CRM vs Marketing Automation: Do You Really Need Both?

CRM vs. Marketing Automation: Understanding the Differences and Benefits is crucial in today’s modern selling landscape. There are a number of tools out in the marketplace that claim to improve your sales and marketing effectiveness. The two most popular technology investments for sales and marketing funnel management include CRM and marketing automation software.

While the names alone imply inherent differences, more and more CRM and marketing automation solutions are adopting a holistic approach, offering tools for both sales and marketing teams. If you’re like many executives out there, this has you wondering if you really need both tools or if you can save budget by only investing in one or the other.

But before you make a decision on whether to invest in a CRM system or marketing automation software, there are some things you need to know to avoid missing out on key benefits of each tool.

What is CRM vs. marketing automation?

First things first, let’s define what both CRM and marketing automation are, and explain the benefits of each tool.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Marketing Automation
• What’s the Difference Between CRM and Marketing Automation?
• How are CRM and Marketing Automation Similar?
• Overcoming Data Quality Challenges
• Accelerate Your Deal Velocity with CRM and Marketing Automation

Customer relationship management (CRM)

A CRM is a software solution used by sales and service teams to cultivate deeper relationships with interested buyers and active customers. CRM vs. Marketing Automation systems are both essential, but they serve different purposes in managing customer relationships and automating marketing tasks.

Marketing has historically tracked campaigns in CRM for internal reporting purposes, but with modern business intelligence (BI) and reporting tools, that is no longer a requirement. The “subscription economy” has led to CRM deployments moving away from expensive on-premise management architectures and are offered as license based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model where hosting and maintenance is managed in the cloud. For the purposes of this article, CRM is best utilized when managing bottom of the funnel opportunities in the sales process.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is a software solution used primarily by marketing teams to measure and strengthen marketing’s impact on funnel activity and pipeline development. Marketing automation exists for the primary goal of automating marketing-focused actions and tasks. Many marketing departments are challenged with complex manual processes to execute campaigns and repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media distribution, and other website actions that can hinder marketing’s performance as programs scale.

The technology of marketing automation makes these tasks easier to manage and execute. One primary difference with CRM is that Marketing Automation systems can track behavioral and demographic data for marketing engaged prospects to automate nurture programs that encourage certain buyer actions. Marketing automation is best utilized for nurturing leads and prospects with content to advance their stage in the buyer journey.

Key differences, CRM vs. marketing automation

While CRM vs. Marketing Automation systems may look very similar on the surface, they cater to different roles in an organization. However, these differences are what make them more valuable to the unique teams they serve and the objectives of each team.

Marketing’s core objective is to feed the pipeline for sales. At the end of the day, the sales team is marketing’s number one client. Marketing’s role in the lead nurturing process has grown over the last decade to align with the lengthening sales prospecting process. Most B2B purchases—especially technology purchases—span multiple departments, which means there are multiple stakeholders involved in any buying decision. In fact, it takes an average of 11 stakeholders, and sometimes as many as 20 to make a purchase.

Long gone are the days of importing a list of “leads” from a trade show and assigning the contacts as “leads” for sales.  Marketing’s job is to not only attract attention (brand awareness) but their role has evolved to further qualifying leads that engage with the brand before passing along to the sales team. A simple model marketing can follow to qualify leads is identifying B.A.N.T. criteria.

• Budget – Does the prospect have budget forecasted?
• Authority – Are you speaking with the right buyer who has the authority to spend said budget?
• Need – Is there a true market fit for your solution?
• Timeframe – When is the prospect looking to buy? 3 months? 6 months? Longer?

Marketing Automation solutions like HubSpot, Pardot, and Marketo provide automation capabilities that help capture demographic lead data and can even measure engagement based on behavior activity like website visits, time on site, and returning visitor traffic. All this information can be used to help inform B.A.N.T. criteria for sales.

Once marketing has qualified a lead based on B.A.N.T., the sales team’s core objective is to close deals and increase revenue. Both sales and marketing processes follow a funnel-like approach to nurturing leads and opportunities, but each solution is customized to track and serve a different type of contact based on their stage of the buyer journey. Similarly, CRM is designed to help the sales organization forecast the deals they plan to close each month or quarter.

