Unfortunately, CRM cost is anything but straightforward. Although many CRM companies advertise specific price points, buyers frequently find that hidden costs billed by their chosen platform quickly exceed the front-facing fees. 

In this article, we’ll lay out the various costs involved in implementing a new CRM including ones that often occur immediately after signing a contract (surprise!) and those that remain hidden until users have no choice but to hand over their credit card or start their search from square one.

How much does a CRM cost?

The cost of CRM software varies widely and depends on a number of factors, including but not limited to:

• Number of users
• Number of contacts or customer data points
• Complexity and number of add-ons
• Advanced reporting and analytics functionality
• Dashboard capability

CRM system subscription pricing – which is typically the number that’s advertised as the “cost” of the product – can range from the low double-digits to well over $100 a month per user.

Many providers scale their price based on your number of business users. These are the individuals in your organization that have access to the solution. For example, a Hubspot Professional plan for five users costs $450.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to CRM cost, though. There’s also the cost of implementation to consider, which for some legacy systems, can easily hit five or six digits (and immeasurable time and effort). 

It’s important to note that even CRM vendors that openly advertise all of their subscription and implementation costs often have substantial fees involved with customizing their platform to fit your business needs. These hidden fees can add up fast.

CRMs business models

All customer relationship management platforms have one thing in common: they bring efficiency to contact management. 

Beyond that, though, no two CRMs are exactly the same. Each and every platform is built differently and, therefore, determines its pricing plans by different metrics. 

Some CRM softwares charge clients per user. Some charge per user and per feature. 

Some charge a flat fee monthly, and some annually. Some even have a monthly or yearly retainer in addition to their SaaS subscription fees. 

And that’s just for the software package – implementation fees also vary widely and can easily exceed the cost of the platform itself.

CRM costs by company size

It’s hard to nail down an exact range of what a company can expect to spend on a CRM – some small businesses need a tremendous amount of customization, and some do fine with the basics until they achieve a certain level of growth. Some enterprise companies never explore beyond the surface level of their CRM, while others spend well into six figures customizing and building out their systems. 

It can be helpful to ask questions about this to your salesperson during the sales process. Can you see a timeline and a total cost of implementation for a company your size? Can you speak with a recently onboarded company about their experience?

Here are some CRM features you might expect to pay for based on your company size:

SMB CRM Costs

Small businesses (fewer than 20 licenses) run the gamut in terms of what they need from a CRM. While many opt to keep it simple during the startup phase, others choose to dive head-first into customizations and add-ons. 

SMBs can often expect to pay for at least the following features:

• Data Integration 
• Preferred Customizations
• Email & Marketing Automation 
• Ability to Create Landing Pages & Forms
• Contact Management
• Customer Interaction Tracking
• Lead Management
• Social Media Management

Mid-market CRM costs

Mid-size companies (21 – 100 user licenses) focus heavily on scaling, and need a CRM that can grow with them. 

• Additional Data Migration
• Intuitive Data Collection & Storage
• Integrations into Inbox
• Intuitive Mobile App
• Data Integrity Guarantee
• Customizable Objects/Fields
• Project and Task Management
• Ability to Transfer Deals to Project Management
• Scalable User Base
• Customer Segmentation

Mid-market companies can avoid department silos by adopting a platform that allows the marketing, customer success, and sales teams to have universal access to real-time data. 

Enterprise CRMs Costs

Large enterprise companies (100+ user licenses), no matter their level of customization, require a more flexible, sophisticated system to meet their needs at scale. 

• Additional Data Migration
• Workflow Consolidation
• Mobile-First Format
• Automated Data Entry 
• Automatic Logging
• Opportunity Management
• Personalized Campaigns and Engagement stats
• Lead Scoring 
• Activity Management
• Pipeline Views
• Power Dialer
• SMS and Call Management
• Dynamic Forms
• Granular Access Control
• Single Sign On (SSO)

It’s important to remember that these are only guidelines. Company size can be an indicator of investment, but not always. CRM pricing depends more on the customization and needs of the business. 

The cost of legacy CRMs

Many companies adopt big-name platforms like Salesforce with the assumption that they’ll have more than what they need in terms of account management.

The truth, though, is that these legacy solutions are almost always overly complex. The quantity of features doesn’t necessarily correlate to their usefulness. Feature-heavy CRMs require heavy training and create ample room for error with their steep learning curve. 

