Last week I presented a session at Silverpop’s B2B Marketing University in Atlanta. In addition to Marketing Automation, there were two big topics: Social Media and CRM. I will write about Social Media some other time, and focus on CRM in this post.
Many attendees were confused by CRM vendors claiming to offer full marketing functionality. If that’s true, why would you still need Marketing Automation? So let’s dig in and find how Marketing Automation and CRM are different.
Strong Features of CRM
In my presentation I tried to shed some light on the strong points of either system. For CRM, I focused on Salesforce.com. This was the list with strong points for a CRM system (compared to Marketing Automation):
|
|
SFDC |
MA |
|
Opportunity creation |
Yes |
No |
|
Forecasting |
Yes |
No |
|
Call logging |
Yes |
Sometimes |
|
Individual emails |
Yes |
Sometimes |
|
Products & Pricing |
Yes |
No |
|
Document library |
Yes |
Sometimes |
|
Case Management |
Yes |
No |
|
Contracts |
Yes |
No |
So in short, those are the features that individual sales people will benefit from. Marketing Automation also has some features for sales people, but those tend to be focused on lead prioritization, email, and prospect activity notifications.
Strong Features of Marketing Automation
I made a similar list for Marketing Automation:
|
|
SFDC |
MA |
|
Native Email Marketing |
No |
Yes |
|
Drip Email Marketing |
No |
Yes |
|
Automated Campaigns Flows |
No |
Yes |
|
Dynamic List Segmentation |
No |
Yes |
|
Web Analytics |
No |
Yes |
|
Deduplication |
No |
Yes |
|
Profile-based Lead Scoring |
Limited |
Yes |
|
Behavioral Lead Scoring |
No |
Yes |
|
One Type of Contact (vs Lead & Contact) |
No |
Yes |
|
Form Builder |
No |
Yes |
|
Landing Page Builder |
No |
Yes |
Today’s CRM Systems Do Not Help Marketing
My conclusion is that the typical CRM system does not have strong marketing functionality. At the same time, a CRM system is a necessity to support an efficient sales force. So your company will need both. Luckily, all Marketing Automation systems can be connected to Salesforce.com and often also to other CRM systems.
In a earlier post I wrote about an project to use Salesforce.com instead of a Marketing Automation system: the conclusion was that you need a whole range of add-ons to make it work, sort-of. In the long run, CRM systems may offer more marketing features, but today you still need a separate Marketing Automation system.
What is your take? What is the key difference between Marketing Automation and CRM?
Good differentiation, Jep. This is one of the reasons I encourage marketers to befriend IT. When it comes time to choose a CRM system, IT talks to sales and sometimes customer servive. For marketing, if the CRM vendor says they have “marketing automation” it often gets checked off and the assumption is that marketing is covered.
That said, I’ve seen marketing automation systems be implemented and barely used because marketing wasn’t that sophisticated. Even if you don’t have the budget for MA, I encourage marketers to talk to vendors (of high and low-end systems) and find out what is available to them. That way, when you try to build the case for investment, you know what you are talking about.
All the best!
Melissa
Jep,
Well done on the differences between CRM and MA, from both perspectives. We run into this a fair amount with our prospects that are looking at their particular CRM system to do more than what it is set up for. Today CRM and MA are two very distinct systems that each play an important role in an organization. As we continue to see each side add features and functionality to their products I think there will be the ability for companies (smaller) to use their MA system as some level of CRM and vice versa. But today to get the most out of your marketing and sales, both systems are vital for maximizing your pipeline efficiencies.
Jep;
Great post with clear distinctions between the two systems. Totally agree that the two are different and, for now, that you need both. And also agree with the comments regarding how it’s easy to implement something and then find it’s not used, either at all or efficiently, for a host of reasons.
We launched our company around these very issues, aiming to solve them for our customers by offering an end-to-end solution which includes both CRM and MA components, and also the SEO, PPC tools and Reputation Analytics one needs to effectively do one’s SEM and Social Media campaigns.
In short, our site at http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca is a genuine attempt to make Sales and Marketing Automation Easy for the client.
Hi Jep,
Your matrix does a great job of providing the analytical reasons why they are different.
