Okay, to be fair, it's not like there's zero work involved. After all, someone has to do quite a bit of legwork on the front end for sales and marketing automation to be successful. Still, the point stands: you can leverage the power of your CRM system to engage with prospects, acquire leads, and convert customers as you've never been able to before. The question is, how exactly should you automate your CRM for the best results?
In this article, we'll answer that question, especially as it relates to HubSpot. But first, let's recap some of the key reasons you should automate in the first place!
Key Benefits of CRM Automation
Here are just a few of the advantages you can gain from (effective) CRM automation:
You can save a lot of time and resources.
Sales reps are busy people, and there's no need to add to their workload unnecessarily -- such as by making them manually perform routine, repetitive tasks. Interestingly, one study found that sales reps may only spend one-third of their time actually selling. For those reps, automation may be a life-saver!
You can boost your sales team's performance.
It's been said that multitasking is a way to do many things badly at the same time. Well, with automated processes in place, your team doesn't need to multitask, since the routine work is already done for them. Instead, they can focus on core sales activities more fully -- such as following up with high-quality leads.
You can create a more consistent, streamlined experience for the customer.
CRM automation often encompasses data syncing (e.g., an interaction that's documented in one hub will also be recorded in other hubs). With improved communication among different departments, you can expect that your customers will experience a higher quality of service and increased satisfaction.
Alright, so CRM automation is good, no question about it. Now let's dive into the question of how to make it happen.
4 Ways to Automate Your HubSpot CRM
As we go through these examples, it's important to note that "the sky's the limit" when it comes to which processes (or aspects of processes) you can automate within your HubSpot CRM. These are just examples; your particular business needs and goals may cause you to automate your CRM in other ways.
That being said, let's get down to the nitty-gritty of it!
1. Log new CRM entries from integrated apps
One of the major benefits of CRM software is the ability to seamlessly transfer data between platforms. HubSpot is no exception in this regard. You can trigger new entries in your CRM system from a wide range of external actions. This can include emails sent and received in your Gmail account, meetings scheduled in Google Calendar, appointments booked in Calendly, or forms filled out on your WordPress-powered website. You'll just need to set up the data transfer parameters for the integration, and you're good to go! (It may sound a little complicated, but it's often fairly simple.)
Other automation you can set up with integrated apps include:
- Filtering unique account-based marketing (ABM) accounts
- Scheduling sales activity reports
- Generating ad spend reports by lifecycle stage
- Consolidating reports from all pipelines
2. Automatically add new contacts to specific customer segments
It should come as no surprise that customer contact info changes all the time. It can be difficult to keep up -- especially if you're constantly adding new prospects to your sales pipeline. And besides adding new contacts to your database in general, it's also important to place them within the appropriate segment, so they receive the right messaging that will (hopefully) motivate them to take action.
Handling these tasks manually would take virtually forever. Here again, automation can come to the rescue. You can set HubSpot's Active Lists feature to update automatically when customer information changes, and thus help your customer segments stay as accurate as possible. And if you want to combine your HubSpot data with other data sources, and then consolidate your contact list in one centralized database, you can use an integration like Intersect to automate the process according to your customized criteria.
3. "Enrich" your contacts
No, we're not talking about paying them money! Rather, HubSpot can leverage its records database of 20 million-plus businesses to "add some color" to a new contact's profile. You can automate HubSpot's CRM to "enrich" your contacts in this way.
For instance, if you only have a prospect's corporate email address, HubSpot can take that information and link the email domain to a specific company. Then, it can provide you with more information about the account -- which your sales reps may find helpful as they prepare to reach out.
4. Automate your workflows
Your sales team has specific protocols in place for just about any action that a customer can take. If the customer does A, then your sales rep does B. If a lead does X, then your team should do Y. Many of these tasks are repetitive and don't really require intensive research (or thought, for that matter). So why not automate them?
HubSpot enables you to set up automated workflows that take a lot of the pressure off your team, and allow them to focus on pipeline stages that do require a human touch.
For instance, you can set up automated alerts and reminders when a deal is about to be closed (either closed-won or closed-lost). You can trigger automated email sequences after a purchase, a form submission, or a shopping cart abandonment. You can even automate a "miss you" email to be sent after someone unsubscribes from your newsletter.
Takeaway
In conclusion, the main takeaway from this article is that CRM automation can be extremely beneficial, and doesn't have to be a pain to implement. If you'd like to learn more about how to effectively develop and deploy CRM automation for your company, be sure to reach out to our experienced team at OverGo Studio today for a free consultation. You won't regret doing so!
Take advantage of our free Hubspot CRM Configuration to start modernizing your sales process. This is a limited-time offer where we will design a sales pipeline specifically for your business. Start generating more revenue and improve your close rates by building your first high-performing sales pipeline on HubSpot at no cost. Simply schedule a discovery session with our team of HubSpot experts.