Legacy CRM systems also almost always require a dedicated dev team to implement the product, and other third-party services to reach complete customization as the business grows. They are also known to gate-keep certain marketing automation features, APIs, and reasonable workflow storage behind their premium pricing tier.

On top of that, most legacy CRM companies offer only multi-year contracts. This lock-in often creates a sunk-cost fallacy in companies who aren’t getting what they need out of their legacy system but are reluctant to start the search process from scratch. 

Even for companies that are in it for the long haul, the costs of implementing new capabilities and add-ons as the business grows can be a massive, ongoing budget hit.

Hidden CRM costs

Although the sheer number of choices can feel overwhelming, choosing the right system is actually the easy part – the implementation and integration processes are often surprisingly expensive, complex, and time-consuming.

The surprise and hidden costs (of both time and money) involved in setting up their new system often leave users wondering if the CRM really improved their business. 

Indeed the biggest cost can be a failed implementation where the system was purchased but was not properly configured and adopted and therefore just accumulated dust. 

If you’re shopping for a new CRM system, it’s important to fully understand the full scope of cost and fees involved with using the CRM in a way that works for your needs. 

Setup and implementation costs

The setup and implementation costs for CRMs can vary. Modern, intuitive platforms will be easier and more cost effective, while legacy systems (e.g. Salesforce) can be quite expensive. It’s important that potential buyers fully understand the upfront and post-purchase costs involved in the process. The following questions will help CRM shoppers screen potential vendors and weigh the various costs involved.

• How long will implementation take? 
• How many support staff are needed for the process? What hourly rate does your staff receive for implementation development? 
• Are there fees involved with transferring data from a previous system or inputting data into the new one?
• Is there a minimum number of users allowed? A maximum? What are the fees for exceeding the maximum number of users? 
• Is the subscription fee based on number of users, or number of employees? 

Ultimately, the specifics of your CRM implementation will vary according to your unique business needs. The important part is asking the right pre-purchase questions to get a full understanding of the scope of the project.  

CRM integrations costs

If you have additional softwares that you’re hoping to integrate into the new CRM, you’re likely to face fees for that, as well. For modern platforms, this can be a few simple steps; for legacy platforms, it can take a whole team. Be sure to clarify how these fees are calculated – some will ask for a large, one-time fee, and others may make you pay per integration.

CRM training costs

The second-highest leading cause of failure to adopt a new CRM system is lack of sufficient training, with most employees reporting the systems are far too difficult to learn on their own. 

Consider the costs involved in learning this new system. Not only will you pay for the trainers, but you’ll also be asking your employees to pause their revenue-generating tasks to attend long training sessions. The more complex your system is, the more training will be required and the longer it will take, so this is another reason to do some research. Ask your rep to put you in touch with current customers so you can discover how long it took for them to be working as a team in the CRM.

CRM support costs

No matter how carefully you implement your new system, or how thoroughly you train your employees on its specifics, you’re likely to encounter a few issues as you get the system up and running. 

As you choose your new system, be sure to understand their support program. How readily available are support agents? How much and when will you be charged for consulting with them? Are there phone and email options?

CRM add-ons costs

All CRMs offer add-ons, but most don’t advertise how necessary they are for full functionality. Even Enterprise or Premium subscriptions often require users to add on or build out new features to access specific integrations, analytics, reporting, or intelligence-based features. Unfortunately, these are often advertised during the sales process, but hidden behind a paywall after purchase. 

You’ll be frustrated to hear, “you didn’t select that option, would you like to add it on?”

Be sure to understand exactly which apps and custom features are included in the advertised fee, and what additional fees are involved in complete customization.

The cost of using the wrong CRM solution 

It should be clear by now that choosing the wrong CRM system will cost a ton of cash – even choosing the right system will impact your bottom line! 

There are also many significant and less tangible costs involved with not finding the perfect fit. 

First and foremost, the wrong CRM is highly likely to discourage adoption altogether. In fact, lack of user adoption is responsible for 70% of failed CRM projects.

Even for companies who have success in onboarding their employees, the risk of a poor UX or slow processing times is high. Despite their multitude of features, most big-box CRM systems are clunky and difficult to run once the add-ons and customizations are fully built. 

