The year 2020 is slowly but surely drawing to a close. Therefore, it is advisable to look to 2021 and prepare for it, for example, by keeping your finger on the pulse of the times when it comes to CRM. We dare a look into the near future and thus into the crystal ball, which trends could be trendy next year in CRM.
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What Is Meant By CRM?
CRM means customer relationship management, the management of customer relationships. CRM is also understood to mean CRM systems, such as HubSpot CRM, to carry out customer relationship management digitally. In this article, we mean the CRM systems by CRM.
How Corona Accelerated CRM Marketing
The year 2020 gave digitization a considerable boost. Because the COVID-19 pandemic ensured that classic business processes collapsed at many companies within a few weeks. Customers obtained information and bought mainly via the Internet, and many employees worked from home overnight.
To keep the business and its processes running and make them fit for the present, the solution in many companies was rapid “forced digitization.” This also helped the topic of CRM a leap forward. Nevertheless, the pandemic outbreak resulted in an economic slump: Numerous companies massively shut down their activities (sometimes by force).
The Most Critical CRM Trends For 2021 Are Briefly Presented
The next few months will be exciting. We assume that in the future, companies will continue to work more digitally than before and will change their sales structures accordingly. And that sales staff will stick with them when it comes to CRM to let their business grow properly again. To do this, you should keep an eye on the following CRM trends.
Live Chats As Standard
As our English-language COVID-19 study shows, the topic of live chats has experienced a boom in recent months. No wonder: Due to the lockdown measures, customers were increasingly visiting websites. There they looked for help, among other things. Help you can quickly implement with chat tools like the HubSpot Service Hub.
Real-time customer communication over the Internet is not a new trend. But one that came into focus due to the Corona crisis. Users get used to this type of support, which is why it should be part of the standard of every customer-friendly company in 2021.
Email Marketing With The Right Content
Admittedly, email marketing is also quite old hat in the broad spectrum of the marketing mix. But the sending of info emails and newsletters multiplied in the first COVID-19 peak. As our surveys show, companies sent more digital mailings than ever before – and with great success. The opening rates averaged around 20% in the second quarter.
Nevertheless, an old saying still applies quality instead of quantity. Many mailings not sent by marketing but by sales do not resonate with (potential) customers. The recipients rarely react to this; in the worst case, they mark the sales emails as spam.
So for 2021: Email marketing is still trendy, but you have to use it sensibly. The content must appeal to the recipient. For this, your sales department needs, among other things, proper maintenance of customer data and a well-thought-out content strategy.
The solution for this lies in close cooperation between marketing and sales, known as marketing. When both departments pull together and use the possibilities of their CRM system together, the entire company benefits in the end.
Even Better Customer Approach With Hyper-Personalization
Personalization is the order of the day. For example, the fact that the recipient of a newsletter is addressed with the correct first and last name is now part of good manners. The next step in the evolution of personalization is called hyper-personalization
This means a faster, more direct, and more specific approach to prospective customers or customers, dynamically tailored to their requirements – and on every channel.
An example: websites look different for each customer. Their content is precisely adapted to the respective visitor, his customer profile, and the customer journey’s current position.
For hyper-personalization to be possible, the CRM must know precisely about the customer and exchange its data with other systems, for example, the CMS. Ideally, your company uses the new form of personalization at all touchpoints of its omnichannel strategy.
Voice: Alexa As An Intelligent Sales Assistant
Alexa and Siri are increasingly establishing themselves in consumers’ lives. What provides relief in private life could also be a solution for sales in 2021. If CRM systems can be used with voice assistants such as Amazon Echo or the Google Home devices, many processes are accelerated.
For example, a sales representative no longer has to open their laptop and CRM to access important information about their customers. Instead, he asks Alexa and Co. for the phone numbers or the appointments. This is just the beginning: The voice technology could, for example, link into sales and support discussions, and artificial intelligence (AI) derives the appropriate measures from this.
Nobody knows what the year 2021 will bring. Political, global economic, technological, and other developments can cause trends to shift or radical realignments. However, it should be sure that the digitization surge triggered by the Corona crisis will keep its momentum.
Every company that has once got to know the advantages of customer relationship management does not want to return. It is essential to maintain the momentum, stay on the ball, and adequately use the possibilities of the coming CRM trends.
Also Read : What Is A Workflow? Workflow Management At A Glance