Keeping track of your entire customer database is a balancing act. From ensuring the privacy and security of this data to utilizing it for marketing purposes, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with so much information. However, a Raleigh fractional CMO can handle. For Raleigh-based companies, having an FCMO help manage your SaaS CRM data will make the lives of your team easier.

With the help of fractional CMOs in Raleigh, North Carolina, you can use the power of SaaS CRM software and accurate data to improve customer relationships, stay organized, and scale your business to the next level.

Let’s go over how Raleigh FCMO customer data management can make a huge difference in your business.

And Jason is here to go over it, too:

What Is SaaS CRM?

SaaS CRM stands for softwaras-a-service customer relationship management. It’s a cloud-based software businesses of all sizes use to manage all customer data. Because businesses work with so much data from multiple sources, CRM software keeps everything organized and closely monitored in one central location for all departments to access.

Instead of using costly physical servers, CRM software lets you manage data remotely with an Internet connection. This makes it ideal for remote workers and increases team productivity and collaboration. 

Some CRM tools come with AI-integrated features. Because of AI’s strong data-gathering and analytics capabilities, teams can harness the power of data to make more innovative and personalized decisions. You can use data to reveal customer patterns and trends, analyze user behavior, and tailor marketing campaigns to connect with customers on a deeper level.

Why Is CRM Data Important?

CRM data is the fuel that powers your business and guides your decisions. Listed below are some reasons to prioritize CRM data management.

Improved Decision-Making

CRM data lets companies know more about their customers more accurately. This allows marketing teams to make better decisions about tailoring their messages and offers to fit their needs and preferences. These decisions are no longer based on assumptions or biases but on real-time trends, patterns, and behaviors.

For example, instead of blindly recommending products to a customer, you can look at their purchase history and current items in their shopping cart and offer complementary or related products to increase satisfaction.

Better Customer Insights

CRM data comes from multiple sources and creates a clearer picture of your customer. Even if you’ve never met a customer personally, you still know enough about them and have a clear understanding of their motivations, interests, and behaviors.

The more you know about your customers, the easier it is to personalize your offerings and messages. This leads to more meaningful interactions and greater satisfaction.

Better Collaboration Among Departments

Having a centralized CRM system connects all departments and promotes better data sharing. This is key to removing data silos and giving everyone shared access to data at any time. 

Centralizing all data in one location for everyone to access also increases team efficiency, collaboration, and productivity. This leads to faster turnaround times and better organizational alignment.

Customer Retention

CRM data provides insight into customer pain points and unique situations that must be addressed. The better your company addresses these, the more your customers will trust you, leading to greater loyalty and retention.

Using this data, businesses can also gain insight into how to further a customer’s engagement with the company. This can be through automated follow-ups, loyalty programs, or personalized offerings.

Helps Avoid Missed Sales Opportunities

CRM data can also reveal customers who haven’t moved along the pipeline. For example, data can show customers who visited the website but didn’t convert, abandoned their shopping cart, or haven’t engaged with the brand after a long time.

Brands can find ways to re-engage these customers and convince them to convert. This could be through retargeting campaigns or personalized follow-ups, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks.

What Is an Example of CRM Data?

CRM data comes in four main types: identity, descriptive, quantitative, and qualitative. Let’s break each of them down below.

Identity Data

Identity data is any data used to describe a specific person. It usually covers surface-level details that can be found on online databases, such as:

• Names
• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Account numbers
• Birthdates
• Mailing address
• Social media accounts
• Organization name

This information helps you stay in contact with your customers and prospects and connect with them. After all, calling potential customers by name is always a good starting point to forming strong relationships and making a good first impression. 

Descriptive Data

Descriptive data goes further than identity data and involves personal characteristics about your customers. This data is used to learn more about people on a deeper level, such as their lifestyle, interests, etc. Descriptive data includes:

• Education levels
• Marital status
• Job titles
• Hobbies
• Homeownership status
• General interests

This data type gives insights into their unique lives, interests, and motivations, which could help guide your marketing efforts. You can deliver more personalized messages and content using this data, leading to more conversions.

