What is CRM automation?

CRM (customer relationship management) automation is technology that automatically performs a lot of the repetitive tasks involved in executing sales, marketing, and customer service strategies. Some of these tasks include collecting customer data from online interactions, messaging customers, segmenting contacts, and handling customer support requests.

For example, when someone adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, they may receive an email or text message that refers to the product and encourages a sale. This is a process that CRM automation can handle from beginning to end.

4 key features of CRM automation

  1. Data collection and management: When someone interacts with a brand online (and sometimes in physical stores), CRM automation gathers data about the customer and the interaction into a single profile. This is a necessary first step to creating a cohesive brand experience, from awareness to post-purchase loyalty.
  2. Audience segmentation and targeting: CRM automation also splits a brand’s audience into groups that exhibit similar behaviors or characteristics. This makes it easy to target the right people with the right messages at the right time. 
  3. Personalized communication: Audience segmentation is a precursor to personalized communication. A CRM automates this personalization through product recommendations, special offers at specific points in the customer journey, and triggered messages that are only sent after someone takes a certain action online. 
  4. Analytics and reporting: With high-quality audience data and software integrations, a CRM automatically creates reports that are easy to understand, manipulate, and act on. 

The benefits of CRM automation

  • Higher marketing ROI: When brands spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on optimizing their marketing, sales, and customer support strategies, they can start to see higher ROI from their marketing efforts.
  • Improved customer engagement: When marketers start to send personalized customer offers that reflect purchase behavior, it’s easier to improve the customer experience and increase engagement as a result. 
  • Personalized communication at scale: Automated data collection and audience segmentation are what lead to personalized, relevant messages that reflect the actual interactions someone has had with a brand. CRM automation is what makes it possible to deliver these personalized messages to a lot of people.
  • More revenue opportunities: The data housed in a single view of the customer informs up- and cross-sell opportunities, customer loyalty programs, abandoned cart recovery, and many more revenue opportunities tied to real interactions and purchase history. 

How different teams use CRM automation

Marketing teams

  • Audience segmentation and testing: One of the best ways to refine messaging is to divide an audience into cohorts and test messaging on small sample sizes. Marketing teams use CRM automation to speed up this testing and message refinement process.
  • Campaign management: CRM automation handles a lot of the repetitive tasks involved in executing marketing campaigns, including segmenting audiences, crafting and scheduling messages, and tracking results.
  • Tracking and understanding the customer journey: CRM automation gathers and collects data throughout the entire customer journey, which makes it easy to see what’s working and what’s not from end to end.

Customer support
 

  • AI customer support for common questions: CRM automation can outsource common and simple customer support inquiries to AI, so that agents can focus on answering complex questions that have an impact on satisfaction.
  • Feedback collection: After someone makes a purchase, CRM automation can send a message—triggered a few days after a purchase—that asks for a customer review or solicits feedback through a survey.
  • Customer satisfaction tracking: CRM automation keeps track of customer feedback and makes it easily accessible, so customer support teams are always in touch with how their customers feel about their experience.

Management

  • Real-time analytics: CRM automation eliminates waiting for monthly reports to see how marketing and customer support teams are performing. Real-time analytics dashboards make it easy for managers to quickly course correct (or reward people for a job well done!). 
  • Resource allocation: CRM automation provides a bird’s-eye view of performance across customer lifecycle stages and channels, so that managers can allocate more resources to what’s working and stop investing in tactics that don’t yield results.

Why choose Klaviyo for CRM automation?

  • A single customer view: Klaviyo B2C CRM centralizes your customer data in one place, so marketing, sales, and customer support can all work together to increase revenue and customer satisfaction.
  • B2C software integrations: Klaviyo B2C CRM integrates with 350+ ecommerce software platforms, so you can use all of your customer data to its fullest potential.
  • Personalization and automation: Klaviyo B2C CRM makes it easy to deliver the personalized customer experiences people have come to expect, while automating a lot of the repetitive tasks involved in delivering those experiences at scale.
  • Actionable analytics: You can actually take action on what you learn from Klaviyo B2C CRM analytics, which are and have always been designed for B2C businesses.

Klaviyo has helped 157,000 businesses automate parts of their marketing strategies. Sign up for Klaviyo and get started today.