At the end of the day, one of the most significant costs of a poor-fit CRM is time. It takes a tremendous amount of resources to get a new system up and running, and the lost-time consequences of investing those resources into a poor fit can be devastating. 

Insightly is a deeply integrated unified CRM with transparent pricing

If you’re looking for an affordable, modern CRM with a unified database to build lasting customer relationships, check out Insightly. With Insightly’s robust CRM, you’ll get all the tools you need to run your business and great support to make it happen. Add on the Insightly Marketing and Insightly Service apps, and you’ll align your teams, deliver world class experiences, and drive growth. Choose AppConnect, and every tool you need to run your business will be connected with no-code/low-code integrations.

With one-click data migration and superior customer support, you can switch from your current provider in under two hours. 

Find out how much you can save by choosing (or switching to) Insightly by using a CRM costs calculator.

The post The true cost of a CRM appeared first on Insightly.

Digital marketing tools and advancements have made this conundrum a thing of the past. For modern marketing teams, value and return are key indicators of success. Now, marketers are responsible for understanding their business impact. Today, marketers are able to track online customer behavior and have an extraordinary opportunity to learn about their market position and reputation.This gives us unprecedented ability to understand how marketing contributes to company profit.

Why should you track marketing performance?

It’s no secret that marketing impacts your company’s bottom line, but how? An efficient marketing process drives customers, lowers costs, and shortens the sales cycle. Marketers are responsible for tracking performance to improve the health of the business. This means returning the investment made into marketing programs at a growing rate.

What is marketing ROI?

Marketing ROI, or return on investment, is revenue generated from marketing programs, less the cost of these programs.

Many companies make strong investments into marketing. These include direct costs, like ad spend. They also include indirect costs, like marketing team salaries. Marketing ROI shows that these marketing expenditures contributed to revenue the company generated. Marketing ROI is presented as a percentage.

The marketing ROI formula is (total revenue – marketing expenses) / marketing expenses.

If you spent $20,000 on marketing, and your company generated $100,000 in revenue, your marketing ROI would be 400%. Put another way, for every dollar invested in marketing, the company made 400 dollars.

But, what if you make a marketing investment and you see the value of it later on, or over time? For most companies, calculating marketing ROI is not a simple equation. Instead, it is a process of strategic decision making and analysis.

How to calculate marketing ROI

Measure your marketing spend.

The first step of understanding return on investment is understanding your investment. Your investment includes ad spend, marketing software, team salaries and agency fees. Additionally, consider if you’re spending on marketing outside of your traditional team. Is your customer success team using social media to connect with customers? Is your CEO flying across the country to speak at events? These costs are nebulous and need estimation, but are still marketing investment.

Attribute revenue to marketing efforts.

For companies that broker one or two enterprise deals per year, this is easy. You ask your customer how they heard about the company. Then, you can attribute revenue to the marketing channel they mention.

For many companies, the volume of leads is too great to ask each customer about their journey. Further, online consumer behavior is fraught. Many customers would not even remember how they first learned about your brand.

With technology like Insightly, Google Analytics, and Looker, customer journeys can be tracked through the marketing funnel. You can learn which ad a customer clicked on, which blog posts they read, and how they purchased your product. Then, you can give a marketing effort proper ‘credit’ for the revenue it generated. The team at Marketing Evolution terms this ‘person-level marketing,’ or marketing attribution.

If a customer has many marketing touchpoints, how do you assign credit? Your team should choose an attribution model. An attribution model designates a consistent method of measuring marketing revenue. A common model is first-touch attribution, crediting the initial interaction a customer had with the company. Many companies also use last-touch attribution, ascribing value to the final interaction before purchase.

Whichever attribution method you choose, you measure your marketing ROI by knowing which efforts resulted in revenue. Your team can measure investment by program, and calculate the return that each program generates. Depending on your volume and model, you may be able to calculate ROI with more granularity.

How not to measure marketing ROI

Measuring marketing ROI with an attribution model is somewhat novel. Most firms are just beginning proper implementation, attribution and optimization that allows for calculating marketing ROI.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes made about marketing return on investment.

Don’t undercut long-term impact by focusing on short-term value.

Consider this situation. Your team makes an unprecedented investment into creating a professional report. You research, write and design a 20-page book explaining trends in your industry. You publish this report on your website March 1st. By March 31st, it’s received a paltry 25 views and hasn’t brought in any leads. When you’re calculating your marketing ROI for March, you chalk it up to a major loss.

