Top 5 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools

CRMs are an invaluable tool for any company looking to increase its sales. A recent study by Thrive revealed that 92% of businesses had seen significant increases in revenue because the CRM played a key role in helping them reach their financial goals.

CRM tools help businesses manage customer data, sales, and marketing. These are great for keeping track of your company's interactions with customers and their preferences to make sure you're always meeting them where they are most comfortable! From sales records to every 👍on Facebook, a CRM is a great way for companies to manage customer data, sales, marketing, social media engagement, and many other aspects of the business.

If your company is looking to grow or if you are currently experiencing a growth spurt, then it is important to capture your customer’s data. When you invest in good CRM software, you can build better customer relationships throughout the different levels of the buyer’s journey.

But which CRM is better?

It really depends on your needs. A good CRM is capable of integrating with most areas of your business by helping with customer relations and managing various processes that lead to sales.

There are several CRM software tools available in the market today. However, each has its benefits and shortcomings. The decision to choose a particular CRM depends on various factors, such as the size of your organization, budget, staff’s technical expertise as well as your goals.

Check out the top 5 CRM software tools that we have reviewed and ranked.

Hubspot is an all-in-one marketing and sales platform that helps you grow your business by helping you sell, market, and deliver content to your customers. It is one of the leading CRM tools on the market today. It has a myriad of features that allow for an easy-to-use interface and it is also very affordable for small businesses.

HubSpot is our top choice because of its user experience (UX), ease of navigation, and its capability of integrating various features. Hubspot is more than just a CRM. It is a package of hubs that are seamlessly connected so that you can market, sell and service your customers all in one place. HubSpot is usually best suited for small to medium-sized organizations.

Pros

• HubSpot Sales, Marketing, and Social Media hubs are the key tools of this platform.

  • Sales hub lets you keep a database of customers, track calls, manage sales documents, and automate the processes.

  • The Marketing Hub lets you create emails, campaigns, nurturing workflows, and do audience segmentation with just a few clicks.

  • Within the Marketing Hub, the Social Hub publishes, schedules, and monitors all of your social media posts in one place.

• Emails can be created using a drag-and-drop email editor. This means you can design an entire series (or groups of email and workflows) of email campaigns at once and let them run on an automated schedule to nurture your audience and incorporate triggers to send special offers.

• HubSpot workflows can be integrated with SMS and Whatsapp.

• HubSpot has an excellent support team and HubSpot Academy has a large number of free courses to train you and your team.

Cons

• Several features of HubSpot are free, however, if you wish to utilize most functions, then it will cost more as you grow.

• Paid options open up newer functions, however, in order to benefit from key features such as A/B testing, template sharing, and automation, the subscription has to be upgraded to one of the monthly plans.

• Technical assistance is not free if it’s needed on a continuous basis.

Salesforce is one of the most widely used CRM tools with features like lead scoring and sales projections. It helps businesses in managing customer information, leads, and accounts, as well as sales activities like forecasting and reporting.

Salesforce has been used by major companies like Microsoft, IBM, and GE over the years. Salesforce allows users to manage email exchanges with customers, automate lead routing and follow-ups, as well as schedule meetings with clients.

In the cloud-based CRM space, Salesforce is the pioneer and has massively grown since its inception. Whether Salesforce is the right CRM for you or not, again, depends on what do want out of this system. This CRM is mainly targeted at medium to large-scale organizations.

Pros

• When it comes to scalability and expandability, Salesforce remains a winner. The ecosystem is massive and has several branches which are called “clouds” built for various industries, for instance, healthcare, not-for-profit, military, and media companies.

• Salesforce has an app exchange, a marketplace where independent developers publish their apps, targeting specific industry needs. The app integration features significantly increase the usability of the system.

  • For instance, In the Marketing Cloud, DeSelect is an app that can be added to simplify segmentation by doing tasks that are usually done with the help of SQL.

• The support network is huge and robust, with multiple ways to find the right information and help.

Cons

• Salesforce is not a one-size fits all option. Each of the components and clouds has to be learned and customized according to the organization’s needs. This is why there are separate Salesforce certifications for various functions and cloud types.

• The learning curve is steep. For example, to fully use its Marketing Cloud, at least a foundational level of HTML, CSS, SQL, and AMPscript is required.

• It takes a lot of resources to get Salesforce certifications, resulting in expensive talent and sometimes a shortage of an in-demand skilled workforce.

• Salesforce can get expensive, especially with additional features at an extra cost. Thus, this CRM suits enterprises with bigger budgets.

Aimed primarily at Small businesses, Monday.com is a CRM platform that is intuitive and fairly easy to navigate. Monday.com is basically a “work OS” that is used for various tasks such as project management, analytics, and CRM.

Pros

• Easily integrates with major platforms such as Outlook, Slack, Dropbox, Teams, and MailChimp.

• Centralized customer database, with tracking of the sales pipeline, customer journeys, and complaint recording.

• Advanced features such as intelligent lead scoring and task automation.

• Monday.com has intuitive usability and does not require weeks of training or coding skills for it to be used efficiently.

• Enables you to send messages directly to Slack and Outlook and create posts on LinkedIn.

Cons

• Monday.com has been marketed primarily as an OS and project management tool, and CRM is its secondary function. If you want a fully functional and feature-rich CRM, then there could be better alternatives.

• The platform does not have an email marketing feature and will need to get connected with an external email client, such as MailChimp. This means you will be paying for both of the platforms.

Zoho is another CRM tool with many features like email marketing, project management, and sales analytics.

Zoho is a contender because of its affordability and feature-rich interface. It is suited for small and mid-size businesses and has decent integrations with various apps.

Pros

• User-friendliness is one of the top features of Zoho. Pretty much any staff member can learn this platform, and you will not need to hire a CRM specialist.

• Zoho offers a lot of flexibility and customization options. Thus the software is suitable for most businesses, as it can be adapted accordingly.

• This CRM can be connected to other Zoho products, such as Zoho campaigns for email marketing, inventory, and booking apps.

• Zoho is cost-effective and can be started with a free trial. However, to access advanced features such as automation, you have to upgrade the plan.

Cons

• Customer support is not as efficient as compared to other CRMs.

• Users have reported problems with auto-syncing and refreshing, thus leading to performance issues.

• Integration of new apps can get complicated, and the documentation is not detailed, and that can require a lot of help from technical support.

Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM software that mainly targets the sales function of small businesses. It is affordable for low-budget startups and does not require extensive training. Pipedrive gives you a visual overview of the processes and enables you to perform several tasks under one platform with ease.

Pros

• Provides end-to-end campaign management, from lead generation to management.

• Drag and drop automation for various processes and email marketing.

• Easy to set up and customize without the need for much technical knowledge.

• Pipedrive has incredible sales reporting and analytics features that include intelligent forecasting.

• It has a smart feature that automatically captures publicly shared contact data from the web. This feature saves a lot of valuable time.

Cons

• Pipedrive is sales focused and does not operate in sync with the marketing and service functions. This is a key flaw of Pipedrive because these functions should be able to work in synergy.

• Pipedrive offers email marketing, but its features are quite limited as compared to its competitors.

• It does not have the ability to manage quotes and invoices.

Various factors are involved when it comes to selecting a CRM for your company. With the right customer relationship management software, you can optimize your sales and marketing efforts to give yourself an edge over competitors. If you have not invested in a CRM yet, it is time to make this much-needed move.

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