Quantitative Data

Quantitative data is numerical data that measures how much a person interacts with your brand online. It also objectively measures the success of a marketing campaign by looking at relevant metrics and KPIs. It includes data like:

• Conversion rates
• Click-through rates (CTR)
• Engagement rate
• Time spent on website
• Number of service tickets
• Open rate
• Purchase history

Quantitative data gives insight into improving engagement and sales by understanding your users’ actions and interactions with the brand. For example, you can provide personalized product recommendations based on previous purchases to increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.

Qualitative Data

Unlike quantitative data, which is objective, qualitative data is subjective data that’s used to understand a user’s behaviors or reactions to your brand and products. Qualitative data can be gathered using surveys, interviews, activity tracking, reviews, and focus groups.

Qualitative data examples include:

• Customer reviews
• Brand sentiment
• Customer satisfaction with your products
• Buying factors
• What problems do customers hope to solve using your product or service?

Qualitative data lets you understand how your audience feels about your brand and their motivations for choosing it. This feedback provides new insights into how you can improve their experience with your brand. For example, after reading through reviews, you can add a new feature to your product or improve an existing one to enhance the experience.

What Are the Main Challenges in SaaS CRM Data Management?

CRM data management isn’t easy. Businesses face many challenges when integrating this technology into their everyday operations.

Data Quality Issues

Companies deal with large volumes of data daily, making it difficult to keep track of everything and ensure that it’s accurate. This much data may lead to human errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies. Poor data quality means that data can no longer be used effectively and is irrelevant.

Keep your CRM updated regularly so that data can be used to its full potential continuously. Data validation ensures you have clean and reliable data from the start. This system standardizes data from the beginning and alerts relevant departments if data is incorrect or missing.

Conduct regular data audits as well. Use this audit to validate your current data, check for missing data, and find areas for improvement. Revisiting your data management strategy is essential to identifying and addressing which parts of the process are causing quality issues.

Scaling Trouble

Your company will add more customers to its database over time, meaning your CRM must accommodate more data. This could lead to slower loading times and poorer performance, especially if your CRM software isn’t updated or you choose one that’s not the right fit for your company.

Therefore, your business should adopt CRM software that can scale alongside your business. Choose CRM software that’s flexible enough to accommodate a company’s growing needs without compromising performance. A cloud-based solution is ideal for larger teams, giving everyone easy access to everything in real time.

Data Security and Regulatory Compliance

Cybercrimes and data breaches are still common in all industries. This is due to a lack of robust cybersecurity measures that safeguard customer data and a failure to comply with security regulations.

Some necessary compliance acts to take note of include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) (for healthcare companies). Ask your web dev leader about what North Carolina rules to be mindful about safely, in particular, along with Raleigh rules. In particular, look to the North Carolina Consumer Privacy Act.

Invest in stronger cybersecurity measures, such as end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and role-based access control, to keep your customer information safe. Conduct regular security audits to ensure your system is always secure. Have incident response plans in place as well in case of breaches.

Data Silos

A data silo is a collection of data that is not easily accessible by other departments. For example, finance, admin, HR, and other departments rely on data from various sources, which are stored in separate locations, known as silos. Data silos prevent data sharing among teams, which could cause delays and decrease data quality.

Data is best utilized when everyone has equal access across the entire organization. Removing silos allows data to be found quickly and provides the company with a 360-degree overview of all data. 

To avoid silos, adopt a centralized data management system, which stores all data in one central location for everyone to access. You can also integrate data through scripting with SQL, Python, or ETL (extract, transform, load) tools.

How To Improve SaaS Customer Data Management: 6 Steps

SaaS CRM data management is easy once you follow the proper steps. Here are six helpful tips from a fractional CMO for SaaS that’ll make the whole process a breeze.

