What is generative AI?

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) refers to models or algorithms that create brand-new output, such as text, photos, videos, code, data, or 3D renderings, from the huge amount of data they are trained on. The models ‘generate’ new content by referring to the data they have been trained on, making new predictions. 

The purpose of generative AI is to create content, as opposed to other forms of AI, which suit different purposes, such as analyzing data, making ad recommendations, parsing through applications, helping to control a self-driving car, etc.

As mentioned above, generative AI is simply a subsection of AI that uses its training data to ‘generate’ or produce a new output. AI chatbots or AI image generators are quintessential examples of generative AI models. These tools use vast amounts of materials they were trained on to create new text or images. 

The term generative AI is causing a buzz because of the increasing popularity of generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s conversational chatbot ChatGPT and its AI image generator DALL-E 3. 

These and similar tools use generative AI to produce new content, including computer code, essays, emails, social media captions, images, poems, Excel formulas, and more, within seconds, which has the potential to boost peoples’ workflows significantly. 

ChatGPT became extremely popular quickly, accumulating over one million users a week after launching. Many other companies saw that success and rushed to compete in the generative AI marketplace, including Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Anthropic. These companies quickly developed their own generative AI models. 

The buzz around generative AI will keep growing as more companies enter the market and find new use cases to help the technology integrate into everyday processes. For example, there has been a recent surge of new generative AI models for video and audio.

AI features coming to Insightly Marketing

As you can imagine, generative AI lends itself well to marketing use cases. We’re building generative AI capability into Insightly Marketing, our marketing automation platform, in a number of areas, and partnering with the leader in generative AI, OpenAI, to do so. It will be a chat-like interface that’s familiar to users with an AI assistant built right into the editing experience.

Write brand new, original content

Let’s solve the ‘blank page’ problem. When you don’t know what to write or how to get started, AI will be your ally within Insightly Marketing. You will be able to use AI to write content for emails and landing pages without leaving the editor. Simply give the AI assistant some direction with a few prompts, and it will generate paragraphs of content for emails and landing pages that you can then use, edit, and modify to your needs. The new AI assistant can also be used to come up with some catchy titles for emails or headers for landing pages.

Rewrite Existing Content or generate content variations

Another useful task for our AI assistant is to come up with variations of content you have already written, or to rewrite existing content for use in A/B testing of emails or multivariate tests of emails which we already support.

Check spelling and grammar

Our new AI assistant can also be used to check spelling and grammar. Just give it the text you wish to check, and ask it to check for spelling and grammar and it will take a look over what you have written and provide edits or suggestions of how to better phrase passages.

Change length, tone or call to action

You will also be able to use the AI assistant to to change the character length of an email. Maybe you have some existing content from a blog post or a web page that you want to use, but it is a bit too long for what you would like to include in a short email. The AI assistant can write an abbreviated version that gets the main points across for you to easily use in an email.

(This feature hits close to home because we have a small but mighty marketing team here at Insightly. I know they often reuse and repurpose content for different channels like many other marketing organizations do. With them in mind, I know this feature will be well-received.)

Similarly you can change the tone of an email. If a team member has written some content you would like to repurpose, but you would like it rewritten in a more business oriented style, our AI assistant can do that for you in just a few keystrokes.

The new Insightly AI assistant can really speed up the email creation and landing page authoring process right there in the editor, and it allows you to do so without having to switch apps and change contexts.

AI features coming to Insightly mobile apps

We’re bringing the power of AI to our Android and iOS mobile apps too. We have a brilliant free feature in our mobile apps that allows you to bring in contacts into Insightly from business cards you receive from clients. You can use the camera on your phone and the Insightly mobile app to take a picture of a business card and Insightly will automatically bring that into Insightly as a contact.  Insightly recognizes the text on the business card and sorts out the name, company title, addresses, phone and fax numbers and email and website addresses on the business card and then saves them directly to Insightly.

With AI, this feature gets better. We’re launching a new version of the business card scanner that is infused with AI. Using the power of artificial intelligence, the new scanner system is much more accurate at recognizing contact titles and roles than the previous version and categorizing and importing all the relevant information from a business card without human intervention.

AI features coming to Insightly Service

Insightly Service is an application available on our platform for customer support ticketing. Customer success and service agents use it everyday to capture and resolve customer issues and queries. 

One of the huge advantages of using Insightly’s unified platform of Insightly CRM, Insightly Marketing and Insightly Service is that your entire staff can see those valuable customer service tickets and Insightly marketing data right inside CRM contact and lead records. The integration between the three products and their data is built right into Insightly, aligning your teams and giving them the opportunity to create great customer experiences. 

Sometimes resolving customer service tickets with customers involves a number of interactions or the back and forth correspondence between customers and your staff can result in some lengthy exchanges.

Rather than staff members working in Insightly CRM or Insightly Marketing having to read and review all those interactions back and forth between the customer and staff to understand a ticket and what it is about, we’re bringing the power of AI to save you time. 

The AI built into Insightly will read through all the interactions and back and forth in a ticket and then generate a short summary of each ticket. The summary includes the nature of the ticket correspondence and the resolution provided. 

This allows your staff to be able to review all the tickets linked to customers very quickly without having to wade through the entirety of the correspondence for each one. It will save you time and give you a fuller picture of all the customer interactions and the state of the relationship.

AI features coming to Insightly CRM

Generative AI is not only awesome at creating and generating text for you, it’s also really good at writing code too. We’re utilizing this superpower-like capability to generate code to help you create new calculated fields in Insightly.

Calculated fields are new fields you can add to any record in Insightly CRM that calculate something and save the result – a bit like a spreadsheet. Calculations can include math operators like division and subtraction, text operators like concatenation, logical operators like true false assertions and branching, date time functions, etc.

Insightly customers can use calculated fields for calculating discounts or commissions on sales, for working out the tax on items, calculating scores or working out if a field has certain text within it, or for combining and calculating the total of several other fields.

Calculated field formulas in Insightly are written in computer code a little like Excel formulas, and you need a certain level of expertise and understanding to be able to write one correctly. We’re making it a lot easier for just about anyone to create one of these calculated fields by using the power of AI to write the formula for you. Just describe in plain English in a few words what you’re trying to do or accomplish, and our AI assistant will automatically generate and write the complete calculated field formula field for you. The benefit here is that you don’t have to know or understand any computer code to make it work. Just describe what you want and we can do the rest for you automatically and seamlessly using the power of AI.

Get ready for AI

I’m happy to share that we’re bringing the power of generative AI across our whole suite of applications in Insightly. In the near future, Insightly will be using generative AI to make your teams more efficient. Whether you use Insightly CRM, Insightly Marketing, Insightly Service, or even our mobile apps, you’ll get a helping hand from AI to do more with less. Stay tuned for more details as we roll out these updates. 

A marketer’s tool belt can span various categories and differ across industries and disciplines. From analytics and marketing automation to content creation and project management, your team probably already uses many different systems to keep everything on track. Could adding one more to the mix really make a difference? The short answer is yes: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be a significant benefit to marketing teams. 

Defining the Role of CRM in an Organization

At its core, a CRM system is a centralized hub for managing interactions with customers and prospects across various touchpoints. Within an organization, a CRM plays multiple roles:

Centralized Data Management: CRM systems serve as the central repository for all customer-related data, providing marketing teams with a single source of truth for the business. This consolidated database ensures that everyone within the organization (including your marketing team) can access accurate, up-to-date information about customers, prospects, and leads. 

For marketing teams specifically, accessing CRM gives them valuable insights into customer preferences, purchase history, and interactions across various touchpoints. Having a single source of truth eliminates data silos, reduces the risk of errors, and promotes consistency in customer interactions, which ultimately fosters better decision-making and alignment across departments.

Relationship Building: CRM systems facilitate nurturing relationships with prospects and existing customers by tracking interactions and preferences. As we all know, building strong relationships with existing customers is just as important as building relationships when acquiring new customers. Relationship building is essential because it drives engagement, conversions, retention, advocacy, and competitive advantage in the marketplace. CRM systems enable teams to stay connected with customers post-purchase, offering personalized support, recommendations, and exclusive offers. This can foster loyalty and encourage repeat purchases, contributing to long-term customer retention and lifetime value.

Marketing teams can leverage relationship data to deliver targeted campaigns, personalized messages, and tailored content, which helps foster stronger connections and increase brand loyalty.

Process Automation: Process automation is a game-changer for modern marketing teams, empowering them to optimize their workflows, save valuable time, and enhance productivity. CRM platforms, such as Insightly, offer robust automation capabilities that revolutionize marketing tasks, from lead capture to campaign management.

Workflow automation enables marketing teams to handle increased volume and complexity without sacrificing quality. By automating repetitive tasks like lead capture, email marketing, and campaign management, CRM platforms enable marketing teams to streamline their workflows and focus on high-impact activities. 

Moreover, workflow automation ensures consistency and reliability in team efforts by enforcing standardized processes and reducing the risk of human error. Whether scheduling automated email campaigns, assigning tasks to team members, or triggering follow-up actions based on predefined criteria, automated workflows ensure that tasks are executed promptly and accurately, maintaining high consistency across marketing initiatives.

Integration Ability: Integrations break down silos between departments and foster collaboration by enabling shared access to customer data and insights. When your CRM integrates with marketing automation, sales, and customer service systems, teams can collaborate more effectively to coordinate activities, align strategies, and deliver a cohesive customer experience. This collaboration leads to better coordination, improved communication, and a more holistic approach to customer relationship management.

CRM systems offering seamless integrations with email marketing platforms and automation tools enable marketing teams to orchestrate cohesive, multi-channel campaigns. By integrating with email platforms, CRM systems facilitate automated email workflows, personalized messaging, and lead nurturing campaigns. These kinds of integrations streamline processes, eliminate manual data entry, and ensure customer interactions are tracked and synchronized across platforms. 

