Find new customers, and build stronger relationships with existing ones with Vtiger’s New Social Module

It’s safe to say that social media has transformed how buyers make purchasing decisions. More than a decade ago, well before the advent of social media, product research and validation took place predominantly via direct exposure, word of mouth discussion and referrals. The emergence of social media, however, resulted in a paradigm shift that provided shoppers with access to a wealth of supposedly honest information about a company or product. This culminated in the shift in purchasing behavior, which is well summarized by a point made in one Hubspot report – for sites that participated in its survey, visitors were 71% more likely to make a purchase if they were referred by social media.

That shift, has evidently been recognized by marketers, and is now being capitalized on. A separate report by Bufferapp reveals that 93% of surveyed marketers stated that they use social media to reach new and existing customers. In response to the demand for tools to manage a company’s social presence, various social media management tools like HootSuite, Sprout Social, Buffer and others have emerged to help marketers manage content flow and analysis. These isolated tools, however, often lack the ability to track long-term individual relationships that emerge from social engagements, let alone the social histories and engagements of an organization’s existing and new customers.

Today, social conversations are an important part of a prospect or customer’s journey. A customer’s tweet for advice about a competitor product might be critical information to an account manager responsible for his account, but that account manager might never know about that tweet without it appearing in a system that he or she already uses. Given that a CRM is already a reservoir of customer data that holds every email, call, note, deal and purchase, and is used by your customer-facing teams to make decisions every day that drive marketing, sales, and great customer service. Hence, ensuring that social conversations are captured in your CRM for your sales team to respond to is crucial. This was a key foundational reason for the creation of Vtiger’s new Social Module, but its benefits extend far beyond.

In addition to tracking existing leads and contacts into the social sphere, Vtiger’s social module allows you to perform Twitter searches, find relevant users, and add them without setting foot outside of CRM. Beyond that, the Social module lets you:

1. Research your market – Knowing your customers is the key to your selling. Social module lets you learn what interests your existing leads and contacts by allowing their tweet history and facebook comments to be viewed directly in their lead and contact records. Use it to influence future sales opportunities, and to provide products and services better suited to their needs.
2. Transform followers into advocates – Find new followers through search streams, and leverage opportunities to engage with and win them over. Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate reports that 79% of Twitter and 60% of Facebook users are “more likely to recommend brands” soon after they start following them or “Like” them and Deloitte reports that Customers referred by loyal customers have 37% higher retention rate.
3. Transform shoppers into buyers – Convert “I’m just looking for” customers into “I want to buy” customers by continuously monitoring tweets about you, your competitors, or subjects relevant to your business, and creating leads from any Twitter user or message for your sales team to follow up on.
4. Bridge the gap between sales & marketing team and your customers – With an integrated view of online conversations of customers your sales team can procure only the pertinent data that is crucial for a sales operation. Marketing team can connect with sentiments and behaviour of customers at the initial stage of buying process where customers want to be addressed at their point of need.
5. Create tickets from Tweets – Delight customers with excellent service by transforming customers’ Tweets for help, into tickets for your business to collaborate around resolving
6. Measure and improve the effectiveness of your social campaigns and engagement.

The bottom line is that with any relationship, the more you know, the better you can predict needs, and respond in the most appropriate way. Vtiger helps you do that by capturing all available sources of information, previously from emails, calls, and other engagements, and now from social sources. It then makes that data available for your sales, marketing and support teams to plan and deliver amazing customer experiences.The Social Module is available to all Ultimate edition users. To learn more, sign up for a free trial or feel free to contact us at [email protected].