Most funnel processes in sales will align around a “stage” model, and each stage is associated with a percentage that indicates how confident sales is that opportunity will become a new customer. This process is where CRM shines.

Here is an example of the sales process funnel:

• Stage 1 – Sales Qualified Lead – SQL ( 0%)
• Stage 2 – New Opportunity (10%)
• Stage 3 – Engaging All Buyers & Validating Opportunity (25%)
• Stage 4 – Confirming Value and Commitment (50%)
• Stage 5 – Contract Negotiations (75%)
• Stage 6 – Obtaining Signature (90%)
• Stage 7 – Closed/Won (100%)

In my experience, many organizations falter when they do not consider the downstream impacts of selecting marketing automation and CRM in tandem. Even though they are resources that support different departments and stages of the funnel, they can be the bridge to successful marketing and sales alignment.

And with your marketing and sales team working closer together to move leads through both funnels, lead velocity can then be realized at a faster pace.

How are CRM and marketing automation similar?

Just like sales and marketing teams overlap to drive business results, CRM and marketing automation systems also overlap and share similarities in addition to the differences we’ve reviewed. At their core, both solutions have the ability to house prospect and customer demographic information, but most marketing automation solutions will charge additional fees based on the size of your database, which typically makes it more cost-effective to use CRM. 

The big challenge facing an organization using these technologies is maintaining data quality and integrity in both CRM and Marketing Automation software.

Overcoming data quality challenges

It’s predicted that 91% of data in CRM systems is incomplete, stale, or duplicated each year. A contact will move addresses, get a new job, or might even retire, causing the data in both of your systems to become out of date. 

To combat inaccurate data, many organizations rely on periodic data cleansing projects. However, this approach is often too slow, as a segment of the freshly cleaned contacts can quickly become obsolete. This is where relationship intelligence automation (RIA) and data enrichment come in. Introhive’s RIA automates the capture of relationship insights from various touchpoints—such as emails and meetings—while ongoing data enrichment continuously enhances CRM and marketing automation systems with up-to-date information like contact details and job changes. This ensures that both teams can rely on accurate, current data, reducing manual entry and enabling more strategic decision-making, ultimately improving sales velocity and team alignment.

By eliminating the need for manual data entry and maintaining accurate, continuously enriched data in real-time, both CRM and marketing automation solutions remain in sync. This not only supports accurate analytics and forecasting, but also creates a seamless sales and marketing handoff that accelerates the entire process.

Accelerate your deal velocity with CRM and marketing automation

The misalignment of sales and marketing teams costs can really add up as a result of lost productivity and wasted efforts. If your CRM and marketing automation software are also misaligned, you can expect that number to rise due to longer sales cycles, inaccurate forecasts, and more. Automating data entry and lead management can help mitigate these losses by enabling reps to spend 35% more time selling, leading to more closed deals and greater overall efficiency.

A well-aligned CRM vs. Marketing Automation system can have huge impacts on your sales cycle, including:

• Increased lead and deal velocity with more client touch points
• Reduced sales cycles with more educated and informed buyers
• Improved visibility of growth potential and pipeline development
• Enhanced pipeline and sales forecasting accuracy

Introhive’s platform empowers marketing and sales teams to work more closely by breaking down data silos. With cleaner data and enhanced communication between CRM and marketing automation systems, teams can better align strategies, optimize outreach, and significantly reduce sales cycles.

Request a demo to see how we can work with your CRM and marketing automation to improve your data accuracy and quality.

FAQs on CRM vs. marketing automation

What are the primary differences between CRM and marketing automation? 

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) focuses on managing customer relationships and data, typically used by sales and service teams. Marketing automation streamlines marketing tasks like email campaigns and social media, primarily benefiting marketing teams. Understanding CRM vs. Marketing Automation helps determine which tool best suits your business needs.

Can CRM and marketing automation be used together? 

Yes, integrating CRM vs. marketing automation can enhance business efficiency. While CRM manages customer interactions and sales data, marketing automation handles campaign management and lead nurturing. Using both systems together ensures seamless communication between sales and marketing teams.

How does using both CRM and marketing automation improve business outcomes?

Combining CRM vs. marketing automation systems can lead to increased lead velocity, reduced sales cycles, and improved sales forecasting. This integration ensures that marketing efforts are effectively translated into sales opportunities, enhancing overall business strategy and performance.