Lead Management Systems: ERP, CRM or Marketing Automation?

There are several lead management systems, some simpler and others more complex and complete, but undoubtedly a company that doesn’t have some kind of tool to capture, manage and cultivate leads will have significant difficulties, especially if working with internet sales.

In summary, we can say that the generation of leads is the process of attracting consumers and the collection of registration data, such as addresses, emails, names and phone numbers, so that you can contact them.

Of course, without the use of technology and lead management systems, this process becomes costly and inefficient.

Fortunately, these days, there is a wide range of lead management tools, each suitable for all types and sizes of businesses, big and small.

See also: What are some of the challenges faced by small businesses?

What to Expect from Lead Management Systems

ERP – Lead Management Systems

ERP systems, which seek to integrate all of the company’s software and applications into a single database, can either integrate their lead management systems with ERP or have their own lead management module.

This is the case, for example, of SAP CRM which has lead and contact management, sales visit planning, sales intelligence and other features. Another product of the company is the SAP Marketing Cloud, a solution focused more on digital marketing. The two can work in a complementary way.

There is also the reverse approach in which you acquire a complete lead management system that includes BI, digital marketing, e-commerce platforms, email marketing tools, content marketing, inbound, marketing automation, sales force management, CRM and more.

This is the case with Salesforce, a very complete and comprehensive system.

CRM – Lead Management Systems

In this case, tools include sales force management, performance metrics tracking, and a sales funnel, allowing you to also qualify leads at multiple points of contact with the help of reports and filters.

But CRM tools don’t always rely on trigger modules for email, marketing automation and other digital marketing activities.

Some examples of this type of CRM tool are Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Sugar CRM, Agendor and Plug CRM.

Marketing Automation Tools – Lead Management Systems

Marketing automation systems are more specific tools for generating leads through digital marketing.

They’re great for lead nutrition, blog management and social media publishing, landing page creation, data capture on lead generation forms, and other features, but they don’t always have well-developed BI functionalities developed.

Some examples of lead management systems of this type are Hubspot, Kissmetrics and the Brazilian LAHAR and RD Station.

To learn more about this type of tool, we talked with Rodrigo Tucunduva, co-founder of LAHAR.

Interview with Rodrigo Tucunduva, Entrepreneur

One of his first observations was to list what features customers wanted in lead management systems focused on marketing automation, noting that their goal goes far beyond doing digital marketing, see:

• Generate Qualified Leads
• Sell to these Leads
• Customer loyalty
• Increase Productivity
• Become an Internet Reference
• Measure and Display Results

The perception that digital transformation is under way and that only companies concerned about accelerating productivity will have a place in an increasingly competitive market has already become a unanimity among entrepreneurs.

Tucunduva comments on the work of these users before using a marketing automation tool:

“Many of them did not have lead capturing in their companies and, if they did, it was not organized or segmented. Some even generated leads, but they didn’t have an adequate, automated relationship with those leads. With software specially designed for it, that scenario has changed.”

Tucunduva divides the companies that make use of marketing automation into 3 types:

1- Small entrepreneur
They are professionals who don’t have as much knowledge in digital marketing and still consider the generation of traffic and leads for their   business a challenge.

“This profile typically needs more conversion and relationship-related functionalities such as landing pages, form integration, and email marketing relationship.”

2- Medium-sized companies
These are organizations that already have a certain maturity in digital marketing and often a structured marketing area with trained professionals.

“This client profile already has a clear view of how to use marketing automation to gain productivity, scale and intelligence in its marketing and sales processes, since it has already passed the basic stage and has advanced needs” – suggests Tucunduva.

3- Agencies
Finally, Tucunduva speaks about companies, such as publicity and advertising agencies, that use lead management systems to provide services to other companies:

“This profile usually already knows the solutions of the market well and knows how to generate value with lead management systems and software.”

They are the ones who can spread this culture in the market, “teaching”, especially small entrepreneurs, about the importance of using lead management systems to achieve results.

Regardless of which lead management systems or software you choose for your business, the most important thing is to understand what advantages they can bring to your company, such as capturing, qualifying and targeting leads, and delivering to the sales team more promising contacts that become customers, as well as intelligence insights to work on building customer loyalty.

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