In April, your team adds a few keywords to the report and distributes the piece to some industry analysts. Your sales team starts to use the report for lead engagement. It starts to gain traction. You double your web traffic, and you start to notice a few leads attributed to the piece. Even though you published the piece in March, it’s providing value in April. In each subsequent month, the value of this report grows. Ultimately, the revenue it brings in dwarfs the investment.

Marketing compounds. Online, digital marketing efforts live forever and gain traction over time. What looks like a loss in the short term has the potential to be a long-term gain.

Don’t fall for vanity metrics.

When you begin analyzing your marketing, it can be easy to get excited by the biggest numbers. For example, say you published a short blog post about the best restaurants near your new office. The piece generated high web traffic from tourists in the area looking for lunch spots. This high number might tempt you to divert marketing efforts away from product posts. Instead, you can increase your traffic by focusing on lifestyle topics. If you’re casting a wide net, you can cross your fingers that some users actually want to become customers.

But, like every teen movie has taught us, popularity isn’t worth it. Metrics like impressions, web traffic, and “likes” worsen your marketing ROI. The exception is if these metrics correlate to revenue, like if your site is ad-supported.

Daniel Hochuli of Content Marketing Institute sums it up, “It’s the act of counting vanity metrics as evidence for success that is a problem.” Vanity metrics muddle marketing ROI. They are investments untethered to returns.

Don’t get tricked by ‘sunk costs.’

In the example of the industry report, a rookie marketer might chalk it up as a loss. They will move on, and never create another industry report again.

A savvy marketer would likely see an underperforming marketing effort as an opportunity.

You can always optimize, improve and iterate on your marketing efforts. You can bring value into marketing programs, even if they seemed hopeless. By growing the return over time, you minimize the impact of the investment.

Measuring short & long-term marketing ROI

Marketing isn’t a simple input-output, and neither is marketing ROI. Marketing teams need to measure both short and long-term investments and returns. Here are two schemas for understanding marketing ROI over time:

Short term: marketing spend per customer.

If your marketing programs are new, you may not have the luxury of proving marketing ROI over time. You are looking to show the value of your programs quickly. The fastest way to show marketing value is total marketing spend per customer. This is also called total customer acquisition cost.

This metric takes into account all marketing spend across all customers. Because of this, you can be sure that all your marketing efforts are being accounted for. Over time, your total marketing spend per customer should decrease. Understanding total customer acquisition cost is crucial for short and long-term marketing planning.

Long-term: cohort analysis.

Mature organizations have historical data, and opportunity to plan for the long term. These teams want to optimize marketing efforts for efficient value. The best way to do this is with cohort analysis.

A cohort of your users are those who come into your website through the same channel, ad, or piece of content. For example, users attributed to your industry report, mentioned above, are a cohort.

A cohort analysis report tracks the behavior of a group, and the revenue they generate. For the ‘industry report’ cohort, you credit their revenue to March’s marketing investment. This cohort analysis also allows you to value recurring revenue by marketing investment

Cohort analysis requires an investment of both time and resources. Yet, it is crucial in reporting on long-term marketing gains. By laying this groundwork, you validate your efforts and investment. In her explanation of cohort analysis, Maria Calvello of G2 explains, “since the process of cohort analysis involves taking a deep-dive into groups of people and observing their behavior, it’s an ideal way to improve your customer retention.”

Conclusion

Marketing ROI is both a simple formula and a long-term analytic process. It is assessed in both the short-term and the long-term. It can impact an organization immediately, or over a period of time. This enigmatic nature can make calculating return on investment a daunting task. Yet, it’s a crucial step in understanding how  marketing contributes to the bottom line.

Sources:

Cohort Analysis: An Insider Look at Your Customer’s Behavior. Maria Cavello. G2. February 28, 2020.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Gerald Chait. B2B Marketing. March 18, 2015.

The Right and Wrong Ways to Use Vanity Metrics. Daniel Hochuli. Content Marketing Institute. February 10, 2020.

The post How to measure marketing ROI appeared first on Insightly.

That may sound like a straightforward question. But it’s not.

