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What is Agile CRM?
Agile CRM is one of the best known platforms that have many alternatives too. While it is a leading platform, you may find that it is not the most affordable platform, which makes it imperative for small businesses to look for alternatives to Agile.
In earlier article we have learned about usage and advantages of CRM. Yet, before we go deeper into that, we need to find out how CRM can help a small business in the first place.
How does CRM help small businesses?
1. Boosting sales
CRM platforms like Agile or Agile alternatives can help a small business maintain an organized database of customers, right from the time leads to the time they get converted to customers and a loyal base for your business and brand.
Not only that, but CRM also helps analyze the sales and provides various strategies on how to increase sales.
Research says CRM helps increase revenue by a whopping 41%.
The Agile alternative will maintain the old records even as it generates new leads.
It provides data regarding how many interested customers are there in the market, the niche of the business, the problems that the products and services can fix – all these questions are answered in a detailed manner and forwarded to the respective teams.
2. Understanding your customer
Customer relationship management is all about creating a satisfactory relationship between their customers.
It is more than just a conversion of leads and generation of customers.
One would need to follow up after a sale to build a relationship for after-sales services, re-selling, cross-selling and up-selling, with a good Agile alternative. Your customers should find the leader in you.
3. Improving the work culture
Everything is performed in an organised manner. The working environment set by the use of a CRM platform or an Agile alternative improves as employees are more productive with the help of the automation of tasks and the information that lets them focus on their core tasks to engage the customers in a better manner.
Good working culture and organizing the employee engagement activities boost your organization’s profit.
4. Improve customer relations
Customers feel much connected to the company due to CRM.
They are aware of the latest updates, the new products or services that are getting introduced, the new stories via newsletters, and many more.
Customer grievances are handled in a much more effective and efficient manner with a good alternative to Agile.
5. Targeting the potential audience
You would need the right information in the right place so that the information is used in a relevant manner to tap the right prospects within the wider audience segment. This is something you can do with a worthy Agile alternative by your side.
One of the core ways in which CRM and alternatives to Agile set about the task of engagement are with emails.
This can be a fitting way to generate leads and to nurture those leads until they reach the right call for action.
Email marketing is one of the most affordable marketing techniques.
With email marketing, the CRM framework would be able to build the right basis for an omnichannel presence, yet it must be noted that all alternatives to Agile do not offer such integration.
Let us understand the various kinds of emails and how they can be used for better customer relationships within the broad CRM framework for small businesses.
Building customer relationship using email marketing
1. Bulk email
Email marketing is one of the most common CRM features and helps targeting customers by sending bulk email trying to convert these leads into a potential customer.
2. Automatic email trigger
A trigger is a business rule which can perform automated actions based on the happening of a certain event. So on the occurrence of any event the trigger used to go on and automated emails used to be sent.
There are 3 kinds of email triggers
- Event based trigger
- Time based trigger
- Activity based trigger
3. Email Sync via IMAP configuration
Now CRM can be integrated with Google, Yahoo, and nearly any email so that you can find yourself in the inbox of your ideal customer despite the email carrier he or she may be using.
Alternatives to Agile CRM
While Agile is the first name that one would think about when considering a CRM platform, there are an array of alternatives to Agile CRM including the following:
1. EngageBay
This is possibly one of the best alternatives to Agile CRM. It is not only affordable, but it quickly becoming one of the most widely used platforms out there for CRM and marketing automation needs.
EngageBay has actually managed to bring in over 12,000 happy customers from all over the globe due to the fact that it offers a range of functions that can cover all aspects of digital presence building.
Not only this, but these functions are data-driven thanks to a robust CRM framework that can also be customized as per your business needs.
This is especially relevant for small businesses.
2. Drip
This platform is one of the best email marketing platforms when it comes to CRM.
You can easily get all your leads in one place and organize them as per various email campaigns. This will help your sales team greatly.
Yet, it may not be the best alternative to Agile since it does not offer all the wider features for marketing automation unlike EngageBay, which gives you better integration opportunities.
3. PipeDrive
While Pipe Drive is easy to setup and easy to use as well, it is not a very popular software when compared to other Agile CRM alternatives.
Reporting can be a drawback with this software. It claims to provide more qualified leads and helps grow your business.
4. Zoho CRM
This alternative to Agile CRM manages sales, marketing and customer satisfaction as well, all within one framework.
Zoho offers a fully featured free edition of only its Flagship CRM software, all the remaining integrations and features need to bought and installed which also makes it quite expensive.
5. Bitrix 24
This is an alternative to Agile CRM and is designed for small businesses keeping in mind all their requirements.
This might not be a useful tool for a larger organization that has higher demands.
Bitrix 24 is a collaboration platform that provides services like CRM, project management, document management, time management, human resource management and many other services.
The above analysis clearly shows us that EngageBay would be your best bet when you are looking for a worthy CRM platform and an alternative to Agile CRM.