1. Regularly Manage Data

To ensure the accuracy of your data, conduct regular cleaning and validation sessions to maintain data integrity and identify errors, duplicates, or irrelevant data.

Practice data enrichment to refine and verify raw data from multiple sources. Use data enrichment tools to supplement your current data pool with new information. For example, these tools can add more information about your customers, which helps build a more comprehensive customer profile.

Consistent Data with Enrichment and Standards

Another way to maintain consistent data is to set data management standards. Adhering to these data standards ensures that the entire data process is governed correctly regarding collecting, sharing, and processing.

Set proper naming conventions to make data more organized and easily identifiable. When naming your data files, use brief but descriptive names with no special characters. Everyone on the team should follow these naming conventions. You can add dates or numbering to the file names to make them easier to identify.

2. Integrate Data Carefully

Data is best used when it’s well-integrated with each other and can be accessed by anyone on the team. One way to integrate data is by using middleware or APIs, which bridge multiple databases and systems for easier communication. This also makes the data transmission process more streamlined.

Have a centralized data repository for all your data from all sources. Remember what we said before about data silos? 

They can be a real hindrance to speedy and efficient data sharing. Instead of having to go through different silos to retrieve data, have it all in one central repository to improve accessibility and collaboration between departments.

On that note, find ways to reduce silos whenever possible. Apart from using a centralized data system, establish clear guidelines for data retrieval, storage, usage, etc., to ensure consistent handling, and practice data governance to maintain data quality, security, and compliance across the organization.

3. Follow Data Security Best Practices

Your customer’s safety should be your top priority. This can be achieved by following data cybersecurity best practices. Regular security audits and vulnerability testing should be conducted to identify weak spots in the security system and reinforce them before a breach occurs.

Further strengthen your cybersecurity system by adding end-to-end data encryption measures and role-based access control policies. Other security measures to implement include multi-factor authentication, firewalls to filter unwanted traffic, antivirus/antimalware software, and data backups. This ensures that data cannot be accessed or altered by unauthorized users.

Failure to comply with cybersecurity laws may result in heavy fines and penalties. Stay updated on state, federal, and international legal compliance requirements. It also helps to explore cybersecurity trends to beef up your security.

4. Always Look To Improve

To continuously improve your CRM data management, set clear KPIs that align with your business goals. You can use automated dashboards to track these KPIs in real time and adjust accordingly. Some KPIs you can monitor include model accuracy, data completeness, and time-to-insight.

Look for outside help from professionals. Engage with industry consultants or fellow data specialists and gather insights into how they approach their CRM data management. These can give ideas on how you can refine your current system. Don’t be afraid to test different things, like tools, strategies, and processes.

Use the power of technology as well to improve your current data-gathering process. Automation and AI tools can streamline the entire process and analyze large chunks of data, freeing up more time to focus on other tasks.

5. Visualize Your Data

Sometimes, data is complex to interpret because it involves a lot of numbers and complex information. Present data visually, such as infographics, graphs, charts, and presentations, to make data more easily understandable.

By visualizing data, all team members and stakeholders can absorb the information and grasp key patterns and trends faster. The sooner everyone can understand the data, the sooner they can act on it.

Use predictable patterns for layouts and clear color cues to draw readers’ attention and highlight key information. However, presenting numbers and graphs won’t always be enough. Compare the data to something tangible, like a goal or past performance. This will let readers see the context behind the data, making it easier to drive action.

6. Offer Ongoing Support and Training to Employees

Proper training and support go a long way. Provide helpful training resources, such as manuals, guides, or tutorials, to give your team a clear understanding of how to collect and process data effectively. Be open to questions and feedback, so team members feel comfortable sharing their opinions and concerns.

Additionally, openly communicate the benefits and significance of SaaS data management. If everyone understands the purpose of data management, they can work toward a common goal and improve their collective efforts. This also reduces errors due to a lack of understanding.

Raleigh Marketing Case Studies

Digital Authority Partners has helped SaaS companies maximize their data to improve marketing performance. We carefully examine each client and provide a completely customized solution that leads to greater results.