At any given time, marketers use several marketing channels and strategies to attract and convert the most customers. Since each customer goes through multiple touchpoints within the buyer’s journey, pinpointing which marketing channel or strategy is making the most impact in generating sales for your business can be challenging.

That’s where marketing attribution comes in.

In this article, you’ll learn what marketing attribution is and how to build an attribution model customized for your business.

What is a marketing attribution model?

Marketing attribution refers to the process businesses use to figure out which of their marketing campaigns or channels are directly responsible for converting website visitors into customers.

Marketing attribution models guide marketers on evaluating each touchpoint within the sales funnel following a set of guidelines.

By building and implementing a marketing attribution model, you and your team can make more informed decisions on which channels and campaigns you should focus on.

As a result you can boost our ROI while lowering your marketing spend. This is vital since more than 50% of businesses today still allocate less than 10% of their overall budget to their marketing campaigns and activities.

Marketing attribution models fall into two general categories: single-step and multi-step attribution models.

Single-touch attribution models

First-touch attribution

This single-touch marketing attribution model shows you which of your marketing channels caused a potential customer to visit your website for the very first time.

Businesses often use this when they’re planning to launch a marketing campaign focused on brand promotion.

Last-touch attribution

As the name suggests, the last-touch or last-click marketing attribution model assigns the entire conversion credit to the last customer touchpoint before the purchase or opportunity creation.

Multi-touch attribution models

The downside of using a single-step marketing attribution model is that both the first-touch and the last-touch attribution models only pinpoint to a single interaction on the buyer’s journey. They don’t show whether other marketing channels you’re using have also influenced a potential customer’s decision to buy.

Thus, many marketers use one or more of the following multi-touch marketing attribution models.

Lead-conversion touch attribution model

This is perhaps the most widely used attribution model because it shows which channels are the most influential in converting your website visitors into qualified leads.

The reason is simple: generating qualified leads is still the most significant challenge faced by businesses across all industries. By identifying the channels and campaigns that bring in leads that are ready to buy, it will be easier for you to convert them into customers.

Linear attribution model

This multi-step marketing attribution model divides the conversion credit equally across all channels used in the buyer’s journey from start to finish.

The drawback of this multi-step attribution model is that the points are evenly distributed among all the touchpoints, so you can’t identify the top-performing channels.

Time-decay attribution model

Similar to the linear attribution model, the time-decay attribution model shows how each marketing channel you’re using affects a visitor’s eventual conversion into a customer.

The difference between the two models is in the way they distribute points.

Instead of giving equal points to each marketing channel, in the time-decay attribution model the value of the points awarded are based on how close each touchpoint is to the actual conversion. That means that channels used in the bottom of the sales funnel are awarded higher points than those used at the top of the funnel, or at the beginning of the buyer’s journey.

U-shaped attribution model

This marketing attribution model gets its name from the way the points are distributed.

Here, both the first and last touchpoints of your sales funnel get 40 points each, from the total of 100 points or the total conversion value. The remaining 20 points are then distributed to the marketing channels used between the first and the last touch.

This model works if you assume that all your leads complete the same journey, starting at the top of the funnel. But, as this study shows, 74% of B2B customers would have completed half of the buyer’s journey before reaching out to you.

More importantly, not everyone that enters your marketing funnel goes through the entire buyer’s journey. In fact, 79% of your leads never make a purchase.

Custom attribution model

Custom attribution model or algorithmic attribution model is quickly gaining popularity among businesses.

As its name suggests, this model is tailored specifically for your business based on your buyer persona, buyer’s journey, and data from the marketing campaigns you’ve launched.

With this model you have more control over how you credit points to each touchpoint based on how much it influences your customers to convert.

How to choose & build an effective marketing attribution model

1. Audit all your marketing efforts

Conducting an audit of all your marketing channels and campaigns gives you a clearer picture of how many touchpoints spread across your sales funnels. It also helps you and your team decide whether building a custom attribution model will be the best option for your business.

Building a marketing attribution model from scratch, after all, requires a significant amount of resources. So, you want to make sure that it will be worth your investment.

Build a custom attribution model if you:

• Have a big marketing team/access to more resources
• Use multiple online and offline marketing channels
• Previously tried one or more standard marketing attribution models without success
• Need to provide stakeholders with a more comprehensive report on how each touchpoint influences your sales and their ROI

2. Set clear goals

Once you’ve determined that a custom marketing attribution model is the best option for your business, you need to choose the main goal for creating one.

