These days, customer relationship management is an integral part of running any kind of business. CRM software solutions present a more efficient way to organize PR work and all types of interactions with current clients and potential leads.
CRM shouldn’t be viewed as a sales tool solely useful to marketers—any business with PR needs can profit from a more organized way of conducting relationship management with consumers and other stakeholders alike. There are CRM solutions specifically designed for PR, focused on the long-term nurturing of client relations. With that in mind, we will delve into how and why a CRM helps your business improve its efficiency!
Better organization
The process of managing client relations can be cumbersome without the right set of tools. That’s why movers and similar businesses find CRM helpful when managing a huge number of different clients. There is simply too much information to deal with manually.
A PR rep is often plagued with random post-it notes, dozens of different spreadsheets, and client information they’re simply used to remembering themselves. As they tackle more PR positions at bigger companies or their client load increases, scaling up while remaining efficient can be tough. CRM software is there to dissipate such concerns. Such solutions provide a way to stop working through your email inbox and organize the information you receive in a clearer way.
Disparate software tools are a worse option than one CRM platform.
Contact management
Any PR professional knows that this is an industry heavily focused on personal contacts. Many PR reps have vast spreadsheets clumsily detailing information for important individuals. That’s something a CRM solution can help with.
You don’t need to have haphazardly collected information on the social media accounts of your contacts, or your meeting history with them. CRM can handle all of that in a single uniform interface, along with other correspondence and even financial details like invoices.
Having a single place to store and easily access all information pertaining to a particular client allows for far more efficient work. There are no follow-ups that you’ll mismanage or information that would otherwise probably be lost.
Everything can be organized into distinct fields that you can access with ease. Also, remember that tasks like media monitoring include constant streams of information that you need to process for valuable points—this is made easier with a specifically dedicated platform. That goes double with the world of social media being as important for PR as it is today.
Information organization
At the end of the day, anyone is as valuable as the people they know. Managing all of the contact information across a wide range of industries and niches is not easy. That’s why CRM allows you to remain as organized as possible and quickly find the person you need at the right time. Most of these systems function on the “tag” principle, wherein you assign different tags to contacts or business entities you think you’ll need to contact at a later date.
Do away with analog methods of contact management.
Data tracking
It may not seem like data analytics are important for the world of PR, but only to the outside layman. In reality, managing a large number of clients simultaneously means you need to rely on concrete data. CRM tools provide crucial insights, like knowing if a client has read an email that you’ve sent, or see who’s been looking at your website and if they’re a potential lead.
For businesses that constantly strive to attract new clientele, online metrics are crucial for gauging your efficiency in this process. This is especially true for lead management in email campaigns, where CRM opens up a whole world of information you otherwise wouldn’t have.
Knowing how much time someone has spent reading your copy is valuable information when you’re fine-tuning content for the highest possible conversion rates. CRM solutions even help with the automation of client and lead management, by providing options for trigger-based responses to specific customer interactions.
Follow-ups
Automation is definitely an important part of contemporary client management and PR, particularly when it comes to mundane technicalities. Anyone who’s conversed with multiple clients knows the scheduling woes related to meetings and communication in general. CRM platforms pretty much eliminate this.
Follow-up management will be much easier with CRM.
Most of these solutions let you create a booking page for your contacts, making appointment scheduling much easier for both you and the clients of your business. You can even designate follow-up schedules so that nothing is left to chance.
