Question
Our core need is pulling together and tracking all the touchpoints and interactions we have with people (whether they've engaged with us yet or not). We’re an online angel investing platform for healthcare. We also do expertise matchmaking as part of our model.
Our relationships:
1. investors - these are high touch, and are both online and offline.
2. partners and coinvestors
3. Leads - Lots of people we've identified and targeted, but that haven't engaged with us yet.
4. people seeking expertise matchmaking -generally only online.
Our activities/channels:
- individual email
- phone calls
- campaigns/newsletters
- drip/automated email campaigns based on segments
- transactional emails
- social interaction (mostly LI and Twitter)
- some ad targeting/retargeting
We send quite a bit of content through these channels too. We'll be doing more behavioral type email in the future, a la http://customer.io style emails. We also use referral and sharing functionality in our product and will be segmenting based on data we collect.
The bonus is we are a startup in a new market, meaning we're poor, short on time, and have too few existing processes. :)
What we want to do:
- One place to see all our interactions, even if it's just integrating with other options.
- accommodate engaged (contacts) and not yet engaged people (leads). tagging/reporting could work
- segmenting based on criteria we set manually or from user data
- Automated drip email campaigns - for onboarding and other types of campaigns
- custom fields - Multi-select lists are critical in this
- flexible reporting - adhoc report building especially
- deduping against both leads and contacts when importing - I only bring this up since Salesforce doesn't seem to do this without an external tool. We don't want to double up different campaigns on people
- Good API, at least for us to push data to
Answer
Integration (or the lack thereof) is the fatal flaw in many organizations' deployments. I have faced this with most clients needing to realign their internal Systems-Processes-Personnel issues. Zapier is a powerful integrator but it can also be something of a band-aid solution. Something largely overlooked is that most CRM tools are elements within a wider enterprise solution. Generally, they work well with their own allied elements, okay with some 3rd parties, and not a all with others. The CRM company's overarching ambition is to win you over to their complete suite. Nothing wrong with that if it fits, but you should go in with eyes wide open.
To your question, I have experience selecting and integrating a range of CRM solutions across a variety of industries. In choosing, there are five metrics I follow when considering a CRM application for general use:
1. Organic Fit - To what extent does its underlying methodology fit your existing process. Will it integrate with your other systems (e.g. Accounting, HR, etc)? If not, what would need to change?
2. Market Penetration - If it's widely adopted, others are finding it useful and it's likely well-supported. But there is a reason it isn't #1 on my list: it needs to fit your operation.
3. Quality of Support - Near zero downtime, rapid response to user issues.
4. Scalability - Today's need will not be tomorrow's. What is the existing ceiling? What happens when you blow through it?
5. Cost of Use - Services are not the only things that scale. Write this into your game plan.
The top six examples (in no particular order) would include: Salesforce, Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive and Sugar CRM. Let's arrange a call if you would like me to provide rankings based on above five factors, and I can offer deeper insights to the points raised above.
