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Why would a person purchase a full CRM system rather than go with an email tool like Constant Contact? What I mean is, what are the main differences between the two?
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3 Answers
CRM incorporates three basic pillars - sales, marketing and service - and integrates them so that, when things are working well, data from each of the pillars can inform the others. In other words, it helps as leads come in through marketing, are passed and acted on through sales, then as those leads turn into customers service supports them, and marketing works to make them more loyal, etc. You're never done with CRM.
Constant Contact falls into the email campaign part of the marketing automation spectrum, There are a lot of GREAT marketing automation tools out there which support or even supplant the marketing components of CRM applications, and they wisely integrate well with most CRM systems. That said, without the nucleus of CRM at the center of your organization, you're going to have to develop work-arounds to move the data collected through the email marketing system to all the right places - sales, lead nurturing programs, loyalty management, etc. It certainly can help address a pain point for sales in pure lead generation, but used by itself long enough it's likely to point out other areas where your entire organization can utilize the lead data it generates more efficiently.
Chris has hit on many of the key points in his reply. Answering as a co-founder of an onilne CRM solution (AppShore) I can add a little more color based on small business customer feedback. Specifically, many CRM solutions, like ours, have built-in email campaign management tools, but they tend to be more simplistic in nature than products built for a single purpose like Constant Contact. For example, Constant Contact and other products like them provide detailed reports on the open rate, click through rate, and bounce rate. They provide pre-formatted templates, automated subscribe and un-subscribe features, and autoresponders for initiating instant replies to recipients. These are all very important features for any one who is managing large lists of email addresses and especially those who are interested in measuring the success rate, and therefore the efficacy of their email marketing spend. However, for most small business customers a an email management built-in to the CRM is sufficient. And for those who do need more functionality, they often use a CRM solution in conjunction with an email marketing tool and feed the leads generated by email in to the CRM product. The point is, the two are not mutually exclusive. CRM is built for the kind of things Chris describes above and email management tools for something completely different, although equally important to many.
When you're looking at a niche solution ask yourself a few questions like:
Am I going to need to integration with other applications like accounting or ERP?
Do I want to administer the application on my own, or have someone do it for me?
Do I want to host the application or have someone do it for me?
Do I need reporting capabilities and if yes, can I create the reports on my own?
The difference between the two is the options you have to control/administer/report/integrate....
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