Having a clear and specific goal will guide your marketing team to identify which datasets to analyze and use as references in building your attribution model.

Setting a clear goal will also help your team establish the metrics they’ll use as benchmarks to determine whether or not you’d need any adjustments so you can reach the goals.

3. Map your customer journey

Your customer journey serves as the roadmap of your entire attribution model because it helps you identify the specific marketing channels you’ll be monitoring.

Use your customer journey map to categorize each touchpoint based on its impact on your customer’s buying decisions, then distribute the points accordingly.

4. Incorporate lead scoring

Lead scoring is the process of identifying which of your leads will most likely convert into customers.

This is crucial because once you identify your “hot” leads, you can then identify common touchpoints that resulted in conversion and include these into your custom attribution model.

5. Invest in the right tools

Tracking and monitoring the data for each touchpoint manually can be extremely tedious and time-consuming. Not to mention that it’s going to be prone to errors.

Investing in a unified CRM like Insightly makes it easier to track and automate your custom attribution model. It also enables you to collect data across multiple marketing channels in your buyer’s journey and create dashboards and visual reports of all key performance metrics.

6. Customize your attribution report

If you’re going to build an attribution model for your business from scratch, you’ll also need to customize sales reports in your CRM.

Insightly’s advanced reporting features enable you to create a custom report based on the selected touchpoints and the specific values you’ve established.

It also allows you to schedule when these reports will be generated and automatically shared with your team. These regular reports will help you to monitor, evaluate, and make adjustments to your custom attribution model and keep you and your team on track with your goals.

Conclusion

Implementing a marketing attribution model—standard or customized—takes a lot of time and effort. But it’s going to be worth it in the long-term.

For starters, a marketing attribution model helps you and your team to identify top performing channels and focus on them, instead of worrying about ROI every time you launch a new campaign.

Ultimately, marketing attribution models allow you to maximize your marketing budget, improve your customer engagement, and generate more revenue and scale.

Of course, having a marketing attribution model isn’t foolproof, especially if you’re using one that you’ve built from the ground up. So, test regularly, use data to adjust your attribution model, and keep your goals in mind.

The post How to build an attribution model for your business appeared first on Insightly.

Multivariate testing allows you to experiment with granular variations of the same email and zero in on which variation is more effective. It’s best used to identify the right tactic for a smaller segment of your audience, not your entire contact database.

The goal of multivariate testing is to improve audience engagement, conversion rates, and increase revenue generation through your digital marketing efforts. Let’s dig in, starting with the basics.

What is multivariate testing?

Multivariate email testing involves a complex and advanced approach to tactical email evaluation. You can test several combinations of the same email. With the ability to swap out email subject lines, email body copy, images, the sender “From” name or address, send time, and more, you have many options to play around with. This is where it diverges from a very similar approach, A/B testing.

How is multivariate testing different from A/B testing?

A/B testing experiments with two elements of an email. Multivariate testing experiments with up to four elements in an email, in multiple combinations, to determine the best performing combination.

For example, Insightly’s multivariate testing feature—among its new marketing automation features—lets you compare four variables in up to eight versions of the same email. You can test Subject Line 1 with Email Body 2, Sender Name 3, and Send Time 4. That’s just one combination and you have eight to play with, providing deeper insight to drive future email campaign success.

In some scenarios, A/B testing is all you need, while in others, multivariate testing is called for to generate deeper, actionable insight (more on that below).

How do you run a multivariate test?

Much in the same way A/B testing lets you select two options of the same email element; multivariate testing lets you choose multiple options. Ultimately, this is all done in your marketing automation solution and is quite easy to pull off.

Set up is fairly straightforward. We’ll use Insightly Marketing to explain. When you select the multivariate testing option for an email campaign, system workflows guide you through the process of selecting which elements you want to test and let you select what each respective combination of elements looks like.

Once this is set up, all combinations are sent out to a test group of your target audience. In the case of Insightly, the system automatically monitors the engagement levels of each email version sent to the test group. It then examines the resulting metrics, determines the “winning” combination, and routes that version to the rest of your target audience on the assumption that it will produce the best results.

Because the process is automated, you simply select the combinations you want to test then sit back and wait for the results to come in. Your unified CRM with marketing automation does all the heavy lifting while you focus on strategy.