Benefits of Insightly CRM for Marketing Teams

The benefits of CRM extend far beyond just sales and customer service functions. Like sales, CRM systems should serve as the backbone for marketing operations. Insightly CRM empowers marketing teams to work more efficiently, strategically, and collaboratively to drive business growth and success. Marketing teams can leverage Insightly CRM to work more efficiently and innovatively in their marketing strategies.

By leveraging Insightly’s robust features and capabilities, marketing teams can unlock enhanced lead management, improved collaboration and communication, robust reporting, and analytics, all housed in a customizable and mobile-friendly system. 

Enhanced Lead Management

Insightly’s lead management tools enable marketing teams to capture, track, and prioritize leads effectively. By assigning lead scores based on a combination of behavioral data and demographic information, Insightly helps marketing teams identify and prioritize leads with the highest potential for conversion. 

For example, leads with strong engagement with marketing content or who fit the ideal customer profile may receive higher lead scores, indicating their readiness to move further along the sales funnel.

Automated lead capture mechanisms simplify the lead management process by seamlessly capturing leads from various sources, including website forms, social media campaigns, and events. Whether a prospect fills out a contact form on the website or provides their information at a trade show booth, Insightly ensures every lead is noticed, capturing valuable data and initiating the lead nurturing process automatically.

Once leads are captured, Insightly provides marketers with powerful tools to segment, categorize, and prioritize leads effectively. By analyzing lead scores and other relevant data points, marketing teams can tailor their follow-up actions to suit the needs and preferences of each prospect, increasing the likelihood of conversion and revenue generation.

Improved Collaboration and Communication

A shared customer information and communication platform like Insightly serves as a unifying force within an organization, bringing together disparate teams and departments to work towards a common goal. By providing a centralized hub for customer data and interactions, Insightly facilitates collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer service teams, breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional alignment. Getting your marketing automation platform and CRM from the same vendor allows for shared data among the marketing and sales teams. 

The benefit of integrated communication further enhances collaboration by enabling real-time communication and project management between teams. Whether it’s sharing updates on leads, discussing customer feedback, or coordinating follow-up actions, these tools streamline internal workflows, ensuring seamless coordination and alignment across departments. Implementing Insightly CRM as a shared platform allows organizations to break down barriers, leverage collective expertise, and work together more effectively to achieve their goals.

Reporting for Data-Driven Decision Making

CRM systems should have robust reporting and analytics capabilities, offering insights into campaign effectiveness, lead generation, and customer engagement metrics. These insights empower teams to measure ROI, identify trends, and optimize strategies for better results. Insightly’s robust reporting and analytics empower marketing teams to make data-driven decisions. By analyzing metrics such as conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value, teams can optimize marketing strategies for maximum effectiveness and ROI.

Unlike traditional reporting systems, which require custom development and specialized expertise, Insightly CRM offers out-of-the-box reporting and analytics and fully customizable dashboards that you can tailor to your unique needs. With drag-and-drop interfaces and intuitive visualization tools, marketing teams can create and customize reports without the need for expensive developers or IT support. This self-service approach empowers teams to analyze data, track progress, and make data-driven decisions independently, saving time and resources.

Scalability and Customization

Insightly offers scalability and customization options to accommodate marketing teams’ evolving needs. Whether scaling campaigns to reach new markets or tailoring CRM workflows to specific business processes, Insightly provides flexibility and agility for growing teams.

A CRM system that offers extensive customization options allows marketing teams to tailor the system to their specific needs and preferences. Custom fields, layouts, and dashboards enable marketers to capture and visualize the information they need to inform their strategies and decision-making. Whether tracking campaign performance metrics, segmenting audiences based on demographics, or analyzing lead quality, a customizable CRM empowers marketers to focus on the data that matters most to them. This flexibility enhances usability, efficiency, and productivity, ensuring that marketing teams can extract maximum value from your CRM investment.

CRM Mobile Access

Modern CRM systems offer mobile applications that enable marketers to access critical information and stay connected on the go, whether at trade shows, events, or on the road. Mobile access allows marketers to view customer profiles, track interactions, and update records in real-time, ensuring continuity and responsiveness in customer engagement. 

Whether capturing leads at events, following up on inquiries, or accessing campaign metrics remotely, Insighty’s mobile access benefits marketing teams to stay productive and proactive, regardless of their location. This flexibility enhances agility, responsiveness, and customer satisfaction, driving business growth and success.

Marketing Teams Love Insightly CRM

A CRM is an integral tool with many benefits for marketing teams. It provides a centralized platform for managing customer relationships, tracking interactions, and, ultimately, informing marketing strategies. Whether harnessing the insights from Insightly CRM’s robust features or integrating it with other tools in your organization’s tech stack, CRM remains an indispensable tool for marketing teams looking to stay ahead in today’s dynamic and competitive landscape.

Supercharge your marketing efforts by combining the power of Insightly Marketing with Insightly CRM or by integrating with other tools in your tech stack using Insightly AppConnect to enhance marketing effectiveness, drive team efficiency, and enable data-driven decision-making. Set your marketing team up for success by watching a demo on demand or scheduling a personalized Insightly demo.

Globally, it’s nearly a tie.  According to NinjaOne, “Google Workspace tends to be more popular among businesses, holding 50% of the market compared to Microsoft 365’s 45% market share.”

If you are using Insightly, you don’t need to worry either way. Read on for the many ways your Google products play nicely with Insightly. In fact, Insightly was born in the Google Marketplace and has since added significant functionality to become a full featured platform serving sales (Insightly CRM), marketing (Insightly Marketing) and customer success (Insightly Service) teams, along with an integration building tool (AppConnect) to make your entire tech stack function better. 

Microsoft fans, do not fret! You can find out about all the ways Insightly CRM works with Microsoft products and apps in a similar article. 

What Google integrations are available in Insightly?

There are several ways you can sync Google features to Insightly. These integrations are available for all users, though some require a paid Insightly plan. (Psst – get the details on the Insightly Free Plan.) Read on for ways to get more from Insightly plus Google apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google contacts, and Google Workspace SSO (single sign on).

Insightly Email Sidebar for Gmail 

With the Insightly Gmail Sidebar for Chrome Browsers you can build stronger relationships right from your inbox. Insightly knows that sales reps spend a ton of time in their email inboxes as well as in Insightly CRM. With this sidebar, you don’t have to choose. You get the convenience of both at the same time so the CRM stays up to date. 

To access the sidebar, search for it in the Google Workspace Marketplace and then download/install it. (Note: Be sure to sign into the Gmail account you use for Insightly.) Next time you load Gmail,  you’ll see the Insightly Gmail sidebar on the right of your screen.

With the sidebar, you view customer information and save emails to Insightly CRM right from your Gmail inbox. Select your recipients from Insightly, use a template, and even schedule an email to send later. You’re doing this all from Gmail, so it’s super convenient. The email you send appears as a sent item in both Gmail and in Insightly CRM. 

If you’re in Gmail and you’d like to send a message to someone who is not yet in Insightly CRM, no worries. You can use the sidebar to create the contact in Insightly and then go ahead and send that person a message. 

Ready to start using it? Great! You can install the sidebar. This feature is available with all Insightly plans.

Learn more in this video:

Google Calendar Sync   

Maintaining multiple calendars is a sales rep’s worst nightmare. The odds of missing a super important meeting go up exponentially when you don’t have your business in one place. Your Insightly calendar is just as important as your Google calendar, but the good news is that you don’t have to choose.

Set up a two-way sync of your Insightly CRM calendar with your Gmail calendar and you’re all set. Once you’ve established this two-way sync, Insightly will display your Google calendar items on your Insightly calendar and copy Insightly items from the last two months and into the future to your Google calendar. 

What about milestones and tasks? No worries – you can also choose to sync Insightly milestones and tasks if that additional data is helpful for your daily operations. When you enable either of these options, Insightly will add two new calendars to your external calendar called Insightly-Tasks and Insightly-Milestones. Heads up: this feature is only available on paid Insightly plans. Learn more. 

Insightly Calendar Feed 

If you’re on the Insightly Free Plan, you still have options! You can display your Insightly calendar in your Google Calendar via a link. The link can be found at the bottom of your Insightly calendar page, and you can add it in Google Calendar under ….Other calendars > Add by URL.

Save Files in Insightly CRM to Google Drive 

You’ve likely got a lot of data – docs, spreadsheets and more – saved on Google Drive. Saving to the cloud is a much better option than saving to a local drive. Local drives can get damaged, lost, or even corrupted, leaving users in a tough spot. 

So it just makes sense that Google Drive users can link to files in Google Drive directly from Insightly. 

Files stored in Google Drive — including Google Docs and Google Sheets — can be linked directly to your Insightly records from the Files section on the Related subtab.

This section is available in contacts, organizations, opportunities, and projects. The first time you click the Google Drive icon, you will be prompted to log in to Google. Click Allow to grant Insightly permission to access your Google Drive. (Heads up: make sure you select the account associated with your Insightly login.)

Learn more in this Help Center Article. 

Sync your Google Contacts with Insightly CRM

You’ve likely got a lot of contacts in your CRM and you may also want to access them in your Google Contacts. No worries! Insightly syncs them for you. You can utilize a one-way sync from Insightly to Google in which you can sync all of your Insightly contacts to your Google Contacts list. Your contacts will appear in a group called “Insightly-Contacts” in Google Contacts. They can optionally be added to your “My Contacts” group, too. Anytime you make changes to these contacts in Insightly, those updates will be reflected in Google. Heads up: This feature is only available on paid Insightly plans.

