Managing marketing these days is a heady experience, but one thing’s for sure: mastering social media is a must.
Consider this: eMarketer estimates that there will be 180.3 million U.S. social network users this year, meaning that “nearly seven in 10 internet users and 56.1 percent of the country’s population will use a social network site via at least one device at least once per month.”
What does social media mean to marketers?
“High social media usage presents marketers with a bounty of consumer data, and managing this is top of mind for those using customer relationship management (CRM) tools,” according to eMarketer.
In fact, U.S. CRM users polled by business software solution provider Capterra in June suggests that social media tools were the most in-demand CRM software features.
“When asked which features they desired most in CRM tools, 25 percent of respondents cited social media monitoring options, and 24 percent wanted their CRM software to pull in information from contacts’ social media profiles,” noted eMarketer.
Capterra disovered that the dominant group of respondents using CRM came from the retail industry (18 percent). Recent research supports the sense that social CRM integration is growing chiefly among retailers.
According to Econsultancy and ResponseTap polling in March 2015, 31 percent of agency professionals worldwide used social CRM data to inform an understanding of the customer journey.
“The study noted that social CRM could “provide the most unadulterated feedback available” and suggested companies weren’t making enough of this opportunity, whether alone or in the context of information from other data sources,” concluded eMarketer.