What do you need to run your test?

First and foremost, you need the right technology. If you use a unified CRM that includes both sales and marketing automation capabilities, all your data is stored under one roof and the process is exponentially easier.

If not, you at least need a marketing automation solution that can run this kind of test. Without the right software, multivariate testing is virtually impossible.

Additionally, you need to know what insight you aim to gain from your test and which problem or challenge you’re trying to solve. Below are some tips and questions to ask yourself to gain the insight necessary to run an effective test.

Tips for effective multivariate testing

Multivariate testing is used to solve a problem or address poor performance in a given area. When planning and setting up your test, it’s important to:

• Identify the problem you’re trying to solve or question you want to answer
• Define your hypothesis
• Decide which combinations you want to test
• Calculate the correct sample size to give you statistically accurate results
• Run a test on fake leads first to ensure every automated, triggered action is set up correctly
• Monitor the test as it progresses with real leads to ensure no unexpected hiccups occur

Asking questions before you start

A good way to get the most out of your multivariate email campaign testing is to ask yourself some preliminary questions. Below are a few good questions to ask yourself during the planning stage—these will help put you in mental testing mode.

• Does my audience prefer creative or short, direct subject lines?
• Does asking a question in the subject line result in more opens?
• Are recipients more likely to click a call-to-action button (or image) than hyperlinked text?
• Are they more likely to open an email from [Company Name] than an individual?
• What is the best time to send emails to my target audience to get higher open and click-through rates?
• Are concise bullet points more effective at driving click-throughs than text in paragraph format?

I could go on and on, but you get the point. It’s important to approach multivariate testing with an inquisitive mind. Digital marketing must adapt to shifting customer expectations and testing new tactics is a great way to adapt.

When should you use multivariate testing vs. A/B testing?

A/B testing provides sweeping generalizations about the efficacy of one specific element of an email (or another marketing asset). This is high-level insight that tends to apply across the board and inform large shifts in your digital marketing strategy.

On the other hand, multivariate testing provides more granular insight into a tactic. Use it when you need to optimize smaller elements with precision as they relate to a segment of your audience.

In short, if you want insight into how effective a tactic is to your audience as a whole, A/B testing is the way to go. If you’re looking to discover which tactic best engages a specific, targeted segment of your audience and why, go with multivariate testing.

Ready to run your own test?

We strongly encourage you to do so. If you don’t constantly evolve your digital marketing practices and engage in experimental, disruptive marketing, you’re likely to be overtaken by the competition. Luckily, with marketing automation today, it’s easier than ever to engage in multivariate testing and A/B testing.

After all, with this technology at your fingertips, you no longer need to rely on guesswork to find the most effective digital marketing tactics. It’s increasingly easy to use data instead of intuition in business decision making. Get the right tools, the right mindset, and see what your experimentation uncovers.

Would you like to learn more about how multivariate testing could help you ramp up your digital marketing efforts? We’re happy to provide more details and answer your questions. Just request a free demo and we’ll provide the information you need.

Request a demo

The post What is multivariate testing? When & why you should use it appeared first on Insightly.

That’s why midsize companies frequently hire CRM consultants to help with implementation, training, and ongoing support. CRM consultants possess intricate knowledge about particular systems, features, and integrations—knowledge that may not exist within your organization’s four walls.

Of course, hiring a CRM consultant comes with its share of tradeoffs. Cost is certainly at the top of the list, as CRM experts are in high demand and, as a result, highly compensated.

This article discusses the topic of CRM consultants and how to form a game plan for eliminating, or at least minimizing, consulting fees.

Why are CRM consultants so costly for midsize companies?

Midsize companies have customer data management needs that are similar to those of larger organizations, but with budgets that are considerably smaller. This means that every dollar of your CRM project really counts. However, when you’re spending the majority of your CRM budget on consulting fees, it’s hard to make traction toward your actual business goals.

Here are just a few reasons why consulting fees can add up so quickly for midsize companies:

CRM onboarding expenses

Bringing in a consultant to document use cases, develop architecture plans, and serve as an independent advocate is a common starting point. You also need someone who can extract data from legacy systems, prepare data for import, configure custom fields, onboard users, and coordinate training. And, of course, all of these tasks require meetings—lots of them. Before you know it, the consultant has logged 100+ hours, which begins to rival the total cost of your first year’s subscription. Ouch.