SSO for Insightly CRM with Google Workspace

Make it easy to log in to Insightly for your whole team when you enable single sign on (SSO). Your Google Workspace Super Amin can access the External Directory Sharing toggle and enable it to allow for single sign on with Google. 

The sharing toggle must be enabled to allow public data and authenticated users basic profile fields to ensure that Insightly’s API will have access to the Super Admin’s profile. Then, all users can log in to Insightly directly from the Google Workspace app grid. Please note that all users must have the Google Workspace for Insightly account type. Visit this help article to see if you have that account type. 

Get to work fast with Insightly CRM and Google applications

Insightly and Google make up a winning combination for workplace efficiency. This article covered ways to get more from using both, including opportunities in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Contacts, and enabling single sign on with Google Workspace.

Want to get a closer look at any of these features? Schedule a personalized demo with a member of the Insightly team today.

Did you know that globally, it’s nearly a dead even split? According to NinjaOne, “Google Workspace tends to be more popular among businesses, holding 50% of the market compared to Microsoft 365’s 45% market share.”

The good news is that you are all set either way with Insightly. This article explores the many ways to connect Microsoft products with Insightly. 

Google fans, do not fret! You can find out about all the ways Insightly CRM works with Google Workspace in a similar article. 

What Microsoft integrations are available in Insightly?

There are several ways you can sync Microsoft features to Insightly. These integrations are available for all users, though some require a paid Insightly plan. (Psst – get the details on the Insightly Free Plan.) Read on for ways to get more from Insightly plus Microsoft apps, including Microsoft Outlook Email, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Azure AD, and Microsoft Word. 

Insightly Email Sidebar for Microsoft Outlook 

With the Insightly Email Sidebar for Outlook, you can build stronger relationships right from your inbox. Insightly knows that sales reps spend a ton of time in their email inboxes as well as in Insightly CRM. With this sidebar, you don’t have to choose. You get the convenience of both at the same time so the CRM stays up to date. 

With the sidebar, you view customer information and save emails to Insightly CRM right from your Outlook inbox. Select your recipients from Insightly, use a template, and even schedule an email to send later. You’re doing this all from Outlook, so it’s super convenient. The email you send appears as a sent item in both Outlook and in Insightly CRM. 

If you’re in Outlook and you’d like to send a message to someone who is not yet in Insightly CRM, no worries. You can use the sidebar to create the contact in Insightly and then go ahead and send that person a message. 

The sidebar pops up on the right side of your screen while you are using Outlook and gives you these options. Ready to start using it? Great! You can install the Sidebar from the Microsoft Office Store. This feature is available with all Insightly plans.

Learn more in this video.

Microsoft Exchange Calendar Sync   

Everyone knows that maintaining multiple calendars is a recipe for disaster…or at least a missed meeting or two. Your Insightly calendar is just as important as your Outlook calendar, but the good news is that you don’t have to choose.

Set up a two-way sync of your Insightly CRM calendar with your Outlook calendar and you’re all set.  Once you’ve established this two-way sync, Insightly will display your Exchange calendar items on your Insightly calendar and copy Insightly items from the last two months and into the future to your Exchange calendar. 

What about milestones and tasks? No worries – you can also choose to sync Insightly milestones and tasks if that additional data is helpful for your daily operations. When you enable either of these options, Insightly will add two new calendars to your external calendar called Insightly-Tasks and Insightly-Milestones. Heads up: this feature is only available on paid Insightly plans. Learn more. 

Insightly Calendar Feed 

If you’re on the Insightly Free Plan, you still have options! You can display your Insightly calendar in your Outlook Calendar via a link. The link can be found at the bottom of your Insightly calendar page, and you can add it in Outlook Calendar under ….Other calendars > Add by URL.

Save Files in Insightly CRM to Microsoft OneDrive 

A lot of companies rely on the safety of Microsoft OneDrive. It can offer peace of mind versus saving files to local machines that can die or be corrupted. 

Did you know that Microsoft OneDrive files can be linked to your Insightly records? All you need to do is click the OneDrive cloud icon on the Files subtab of a record when you want to log in to OneDrive and create links to those files. Then you will see your Microsoft OneDrive files in the Files section in the Related subtab in your records.

Learn more in this Help Center Article. 

Connect Insightly CRM with Microsoft Sharepoint

If your team is using Microsoft products, odds are you are utilizing Microsoft Sharepoint to share files. With Sharepoint, your team can create document collections and make custom layouts and designs. 

You can connect Insightly CRM and Sharepoint via AppConnect, Insightly’s low-code/no-code integration tool. 

With AppConnect, you can set up a recipe to run between Insightly CRM and Sharepoint. When a new project is created in Insightly, a linked Sharepoint folder is created and you can sync the attached files in the CRM to that Sharepoint folder. This makes it easy for everyone on your team to collaborate and have access to the documents and data they need to do their jobs. 

Get the details in this video:

Connect Insightly CRM with Microsoft Teams

In addition to being in the CRM and email all day, your team is probably spending a great deal of time in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is an excellent way to foster collaboration in your organization since it shares data and information instantly. It can also be a source of fun and connection for teams who are spread across an office or even the world. 

Great news…it’s pretty simple to connect Insightly CRM and Microsoft via AppConnect, Insightly’s low-code/no-code integration tool. Just build a recipe and let it run. 

Here’s what it looks like in action. Imagine you have a new project in Insightly CRM. With a simple checkbox, you can have Insightly CRM create a channel in Microsoft Teams for that new project, and even invite the team members to that Microsoft Teams channel. They’ll get notified in Microsoft Teams, so you’ll ensure that everyone is aware of the project. This is just one way that Insightly CRM and Microsoft Teams can work together to improve communication for your teams. 

Get the details in this video:

SSO for Insightly CRM with Microsoft Azure Active Directory

With the Insightly Single Sign-On (SSO) application, your Azure Active Directory users can access Insightly with one click through Azure AD. It’s convenient to give your users access to Insightly from their Azure AD access panel or Office 365 portal. Clicking the Insightly icon will log them in to Insightly without entering their Insightly username and password – an extra time saver. While this makes it more convenient to sign in, they can still access Insightly by signing in directly, too. 

To access this feature, your Azure system admin will need to log in to the Azure portal and access Insightly via the Enterprise Applications menu. From there, grant the necessary permissions and you’ll be all set. Read more in the Help Center Article. 

Add conditional merge statements into Microsoft Word templates

Using Microsoft Word and Insightly? You’ve got a great option for your templates. Whether you are on a Mac or PC, you can create a PDF from any record in Insightly with Microsoft Word. 

When making templates for merge documents or PDFs, you have the option to include IF/THEN logic within them. You can use this logic to selectively include document sections depending upon what fields are filled out in the record. Using the features under the ‘Insert’ tab in Microsoft Word, you’ll add a conditional statement that routes to a Field Code in Insightly. Read more in the Help Center Article. 

Get to work fast with Insightly CRM and Microsoft applications

Insightly plus Microsoft is a winning combination. This article covered ways to get more from using both, including opportunities in Microsoft Outlook Email, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Azure AD, and Microsoft Word. 

Want to get a closer look at any of these features? Schedule a personalized demo with a member of the Insightly team today. 

This season, take Closing Time with you. Closing Time is the podcast and YouTube Show designed for go-to-market leaders. With episodes around 20 minutes or less, Closing Time dives deep into one topic to give you actionable takeaways from prominent leaders in sales, marketing, customer success, and more. 

According to the American Journal of Medicine, the attention span of the typical adult learner wanes after 15-20 minutes, so the bursts of micro-learning delivered by Closing Time are ideal for professionals in go-to-market fields.

The team at Insightly selects guests based on their knowledge of go-to-market areas, trends in the marketplace, and topics that you need to know to have a seat at the table. The list of episodes includes thought leadership concepts, deep dives into recent research, and practical, how-to guides that listeners can put into practice immediately. 

As we celebrate the 100th episode of Closing Time, it’s a good time to look back at some luminary episodes and divide them into groups for  various roles. Let’s explore 5 curated collections of episodes for professionals in different disciplines of go-to-market.

The CSO Collection – Chief Sales Officer

Is it time to build a BDR/SDR program? Are you ready to lead your team through the next economic downturn? These are questions CSOs ask themselves all the time. In this six pack, hear from Sam McKenna of #samsales on the economics, metrics, and resource allocation data that can help you decide if and when a BDR/SDR function is a good fit. It’s in episode 8: How do you know if you need a BDR/SDR program.  Mike Weir of G2 talks about leading teams when economic conditions are rough by continuing to create environments that focus on development plans, coaching and advancement. This collection has technical CRM experts talking about getting your tech stack right from the start, and advice on compensation from a leader in sales recruiting. CSOs will be on the edge of their seats!

Also included in this collection:

• Episode 16 with Amy Volas: Latest trends in sales compensation
• Episode 63 with Vanessa Hunt: Choosing the Right CRM: It’s an Art, Not a Science
• Episode 64 with Mike Topalovich: Do legacy CRMs need a reality check?
• Episode 87 with Ann Handley: AI-Driven Authenticity: How Sellers and Marketers Can Use AI to Foster Genuine Connections

The Sales Manager Collection

Let’s roll up our sleeves and get close with our sellers. In this collection, we get hands-on with the coaches who are in the trenches, having weekly pipeline meetings, and coaching AEs/BDRs/SDRs every day. They are the hype men and women, keeping the team pumped and excited to sell, sell, sell. Now, are we selling against a competitor or against the status quo? Sales advisor Jen Allen-Knuth talks about the cost of inaction in episode 38: 3 Ways to Defeat Your Buyer’s Status Quo. So if we get a sale, can we upsell/cross sell? Hannah Ajikawo of Revenue Funnels shares tips to help increase ACV – the metric that keeps most sales managers up at night.

