I have no doubt that marketers use multiple tools to manage their marketing campaigns. Of all the tools in their kitty, marketing automation and CRM stand tall and in this article we will discuss how to integrate a CRM with marketing automation system. Read about the advantages of integration CRM with a marketing automation system here.
Integrating a CRM with marketing automation system gives a plethora of benefits. Both Marketing and Sales can seek to benefit from such an arrangement. Both departments receive an automatic boost that can help them tackle and solve a lot of problems at hand. A solution like this has the habit of simplifying things further for other users as well.
Integrating CRM with Marketing Automation system is not really a new concept either. Most marketing automation platforms are already equipped with seamless integration features in order to help the user streamline their workflows and improve the entire process of Marketing and Sales.
How does Integration Work?
Integration is a funny thing. Just because it works does not necessarily mean it is right. Moreover if it works now, does not mean it will work five years down the line. Why? Well, technology is evolving, products keep getting upgraded from time to time, strategies get modified and so on and so forth.
Integration can become brittle at times, worn down from usage. But that depends on how well it is built. So you need to be aware of your integration as it is not as easy as it looks.
How Can You Integrate CRM with Marketing Automation?
Integrating your CRM with marketing automation system is vital, but what is more important than that is how to do it and which option suits your needs. I will present 3 ways you can integrate your CRM with marketing automation system:
- Native Integration: Well, native integration is as simple as it sounds. Most marketing automation systems have inbuilt integrators which you can use to connect to a CRM of your choice.
No marketing automation platform supports all CRMs. Most of the marketing automation systems integrate with SalesForce, Zoho, Sugar and other widely used CRMs. If you wish to opt for native integration you have to make sure that your CRM is compatible with your marketing automation platform.
Sometimes, native integration does not provide real-time data updates. There is a usual latency, and data sync may take even four to five hours to from one platform to the other.
So, if you are choosing a marketing automation system based on the CRM integrations it provides, then be sure to check the data sync time as well and avoid unpleasant surprises.
- 3rd Party Integration: If you have a marketing automation platform which doesn’t have a native integration with your CRM then you might have to look for alternative solutions like using third party integration tools. Zapier and Bedrock are well-known commercially used middleware. Both have readymade integrations for a large variety of web applications and come with a small price-tag to get started. However, do keep in mind, the pricing is based on per API call, and it might prove to be very costly if you have a high web traffic.
Mostly, they do provide almost real-time data transfer making the integration seamless. But these tools too are limited to certain vendors and their services. Its easy to integrate 2 applications using these tools and they are a great fit for smaller companies, however these tools have limited features and data fields. That makes less attractive to companies who have custom sales and marketing workflows.
- Custom Middleware: We recommend this for all medium to large companies who have a deep integration requirements. It is a great solution for organizations that generate a high amount of web traffic and require multiple systems to integrate to their marketing automation platforms.
Custom middleware allows customizations, so custom middleware is the way to go. Also, you may choose to host the middleware locally or on a shared server. Most companies have custom requirements and there is no one-size-fits-all tool available.
Custom middleware can be designed to ensure there is no latency whatsoever and data sync happens in real-time.
So, what kind of integration do you want? Drop us a line if you want to integrate your CRM with marketing automation system!