Exploring Ways to Boost Lead Generation With Your CRM

Lead generation is not a new concept in the business world. Reaching out to people interested in your products or services and converting them into customers has been an age-old practice underlining business growth. However, as competition grows and the mediums for pushing out brand information transition from billboards, TV, and print ads to online platforms, grasping and retaining the attention of the target audience has become more and more challenging.

In fact, generating traffic and leads remains the top challenge for 61% of marketers. That’s why most businesses today recognize the importance of tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) software in managing customer interactions the right way for generating quality leads and converting them into sales, especially through email marketing. As per a report, among marketers who adopted automation, 80% saw an improvement in lead generation and 77% witnessed an increase in conversions.

So, the golden question remains: how can you best optimize your lead generation prospects using your CRM. Let’s find out.

7 Ways to Boost Lead Generation Using CRM

To optimize your lead generation process with the help of your CRM, you first need to understand that lead generation in today’s tech-driven times poses a whole new set of obstacles.

For instance, reaching out to every target user that visits your website or expresses interest in your offerings can be a Herculean task in the absence of high-quality information and pointed insights. Neither of these can be achieved without having in place a system for accumulating, storing, and sorting large mounds of visitor data. That’s why your CRM software is a key part of the lead generation puzzle.

Here are 7 ways you can leverage it the right way for lending impetus to your lead generation endeavors:

1. Identify Your Needs

It helps to understand and ascertain the role your CRM software would play in your lead generation initiatives before investing in one. With clearly defined needs and goals at hand, you can analyze the features of different CRM platforms to pick one that’s best suited to your email marketing needs.

Will the CRM be adopted by the entire organization or just a select few departments? What processes do you aim to automate through the CRM? What is the extent of user data you expect to generate? How do you want to segment and analyze it?

Addressing these – or similar – questions will help you zero-in on the best software to cater to your immediate and future needs.

2. Centralize the Data

Information silos have proven to be a major roadblock in businesses’ endeavors to use the right insights for nurturing leads in different stages of the marketing and sales funnel. Hence, compromising their ability to secure conversions.

Given the effectiveness of CRM solutions to collect, store and retrieve information as and when necessary, centralizing all the customer and visitor data should be the first order of business. This allows you to carefully document and meticulously track the concerns and inhibitions of your potential customers. This knowledge, in turn, proves crucial in accurately and effectively recognizing pain points and offering concrete solutions to address them through emails.

3. Analyze Your Data

There is little room for contention over the fact that the ability to process large swaths of data and present it as useful insights is one of the biggest strengths of CRM. These data insights should serve as the bedrock of your lead generation initiatives. Among these, perhaps the most crucial is the real-time analysis of lead generation marketing efforts in garnering sales and profits.

For instance, analyzing CRM data insights vis-à-vis marketing efforts can help you differentiate between campaigns that generate high sales but small profit margins and those that generate higher profits with fewer sales.

That’s why consistent and periodic data analysis is non-negotiable for effectively using CRM software for capitalizing lead generation. This, in turn, equips you to prioritize the right lead-generating initiatives, allowing you to allocate resources and money where it counts. All of this, ultimately, contributes to your bottom line. An email agency can help you with the analysis and also to make the most of your CRM for your email marketing efforts.

4. Map User Journeys

To be able to get the most out of your lead generation initiatives, you have to be able to track the journeys of existing as well as potential customers with your brand. This strategy allows you to gain a holistic perspective of your website visitors, users, repeat as well as one-time buyers on a personal level.

Of course, the user journey map has to be detailed, covering everything from their first interaction with your brand to possible scenarios that have or can bring them to the point of completing a transaction.

To be able to create such in-depth journey maps, you need to first define clear objectives covering all the touchpoints. The next step is to carve out user personas and analyze their perceived goals vis-à-vis your business objective. To be able to do so effectively, you need to put yourself in their shoes and embark on the journey yourself.

Putting yourself in your target users’ shoes can throw up some valuable insights about who they are and what they expect from your brand. Based on this understanding, perform A/B testing of your lead generation marketing efforts and tweak them wherever necessary.

5. Manage Leads in the Pipeline

Getting sales leads is one thing, converting them into transacting customers quite another ball game altogether. The journey from lead generation to conversion is often a long, arduous one for marketers and sales executives. However, your CRM software can simplify the process of making a lead in the pipeline travel to becoming a paying (preferably returning) customer.

By tracking interactions, you can prioritize leads with a greater likelihood of conversion at every stage of the marketing and sales funnel. Besides, the analytics offered by CRM platforms can also help you determine which sales opportunities present the highest value.

A consistent and committed approach to managing the leads in the sales pipeline with the help of your CRM software helps ensure that no conversion opportunities slip through the gaps. This is crucial for taking lead generation a step further, translating into a boost in revenue.

6. Lead Scoring

To be able to figure out what information you need to put out there and whom to target with your marketing initiatives, you need to be able to ascertain which leads are worth the effort. That’s where lead scoring – a method of assigning a value that corresponds with the viability of conversion – comes into the picture.

CRM platforms can make this process extremely simple and straightforward by allowing you to customize lead scoring variables and then automating the process of assigning value to different leads. A lead with higher buying power, for instance, would end up with a higher lead score. Similarly, a repeat visitor can be qualified as a high-value lead. These lead scores enable your marketing and sales teams to focus their energies where it truly matters.

Since the entire process of sending high-quality leads to these teams is automated, you can get optimal value for minimal effort. This can only be achieved when you align your lead generation efforts with your CRM software.

7. Constant Data Monitoring

Another great benefit of CRM platforms vis-à-vis lead generation initiatives is their ability to offer real-time updates on customer data 24/7. These instant and latest insights on customer behavior, trend forecasts, among others, can help marketers tweak and adjust their lead generation initiatives on the go.

There is simply no need to stick to a strategy that may not be working at all for months on end, and then, make amends based on quarterly or biannual reports. The secret to optimizing lead generation with the help of CRM software is the willingness to dive into data frequently, analyze the insights, and continually implement necessary changes.

Paying attention to real-time reports and making required adjustments in time puts you in a unique position to not just generate quality leads but also convert them into paying customers.

The Takeaway

Lead generation may be a classic approach in the business world but its process has undergone a paradigm shift in recent times. The key to succeeding in your efforts to garner quality leads is to make the most of the cutting-edge tech tools at your disposal such as your CRM software to be able to focus your time, money, and resources where it matters. Need help with making the most of your CRM? Let Email Uplers help.