Also included in this collection: 

• Episode 24 with Amy Volas: How to get (and keep) a job as VP of Sales
• Episode 28 with Amy Volas: How to Reduce sales turnover: Your hiring process
• Episode 39 with Tyler Lessard: How to get your sales team to adopt video selling
• Episode 59 with Derek Grant: Top 5 ways to Improve your sales cadences. New research!

The Account Executive (AE) Collection

Step right up, sellers! This collection is for you. You’re working the phones, personalizing emails, following up with leads, and generating pipeline. All this while you’re keeping the CRM updated every day. You also know that selling is a craft and you constantly need to keep your skills sharp. In this collection, we turn to Udi Ledergore from Gong where they analyzed mountains of data and came up with call openers that work, terminology around pricing discussions, and even permission to use a few ‘colorful’ words now and then. Learn all about it in episode 74: How to make your next sales call better. Tyler Lessard of Vidyard chimes in on episode 37 with unique ways to use video throughout the sales process – ahead of the demo, as a demo follow-up, and even when delivering a contract. 

Also included in this collection: 

• Episode 10 with Doug Landis: 5 Discovery Call Tips to Help Buyers Overcome the Status Quo Bias
• Episode 22 with Ravi Rajani: 4 ways build authentic rapport & connection over Zoom
• Episode 30 with Sam McKenna: 5 steps to turning a referral into a win
• Episode 58 with Chris Orlob: SaaS Demo Best Practices: How to Crush Your Next Demo Call

The Marketer’s Collection

Talk about a lineup of luminaries. This collection contains episodes featuring Shama Hyder, CEO of Zen Media, Katie Foote, CMO of Drift, and 2x founder Rand Fishkin. Explore topics that are top of mind for markers like attribution, ABM, and branding. In episode 25, Katie Foote talks about the new ‘conversational marketing’ category and how Drift is putting it on the map. Shama Hyder walks you into the dark social funnel in episode 14, talking about how people research privately on social media before they initiate a sales process with your team.

Also included in this collection:

• Episode 62 with Anna Furmanov: Early Stage Startup? 11 Startup Marketing Initiatives to Help You Grow Faster
• Episode 68 with Rand Fishkin: Bouncing back after the death of marketing attribution
• Episode 81 with Dale Harrison: Does Brand awareness work in B2B? Here’s how to prove it does to your CFO
• Episode 86 with Brendan Hufford: Efficient Growth: Using Marketing Sprints to Grow Faster while Spending Less

The Sales Ops/Rev Ops Collection

We didn’t forget you, operations folks! So many episodes of Closing Time talk through the importance of the sales operations and revenue operations teams and how they link marketing and sales teams together. Getting the right tech stack, maintaining it, and getting leads into the hands that need them…operations teams are our anchors. Sales strategist Chris Walker has been on two Closing Time episodes talking about how to refocus and reshuffle sales teams to focus on metrics that drive wins. In part one, episode 69, he talks about the difference between demand capture and demand creation. In part two, restructuring your sales funnel is on the table. 

Also included in this collection:

• Episode 3 with Todd Caponi: Salespeople Ruin Everything: Building a tech stack that works
• Episode 46 with Eddie Reynolds: The 5-step RevOps model for high-growth teams
• Episode 49 with Keith Rabkin: The 4 Keys to Successful Sales Proposals
• Episode 90 with Josh Fedie: How to Optimize the B2B Buyer Experience and Improve Wins Rates in 2024

New this year: Closing Time Customer Spotlights

Closing Time recently expanded its format to include the Closing Time Customer Spotlight. You’ll hear directly from an Insightly CRM customer on how they are using the platform to achieve key metrics in their business. The inaugural episode of Closing Time Customer Spotlight features CEO Frank Gray III of NeuLine Health. Frank talks about how his company was using Insightly and then searching for a HIPAA-compliant platform to help with additional processes. During their discovery, they realized that they in fact did not need to add another platform; rather, they doubled down on their use of Insightly and customized their Insightly instances to meet the needs of their three healthcare businesses. Hear Frank’s story in episode 94 entitled How healthcare business, Neuline Health, uses a HIPAA-compliant CRM. Explore more episodes of Closing Time Customer Spotlights by visiting the Closing Time page. 

Time to hit the road

Grab one or more Closing Time six-packs and hit the road. Take your micro-learning with you on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Or watch on YouTube.

Effective lead management requires a strategic approach and a deep understanding of your target audience’s needs and preferences. It’s about more than just tracking contacts and interactions—it’s about guiding prospects through the buyer’s journey, from initial contact to final conversion. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of CRM and lead management, explore their importance, and provide actionable tips for effective CRM lead management.

What is a CRM?

Let’s start with the basics. A CRM is a powerful tool businesses use to manage relationships and interactions with customers and prospects. CRM software allows organizations to centralize and organize customer data, like contact information, communication and purchase history, miscellaneous preferences, and more. 

With a unified view of customer interactions across various touchpoints, CRMs enable businesses to understand their customers’ needs better, anticipate their preferences, and deliver personalized experiences. Consider your CRM a hub for managing customer relationships, facilitating communication, and driving sales growth. Whether you’re a small business owner looking to streamline your sales processes or an enterprise organization aiming to improve customer satisfaction, CRM software offers many benefits for businesses of all sizes.

What is Lead Management?

Lead management is a subset of CRM focusing on managing potential customers or “leads” throughout the sales process. It involves capturing leads, nurturing them through targeted communication and engagement, and ultimately converting them into paying customers. 

Lead management encompasses various activities, including lead generation, qualification, segmentation, nurturing, tracking, and analysis. Its primary goal is to maximize sales efficiency while improving conversion rates and enhancing customer relationships.

Lead management begins with lead generation, attracting prospective customers to your business through various marketing channels such as email campaigns, social media, content marketing, and advertising. Once leads are captured, they must be qualified to determine their level of interest and readiness to purchase. This involves evaluating demographics, firmographics, engagement level, and behavioral data to prioritize leads and focus efforts on those with the highest likelihood of conversion.

Segmentation is another crucial aspect of lead management, as it allows businesses to categorize leads based on common characteristics or behaviors. By segmenting leads into different groups, businesses can tailor their marketing messages and communication strategies better to speak directly to the needs of each segment. This personalized approach enhances engagement and increases the likelihood of conversion.

Nurturing leads is an ongoing process that involves building relationships with prospects through targeted communication and engagement. This may include sending personalized emails, providing valuable content, offering special promotions or discounts, and maintaining regular contact through various channels. Nurturing leads helps keep them engaged and interested in your products or services, gradually moving them through the sales funnel until they are ready to purchase.

Tracking and analyzing lead interactions are essential components of effective lead management. By monitoring lead behavior, tracking engagement metrics, and analyzing conversion data, businesses can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their lead management strategies. This allows them to identify areas for improvement, refine their tactics, and optimize their processes for better results.

Why is Lead Management Important?

Effective lead management is essential for businesses for several reasons:

• Maximizing Sales Efficiency Effective lead management enables businesses to prioritize and focus their efforts on leads with the highest potential for conversion. Businesses can streamline their sales processes by qualifying leads and nurturing them through the sales funnel.
• Improving Conversion Rates Lead management helps businesses engage with prospects meaningfully. Providing leads with the information and support they need to make informed purchasing decisions increases the likelihood of conversion. Businesses can drive higher conversion rates by nurturing leads through personalized communication and targeted marketing campaigns.
• Enhancing Customer Relationships Lead management is not just about closing sales but also about building and maintaining customer relationships. By providing value-added content, delivering exceptional customer service, and staying in touch with leads throughout their journey, businesses can foster trust and loyalty, turning leads into long-term customers and brand advocates.
• Gaining Competitive Advantage In today’s competitive marketplace, businesses that excel at lead management have a significant advantage. By delivering personalized experiences, responding promptly to inquiries, and staying top-of-mind with prospects, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors and position themselves as industry leaders.

Customization of Lead Management

Customization of a CRM system is incredibly important when setting up lead management processes. Every business is unique, with its own specific needs, workflows, and requirements. Therefore, being able to customize your CRM to align with your organization’s processes is crucial for ensuring optimal efficiency and effectiveness in managing leads.

Another benefit of customizing your CRM is the ability to create custom workflows to match your business’s specific lead management processes. This could include defining stages in the sales pipeline, setting up automation rules for lead routing and follow-up, and configuring alerts and notifications for important events.

As businesses grow and evolve, their lead management processes may change. Customization allows businesses to adapt their CRM system to accommodate new workflows, processes, and requirements as needed. This scalability and flexibility ensure that the CRM remains a valuable tool for managing leads effectively over time.

8 Tips for Effective CRM Lead Management

Now that you understand lead management better let’s dive into some actionable tips for CRM lead management. 

