With Black Friday now on the horizon, many businesses are preparing for an influx of sales and, hopefully, revenue. The last weekend of November presents consumers with the opportunity to purchase some high-end products and brands at reduced prices. However, this also allows a variety of SME’s to provide a great offer to consumers and boost their sales. With strategic marketing and the right offer in place, many businesses can see an exponential increase in sales over the weekend. Using CRM across your company’s communications can help your business increase sales from within your current customer database.
What is CRM?
CRM stands for customer relationship management. This looks at how a business manages its interactions with customers. Usually based on data that has been collected on current customers, and then using this to craft the perfect communications to encourage customer loyalty and future sales. CRM, however, often refers to CRM software, which is software that collects all of your customer data and allows easy analysis for you and your teams. The software will analyze all of the customer data in your database and then offer up which of these leads are worth pursuing. So let’s take a look at how to use CRM to increase sales for your business.
5 Ways That CRM Can Boost Black Friday Sales
#1 – Segment your customer database
One way to use CRM to boost sales this Black Friday is to segment your full customer database into various stages of cold leads, warm leads, and customers who may not be worth targeting. The most important part of targeting your existing database for Black Friday sales is to ensure that you are only targeting the potential customers who are likely to generate a sale. You could end up wasting a bunch of your time and budget if you are using paid advertising on customers who are not likely to purchase at all. The key is warm-to-hot leads who you get through the final stages of the funnel quickly. CRM software will make this process easy and may even rank your leads on a scale out of 10 for the likelihood of purchasing for example.
#2 – Automate your communications
If you are looking to make the process as simple as possible for your business, then automating your customer communications will be exactly what you need. Most CRM software will enable you to automate a series of messages sent to leads within each of your customer groups. If you are looking to boost Black Friday sales for your business, then automated messages sent at the right times will definitely be an important part of your marketing campaign.
#3 – Easy To Access Information Between Your Teams
One of the most frustrating parts of remarketing to customers is when you can’t get access to the information that you need when you need it. Whether it has been entered incorrectly or is not able to be accessed by you personally. The delays this causes will also affect your results and likely reduce sales. For example, sending out a cart abandonment email to all the customers who have left an item in their cart at the right time can cause an increase in conversions. However, if you and your sales teams cannot access this information, then this email will not be sent out and you will lose out on all those potential sales. With good CRM software, all of this information will be available at the click of a button to whoever is required to see it.
#4 – Integrate with other third-party applications
When you are looking for good CRM software, an important factor to consider is how well it will interact with the other software that you use in your job role. Most CRM platforms are designed to integrate and work with other third-party applications. This is because these platforms can provide important data or functionality that will benefit your marketing and sales teams. Use this functionality to your advantage and incorporate your other software applications directly into your CRM software. This will make creating those all-important communications as efficient as possible.
#5 – Personalise Your Customer Communications
An essential part of customer communications is the ability to design and implement unique communications for each of your customers. A great method that CRM software provides, which will support your aims of boosting Black Friday sales, is the ability to personalise your outgoing communications. Each of your customers expects a personalised and unique omni-channel experience. This would be impossible to implement without the right kind of CRM or CCM (customer communications management) software in place. Creating unique communications suited to each of your customers will mean that your customer feels heard and is more likely to become a repeat customer and recommend your service to other potential leads. So there are 5 ways that CRM software can benefit your business this Black Friday.
So there you have it: how to use CRM to increase sales this Black Friday. It is important to remember that even after Black Friday, all of these benefits will still be available to you with CRM software. Consider it a long-term investment that should easily justify itself over time. Use CRM to your advantage and you will be giving yourself the best chance of leapfrogging the competition. Sefas offers a CCM solution that makes sending out all your customer communications easy. The Harmonie Communications Suite (HCS) offers key features, including document and template creation, communications auditing software, hybrid mail, and more. With HCS, you can design and build a leading customer experience with compliant and quickly delivered communications to your customer’s preferred platforms. To learn more about how HCS can support your business, contact us today.