truly capture every type of customer’s interest, they need to be sensitive about their marketing channels— how the customers found out about them and how these customers interact with them.

This way, the company can map the whole experience of the customer and look for ways to improve this experience. A different journey may then be provided for a customer that used online marketing channels compared to traditional marketing channels.

Because customers nowadays use more than one marketing channel, companies have to provide a consistent multi-channel experience (omnichannel marketing) to all customers.

Customers expect a consistent, quality experience throughout and that’s why the brand’s identity and values should be unified and consistent as well across these channels.

Upgrade Your Relationship Marketing

Improve the way you build relationships with customers. Get in touch with Saphyte’s support team now to know more about relationship marketing and the tools you can use to connect with customers.

Companies that value customer experience gain 4-8% higher revenue than their competitors in their industries. They are found to be 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers. Find out what customer relationship is all about and how it transformed the way companies deal with their customers.

When companies talk about customer relationships, they usually refer to the marketing strategies a company implements to encourage customers to stay for the long haul. Customer relationship strategies aim to build loyalty and they typically require determining what customers uniquely need and want first before anything else.

However, right now, companies face roadblocks in identifying these needs and preferences. The global pandemic caused a shift in consumer preferences and changes in consumer behavior, which means that the consumer data that companies have gathered in the previous years may be rendered irrelevant.

Without the right data about your target customers, it would be hard to offer the right solutions. This puts a strain on the customer relationship. Some customers may avoid coming in contact with the business again after the business failed to address their needs and preferences.

How Customer Relationship Works

All customers start from a point where they had zero knowledge about the brand. Along the way, they come into contact with the brand via advertisements, word-of-mouth communication, or other promotional activity of the business.

This is where brand awareness starts. When the brand messaging piques their interest, they may seek more knowledge about the brand. And after weighing options, or when a need arises, they may proceed to select the brand’s product and services out from the competition.

They will then use the product. Here, an experience will be formed. If it’s a good experience, the customer may consider buying the product again in the future. In fact, they may even act as brand ambassadors, actively promoting the product and the brand to other people.

If it’s a bad experience, the customer may no longer choose the product in the future and may even discourage others from buying the product.

Customer relationship then aims to keep the customer moving from the first stage (awareness) to the last stage (advocacy). It seeks to keep customers loyal to the brand (and promote the brand to their social circles) by identifying the customer’s specific needs, offering the right solutions, and consistently offering a positive experience throughout their journey.

How Customer Relationship Transformed Marketing

Many marketers began to prioritize customer relationships after seeing successful companies implement a customer-centric model.

According to a report, 45.9% of business professionals would consider customer experience as their #1 priority for the next 5 years.

And this is because many customers now would prefer experience over anything else. In fact, according to research, 86% of customers claim that they are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

It’s not stopping anytime. At the end of 2020, a study expects customer experience to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.

How to Integrate Customer Relationship in Marketing

To emphasize the concept of customer relationship when engaging customers, take note of the following:

1.      Prioritize gaining customer trust

You can never build loyalty without gaining customers’ trust first. That’s why, in all things you do, always ensure that you will be able to gain the customer’s trust at the end of the day.

To do this, your products and services must be reliable. They must create a positive experience for your customers. They should be able to fix a problem or provide a solution to a challenge.

2.      Understand customer’s intent

Understanding why your customers became your customers is essential in running a customer relationship marketing strategy. It helps you predict intent and anticipate the needs of your customers before they even say it.

Here, you can create a roadmap that leads to a smooth journey for the customer, leading to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Integrating technology may be necessary to speed up processes and increase service accuracy and reliability.

3.      Identify opportunities through customer data

Throughout the journey of the customer, sales opportunities may arise for the business. Identifying these opportunities will not just increase revenue but may also enhance the experience for the customer.

Sending personalized offers or promotions, for example, is a way to enhance the customer experience and exceed their expectations. Gathering customer data through tools and technology is an effective way to personalize offers.

Customer Profiling with Saphyte Forms – YouTube

4.      Management must agree

To enhance the customer experience, the management must first agree that this is top priority. Drafting customer-centric company policies are, therefore, necessary to ensure that employees collectively follow protocols that aim to give customers a positive experience.

These policies must also align with company goals, mission, and vision. To build genuine relationships with customers, those at the top of the organization must lead in doing so.

Transform Your Marketing

Learn more about how to use tools and technology to gather customer data and provide a personalized experience. Get in touch with our experts here at Saphyte. Click here to get started.