1. 1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile First and foremost, know and define your ideal customer profile clearly. By understanding your ideal customers, you can tailor your lead management efforts to attract and engage prospects who are most likely to convert. Create detailed customer profiles based on demographics, behavior, and preferences.
   2. Streamline Lead Capture Processes Streamlining lead capture processes ensures a steady influx of leads into your CRM system. Efficient lead capture is the foundation of successful lead management. You can utilize multiple lead capture channels, including web forms, email integrations, and social media. By leveraging these channels effectively, businesses can capture leads from various touchpoints and channels seamlessly. By centralizing lead capture within a CRM like Insightly, businesses can ensure that no potential opportunity slips through the cracks.
   3. Implement Lead Scoring and Qualification Not all leads are created equal, and prioritizing leads based on their likelihood to convert is essential for maximizing sales efficiency. Lead scoring and qualification help businesses prioritize leads based on their conversion likelihood. Assigning scores to leads based on criteria such as engagement level, demographics, and behavior allows businesses to focus their efforts on high-scoring leads to optimize their sales and marketing efforts and drive better results.
   4. Organize Leads with Tags and Custom Fields Organizing leads effectively is the first step for personalized communication strategies and targeted marketing efforts. Insightly allows users to categorize leads using tags and custom fields based on various criteria, such as industry, location, or lead source. This organizational structure makes segmenting leads and tailoring outreach strategies easy.
   5. Nurture Leads with Automated, Personalized Communication Nurturing leads through personalized communication is more important than ever when building relationships and guiding them through the sales funnel. Automation features like drip campaigns and personalized messaging enable businesses to deliver relevant content and messages to leads at the right time. By automating routine tasks, businesses can focus their efforts on high-value activities while ensuring that leads receive the attention they deserve.
   6. Track Lead Interactions Tracking lead interactions provides valuable insights into lead behavior and preferences. Insightly’s activity tracking feature allows users to monitor real-time lead interactions, including email opens, website visits, and social media engagement. By understanding how leads interact with their brand, businesses can craft their offers and messaging to better resonate with their audience.
   7. Collaborate Across Teams Effective lead management requires collaboration across sales, marketing, and customer service teams. By breaking down silos and fostering teamwork, businesses can ensure a unified approach to lead management. For example, aligning lead management with the sales process can ensure a smooth transition from prospect to customer.
   8. Analyze Data and Optimize Strategies Continuous analysis and optimization are key to improving lead management strategies over time. A CRM tool with robust reporting and analytics can provide valuable insights into lead performance, campaign effectiveness, and ROI. By analyzing these metrics and identifying areas for improvement, businesses can refine their lead management strategies and drive better results.

Effective CRM lead management is essential for improving customer relationships and gaining a competitive advantage in today’s business landscape. Businesses can maximize sales efficiency and improve conversion rates by effectively capturing, nurturing, and converting leads. With the right lead management processes in place, the full potential of your sales pipelines can be unlocked, leading to sustainable growth and success.

By following the tips outlined in this blog post and leveraging Insightly’s powerful capabilities, businesses can streamline lead management workflows, nurture leads effectively, and ultimately drive conversions and revenue growth. Ready to implement an effective CRM lead management strategy with Insightly? Watch a demo on demand or get a personalized Insightly demo today.

The big debates are usually Google workspace vs. Microsoft, and subsequently Slack vs. Teams. You can get a pretty lively discussion going quickly on those hot buttons alone.

You’ll also hear almost any professional is willing to share what CRM or customer relationship management software they are using, since the CRM is a must-have, and is typically the lifeblood of a business. (Although research shows that around 79% of people have some dissatisfaction with their CRM.) When you ask about CRM, you’ll hear a lot of differing perspectives based on the team of the person you are speaking with. 

CRM means different things to different roles, but with the right CRM (one that’s easy to customize), your CRM can look a lot different to each role, but still serve the entire company with efficiency and precision. 

Let’s explore the different roles in an organization and how CRM looks to each. We’ll start with the obvious ones – the go-to-market teams, and then move into others who you may not think can benefit from CRM, but surely can.

Sales teams and CRM

This one is easy, because sales teams are typically closest to the CRM. Every day, the sales team leaders rely heavily on the CRM system to streamline their processes, organize their workflow, and ultimately drive sales success. The CRM serves as the central hub for all customer-related information, acting as a repository for contact details, communication history, sales opportunities, and more.

To begin their day, sales representatives log into the CRM platform, where they can immediately access their task list and prioritize their activities. They start by reviewing any new leads or prospects that have been assigned to them, along with any ongoing opportunities they are currently managing. The CRM provides a comprehensive view of each customer’s journey, allowing salespeople to tailor their interactions based on past engagements and preferences.

As the day progresses, the CRM facilitates communication and collaboration within the sales team. Sales representatives can record notes from client meetings, log emails and phone calls, and schedule follow-up tasks directly within the CRM interface. This ensures that everyone on the team is kept up-to-date on the latest developments and can coordinate their efforts effectively.

Moreover, the CRM system serves as a powerful analytics tool, providing insights into sales performance and trends. Sales managers can generate reports to track key metrics such as conversion rates, pipeline health, and revenue projections. These analytics help identify areas for improvement and inform strategic decision-making, such as adjusting sales strategies or reallocating resources.

Overall, the CRM is an indispensable tool for the modern sales team, providing a centralized platform for managing customer interactions, fostering collaboration, and driving revenue growth. By harnessing the power of technology, sales professionals can work smarter, not harder, to achieve their goals and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Marketing teams and CRM

The marketing team relies on the CRM system as a cornerstone of their operations, leveraging its functionalities to measure effectiveness, analyze data, and see progress on revenue goals. While marketers may work more often in their marketing automation platform to execute day-to-day activities, they’ll use the CRM that integrates with their marketing platform to see how leads that are passed to sales are progressing through the pipeline. 

By harnessing the CRM’s comprehensive view of existing customer interactions and preferences, marketers can create highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns that will resonate with prospects. They can see how quickly leads from certain campaigns progress and then put more effort into those campaigns. They can also see which leads types stall and reconsider messaging to those audiences. 

Furthermore, the CRM provides valuable insights into customer lifetime value. By analyzing these metrics, marketers can double down on leads and profiles that not only become customers, but stay with the organization for long periods of time. Having a high customer lifetime value translates improves metrics on customer acquisition cost. This data-driven approach empowers marketers to make informed decisions and continuously improve their marketing efforts.

Customer success teams and CRM

The CRM system is an indispensable tool for the customer service team, serving as an important business information repository. The team members may spend their days in a customer service and ticketing tool, but it’s vital for that app to integrate with the CRM. Customer service representatives log into the CRM platform to access a wealth of customer data, including past interactions, purchase history, and preferences. This comprehensive view of each customer allows representatives to provide personalized support, anticipate needs, and resolve issues more effectively.

The CRM also plays a crucial role in managing customer relationships and fostering loyalty. By reading detailed notes and interactions within the CRM that the sales team provides during the sales process, representatives can better understand the customer journey, specific outcomes they may be seeking, and the very features that drove the customer to select your product or service. Additionally, the CRM’s analytics capabilities provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction levels, allowing the team to identify trends, pinpoint areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the overall customer experience.

Furthermore, the CRM serves as a central repository for customer feedback and sentiment analysis. Representatives can capture customer feedback directly within the CRM platform, whether through surveys, reviews, or social media interactions. This feedback is then analyzed to identify patterns, trends, and areas where the team can make improvements to better meet customer needs and expectations.

Product teams and CRM

While it may not seem obvious, effective use of the CRM is paramount for the product development team. Members of the product development team can log into the CRM platform to access a comprehensive repository of customer insights, feedback, and preferences. This invaluable data serves as a guiding compass for the team, allowing them to align product development efforts with customer needs and market demands.

The CRM facilitates seamless communication and collaboration among team members involved in product development and creates a reliable feedback loop. Product leaders can access customer feedback, track product implementation progress, and see pertinent information in real-time. This ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding project status, requirements, and objectives, fostering a cohesive and efficient workflow.

The CRM also plays a pivotal role in prioritizing product features and enhancements based on customer feedback and market trends. By analyzing data within the CRM, the product development team can identify patterns, pain points, and emerging opportunities, enabling them to make informed decisions about which features to prioritize in the development pipeline. This data-driven approach ensures that resources are allocated effectively and that the team is focused on delivering value to customers.

Furthermore, the CRM serves as a central repository for customer-centric innovation and ideation. Members of the product development team can capture ideas, suggestions, and feedback from customers directly within the CRM platform, ensuring that no valuable insights are overlooked. These insights then inform the ideation process, guiding the creation of new products and features that address genuine customer needs and pain points.

CEO + CRM

Has there ever been a CEO who feels they know too much about their business? Not likely! You will hear a CEO say they are pressed for time, which is why a great CRM system can be a lifesaver for this role.

A CRM system as a strategic tool to gain insights into the company’s overall performance, customer interactions, and market trends. Firstly, the CRM provides the CEO with a bird’s-eye view of the customer base, including key accounts, sales pipelines, and customer demographics. This allows the CEO to understand customer acquisition trends, retention rates, and overall customer satisfaction levels.

Additionally, the CRM serves as a central repository for critical business data, enabling the CEO to track key performance metrics, such as revenue growth, sales conversion rates, and customer lifetime value. By analyzing this data, the CEO can identify areas of strength and weakness within the organization, as well as opportunities for improvement and growth.

Furthermore, the CRM enables the CEO to monitor sales and marketing activities in real-time, providing visibility into ongoing campaigns, lead generation efforts, and customer engagement metrics. This real-time visibility allows the CEO to make informed decisions about resource allocation, marketing strategies, and sales initiatives, ensuring that the company remains agile and responsive to market dynamics.

Moreover, the CRM facilitates communication and collaboration across departments, allowing the CEO to stay informed about cross-functional initiatives, product development efforts, and customer service initiatives all in one place. By fostering collaboration and transparency, the CRM helps align the organization towards common goals and objectives, driving efficiency and effectiveness across the business.

Frank Gray III, CEO of NeuLine Health talks about how he uses Insightly CRM every day to keep tabs on three businesses he runs using the platform. Since Mr. Gray’s businesses are in the healthcare industry, HIPAA compliance was a key factor in choosing Insightly CRM. 

Operations teams and CRM

Operations teams are charged with streamlining internal processes, improving efficiency, and enhancing customer satisfaction. The CRM, therefore, is highly valuable to operations teams.

One of the primary ways operations teams use CRM is for monitoring customer communications to ensure that issues that are cross-departmental are elevated properly.

