In nearly every industry, products have become increasingly narrow. Take handheld electronics – most of us carry around a smart phone, but many of us also tote tablets, laptops, and more to cover all our bases. Each device is specialized to do a certain thing or fill a specific need, be it work related, entertainment, or communication (yes, people still make phone calls!).
Our industry has narrowed, too. Marketing automation platforms (MAPs) are becoming more and more specialized. Some are strictly “software as a service” with no additional products or support offered. Some are customer relationship management (CRM) platforms that funnel your data into specific subcategories but do nothing beyond that. Then there are third-party databases that only offer demographic data for the leads your software service collects.
These companies play in specific sandboxes, and they’re good at building their own sandcastles. But because their products are so narrow, there can be gaps when your marketing team tries to make them all play nicely together:
- MAPs are concerned with contacts. They send out signals into the wilds of the Internet: Who will read our blog posts? Who will respond to our offers? Who is interested?
- CRMs are concerned with accounts. While contacts are a subset of accounts, if the software doesn’t get what it needs from the MAP, disconnects occur and the platform gets too cluttered to use.
- Third-party demographics are only helpful if they are appended to the correct contacts, and funneled into the proper accounts.
Fortunately, our specialty is agility across all of these platforms. Filling the gaps is what we do. We take end-to-end responsibility for each lead by mapping all of this data across your program’s services. SmartLead integrates all of your MAP and CRM data into a single database, removing the complexity of rifling through endless clutter and offering clearer insight into the success of your marketing campaigns.
Taking the sales process a step further, we close the loop by setting up sales representative follow-up standards. For most of our clients, a human interaction is required to complete the sale – it can’t be completely finalized online. If an interested prospect has been assigned to a sales rep but that prospect hasn’t been contacted in the agreed upon timeframe, SmartLead has tools and tactics to assure the prospects get the attention they deserve.
Whether you’re looking to fill the gaps between your MAP and CRM, or you’re looking for a full-service platform that can provide both, we can help. Let’s work together to determine what pieces of the puzzle are missing, and help your marketing team and sales reps successfully close the loop with your interested prospects.