Customer Relationship Management or CRM tools, solutions, and software give sales and marketing professionals access to real-time information about their consumers and prevailing conditions, which enables sales teams to create more personalized and engaging customer experiences, and empowers customer service departments to provide quicker and more effective assistance and support.
The CRM application or platform that you choose will be determined by a number of factors, including cost, ease of use, and the features that it offers. In this respect, you should look for a product with an intuitive user interface, and a comprehensive tool-kit. Features like in-built email and phone systems, lead scoring based on artificial intelligence (AI), the intelligent automation of workflows, and customizable dashboards with visual reporting are typical of an enterprise-grade CRM platform. The solution should also provide easy integration with third-party business applications and popular platforms.
Here is a look at some of the top CRM tools available in the current market.
Insightly CRM
Targeting the small to medium-sized business (SMB) market, Insightly CRM has a starting price level of $29 per user per month. Central to the Insightly CRM advantage are a wide range of intuitive functions, an appealing visual design, and a range of application and platform integrations suited to larger organizations in the SMB space.
Among the other benefits of Insightly CRM is the way the platform organizes key functions and presents them in an easily comprehensible and user-friendly manner. Acting as both a lead management and Customer Relationship Management tool, Insightly now also features project management capabilities,
The platform also offers Insightly Marketing, a marketing automation tool. Provided as a separate service, Insightly Marketing aids in converting Insightly CRM data into viable marketing campaigns. This effectively enables existing users to combine their CRM, project management, and marketing functions in a single interface.
Salesforce Sales Cloud
The Salesforce CRM offering, Salesforce Sales Cloud, is an on-demand platform catering to small, medium-sized, and large-scale enterprises. Part of the Salesforce advantage is the platform’s ability to support sales, marketing, and customer support in both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) arenas.
Salesforce offers five versions of Sales Cloud, ranging from Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Performance. Pricing is on a per-user, per-month basis, and support contracts are available at three levels — a Standard Success Plan, Premier Success Plan, and the Premier+ Success Plan.
One of the great benefits of Salesforce is that Sales Cloud provides full customization on an integrated platform that enables a business to use its AppExchange to access thousands of applications that fuse customer service, business analytics, sales, lead generation, and marketing. With Salesforce for Outlook, users can seamlessly synchronize their contacts, email, calendars, and tasks in both applications.
The Salesforce CRM solution deploys as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). An upgrade to the platform known as Salesforce Lightning Experience enables sales reps to generate and follow-up on leads, manage their account activities, track the status of each campaign, and generate reports.
ActiveCampaign
The ActiveCampaign CRM platform provides an integrated suite of Customer Relationship Management and marketing tools, with its basis on email marketing. Aimed at small to medium-sized organizations, ActiveCampaign helps business users to create professional-looking email messages, build contact lists, manage marketing campaigns, track customer behavior patterns, and measure the performance of their promotional efforts.
The ActiveCampaign advantage lies principally in its comprehensive feature set. The platform provides automation applications for email marketing and general marketing. Among these are applications for creating lead capture forms, drag-and-drop design of email, segmenting leads, website tracking, social media tracking, email campaign reporting, and social integration.
ActiveCampaign also provides its own set of sales force automation (SFA) features, including lead scoring, pipeline management, contact management, and drag-and-drop deal tracking. The platform integrates with several leading third-party CRM solutions.
For cash-strapped SMBs, one of the biggest benefits of ActiveCampaign CRM is its free customer service, which includes phone support, live chat, one-on-one consulting, and a self-help knowledge base. Enterprise customers also enjoy free custom design services.
HubSpot CRM
The HubSpot CRM advantage lies in its broad appeal. This Customer Relationship Management platform is suitable for any Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C) organization in sectors as diverse as accounting, construction, sales, marketing, retail, or real estate.
From a visual dashboard providing a real-time view of the entire sales funnel, HubSpot CRM offers a range of features that include sales automation, email tracking, customer relations management, contact management, sales pipeline management, lead management, plus inbound and outbound marketing. HubSpot CRM’s email marketing and lead generation automation features help users to manage and create email templates and to track the performance of each message.
One of the benefits of HubSpot CRM for business users is that the platform’s free plan is free forever. The scheme includes access for unlimited users to all of HubSpot’s sales, customer service, marketing, and contact management tools.
Microsoft Dynamics 365
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM platform offers integrated solutions that enable businesses to drive sales, track leads, automate their field service operations, and improve business operations using enterprise-ready mobile apps from the cloud. Tools are available for Customer Relationship Management, marketing, sales, marketing automation, project service automation, project management, sales forecasting, and tracking finances.
The benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM software enable sales and marketing teams to track customer interactions and insights and implement personalization strategies from a platform that provides overall visibility and a single source of truth. Users can deliver an improved customer experience with the assistance of smart assist technology and scripting tools that work from customer profiles and past interactions, which are features of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer service app.
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM advantage lies in the platform’s numerous integrations. As you’d expect from Microsoft, the CRM software integrates with apps and platforms like Outlook, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Teams, Word, OneNote, Microsoft Azure, Lync, and SharePoint. Supporting mobile apps are also provided for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. These apps feature offline synchronization, so users can continue to work without internet connectivity.
Zoho CRM
With plans starting from $8 per user, per month billed annually, Zoho CRM is available on monthly or annual subscriptions, with customer support via phone, email, digital documentation, and other online channels. Among the benefits of Zoho CRM is that it offers tools for sales and marketing automation, customer support, analytics, and Help Desk functions to businesses of all sizes.
Enabling users to respond to their customers across various channels in real-time is at the heart of the Zoho CRM advantage. The platform offers an AI-powered sales assistant dubbed Zia, which is capable of analyzing previous contact data and predicting the most appropriate time to contact consumers.
Zoho CRM provides Software Development Kits (SDKs) for building tools to add custom functions, and the platform integrates with WordPress, G Suite, Evernote, MailChimp, and other third-party environments.
Pipedrive
Among the benefits of the Pipedrive CRM system is that it provides sales personnel with full visibility of their different sales pipelines. Users can track upcoming activities with the activity & goal feature, and the platform can monitor sales targets at individual and team levels, with custom tools for generating visual reports. Pipedrive’s “activity-based selling methodology” streamlines and monitors every action that could convert a potential lead into a successful sale.
Seamless integrations are part of the Pipedrive CRM advantage. Users can send and receive messages from multiple email accounts using their Pipedrive subscription, and the platform integrates with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Trello, Google Maps, MailChimp, and a number of leading CRM platforms.
Freshdesk
One of the major benefits of Freshdesk CRM is that the cloud-based customer service software helps businesses provide support across every channel of contact. This Freshdesk CRM advantage extends across chat, phone, social media, email, and instant messaging.
The software provides productivity and customer service tools, including smart automations, analytics, performance monitoring, AI-powered chatbots, and branded help centers offering self-service.
SugarCRM
Available as a cloud-based or on-premise solution, Sugar CRM starts at $85 per user, per month for 10 users minimum, billed annually (Sugar Enterprise).
Among the benefits of Sugar CRM is its cloud-based application, which provides tools for account management, CRM, plus sales and marketing automation. Features on offer include home page customization, downloadable plug-ins, a shortcut bar, tool wizards, and global search functions with an enhanced view.
Central to the Sugar CRM advantage is that the software is developed on an open-source platform. This allows users with the necessary coding skills to adapt and customize the tool to suit their individual needs. The software can run on Windows, Linux, MySQL, SQL Server, and Oracle systems, and the SugarCRM platform integrates with multiple third-party systems.