CRM systems often include features for task management and workflow automation, which operations teams leverage to streamline their daily tasks and to seek efficiencies across an organization. For example, operations managers can use the CRM to assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and track progress in real-time. Automation features can also be used to streamline repetitive processes, such as sending out automated emails or generating reports, freeing up time for operations teams to focus on higher-value activities.

CRM systems also play a crucial role in inventory management and order processing for operations teams. By integrating with inventory management systems and e-commerce platforms, the CRM allows operations teams to track inventory levels, manage orders, and process shipments more efficiently. This ensures that customers receive their orders accurately and on time, leading to improved satisfaction and loyalty.

Moreover, CRM systems provide operations teams with valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can inform decision-making and strategy development. By analyzing data within the CRM, operations teams can identify trends, anticipate demand, and make informed decisions about inventory levels, pricing, and product offerings.

Engineering teams and CRM

You may think that an engineering team is pretty far from a CRM, but that would be a mistake. 

Engineering teams can utilize a CRM system in several ways to enhance their workflow, collaborate effectively, and deliver high-quality products. One primary function is to gather feedback and requests directly from customers. By viewing logged customer inquiries, feature requests, and bug reports in the CRM, engineering teams can prioritize their development efforts based on customer needs and preferences.

CRM systems also serve as a centralized repository for customer data, enabling engineering teams to access relevant information about customer preferences, behavior, and interactions. This data can inform the design and development process, helping engineers create products that align with customer expectations and market demands.

Moreover, CRM systems often integrate with project management tools and version control systems, providing engineering teams with a seamless workflow for tracking tasks, managing deadlines, and collaborating on projects. Engineers can log their progress, update project statuses, and communicate with team members directly within the CRM platform, fostering collaboration and transparency.

Additionally, CRM systems can facilitate communication between engineering teams and other departments, such as sales, marketing, and customer support. For example, engineers can receive insights from sales teams about customer pain points or feature requests, allowing them to prioritize development efforts accordingly. Likewise, engineers can provide updates on product development progress to other departments, ensuring that everyone is aligned and informed.

Furthermore, CRM systems often include analytics and reporting capabilities, which engineering teams can use to track product performance, identify issues, and measure the impact of their work. By analyzing data within the CRM, engineers can gain insights into product usage, user engagement, and customer satisfaction, helping them make data-driven decisions to improve product quality and performance.

Insightly CRM: a powerful tool for all teams

The best CRMs serve all of these teams, but allow each team to have customized views of the information they require and is unique to their role. Insightly is an affordable, modern CRM that is easy to customize. Legacy CRMs (like Salesforce) have a high total cost of ownership because they are expensive to license and then even more expensive to customize and maintain. Learn how to switch from Salesforce and choose a modern, affordable and customizable CRM that all of your teams will love.

Customer experience (CX) and satisfaction are some of the driving forces behind modern business success. To meet customer-centric goals, new CRM tools with greater precision are being developed.

Every year, new trends come up in the CRM space. Keeping track of these trends will help you plan ahead, meet changing business needs, and gain a competitive edge.

So, here are the top CRM trends for 2024. Let’s explore each in some detail so you can be prepared as a CRM user to leverage the most recent technology in your day-to-day business operations.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Of course AI tops the list of 2024 CRM trends. All major platforms are releasing updates to show how CRM users can use AI to be more efficient. (Psst: Watch Insightly’s webinar on this topic and hear straight from the CEO on ways Insightly is adding AI to the platform.)

One thing that AI can do very well is understand plain English commands.  This is what is so appealing about AI in general, and particularly generative AI. As the phrase implies, generative AI can generate net new content from what it ‘learns’ from various sources. A great example of this in action is writing code. Code writing can be a tedious task that also requires a high level of skill, but with a plain English command, you can get AI to write code for you. In CRM, this can mean calculated fields or integrations become much more accessible and easy to create.

Another way that AI can show up in CRM is by helping to grade and score leads so that the highest quality leads are prioritized. By automatically synthesizing data from the lead like employee count, revenue level, geographical location, job level, role department, and more, AI can tell you what leads should command attention quickly. This might take a human time and therefore cause leads to sit which we all know isn’t ideal.

IoT technologies

IoT stands for “the internet of things” and is used to describe a network of physical objects that are tied to the internet through sensors, scanners, software, and other technologies.

One of the main purposes of connecting the physical and digital worlds is the exchange of information. There has been an upward tick of CRM integrations with IoT tech to make life a little easier.

Enriched IoT data

IoT technology helps to monitor and service clients in proactive ways. Data generated from these solutions is used to increase customer satisfaction and retention.

CRMs are integrating with compact resources that have flexible offline/online capabilities, such as:

• Wearable monitors
• GPS systems
• Cybersecurity scanners
• Smart appliances
• Energy meters
• And more…

These advanced solutions lead to greater visibility and cost efficiencies. The more mobile people become, the more IoT integrations we will see.

Workflow automation

Automation-enabled self-service is another emerging trend in 2024. The concept of self-help in the CRM world is catching on. Working smarter, not harder, happens with automation and CRMs offer many opportunities for workflow automation in businesses.

Automating processes can have huge benefits. It frees up your team from manually intensive work. It ensures things don’t get missed or forgotten due to human error. For example, when a new lead is entered into your system, a welcome email can be triggered to ensure that person feels valued and welcomed. Can you put a price tag on that customer experience?

Effective workflows can move prospects through sales and marketing pipelines quickly resulting in an increase in pipeline velocity.

This synergy has enabled chatbots to complete more contact management tasks without any human interference. They can quickly guide users through the right channels and provide actionable insights. Integrate that with a CRM, and you have an entire workflow that’s completely run by machine learning.

This extends to email communications as well, and once set up, these require little to no effort on the part of employees. Entire email campaigns can be automated to nurture sales prospects down the funnel. (If your CRM is on the same platform as your marketing automation application, this can be even more effective with drip campaigns, landing pages and forms all connecting with your CRM.

Workflow automation enables a business to offer high-quality customer service while optimizing operational costs. This is something that CRMs are supporting in new and innovative ways.

Flexible APIs

In CRM, APIs are the roadmap to customer intelligence. An API is what integrates platforms together. It is the glue that binds enterprise systems and helps to capture greater revenue growth.

Flexible APIs create a valuable record of customer preferences, while driving successful strategies. It’s one of the key technologies that enable cloud-based CRM applications to flex in response to sales and marketing needs. They’re fueling an unprecedented level of data-driven insights.

Additionally, CRMs with open API integration are enabling entirely new business models. As the development becomes increasingly customer-centric, APIs allow for greater versatility and  flexibility in designing custom:

• Workflows
• Graphical user interfaces (GUI)
• Screen designs
• Process steps

Over time, APIs will redefine the nature of how cloud-based CRMs operate. Today, nearly every CRM will offer API features (some more scalable and mature than others).

Cloud-based CRMs have enterprise-grade APIs that orchestrate a wide variety of databases. Cloud management is helping APIs become more customer-oriented by providing scalable integration frameworks and technologies. This allows for greater collaboration across departments, teams, divisions, and channels.

APIs are facilitating a new era of integrated CRM systems that are innovative and data-driven.

Dynamic user interface

One of the top CRM trends for 2024 also involves dynamic user interfaces. As CRMs evolve, the need to manage multiple functions in one spot becomes apparent. Rather than using separate systems for sales, marketing, service, and operations, new CRM dashboards are multifaceted.

A business can condense robust sales and marketing tech stacks into a single spot. Brands like Insightly provide several dashboards for universal insight. Toggle between opportunities, projects, and leads with a simple click. Colorful visuals that include charts, graphs, and gauges help a business assess important data at a glance.

Dynamic CRM dashboards display a quick overview of your most critical reports. It presents complex information that’s easy to digest and share with the team. As CRMs continue to evolve, the user interface will convey more and more data streams, in less amount of time.

Voice controls

As technology like Alexa and other voice-activated hardware become more and more common on households, business software will soon follow. Customers are getting comfortable with conversational AI and this means, CRMs are following suit.

According to a PWC report on voice technology, 90% of consumers who had heard of voice-enabled products and devices and 72% of those had used a voice assistant.

That means that conversational apps are critical for the evolution of CRM tools. Voice technology is a key factor for accessibility and helps to increase user engagement.

Voice-assisted virtual assistants within CRM infrastructures are helping salespeople track, manage, message, update, and notify teams about customer data in real-time. This leads to faster decision-making and a quicker close.

In the near future, you should expect to see an increase in the usage of voice assistants and supporting hardware in CRM processes and interfaces.

One last thought

Most trends in CRM are influenced by brands that can quickly pivot to meet evolving customer needs. In order to stay relevant to tech-savvy consumers, top CRMs need to offer tools with AI, advanced automation, IoT integrations, flexible APIs, a dynamic user interface, and voice technology.

Does that seem like a big ask? 

Not really. The truth is, most of this technology is currently in place. More intelligent and contextually-aware CRM applications already incorporate machine learning, AI, and business intelligence.

The companies that are getting ahead use CRMs to build lasting customer relationships, drive sales, measure performance, and contribute to business growth; all while keeping customer satisfaction at an all-time high.

According to a  study by SelectHub, “CRM will continue to outpace overall enterprise software growth, as the plethora of technologies and strategies they support directly contribute to revenue growth.”

This is because the technologies and strategies that CRM applications support contribute directly to new customer acquisition and retention, gross margin growth, and a healthy return on investment.

If you’re looking for a CRM that stays on top of trends, Insightly is a great place to start. Request a product demo, watch a demo on demand at your convenience, or jump right in with a free trial.

Even though the marketing career path isn’t a straight one, there are a few steps you can take to advance your career.

