This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of SharpSpring CRM. All opinions are 100% mine.
SharpSpring (similar platform to HubSpot, Marketo and Pardot) has an excellent reputation in the marketing automation community since it debuted more than five years ago. Now, the company is offering SharpSpring CRM for free – forever.
Customer relationship management (CRM) refers to the process of managing a business’ relationship with individual customers throughout the entire customer journey – from lead generation through sales conversion, repeat purchases, and brand loyalty.
SharpSpring’s free CRM for small businesses offers all of the tools you need to create a customized sales pipeline so you can track and engage prospects from first touchpoint through a completed sale. In addition, built in appointment scheduling, a form builder, email marketing features, and lead scoring make it easy to engage an unlimited number of contacts, accounts, opportunities, and products throughout the lifetime of every contact.
The six key features that enable you to manage your customers throughout the life of the customer include:
1. Site Tracking
The site tracking feature isn’t offered by any other free sales CRM tool. This feature makes it easy for you to track where people come from when they visit your website and landing pages as well as when they submit your forms. What pages did they view? How long did they stay on key pages? What did they download?
Using this information, you can better target each contact to ensure you’re sending the right messages and offers to them in the future. As a result, your conversions should increase.
2. Social Tracking
SharpSpring is the only free CRM with a social media dashboard that make it quick and easy for you to see exactly what your contacts are publishing on social media at any time. You can also monitor your own brand across social media channels and track what your competitors and prospects are doing. You can even engage with posts without leaving SharpSpring CRM.
This type of insight is very valuable to ensure your products and services are competitive, your brand is perceived positively, and your prospects are getting the right information from you.
3. Form Builder
The form builder built into SharpSpring CRM enables you to capture information from people so you can add them to your prospect list. The forms are customizable, so you can choose to include a variety of fields on your forms. SharpSpring CRM is one of the only free CRM tools with lead capture forms included.
4. Contact Manager
You can import your own contacts into SharpSpring CRM and add more leads using forms built with the form builder tool. Using the Contact Manager Dashboard and pipeline tool, you can view the entire life of each lead and track all behaviors and interactions across the entire life of a contact as shown in the image below. Contact Manager also pulls in external communications by syncing with your Gmail inbox and social media information.
Since you can have an unlimited number of users using SharpSpring CRM, it’s easy to communicate directly within a contact’s profile in Contact Manager, so the entire team is up to date on what’s happening with each contact at all times. You can even set up notifications based on specific actions. For example, you can be notified if a certain contact views a specific page on your website.
5. Email Marketing
SharpSpring CRM comes with a variety of fully-designed email templates that you can use to send messages to your contacts. In fact, it’s one of the only platforms with an intuitive email designer and email templates built in for bulk email marketing.
With the SharpSpring Smart Mail feature, your sales team can quickly send one-to-one marketing messages in just three clicks.
6. Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is critical to maximize sales for your business, and SharpSpring CRM has a comprehensive lead scoring function built in. The CRM boosts scores as your leads engage with you allowing you the opportunity to reach out when they are ready to buy.
Grow Your Business with a Powerful CRM
More than 7,000 businesses use SharpSpring for affordable marketing automation, and now, the company is offering the SharpSpring CRM so businesses can use its sales solution for free. This is not just a free trial. It’s free forever. The SharpSpring CRM is very easy to use, so there is almost no learning curve for small business owners to get up and running quickly.
If you’d like to sign up for free, just visit the SharpSpring CRM website.
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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