Meta Description: SaaS businesses and CRM software solutions are the new Tyler Durden & The Narrator from fight club. Don’t you agree?

Social Copy: Move and give way to the new Tyler Durden & The Narrator (you know, Fight Club) in the business arena. Meet CRM and SaaS. Learn about this iconic duo making rounds about in the business world today and why CRM leads as a SaaS enabler here.

SaaS is becoming a more popular choice for businesses of all sectors and sizes. Study shows that about 80% of final users in the US alone prefer using SaaS applications. While this is excellent news for SaaS businesses, this means a constant battle to stay on top of the increasing demand and compete.

The Challenge

In today’s modern world, companies are constantly laden with drastically decreased lead conversion rates if the transaction business fails to respond to their query within 5 minutes, and availability has become a hot commodity around customer experience. Putting customers in queue will give them a leeway of choosing your competitors, further diminishing all your business’s efforts in attracting new customers and running effective marketing campaigns.

With this impending challenge looming over the businesses, buzzwords such as CRM and SaaS are often seen, and for great reason too. Both CRM and SaaS software are readily available in the market to help businesses align their sales and marketing needs and even their productivity needs. With their popularity, it’s doesn’t come as a shock that vendors are now combining these two powerhouses.

CRM Leads as a SaaS Enabler, Why and How?

With the constant demand for on-the-go services, choosing SaaS-based services over on-premise software is prevalent among businesses of all sectors. These demands, coupled with the advent of cloud computing and the mobile revolution, CRM software has jumped into the cloud computing world. CRM SaaS deployments of CRM are expected to reach their full potential soon (like very soon).

As SaaS will continue to commandeer the cloud model vessel of the future, businesses will also begin to shift their time and energy to their organization’s core goals instead of investing in obsolete IT solutions. In this case, modern-day CRM systems remain the most capable technology to enable and strengthen SaaS companies. Here are three reasons why.

CRM Software Automate Repetitive Tasks

SaaS employees spend hours and hours on day end on daunting repetitive tasks that prevent them from focusing on what matters most – the customer. There are plenty of events that can happen in an 8-hour shift, yes, but if SaaS employees spend much time doing manual tasks, all efforts are in vain.

A cloud-based CRM solution can help employees and organizations automate such tasks. For instance, you can use it to send the contacts on your email list a series of emails at pre-set conditions and track emails to check if they are read or ignored. Or, you can use CRM to assign tasks or pipelines to your sales team.

CRM software enables SaaS companies to help their marketing and sales teams spend time more efficiently. Automating repetitive, low-impact, yet high-effort tasks, the software frees up time so employees can use it to invest in scaling their business.

CRM Systems Manage and Secure Data More Efficiently

To understand the SaaS model better, think of it as a bank. The bank’s business model protects the privacy of the individual customer while providing reliable and secure services on a massive scale. Customers can use or avail of the bank’s offerings and services without worrying about other people accessing their personal information without consent. That’s why a CRM system is a great combo partner for SaaS companies because of its similarity when it comes to the business model.

We all know that collecting data for your current and incoming clients are free. However, it needs to be appropriately organized to use gathered information fully. A good CRM solution offers a prime repository from which all employees can easily access and communicate with their customers in real-time. All company interactions with customers and prospects are securely recorded and stored for future reference. Employees’ can use CRM tools to determine when the last contact with a customer was, provide call memos, and plan activities – of course, to assist businesses in making better decisions.

Real estate companies or any other business are always looking for suitable solutions to streamline their business process. Modern businesses acknowledge that streamlining their business processes is an integral component of success. 

However, streamlining your business process is not easy as it sounds, especially for real estate agents. In a general sense, real estate agents spend a significant amount of time doing admin work – scheduling meetings, setting up reminders, sending emails, leads follow-up, and other menial tasks that can take out precious time out of their day. Instead of closing deals and growing your real estate business’s bottom line, they’re still typing the day away. 

Finding the balance between a good amount of admin work without sacrificing sales performance is like walking on a tight rope untrained. But is a CRM essential for your business? Yes and yes. Here are why adding a CRM is best for your real estate brokerage. 

The Numbers Don’t Lie

A study by Boston Logic and Hubspot states a high correlation between CRM usage and agent productivity, and there is data to prove the degree of impact a CRM software can make. The results of this study are astounding, and here are some of them. 

At 72.5 percent, nearly 3 out of every four agents polled in the survey already have a CRM system in place. 