A case study of ours is Orthogonal, a leading software design and development firm for medical devices. They struggled with generating qualified traffic and engagement with high-value leads. Our strategy involved a complete SEO overhaul, which included creating SEO-optimized content and technical SEO improvements.

This strategy proved effective, with Orthogonal generating a 65% increase in page views and time on site, a 43% increase in conversion rate, and a 20% drop in bounce rate.

The Future of SaaS CRM Data Management

The SaaS industry continuously evolves, meaning how we manage our data will also change. Here are some trends we can expect to see in the future.

Predictive Analytics for Sales Forecasting

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will become more advanced than they already are. One of their most prominent applications is predictive analytics, which aims to predict the most possible outcomes based on historical data, current trends, market dynamics, etc.

One area this could be applied to is sales forecasting. We expect more companies to adopt a predictive analytics model to forecast sales based on previous and current CRM data.

For example, companies can assess past sales trends and numbers to determine what their customers are more likely to spend on, how much they’re likely to spend, what products are in demand, and so on. This allows marketing and sales teams to adjust and improve their strategies to meet and exceed sales projections.

Increased Use of Cloud Storage

As businesses and markets continue to scale, CRM software must also scale. We expect to see more businesses migrate to a cloud-based CRM system accessible from anywhere at any time. 

Cloud-based CRMs are ideal for managing and maintaining CRM data integrity. They also offer greater flexibility, scalability, lower costs, upgraded security, and better adherence to compliance standards.

Serverless Computing

Having physical servers in companies is no longer practical, with the added costs to infrastructure and constant maintenance. Therefore, the best alternative would be to shift to a serverless setup.

Serverless computing is more affordable, accessible to multiple parties, and requires less maintenance, making it the ideal solution for handling CRM data.

Increased Personalization

Modern customers expect personalized offers. This is not new to CRM software, but as time goes on, personalization efforts can expect to increase tenfold. By leveraging CRM software, companies can create hyper-targeted marketing campaigns that speak to customers on a deeper level, leading to greater retention and loyalty.

However, there is still some debate about the ethical uses of gathering customer data for marketing purposes, mainly regarding safety and security. This means we may also see some new legislation arise about the ethical use of customer data and how these laws affect SaaS CRM.

FAQs About Customer Data Management for a Raleigh FCMO

Let’s answer some additional questions about CRM data management with a Raleigh FCMO.

Why Does CRM Data Management Matter in SaaS?

Data management is one of the most critical customer success strategies in SaaS marketing. It maintains data integrity, accuracy, and completeness, which is used for better marketing initiatives.

CRM data management helps brands accurately portray their customers, not just on a surface level but on a more personal level. The more brands understand their customers, the easier it is to create personalized marketing efforts that drive conversions and retain loyalty.

What Is a Customer Data Management Policy?

A customer data management policy outlines the specific rules and standards for collecting and analyzing CRM data. This includes who’s responsible for the data management process, what step-by-step strategies must be followed, and whether or not it complies with data security standards.

A clear data policy promotes ethical data management and gathering. It also ensures the safety of your customers, improves overall efficiency, and guides the entire decision-making process.

Who Needs a SaaS CRM?

SaaS CRM can benefit anyone from any business of any size. This includes marketing teams, sales, customer support, account managers, finance teams, and even C-level executives. There’s no limit to who in your organization can benefit from SaaS CRM software.

Talk to A Professional SaaS Marketing Agency

Digital Authority Partners is an award-winning marketing agency specializing in SaaS marketing, from SaaS content marketing to SaaS marketing compliance.

We are a team of dedicated marketers with the tools and strategies to revitalize your SaaS marketing efforts. 

With Digital Authority Partners, you can enjoy higher sales and conversion rates through custom-fit solutions and analytics-driven marketing campaigns.

Our Raleigh FCMO experts create tailored strategies for better insights and real results. Let’s chat about what’s possible.