8 Powerful and Free CRM Integrations to Boost Your Work
Long gone are the times when businesses saw the phone as an exciting tool to sell their products.
As sales, marketing, and customer service techniques evolved along with technology, people started to wonder about the best ways to collect, sort, and store huge amounts of customer data.
Soon enough, modern customer relationship management platforms were born.
Nowadays, companies that mean business use CRM tools to collect and sort data. At the same time, new challenges began to emerge.
The problems have shifted to the integration of CRMs with other parts of the business, so these can receive and send data from and to various channels, including:
Email marketing tools
Calendars
Ecommerce platforms
Cloud calling tools
Social media networks
Contract and proposals management tools
Team communication apps
More often than not, this happens when you wish the CRM to act as a single source of truth.
In other words, a CRM is capable of aggregating all relevant data in one place and providing an overview that reflects the customer.
This leads to improved efficiency, better reporting, wiser decisions, and above all, better customer experiences.
So, what are the options when it comes to CRM integrations? There are several ways to address them, and these are:
Code
Application programming interfaces (APIs)
Native integrations, where available
Third-party integrations (Make)
So, let’s talk about code.
Just kidding! As a no-code platform, we don’t want to go there (and neither do most marketing and sales managers).
The same applies to custom API integrations, as they both require a person with a programming background to be deployed.
Native integrations can be convenient enough to connect your software tools to your CRM.
On the other hand, not every native integration is good enough. Some are poorly developed, and it doesn’t take more than a quick skim through review sites to know what to expect.
Plus, native integrations won’t solve all your integration needs at once.
This “integration gap” is often solved by utilizing third-party services like Make, which allow you to connect hundreds of services and work with data in more ways than most can imagine.
Taking this into consideration, let’s take a closer look at CRM integrations you can easily create, deploy, and modify with Make.
1. Import Facebook leads to Pipedrive CRM
Facebook Lead Ads forms allow marketers to target and get relevant leads based on multiple demographics. At the same time, they allow customers to easily submit a form pre-filled with data pulled from their profiles. So far, so good.
Now for the tricky part, leads are no good if they can’t find their way into your CRM, leaving sales and marketing champions orphaned.
Who is going to do the import? If you are a salesperson, you want to spend time pitching and closing. If you are a marketer, you want to work on exciting campaigns instead of spending hours moving data around.
To solve this, Make is the answer.
The template below will automatically create a contact in Pipedrive once a Facebook Lead Ads form is submitted. A deal is created as a bonus, and no native integration is going to give you that.
2. Send the right email sequences to your CRM contacts at the right time
Email campaigns are a strong foundation for countless marketing strategies.
What’s even better, it’s a channel you own. That means it’s you who gets to decide who to reach out to, how to, and when.
However, the problem remains the same: Email marketing requires moving data around. Lots of it. And if you are not feeling like doing that, you can always rely on our templates to add your new Insightly leads to Constant Contact. It’s that simple.
3. Prevent poor team communications from coming in the way of business opportunities
“Did you take care of that deal?”
“Uhm, no… I thought YOU did.”
Sounds familiar?
It’s not unusual to miss an important piece of information in the stream of data that flows across a business. It can also prove costly since you’re losing a potential customer and thus potential revenue.
There’s still hope though.
You can set up a workflow to get notified of the most relevant events in your CRM system, like a new opportunity in Salesforce.
Using the template below, a Slack message is sent to a channel and a task is created in ClickUp when these opportunities appear on Salesforce.
This way, everyone in the team will be aware of who has been assigned to the opportunity, and you’ll see it every time you look at your project management dashboard.
4. Understand customer needs and worries without leaving your CRM
Modern businesses recognize the value and importance of customer support teams.
Their work contributes to making customers stay loyal to the company, sharing positive reviews, and ultimately spreading the word about your business.
It’s also vital for sales and marketing to know how customer support is interacting with customers and what issues they are facing.
Simply put, the more they know about the customer before the interaction, the better. This allows marketers and sales representatives to add a personal touch, ask the right questions, and create smarter campaigns.
And proper integrations are your friend when it comes to achieving this. The template below will help you log new Zendesk tickets to your leads in noCRM. It’s an easy way to get the relevant information where it matters the most, and without lifting a finger.
5. Store ecommerce customers in your CRM and thank them for doing business with you
When talking about gathering information about customers from various channels to one place, ecommerce can’t be left out.
For all those who are dealing with customer requests it’s essential to know the following:
Billing and shipping address, email address, phone number
Order history and details
Delivery history
Issued invoices, credit notes
By implementing two fairly simple Make templates, you will be able to get the data and improve customer experience all at once.
The first template will create a new customer and a deal in Zoho CRM from a new Squarespace order, and follow up with a big nice "thank you" email.
The second template will upload new invoices to Zoho and associate them with the right contacts.
No more back and forth between your accounting and CRM software, no more missing documents. Your colleagues will thank you, trust us.
6. Speed up the sending of contracts
E-signature platforms are more prominent than ever, and for a good reason.
Electronic signatures are a fast and convenient way to create and send legally binding documents.
They significantly reduce the time needed for postal delivery of the document, or for setting up a meeting with multiple parties.
There are several ways to leverage your CRM to make this process even more effective. Too good to be true?
Companies are usually sending one certain type of document, or a template. The only thing that changes is the name of the customer, their email address, and all that personal stuff.
Thus, it makes sense to pull that information directly from the CRM and send the document automatically when a deal is won. On autopilot, without your intervention.
What’s better, it’s not a fictional setup - and we have a template to prove it!
7. Get insights about customers when the phone is ringing
In order to have a meaningful conversation with a customer, you need to know who you are talking to.
Imagine picking up a call and won’t be able to tell if the person on the other side is a valuable long-term customer or a mildly interesting prospect.
You don’t know if they previously purchased your product or service, and your hands are sweating as you type their name in the CRM in a desperate attempt to find out more.
Fortunately, there’s a solution. Using the template below, you can connect the phone system app Aircall to Capsule CRM and get the information you need instantly and right below the phone number.
No more unpleasant surprises!
8. Reward customer anniversaries
CRMs can go beyond collecting data. The key to getting all the power is learning how to use the data to benefit customers (and your business).
We can’t stress this enough, but personalization is one of the most fundamental rules to follow when running a business.
It’s not only that customers are more likely to buy from you if the experience is personalized; they are outright frustrated if it isn’t.
No one wants that. You want to offer relevant products, send tailored suggestions via email, or create ads that convert.
In this line, you can also consider “customer anniversary” promos.
We created a template that sends a WooCommerce coupon to your HubSpot CRM contacts a year after you first approached them.
You can easily customize it by sending a coupon a year after the first purchase, conversion, marketing email, or last activity; that’s up to you and your CRM tracking capabilities.
Two things will remain true: Customers like discounts and love to be treated as individuals.
You really can’t go wrong with this one.
Conclusion
We hope that the templates and ideas below inspire you to get the most out of your CRM.
Everyone’s a winner here: Your company, team members, and most importantly, your customers.
Let’s do a quick recap of what you’re getting with CRM integrations:
Happier customers
A single centralized data source
Greater efficiency and team collaboration
Better leads and a boost in sales
To conclude, a word of caution: Do not over-rely on CRMs.
Automation and integrations are great, but customers are sensitive and may notice a lack of human components when it’s missing.
Make sure your data is correct and your campaigns are thoroughly crafted. Also, do not forget to properly train everyone in the company that needs to work with the CRM.
Happy automating!
