New CRM implementations will often focus on Sales and Support (in that order).  As an outgrowth of this (or perhaps as its cause) CRM software solutions tend to focus heavily on these two areas, often downplaying one of the most critical components of CRM, marketing.  Marketing is truly the neglected child of CRM, and marketing solutions within CRM packages typically focus solely on creating and sending out email campaigns rather than on full Marketing Automation.

When most people think of Marketing Automation, they think of Campaign Management.  While campaign management is important, it is simply one element in a full marketing automation CRM solution.  Even in the realm of campaign management, the only direct marketing channel that is taken into account is the email channel.  Yet email is simply one of many channels that marketing has available to it.  Utilizing direct channels such as Direct Mail, Fax, automated voice, and SMS in multi-channel campaigns is key to the success of any marketing.  Email has its own benefits and pitfalls, as does every direct marketing channel.  Knowing what channels are available, which ones are effective for the type of content to be pushed and to the target audience are key indicators that marketing needs in order to effectively manage campaigns.  In addition to direct marketing campaigns, a good campaign management solution needs to automate indirect campaigns, such as web, print, and multi-media advertising, as well as social/viral campaigns utilizing Web 2.0 technologies such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other social networks.  A good Campaign Management solution must allow the user to create, manage, and launch all of these campaing types from a single interface.  After the campaings have been executed, the results must be presented back to marketing to allow for campaign analysis, and must flow to Sales to facilitate the targeting of the best possible leads.

Campaign Management, however, is not all that is necessary in a Marketing Automation tool.  Marketing Automation today must encompass tools to allow a marketer to research the vast online world, manage competitive analysis, and view and manage the vast amount of uncontrolled information regarding the brands, products, and services that a marketing manager is responsible for.  A Marketing Automation software must address aggregating the vast amount of information now available in the online world, and present it to the marketer to allow decisions to be made.  Additionally, in the new social Internet, information on a company’s products can be found in forums, on blogs, and online articles that are outside a company’s control.  Marketing Automation should allow the marketer to be able to easily find these sources and interact with them, thus keeping a company out in the forefront of any “chatter” regarding the corporate brand.

A sales force without marketing is an inefficient sales force at best.  A CRM without Marketing Automation will provide sales with good tools, but without the necessary data that marketing can generate to assist in targeting the leads most likely to lead to revenue.  Rather than being the forgotten child of CRM, more focus needs to be given to addressing Marketing needs both in CRM software capabilities as well as in Implementations.  While there are many good CRM products out there, and many good Marketing Automation products, there are few good solutions that marry the two in a cost-effective way.  The software that is able to fully develop marketing automation within a CRM system for the Small and Medium-sized business, and effectively demonstrate ROI from its offering, will be able to leap far ahead of its competition in the CRM space over the next several years.

Related posts:

1. Adding Value To Your Direct Marketing
2. For Direct Marketing, Cell Phone Number Is The New Email Address
3. Email Marketing and ROI