Pitting CRM against marketing automation is like measuring a tight end up to a quarterback. There may be some overlap in functionality, but both complement each other, and neither can be an out-and-out replacement. Understanding the role and objective of these “sister solutions” can help you get the most out of each system.

In this article, we’ll clear up the differences between CRM and marketing automation, the benefits each can bring and how you can get the best of both worlds.

Compare Top CRM Software Leaders

This article will cover the following:

• CRM vs. Marketing Automation: Key Differences
• What is CRM?
  • Benefits
  • Do You Need It?
  • Best CRM Software
• What is Marketing Automation?
  • Benefits
  • Do You Need It?
  • Best Marketing Automation Software
• Do You Need Both?
  • Integrate CRM with Marketing Automation
  • Integration Process
  • Examples
• Next Steps

Key Differences

Drilling things back to the basics, marketing automation helps users manage digital campaigns, email marketing, lead tracking and scoring, and landing pages. You can check out our list of marketing automation features for a full rundown.

CRM covers the entire sales pipeline process, from individual emails to lead status tracking, task management, opportunity tracking and pipeline reporting. Get an in-depth view of our must-have CRM features here.

BIpso facto, CRM drives and increases sales, and marketing automation helps generate and nurture leads. We’ve outlined the differences in three major factors below:

• Target Audience: A CRM platform broadly caters to sales reps, whereas an MA system helps team members focus on marketing.
• Purpose: An MA tool helps you automate campaigns using predefined conditions and triggers. It’s ideal for short purchase cycles. On the other hand, a CRM helps you manage sales processes, assign tasks to sales reps and maintain an organized database.
• Goal: Manage customer relationships and improve sales reps’ performance and productivity with a CRM solution. A marketing automation platform helps you measure marketing’s contribution to the overall ROI, generate qualified leads and improve workflows for sales and marketing.

Compare Top CRM Software Leaders

What Is CRM?

ICRM is a tool that helps you handle customer relationships, manage contact and sales, and improve agent productivity. You can store information about contacts, including their purchase records, phone conversations and records of inbound emails. Most importantly, a CRM lets you optimize one-on-one client interactions, enhancing customer satisfaction and increasing sales.

Benefits

Key benefits of CRM include:

• Internal alerts remind sales reps about call schedules, account renewals and customer birthdays or anniversaries, prompting them to reach out with optimal timing.
• Integrated workflows automate time-consuming everyday tasks to save time.
• Social media sync helps recognize the channels that drive the most traffic and know what people say about your business.
• Offer targeted promotional content to increase conversion rates and build customer trust.

Do You Need a CRM Solution?

Most likely, your business needs to invest in a robust CRM platform if:

• You can no longer handle all your leads using a spreadsheet, and you need technical help to track customer data.
• You’re receiving reports about unsatisfactory customer experiences. Systematically reach out to unhappy customers and resolve their issues using omnichannel support.
• You’re losing track of customers during their journeys. Use pipeline management to track each customer throughout the sales pipeline and optimize customer experience.

Best CRM Software

It’s easy to get lost in a rabbit hole of reviews and ratings when hunting for the best CRM solutions. Take a look at the top CRM platforms and find the best fit for your business using SelectHub’s leaderboard.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a cloud-based sales, customer and marketing system that uses a single source of truth. It offers pipeline, lead and contact management, workflow automation, marketing tools and integrations with third-party apps. Users can access a mobile app, multiple integrations and other Salesforce enterprise applications. Other capabilities include real-time tracking, a drag-and-drop workflow builder, forecasting, marketing tools and reports.

HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales is a configurable, cloud-based solution that helps enhance sales operations through pipeline management, sales automation, quote generation and activity reports. Its marketing, sales and service hub optimizes experience throughout all customer lifecycle stages.

It also offers a code-free user interface, automated reminders and follow-ups, standardized email templates and dynamic dashboards.

Dynamics 365 for Sales

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a hybrid solution offering extensive relationship management capabilities that help businesses streamline their sales strategies and boost productivity. It provides a 360-degree view of customer activities, recommended actions and prescriptive insights.

Other features include interactive dashboards, contact management, predictive forecasting and contextual AI.

Compare Top CRM Software Leaders

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a suite of tools that help you analyze, automate and streamline workflows and marketing tasks. You can follow prospect activities such as website views, blog reads, email opens and form fills. These tools schedule and track email campaigns and mass communications.

Benefits

Key benefits of marketing automation include:

• Improved customer engagement through prospect segmentation based on past interactions or their interests and preferences.
• A unique lead scoring system that helps identify the most promising leads with greater conversion chances.
• In-depth analytics generated at the end of each campaign that reflects campaign performance and delivers insights.
• Automated triggers for emails at the point prospects are most interested in a product or service. You can also schedule email series in a “drip” campaign.

Do You Need a Marketing Automation System?