1. Decide if you are ready for your next position

It’s not always easy to know when you are ‘finished’ with a current role. Marketing jobs are dynamic, and you may never feel like you’ve completed everything on your long ‘to-do’ list. It’s rare to feel like you’ve done all that you can do in your current position, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not time to move on.

An easy way to tell if you’re ready for a new position is to pay attention to how you feel about your current work. Do you feel challenged or do you feel bored? Are you excited about or dreading upcoming projects? If your work is not energizing you like it used to, you’ve likely outgrown it.

Another way to know if you’re ready to advance in your career path is by reading your original job description. Are you still working on the same primary tasks and projects? Or, have you moved on to more advanced work? If your role has already moved beyond what it was, you are likely due for a new position.

2. Set intentional career goals

It’s tempting to obsess over advancing to a new title—a little signifier of success that you can show off on LinkedIn. Stop to consider what exactly this advancement would mean. Have you mastered everything in your current role? Would a new title provide new opportunities? How would you use those opportunities to grow?

Make a list of your career goals outside of a certain job title or salary bracket. These goals shouldn’t be beholden to marketing career path titles, salaries and structures. Often, these are arbitrary and differ from company to company.

Here are questions to ask when thinking about your next marketing career goals.

Do I want to:

• Pursue a marketing specialty? (more on this below)
• Work in a certain industry?
• Be part of a large or a small team?
• Be on a founding team?
• Manage a large or small budget?
• Work with people I can learn from? If so, in what areas?
• Work remotely?

Not every position will meet all your goals. But it’s still helpful to have this list when you’re considering opportunities and planning career moves.

3. Determine an internal or external move

Oftentimes, this decision is made for you. Is there an open position at your company, or does your company have a dedicated career advancement path? In that case, pursuing your next move at your current company is often your best option. You get the benefit of learning and growing without the learning curve of a new industry, new co-workers, and a new office (or Zoom meeting code).

But, you may decide that you’re ready to move to another company. Or, as is often the case, your company may not have a clear next step for you. This is typical at startup companies or companies with small marketing teams. So you may have only one choice: spend more time in your current position or leave to pursue something new.

How do you know if you’re ready to move to a new company?

Learn a new skill

If you enter a team as a content writer, you may want to branch out into more of an SEO management role. You’ll explore SEO tools and strategies in this type of position. Or, if you start as an email marketing specialist, perhaps marketing operations will have some appeal to you. You’ll operate a marketing automation platform and likely work with the sales ops team running the company’s CRM. If your current team doesn’t have these types of roles, or does not support this type of growth, it may be time to move on.

Try a new industry

One reason why marketing is a great career is because you not only learn a lot about the marketing world, but you also learn so much about every industry that your business is in. If you’ve spent a few years marketing to healthcare, for example, you might want to try your hand at marketing to software developers. If you’ve spent your career in B2B, you may also want to try B2C, or vice versa.

Different industries prioritize different types of marketing, so you may be on a team that runs a go-to-market motion that is partner-led and therefore has a channel marketing function, while  another company may have an event-led go-to-market strategy where a full events team is employed.

Meet new people

We learn so much from every co-worker and manager. Advancing your career can sometimes mean shaking up your work environment. When you move to a new company, you can guarantee that you’ll grow by learning how to work with new and different people. This is especially true if you go to a larger marketing team that may have specialized sub teams for digital marketing, events, marketing operations, content, social media, and more. 

4. Understand your next step

Especially in the startup world, hiring for marketing can be fragmented. Some companies have a CMO or a VP of Marketing as one of their first five hires. Some companies wait until they have an entire sales division before they hire a marketer.

The typical marketing job titles hierarchy at a tech or software startup might look something like this:

Senior Team (VP or Senior VP)
Titles: Chief Marketing Officer/Vice President of Marketing
Depending on company size, they may have VPs of specific channels (demand generation, product marketing, creative), and they set the marketing strategies while keeping abreast of trends in the marketing industry.

Mid-Senior Level Team (Director or Senior Director)
Titles: Director of Marketing, Director of Marketing Operations, Product Marketing Director, Social Media Director, Digital Marketing Director
Directors typically report to VPs, and often manage entire divisions or teams. They are responsible for the day-to-day operations including project management. 

Mid-Senior Team (Manager or Senior Manger)
Titles: Marketing Manager, Social Media Manager, Digital Marketing Manager, Events Manager
Managers typically specialize and are the day-to-day executors of what need to get done. Sometimes they will manage one person or have a small team.

Junior Team (Analysts, Coordinators, Specialists, Assistants, Associates)
Events Coordinator, Marketing Research Analyst, Marketing Analyst, Marketing Assistant, Marketing Associate, Marketing Coordinator, Public Relations Associate
There are entry-level marketers who play a support role in achieving the greater marketing goals.

Though it may seem like the hierarchy is well-established, it can vary. Each company is on its own marketing journey and a company’s priorities will match it. For example, if your company sells via affiliates or channels, there may be an entire marketing team to support the affiliate/channel motion. They will make different hires at different times. Responsibilities and seniority can fluctuate from one company to another.

Because of this, your next title may be lateral, or sometimes a step back. In this case, it’s important to return to your career path intentions. If the position allows you to grow, it is a step forward regardless of the title.

Salary grade is often tied to job title. This also varies depending on exact job responsibilities, industry and geographic location.

Based on US national averages data from May 2024, GlassDoor reports that average marketing salaries can range from around $80,000 to $149,000 with an estimated total pay of $106,262 per year. Salary ranges vary based on industry, location, experience level, education, and other factors.

According to Indeed.com, the average raise for performance-based promotion is between 3-5 percent. So, if you’re a junior-level marketer making $56,999 and get promoted to a marketing manager role, it’s unlikely you’ll make that big jump to six figures. This is a crucial decision when deciding whether to take a promotion at your current company, or fill a role at a new company.

5. Consider generalized and specific marketing paths

To start, most marketers will have a degree in marketing or related field and will start with entry-level marketing roles. Marketers love to say that they wear many hats. One day they might be a designer, one day a journalist, and one day an analyst. When companies smaller and they are beginning to invest in marketing, they are often looking for the type of marketer that can do it all, or a generalist.

Yet, at some point, too many generalists feels like too many cooks. When they start to grow, companies see the value of having a dedicated graphic designer, a content marketer or content manager, a marketing analyst, a campaign manager, and/or social media manager, to name a few.

A full-stack marketing team might consist of 10+ specialists with concentrated experience. Marketing specialties include digital marketing, content, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click management, graphic design, public relations, brand management, product marketing, analytics, campaign management, email marketing, marketing operations/marketing automation, events, customer engagement programs, and sales enablement. In some industries, there may be even more.

Most marketers spend some time as a generalist, and some time as a specialist. For instance, they can specialize in social media marketing or search engine marketing. You’ll also typically have content marketers. Often, generalist skills apply if you’re managing a team or heading up a department. Otherwise, special skills can take marketers far into a successful career in any marketing field.

If you’ve spent some time as a generalist, consider a role that will allow you to focus on a specialty. If you’ve been in a specialty for a long time, consider expanding your skill set by spending some time as a generalist. This will provide you with an opportunity to grow and become a more well-rounded marketer.

6. Decide on whether you want to work at an agency or in-house

Marketers typically work in one of two environments. Agency marketers are contracted consultants who work with different clients to achieve specific goals. In-house marketers are hired by a company to run marketing programs full-time.

Agency marketers and in-house marketers often call upon the same marketing management knowledge. Yet, each environment requires different soft skills to succeed.

If you work in an agency, you’ll find yourself interfacing with clients. You’ll become a pro at communicating your process and results. Oftentimes, these jobs are less flexible because you’re working on your client’s schedule. Ensuring client happiness is just as important as marketing your product.

You’ll also need the ability to switch gears often as you’ll likely work on more than one account at a time. You can often feel like you have a different job every day of the week – a quality that some love and others do not.

If you’re a marketer working in-house, you have more flexibility. You have the ability to work on your own schedule to make sure your goals are met. You have the luxury of long-term thinking and making investments for the company’s future. Yet, in-house marketing also requires interfacing with your company’s senior leadership. It’s important to effectively communicate how your programs impact the bottom line.

One strategy is to try working for an agency so you can sample a few industries and expand your network; then, move in-house with the industry that appealed to you the most in your agency life. Most marketers have a personality for either agency or in-house. It’s worth it to try both and see which is a better fit for you.

7. Identify your gaps in knowledge or experience

How do you know if you’re a good fit for a new job? Review listed job descriptions on Indeed.com and LinkedIn. If you notice a certain skill or experience that you lack, note it.

Some missing skills are deal-breakers. If you’ve never run a marketing campaign, you may not get a job as a marketing campaign manager.

But, many listed skills are nice-to-have. Depending on the company, they may be willing to teach and train you on some of the less-crucial items. This is especially true for junior-level positions.

To learn more about which skills are deal-breakers and which skills are nice-to-have, consider interviewing some people who are in similar roles. You can learn a lot from speaking to other people about their journey and the skills that they have found most crucial to do their jobs well.

Regardless of the role you are applying to, an understanding of the data that drives team decisions is essential. Marketing is responsible for meeting their numbers and each sub-team has their contributions. You should be able to articulate the impact your work has on the bottom line in your current role, and what results you’ll be responsible for in your new role.

Skill gaps are typical; no marketer can do it all, but every marketer should understand the numbers.

8. Consider options for filling a skills gap

If you’ve noticed that one of your skill gaps is something that you want to fill, you have a few options.

Do a project

Let’s say your company has never had an event marketing presence, but you’re looking at jobs that require at least two years of event marketing management. How can you simulate the lessons that other marketers would have learned over two years?

