Is Your CRM Sabotaging Teamwork Across Departments?

This week on Funnel Frontier: Explore how Zoho's new CRM can enhance cross-departmental teamwork, plus the booming growth expected in the marketing automation market.

This week:

• State of marketing automation

• Zoho debuts CRM “for everyone”

• Self-service buying and digital sales (via Forrester)

• Zendesk vs Zoho 

• Email metrics for small biz success (via EngageBay)

Stat of the Week 

Worldwide, CRM software revenue is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.59% between 2024 and 2028. (Statista)

Zoho CRM for Everyone

Ever wish your office plant could lend a hand with customer interactions? 

Sorry, that’s still Plantasia-style fantasy. However, “CRM for Everyone” apparently now exists, at least in name, thanks to Zoho.

It’s billed as an anti-silo CRM that's not just for sales teams but every department. Sales, solutions engineering, customer onboarding, and even marketing can now mingle and exchange memes in one place. 

The shiny new tool features team-specific modules, requester profiles, and a finessed new interface. It’s all about spreading CRM-derived customer context beyond sales to the breadth of your organization. 

Liz Miller from Constellation Research thinks it’s a big deal, putting CRM at the heart of revenue-building. Miller quipped that the tool’s ”reaching beyond the stagnant notion that CRM is a record or a database… [putting] CRM at the center of the project called Revenue.”

Mani Vembu of Zoho, a totally impartial figure, chimed in to say it’s about time we ditched the IT fortress mentality because “reducing CRM complexity and encouraging participation” is the move. 

Zoho’s giving early access to its all-inclusive CRM upon request; you just need to be a customer. 

The Week @ CRM.org

CRM for Small Business. Only 25% of small businesses use a CRM? The rest must enjoy playing on hard mode. 

Best AI Software. AI CRM: It’s like having a personal assistant, sans coffee breaks.

WordPress CRM Plugins. WordPress powers 43% of all websites, but without a CRM plugin, it's like a Ferrari with no gas. 

Weekly Bloom

Are We Giving Willpower Too Much Credit? If willpower were the only factor in success, we'd all be on the Bloomberg Billionaire list by now. Finding the right strategies and support systems might matter more.

State of Marketing Automation

I have a pitch for you, Mr. Weird Al Yankovich. How about Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” except it’s “I Love M.A.”? 

No, it’s not about going to grad school. Marketing automation. Yes, you know, with the computers, it’s very popular.

Case in point, a new report by Technavio finds the marketing automation software market is set to soar with a CAGR of 11.98% to 2027.

Some other hot metrics:

• Incremental growth between 2023-2028 will be $3353.8 million USD

• North America will contribute 39% of the pie

• 2024 growth is estimated at 11.7%

Blame it on the growing need for lead nurturing and the rise of social, mobile, and cloud tech. 

The report finds a market remains split between cloud and on-premises deployments, as a surfeit of software-slingers suavely sell to picky companies of all shapes and sizes, from North America to Asia-Pacific. 

But there’s a catch. High cost is a buzzkill for SMEs. Left clutching their wallets, many wonder if that fancy automation tool is just a “nice to have.”

As far as brands go, the report finds big players like Adobe, HubSpot, and Salesforce continuing to flex their muscles, keeping this a heavyweight bout. Yet even these giants can’t escape the pesky challenges of integration and ROI skepticism.

In a nutshell, the marketing automation market is on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, with tech trends fueling growth and high costs throwing shade.

Topical enough for a parody song? You be the judge.

Stellar Strategies: Tips & Tricks for Sales, Marketing & Service

Self-service buying is changing digital sales (via Forrester)

B2C… has changed. 

Self-service buying is here, and it's shaking the game. Buyers are using digital tools to make purchases on their terms, leaving traditional sales teams in the dust. 

Millennials and Gen Z love self-service, and tech makes it a breeze. Yet only 37% of sales leaders prioritize digitizing the buyer’s journey. 

As a result, sales pipelines are getting cracked and clogged, cycles drag, and customers are fidgeting and rolling their eyes.

Time to adapt! Integrate digital selling, refresh self-service tools, and embrace hybrid selling. 

More togetherness, less finger-pointing. 

That’s the future of B2C sales, according to Forrester. More here.

Zendesk vs Zoho

Zz. Zendesk, Zoho. Both cloud-based, both ready to streamline your help desk woes. 

Zoho, a big ‘ol bundler of biz apps, offers versatility and budget-friendly options that users rant and rave about. Zendesk flaunts its sleek dashboards and user-friendly tools, piquing the interest of nitpicky aesthetes into clean interfaces. 

Zoho wins the freebie round with a no-cost plan for small teams, but Zendesk takes the cake with more pricing flexibility. 

For customer support, Zoho's easy-to-reach human reps edge out Zendesk’s robo-centric support. 

And while both have great knowledge bases, Zendesk leads in help desk tools, while Zoho shines with self-service features. 

More this-or-that here.

Email metrics for small biz success (via EngageBay)

Did you know a good open rate sits betwixt 33% and 38% for email marketing campaigns? Mileage may vary by industry.

Getting into those sweet mid-thirties is a bit of a science, requiring something called “email marketing benchmarks.” Without them, it’s like you’re in a race without knowing the finish line.

Open rates, click-through rates,  bounce rates—you may not like being rated, but hey, it comes with the territory. Small businesses can get a good ROI on email marketing, so it’s worth investing in tinkering and tailoring. 

Because what you don’t know will irritate you, peep those benchmarks at the EngageBay blog.

Galactic Gourmet

CRM blips from around the web

Pipeliner debuts Salesforce Connector. The new integration allows access to Pipeliner CRM through Salesforce, with the pitch of better CRM-sales UX inside the expansive Salesforce universe of tools. 

AI market to be worth $1,339.1 billion USD by 2030, finds report. Marketing and sales will hold the largest piece of the AI market pie, with AI-CRM integration one significant driver. 

Intelligent CX platform Five9 launches Salesforce AI integration. The new release of Five9 for Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony features a one-two combo of Salesforce Einstein and the Five9 suite of AI tools.

Astronomical Assets

Significant Stock Moves from Last Week

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