Invest in a marketing automation platform if you check off the following points:

• You can’t manage your customer list manually. Handling thousands of customer emails can prove daunting, and an MA solution helps you nurture each prospect thoroughly.
• You want to quickly promote carefully crafted content to the right target audience.
• You want to feed more leads to sales, but your customer list is too small. An MA system helps unify the outreach experience.

Best Marketing Automation Software

Narrowing down your software options without proper analysis is like playing Minesweeper without knowing the rules. Check out our analyst-rated top marketing automation solutions to nail down the information you need for your software selection journey.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a cloud-based platform developed around its inbound marketing methodology. It offers a free CRM package along with marketing, sales, service and CMS hubs, deployable individually or together for full flexibility and scalability. Users can automate sales funnels, target leads, manage and create campaigns and analyze campaign performance.

MailChimp

Mailchimp is a web-based marketing platform designed to streamline communication by managing personalized campaigns, building websites and monitoring performance. Standout features include an intuitive website builder with a drag-and-drop interface, an integrated database, digital ad creation and robust landing page builders for web and social media traffic.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a cloud-based email marketing, website builder and conversion funnel tool for managing marketing efforts. Users can boost their online footprint and sell their services, products and knowledge with premade campaigns and editable templates. Notable features include email marketing, landing pages, webinars, autoresponders, conversion funnels, signup forms and paid ads.

Compare Top Marketing Automation Software Leaders

Do You Need Both?

There’s no easy “yes” or “no” answer to this question, as it depends on the stage your customers are in the sales funnel. Syncing data between both platforms is the secret third option to access all your data through one solution.

If you’re looking for a perfect combination of CRM and marketing automation and don’t want to invest in two separate systems, you might consider integration or choosing systems with functionalities of both solutions.

How To Integrate CRM With Marketing Automation Software

Integrating CRM and MA solutions helps improve the customer experience and increase your business’s efficiency, leading to improved ROI. Most importantly, it helps maximize their benefits by combining their strengths. Using them together, you can:

• Assign lead scores
• Nurture prospect relationships
• Glean analytical reports and track progress
• Enable sales reps to visualize lead journeys
• Communicate consistently and seamlessly

Compare Top Marketing Automation Software Leaders

Integration Process

Here are a few tricks to help you align the two platforms:

• Personalized Messaging: You can engage with the target audience better and increase the chances of lead conversions through personalized messages when using a CRM and an MA system in conjunction. While the CRM helps transfer demographic information to the MA tool, eliminating manual tasks, the marketing reps can use that information to run targeted paid ads and campaigns.
• Quick Lead Scoring: Quick responses help ensure increased lead conversions. You can make the process faster and more efficient by assigning scores to leads. Using both platforms, it’ll be easier to identify users who are most likely to get converted – information you can use to send them more effective targeted marketing materials.
• Duplicate Elimination: Using the platforms in tandem means easy access to centralized data, leading to overlaps and accidental duplicate tasks. Monitoring the systems closely ensures no duplicate data, which might confuse customers and lead to compliance issues.
• Robust Planning: Integrating the two systems might need some strategic changes. Be sure to design and follow a plan to identify, implement and address changes to your marketing and sales efforts, making them cost-effective and efficient.

Examples

Finding a solution with CRM and marketing automation capabilities is like getting a glimpse of the Loch Ness monster. However, unlike the Scottish legend, platforms with the functionalities of both solutions do exist. Here are a few examples:

HubSpot Sales Hub: Combine the power of a unified CRM with sales automation processes to eliminate data silos and increase efficiency. Email templates, communication tracking, contact insights and workflow automation are a few standout MA capabilities. CRM features include prospect management, lead conversion, customizable pipelines and instant messaging.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: Salesforce’s enterprise suite and Lightning builder provide access to limited marketing automation functionalities like automated emails, documentation, analytics and sales forecasting.

ActiveCampaign: This MA solution doubles as a marketing-oriented CRM with lead qualification, contact scoring and sales task management. Its USP is machine learning applied to data like phone calls, emails and sales.

Zendesk Sell: Add a marketing automation module to real-time insights from your sales, marketing and customer support departments. MA functionality allows users to trigger workflow automation, set up email campaigns, integrate custom forms into websites and access sales forecasting.

Compare Top Marketing Automation Software Leaders

Next Steps

Choosing CRM over marketing automation can feel like picking a favorite sibling. It’s an almost impossible decision to make. We hope this article clears up any doubts about the differences between the two solutions and provides a light at the end of the tunnel (in the form of CRM integration with marketing automation).

Nailing down your needs goes a long way toward investing in the right solution. Try our free requirements template for CRM and marketing automation for direct insights on actionable steps to take in your software selection process. Good luck!

When comparing CRM vs. marketing automation, would you prefer a system with combined functionalities, or is it better to opt for two different solutions? Let us know in the comment section below!