CRM and Marketing Automation. Tough Choices.

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When creating a company's set of marketing (and sales) tools, we increasingly wonder which of them should be in our portfolio to effectively support strategies and processes. Among the entire range of useful solutions, CRM and Marketing Automation usually appear in the first places. Both of them are increasingly the basis of business technology allowing for effective contact with the customer and building a healthy lead pool.
Despite their nominal differences, CRM and Marketing Automation, developing dynamically, are increasingly gaining many common features. However, they still differ from each other not only in their basic purpose, but also in their basic functionalities. In both cases, the margin creating the common part is becoming wider, but nevertheless these tools continue to complement rather than replace each other.
Depending on the nature of the company using them, CRM/MA functions support, complement, exist in parallel, or compete with each other.


In the case where we have the entire suite of one of the large suppliers such as Oracle, Salesforce, or Microsoft, the problem is limited to a minimum, as the individual components of the platform denmark whatsapp data support the Customer Journey steps within the business processes in a logical and consistent manner. The sales funnel, regardless of type and assignment to sales or marketing, shows information from the same source.

CRM and Marketing Automation
However, in a situation where, when creating a technology architecture supporting a business, we select solutions from various sources, we must unfortunately assume that despite a perfect plan and such assumptions, effective use of tools will involve not only the necessary integration, but also the need to focus on additional processes. The API culture, which I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, assumes free access to interfaces that allow for connecting 'everyone with everyone', but it still requires additional expenditures, resources and tests each time.

Differences Between CRM and Marketing Automation
Returning to the titular issue of CRM, or Marketing Automation, let us briefly recall how these tools are usually defined.
CRM is the management of customer relationships covering both the business area and the technologies supporting it. The concept refers to the entirety of strategies, tactics and operations implemented using business tools as part of direct and indirect interaction with the customer.