At an equivalent rate, 69.4 percent of brokerages surveyed currently supply CRM software for their agents’ disposal.

Nearly 1 in 3 brokerages are uncertain which CRM system is suitable for them, and another 13 percent didn’t know where to start.

Overall, 96.2 percent of brokerages and 94.6 percent of agents surveyed said that a CRM system helped them increase their productivity to some degree.

Surprisingly, 21 percent of real estate brokerages said they did not need a CRM system due to costs, implementation, and difficulty adapting to the CRM. 

Why Real Estate Businesses should be Paying Attention to CRM Now

The success of real estate businesses hinges on relationships, and with the competition getting tighter in the real estate sector, brokerages need to adapt to advance business tools like CRM systems. More than productivity and efficiency reasons, CRMs also streamline transactions in the real estate sector. Here are some of the transactions a CRM like Saphyte can streamline for your real estate business.

Visibility of Prospects in the Sales Funnel

Your sales team is packed with tasks all day long, and reality dictates that there’s no other way around it. As long as the marketing department delivers leads, your sales team will contact them to establish products or services that fit your customers before getting through the actual nurturing and closing process. 

With a CRM, you can help your sales team streamline their process by giving them visibility on your prospects through your sales funnel. Thus, making it easier for your sales representative to see where your prospect is in the sales process. Furthermore, a CRM sales funnel makes it easier for your team to spot the warmest leads or those who need more nurturing. 

CRM Streamlines Email, Invoicing, and Quotes

Most CRM software comes with an email, invoicing, and quotes, which can be advantageous for your sales department. These features allow your real estate sales representatives to send and respond to emails and quote queries without switching software from time to time. 

Also, having your email client and quoting and invoicing in one place minimizes the risk of errors caused by manual data entry. Having all your data needs in a single repository creates a more dynamic, responsive, and responsible team, adding more value to your brand. 

Marketing-to-Sales Handoff Process

The handoff process from marketing to sales is tricky and fragile. During this process, most leads fall through the cracks for several reasons like miscommunication, being too busy to do a follow-up call, or your sales team being too swamped with too many leads. Leads falling out of the sales funnel during the handoff process is an ordinary circumstance but can be avoided with the help of a CRM. 

A CRM can fix this problem by addressing the underlying issues such as missed notifications, and no sales funnel visibility, and lead tracking. A CRM can automatically alert your sales team if new leads are on the sales funnel and your sales team. In return, your sales team can see where the leads are through the funnel. When your team has early notifications and access to a visible sales funnel, no leads will fall out of the cracks, and your sales team can work on more opportunities to close a sale. 

CRM Automates Admin Tasks on your Sales Processes

Your sales and marketing team has too much on their plate. Besides making calls, they also spend their entire shift sending out product catalogs, brochures, and real estate pricing guides which is repetitive and time-consuming. The emails your sales team may look like the same, but they still take time from copy-pasting the text, changing names, attaching documents, and finally sending it to the client. 

With a CRM like Saphyte, some tools automate your workflows, send follow-up emails, chatbots, and more. Your team can go to other prospects or tend to more critical tasks while maintaining the experience quality service to nurture and support the customer’s experience throughout the sales process.

Sales and Productivity Reports

Creating sales reports is not an easy task, but with quality CRMs, you can quickly generate reports with a few clicks and sets. Since the nature of a CRM is to collect data constantly, it’ll be easier for the whole team to gather and combine data on your clients. 

Quick Recap

A CRM’s design is to organize and store all of your sales team’s customer information and data in one easy-to-access location. Adding to providing exceptional visibility, CRMs help simplify your sales process by automating repetitive admin tasks that take time out of your sales team’s day of selling. 

The goal of a CRM is to enable your sales team with all the tools they need to close sales better and efficiently. Streamlining your day-to-day transactions with a CRM is easy; finding the one that works with you can be daunting. With your real estate CRM needs, you have Saphyte as your partner. 

Saphyte is a cutting-edge, cloud-based, centralized CRM platform that is not only scalable and flexible but can also adapt to the unique needs of its users as they grow. Built with features and tools that mitigate business risks and errors, lower costs, support sales and marketing operations through automation and innovative tools, and boost employee productivity. 

With Saphyte, you can take a holistic approach to your real estate business without the hassle and possible future-proof your business. Ready to talk about endless possibilities? Book a call with us and our real estate CRM experts will be right on with you.