Ongoing expenses

Consulting projects have a way of evolving into never-ending engagements. What seemed like a one-time setup morphs into an ongoing relationship. After all, new customer data continues to flow into your CRM. Someone also needs to stay on top of deduplication, record management, provisioning new users, offboarding old users, and ensuring everyone has proper access to the right data. Since you’ve already invested so much time (and money) into the consulting relationship, it seems logical to keep the consultant around to provide ongoing support, even though the hourly fees continue to add up.

5 tips for eliminating dependency on CRM consultants

So, what are your options for minimizing dependency on costly CRM consultants?

Consider these five tips:

1. Start with an intuitive, easy-to-use CRM

Users and administrators want a system that is easy to use and manage. When you go against their wishes and select a CRM with a complex data structure and antiquated user interface, consultants become almost unavoidable. If you’re still in the consideration stage of your CRM selection process, take a few minutes and ask yourself these four questions:

• Do other midsize companies use this CRM?
• Is data management intuitive and customizable?
• Can we save money and improve efficiency?
• Will this CRM scale to align with our future growth?

Then, look for a CRM that’s built for the exact needs of midsize companies and offers features that accelerate user adoption, such as:

• A modern, intuitive user interface
• Easy-to-use administrator tools
• Customizable data fields
• Integration to business applications that your company actually uses

2. Avoid shiny objects

Go back and reevaluate your motivation for implementing a CRM in the first place. Take a CRM needs assessment to get your creative juices flowing. Is your primary goal to centralize customer data? Or, are you looking to scale sales operations and give SDRs more tools for prospect engagement? Identify your primary and secondary goals, then focus all conversations and resources around achieving those goals. Do not be distracted by features that, while interesting, do not support the mission.

For example, if your main goal is to streamline the handoff between sales and operations, you should not spend much time worrying about APIs or custom objects. Rather, focus on the features that accelerate project delivery, such as automated workflows and record linking. You might be surprised by how much your in-house team can accomplish on their own once goals are clearly defined and understood.

3. Use every resource at your disposal

Most likely, your CRM vendor’s pricing page lists every feature and service that you’re entitled to as a customer. (Your contract might include similar information.) Look for the expanded version and familiarize yourself with every resource at your disposal. Examples might include:

• Standard support services (i.e., email support, chat, etc.)
• Success plans that provide dedicated support and continuous improvement
• Online user communities
• Sample data import templates
• On-demand training resources
• Native integrations
• Self-help documentation (For example, here’s Insightly’s documentation site.)

Go through the feature and service list to identify resources that could make the biggest impact on your CRM project. Make sure your team is also aware of these resources and references them often.

4. Continuously invest in your people

Your team is a talented, diverse group of professionals. From IT to sales and marketing, your organization already possesses many skills that are necessary to successfully implement and manage an in-house CRM project. Perhaps they just need extra training or coaching to give them the necessary confidence boost.

Believe in your people. Capitalize on their strengths and identify opportunities to help them develop new skills. In doing so, you’ll be supporting their professional growth while simultaneously establishing a new core competency for your business—one that’s far less reliant on consultants.

Empower your team with modern and easy-to-use CRM, like Insightly CRM, that can drive up productivity, free up time for more creative work, and help your team reach goals.

5. Run the numbers on a CRM success plan

If you’re still not sure how to eliminate costly consultants from your budget, maybe it’s time to consider your vendor’s CRM support and service plans. Although there’s a cost, such plans can be easier to budget for as compared to hourly consulting fees. In exchange for a predetermined amount, your vendor provides additional services to help your in-house team be more successful with your CRM project.

For example, Insightly’s support plans include a variety of value-added services such as:

• Onboarding
• Admin and user training
• Phone support
• A dedicated customer success manager/personalized guidance
• Regular check-ins for continuous improvement

Why not tap into the collective genius of the people who are developing and supporting your CRM software? Seems like a logical place to start.

Get your game plan

Perpetually relying on consultants to manage your CRM is a losing proposition. It’s time to take control and develop a game plan that maximizes the impact of each dollar invested back into your CRM.

Explore Insightly and schedule a demo to get a free CRM needs assessment and see Insightly CRM in action.

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