If you’re considering using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software in your organization, you may be wondering how it could really benefit you. When looking at a list of features, you might be concerned about whether implementing a new system will be worthwhile.
Are the features useful for a creative organization or are they geared toward some other kind of industry? You may be surprised to learn just how much a great CRM can impact your business.
Make Meaningful Connections with Your Customers
CRM isn’t just the digital version of a Rolodex®. You can use several tools to target contact information in ways that will help you personalize your communication. Whether you want to segment emails in a novel way, give your salespeople personal information about leads before they reach out, or ensure current customers are rewarded for their loyalty, a great CRM can help.
Jot important notes and comments about your contacts and link them together or use an integrated app, such as Evernote, to collect important information about a client.
Know Where Your Customers Are
It would be next to impossible to find your customers on all social media networks without help. That’s where Insightly social CRM saves the day. All you need to know is your contact’s email address, Twitter ID, or LinkedIn address. The software will find their profiles on social media channels and add links to social media profiles to their contact records.
When you know where your customers are active, you can target social media campaigns more accurately. Social media can help you segment your contacts by their interests, rather than by less personal metrics, such as gender or age.
Keep Your Team Moving Forward Together
Have you ever had trouble getting your creative team to make progress on a collaborative project? Insightly helps you manage collaborative teams in ways that will get your team working together and keep it that way. You can create a pipeline that gives everyone a clear map of the project from start to finish. Attach tasks to pipeline steps, set task due dates, and link responsible parties to ensure each step is completed on time, by the right people. You can even set email reminders for each task.
Identify Your Clients’ Needs
Let the data in your Insightly Reports show you what your customers need. You’ll be able to see important data, including reasons for losing an opportunity, opportunities by responsible user, and funnel analysis. Reports give you a snapshot of what is working for which clients and which team members. You can look at opportunities by organization or designate a custom field to further narrow the scope of your reports and plan your course of action.
Avoid Radio Silence
Letting communication lapse with your clients can cause you to lose you sales or damage your reputation. Use email reminders for tasks to prevent this embarrassing faux pas. You can create reminders for individual tasks, groups of tasks, or those attached to a pipeline step. While reminders must be set up by the responsible user, you can set up notifications that show you when any task has been completed.
Get Paid On Time
Insightly integrates with QuickBooks Online (QBO) and Xero so you can keep track of your invoices and customer communications. With these two accounting options not only will you be able to see current invoices, but also client history.
With Xero, your invoices and bills live in Xero while your prospect, customer, and partner information lives in Insightly. With the Insightly Xero integration, you get a complete picture of your business from early prospect communications, through the sales process to invoicing and payments. You can also create Xero invoices directly in Insightly.
With QBO you can track who’s paid in full and who’s frequently late. Plus, you’ll save loads of time and avoid mistakes by eliminating duplicated entries. Data copies both ways between Insightly and QBO, so none of your changes get lost between them. Once you log into Intuit in Insightly settings, a little QBO icon will appear by each of your main records, contacts, and organizations.
Keep Past Projects at Your Fingertips
It is vitally important for your creative team to be able to look at past projects for specific clients, especially if you have new people. Using CRM with project management lets your team not only see the timeline from past projects, but pertinent documents, responsible users, and any attached notes. Get everyone up to speed so you can discuss what worked well in the past and what should be handled differently. Strengthen future communication on projects by learning from your past.
Creative organizations often have concerns about implementing a CRM. Truth is, the learning curve and time involved are minimal compared to the rewards your business will reap.
At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