I have to chime in on this, like I have for David Rabb’s similar discussion on this: http://tinyurl.com/yh5g8ys
As I mentioned on David’s blog, CRMs don’t have the focus that MA requires to be successful as a marketing automation product. Just as CRMs have not replaced/incorporated email service providers, because they’re not as very good at it, they have a long road to incorporating MA into their offerings. And it’s not just the features, there is support and ongoing features to think about.
If I were to identify one key difference, it would be the philosophical difference between the two. CRMs try to manage all contact with a customer or potential customer, while MAs focus on generating the lead. A quick stroll down the aisles at Dreamforce this week, and it’s easy to see how MA is just one of many add-ons that SFDC integrates in but doesn’t try to incorporate into their own product.
Regards, Fred.
Thanks for your comments!
Melissa: good suggestion to talk to IT and avoid “Marketing” functionality becoming a check box item
Matt: it will be interesting to see if, how and when MA and CRM will converge. I agree it will start with smaller companies (integrated MA/CRM systems are available for them today)
Fred: thanks for linking to David Raab’s post. Indeed, for the past 5 years I’ve heard people say that Salesforce.com would build their own email marketing functionality or acquire an existing vendor, but that hasn’t happened. Likewise, I don’t think they will acquire a MA vendor.
Good and insightful review on SFDC vs. MA system. I parituclarly like that you speak of marketing people making technological investments sometimes without any IT input – thats a sure way to try your luck with new technologies.
I did want to mention that SFDC can be setup to handle drip marketing, automated campaign flows and deduplication. With some effort and serious dedication, lead scoring can also work. Though, I would image that there may be easier and more effective ways to score leads.
Super article, nonetheless! Keep em coming!
Peter
Hi, Jep. Thanks for this post and thanks for addressing this topic last week at B2B Marketing University in Atlanta.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how CRM and marketing automation are different, and looking through your list I’m struck by this big-picture issue: On one hand, CRM is a largely static and reactive system — meant to track and help keep things organized. Not to say that it doesn’t do some alerting, but it’s better in response to queries from sales and service folks, and it assumes that it will be driven by people. Marketing automation on the other hand is really more of a dynamic and proactive system — meant to help marketers get scale and mange mass one-to-one dialogue w/ buyers before they engage w/ sales or with customers before they re-engage on a purchase. And it assumes some AI-like logic driving evertyhing.
This may not seem like a big deal, but in my mind it’s a huge divider. And it speaks to the differing missions. We can talk about tactical differences, but really automation is what helps us get ahead of our buyer and improve engagement. Meanwhile, CRM helps keep track of it all and ensures continuity of interactions and hand-off to the sales and service teams.
My two cents. Great discussion. Thanks for driving.
Adam Needles
B2B Marketing Evangelist
Silverpop
Twitter: @abneedles
Blog: http://www.silverpop.com/blogs/demand-generation/
Great piece, which I will be using to support my long-held belief and frequent assertion that there is no single solution for both CRM (or sales force automation, as I prefer to call it) and MA. That it is possible to get Salesforce.com and others to do the job of an MA may be the case, but it is not a best-in-class solution.
Jep, good choice of topic. I like Adam’s thought provoking observation that MA systems have a proactive leaning, vs CRM which can be reactive. I suspect that there is too much required diversity in the needs of marketing for one common denominator to capture much of the market; so the CRMs are better off cultivating MA partners to provide a diverse set of solutions whilst they remain focused on a core set of Sales and Service features that can serve multiple markets well.
CRM=Sales Cloud + Service Cloud + Marketing Crowd
-Kevin
Thanks for this insightful discussion, Jep. As someone who uses both CRM (Salesforce.com) and Marketing Automation (Genoo) I can clearly see the difference. In my mind, it’s simple. CRM is a must have repository of customer and prospect data. It’s boring and really does not drive revenue. But it is simply a part of doing business today.
On the other hand, Marketing Automation is invaluable. I can track leads and communicate with them. I can watch and score their behaviors. I can flag them for hand-off to sales. In my mind, this is my revenue engine.
A business needs both today, but they get 80% of the business value from marketing automation.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor and President
Find New Customers
“Lead Generation Made Simple”
http://www.findnewcustomers.net
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