Consider an independent project that allows you to test this skill. Design an event plan that you can execute from beginning to end. Take on all responsibilities that an events manager would. This includes planning, budgeting, travel, copywriting, design, scheduling, engagement, and measurement.

Doing an independent project has a slew of benefits. You’ll learn the ins and outs of the skill you’re trying to master. You’ll show a level of initiative and an ability to learn on your feet, which are great skills for marketers to have. Additionally, you may be able to show your passion for something you’re interested in outside of work. This can give the company a little insight into your personality and passions.

Take a class

For some skills, you may need more of a broad understanding rather than a specific experience. Let’s say you’re applying for a product marketing job that works with a product management team. The job may require some experience working with a product management team. This would be challenging to simulate with a project.

Consider taking a course in product management. Sites like Coursera, edX, LinkedIn Learning, and a number of universities offer free courses at varying levels. These courses will give you exposure to the basics of product management. They may give you the opportunity to test some basic product management skills. Though this does not represent a replacement of the work experience, it will give you a foundational knowledge. It also shows an initiative for learning another part of the business.

Earning course completion certificates and updating your LinkedIn profile with them is a great way to show potential employers that you are willing to learn.

9. Use your network and build a new one

The marketing career path isn’t always a straight line, and neither is the marketing job application process. It’s rare to get a job going through the typical pipeline of sending a resume, getting an interview, and then getting a yes-or-no to the job. Because marketers are usually so embedded in their industry, there is an element of ‘who you know.’

Focus on connecting with other marketers. With the advent of remote work, we are lucky that many marketing networking groups have moved online to Slack, LinkedIn, or even the niche communities listed below. This makes the process of networking a little less time-consuming and a lot less awkward.

Here are a few networking groups to meet others in the industry:

BigSEO – for search engine optimization

MKTG WMN – for women in marketing

Online Geniuses – for tech marketing

Product Marketing Alliance – for product marketing

Vidico – for video marketing

Content Marketing Institute – for content writers and managers

Marketing Profs< – B2B marketing education community

Join your college/university alumni networks and regional groups. Find mentors you can learn from, who can also help you make career decisions and introduce you to people in their networks.

10. Gather as much info as you can

You can be the greatest marketer in the world, but if you don’t know anything about the product that you are marketing, you’re in big trouble. It’s even worse if you don’t know the industry or how your product fits into the market. Marketers need to invest time into learning about industries, products, and customers.

Before pursuing a job at a certain company, reach out to some people that already work there. They can be part of marketing management, but you can learn a lot by talking to sales, engineering, or product teams as well. These conversations are easier than ever with the wide adoption of Zoom. Your contact can give you insight into how the company operates. They can also give insider information before you enter a formal interview process.

Watch their marketing webinars on-demand to see what content is being disseminated. Follow the company on social media – both the corporate account and those of the leadership team. Check out their latest press releases to see what’s top of mind for the organization. This information will prepare you to have productive talks during the interview cycle.

11. Continue contributing to your current position

There’s the old adage that  “it’s easier to find a job when you have a job.”

Finding a new full-time marketing job can feel like a full-time job of its own. Having networking conversations, doing research, scheduling interviews and doing sample projects are challenging and exhausting. Doing all this while you’re still committed to another job will make this a challenging time.

Do your best to continue to be a responsible contributor to your team. You’ll spend evenings and weekends making up time and/or job hunting. Expect to feel a bit burned out during the process – that’s normal. You’ll feel a rush of excitement when it’s time to start at your new gig.

12. Try something outside of the traditional career path

Some marketers will inevitably go from a coordinator to manager to director, and ultimately to a VP or CMO role. The linear career path always seems like the best way to advance through an organization and career. You learn a little more each year, keep getting promoted, and grow confidence in your work.

Some careers take twists and turns. This can lead you to learn more about yourself, your interests, and what you want your journey to look like. As you meet more and more marketers, you’ll learn that the straight-and-narrow progression isn’t for everyone.

Some of the strongest marketers have spent time outside of marketing. They come from a finance or creative writing background. They’ve taken hiatuses to work in sales, product, customer success, or even outside of corporate business altogether. By incorporating these experiences into their work, they were able to develop more nuanced perspectives on marketing. As sales and marketing continue to align, we are certain to see more overlap between the sales and marketing career paths.

If you’re feeling like your career has stagnated, it may be worth taking a leap into a different kind of role. It doesn’t mean the end of your career as a marketer. Instead, it might make you a better marketer and provide you with more diverse experiences and opportunities to meet people and discover new interests

13. Make the move when it feels right

There’s no need to keep to a certain schedule of promotions, advancements, and raises. For one person, a single position could be dynamic and challenging enough to keep them interested for many years. For others, a few months in a position may be enough to know it is not the right fit.

Don’t succumb to an invisible competition with your peers in marketing for the ‘best’ title or the most money. In the face of this pressure, it is crucial to remember everyone is on their own journey. All companies are different and all jobs are different. The best way to be sure that I’m growing is by returning and reflecting on my own career goals.

Conclusion

Pursuing a marketing career is a rewarding and challenging journey. As you chart your marketing adventure, consider both following the established trails and finding a way to forge your own path.

What is the Insightly Partner Program?

The Insightly Partner Program is a community of businesses that offer CRM implementation and management services, marketing automation implementation and management services, and more to businesses of all sizes in all types of industries.

The types of businesses that may be Insightly Partners include:

• CRM consultants
• Digital marketing agencies
• Training and enablement consultants
• System integrators
• IT consultants
• Value added resellers

Why would a business work with an Insightly partner?

If your organization is ready to maximize the power of Insightly CRM but is lacking the people, bandwidth and skills necessary to effectively manage a CRM platform, an Insightly partner might be ideal. It is pretty common for a business to outsource this type of work so the business and its best people can continue working in their roles to build and grow. This is why Insightly created the partner program: to provide a network of trusted resources for businesses like yours. 

While the program has existed informally for years with businesses offering services, Insightly officially launched its Partner Program in the fall of 2023. Out of the gate, the number of partners has exceeded expectations and the community has grown rapidly. 

How do firms and agencies benefit from a CRM partner program?

Creating long-term, sticky relationships is the key to success for integration firms, marketing agencies, IT services providers and the like. Retainer-based relationships are ideal in that it allows businesses to plan and budget for staffing needs over time. Being an Insightly partner allows you to operate the platform that is central to your clients – their CRM. They’ll rely on your business year in and year out to sustain their operation, putting you in a position to cultivate long-term client relationships. 

Providing services to operate a marketing automation platform for your clients is similar in that it is a vital tool for the growth and long-term success of your clients. 

How do Insightly partners help their clients?

Insightly partners provide services to businesses of all sizes and in all types of industries. These services can include:

Insightly CRM support – A partner can help your organization onboard with Insightly CRM, teach your team about the tool, and walk each team member through the CRM step-by-step. A partner agency will help optimize your CRM, assess the customizations you will need to create them, and also assess and set up integrations. A CRM is a powerful tool, and it can take some time to master. Your partner is your first call when you have issues or problems with the system that require a helping hand.

Insightly Marketing support – Using a marketing automation platform multiplies your marketing efforts. With automations for lead nurtures, forms, landing pages, and more, your marketing efforts are ‘always on’ and always working to warm up leads for your sales team. An Insightly partner can help set up onboard and implement Insightly Marketing, and may offer services to provide content, creative, and operations services to maximize your investment. 

Should you work with an Insightly partner?

A frequently asked question is about whether or not a business should work directly with Insightly, or start a relationship with an Insightly partner. The question is a matter of personal choice for every business. A partner is typically an agency, services firm, consulting firm, integration firm, or IT firm. If your business is working with a firm like this, they will typically be providing you with multiple services and therefore having them run your Insightly CRM and/or Insightly Marketing Automation instance would be a natural extension of their services. It would be seen as a convenience to have these services bundled for you. 

Additionally, if your business doesn’t have any technical resources on board, it may be much more cost effective to have an Insightly partner run your CRM. The alternative is having to hire, train and maintain someone in that type of role on your own payroll. 

Another use case is to have one person on your team in a technical role, and to use the relationship you have with an Insightly partner as that person’s back-up, sounding board and helper in times of need. 

How can I find and select an Insightly partner?

Just like when you are hiring a new team member, finding the right person or group of people to be your Insightly partner is vital. The Insightly partner you pick could seem like an ideal fit on paper, but a full interview process is important. These are people you will work with on a daily basis. They will be close to all your data and your employees. You’ll work side by side on countless projects. In short, you are looking for someone or a group that is a good cultural fit with your business.

Your Insightly partner is a group that you will build with and should feel like an extension of your in-house team. In short order, they should understand your business, your operations, your leads /prospects /customers, and the challenges your business faces.  An alignment on core values is ideal, and a genuine good rapport will go a long way. 

One question we often field is about geography: Should your chosen Insightly partner be geographically nearby? This often depends on your business. If your workforce is distributed and your team is used to using remote-enablement tools for communication (e.g. Zoom, Slack, Teams) you’ll likely find that the location of your partner is irrelevant. (That said, being within a few time zones can be convenient.) If your employees are in-person each day in a single location, face-to-face culture may dominate in your organization. As such, you might want to find a partner that can be in person frequently. 

Contact Insightly to discuss the best partner for your business needs.

How do I become an Insightly Partner?

The first step to becoming an Insightly Partner is to be an Insightly customer. You and your team should be expert users of all apps in the platform for which you would like to provide services. Further you should understand the value each supported app in the platform provides to businesses and the end-users. From there, the application process starts with a visit to the Insightly Partner Program information page; for ease of use by potential partners, the application process is managed via PartnerStack. 

Where can I get more information about the Insightly Partner Program?

You can find out more details about the program on the Insightly Partner Program information page. For ease of use by potential partners, the application process is managed via PartnerStack.