7 Best CRMs for Marketing Agencies: Digital, Advertising, Creative

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is critical for running a successful marketing agency. With so many options, selecting the best CRM for marketing agencies can be difficult. This guide will outline the best CRM for marketing agencies. 

[Related article: Interview with Chad Stewart: ‘There Are Many Reasons to Explore CRM’]

In this article, we will talk about 7 CRMs for Marketing Agencies:

• HubSpot
• Salesforce
• Freshsales
• Sendinblue
• Copper
• Funnel CRM
• EngageBay

What is CRM software?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and it refers to any type of communication you have with clients or leads. While CRM software is any system designed to manage your organization's interactions with customers and potential customers. In general, teams use this type of solution to automate processes and increase profitability.

[Related article: What Is CRM? A Beginner’s Guide to CRM Software]

How to use CRM for marketing

The more information you have about your customers and how to use CRM for marketing, the more competitive your company will be. Customer data knowledge allows your company to improve and focus its sales and marketing efforts, allowing you to grow your business. The best CRM for marketing agencies allows you to collect and organize customer data as well as identify customer preferences (e.g., what products they need and prefer, the solutions they are seeking, or their areas of opportunity or weakness). It also provides the information needed to inform customers and prospects about your products or services.

[Related article: Interview with Jonathan Moran: Marketing CRM]

Using the best CRM for marketing agency benefits your business by helping you do the following: 

• Improve your understanding of your target audience. The CRM f-or advertising agency centralizes customer information, allowing you to build a comprehensive picture of your customers and track any changes as your company grows.
• Specific customer groups should be targeted. When you understand your customers' backgrounds, interests, and purchasing habits, you can target your marketing efforts to those who will be interested in the message.
• Find new clients. You can use the information you've gathered about current customers' preferences to create targeted marketing campaigns for prospects who share similar interests.
• Determine audience preferences and trends. CRM software allows you to discover patterns in data to learn what your target audience likes, providing access with them more effectively. 

7 Best CRMs for Digital Agencies

HubSpot 

Our top choice for the best CRM for advertising agencies is Hubspot. Hubspot has a massive feature set that makes managing your marketing agency's clients, sales, marketing, and more a breeze. Hubspot provides both free and paid subscriptions, making it an excellent choice for a small marketing agency looking to test the waterways with a CRM before committing to one.

One of our favorite aspects of Hubspot is the abundance of resources available to help marketing agency owners learn how to use their products. Hubspot's blog is chock-full of useful information for marketers looking to make the most of their CRM.

Key features

• Reporting dashboard;
• Deal tracking;
• Live chat;
• Email tracking and notifications;
• Company insights;
• Prospect tracking;
• Meeting scheduling;

Pricing

Hubspot provides both free and paid services. What we like best about Hubspot is its adaptability. Agency CRM users can have Hubspot manage all or just some of their sales, marketing, and service functions. Pricing ranges from less than $100 per month to more than $1000 per month, depending on the size of your CRM for marketing agency.

Pros

• Simple onboarding procedure
• Transparent pricing that grows with your digital marketing agency
• Flexibility in the capabilities of sales and marketing
• Integrations with applications such as Quickbooks, Trello, PandaDoc, and others.
• The support staff is extremely helpful.

Cons

• Hubspot costs more than most CRM tools for marketing.
• Hubspot does not scale as well as other CRMs for marketing agencies on our list, such as Salesforce.
  Read a Detailed HubSpot CRM Overview

Salesforce

Salesforce, another major CRM for digital marketing agency, offers numerous benefits, but it may be overkill for smaller, more agile agencies. Having said that, there are numerous benefits to using this platform, including the ability to assist your agency in focusing on leveraging the value of your data and meeting client needs through unique combinations of technology and creativity.

Salesforce focuses on relationship building with tools such as Email Studio, Customer 360 Audiences, a one-of-a-kind 1-to-1 customer journey builder, Mobile Studio, Social Studio, and others. This platform enables you to integrate your client services and customer relationship management into a single, cohesive whole.

Key features

• The modular framework allows for customization.
• A central location for all activities, from email marketing to client interaction, thanks to powerful analytics.
• Integrations that are powerful with the tools you already use
• Apps and tools for each stage of the customer journey

Pricing

Salesforce's pricing structure is pretty complex. Because Salesforce provides so many solutions, it is best to contact the Salesforce team to discuss pricing for your specific needs. Pricing ranges from around $25 per month to thousands of dollars per month, depending on your needs.

Pros

• The CRM software for digital marketing with the most integrations for marketing agencies.
• Capable of handling massive workloads and scaling to enterprise-level

Cons

• Pricing obscurity
• The onboarding process is lengthy and difficult.
  Read a Detailed Salesforce CRM Overview

Freshworks

Freshsales CRM (previously known as Freshsales) has a plethora of appealing features as well as mission-critical capabilities. It provides a unified platform for lead collection, management, and monitoring, as well as customizable email marketing capabilities to keep your company at the forefront of your clients' minds.

Freshworks also brings other capabilities to the table. For example, strong social integrations promote social listening and better brand management. It also allows you to centralize all of your client communications, automate repetitive tasks, and improve collaboration among team members.

Key features

• Consolidate the client experience
• Increase employee collaboration and productivity.
• Deal administration and tracking
• Track page visits and actions
• Make your own activities and define their outcomes.
• Workflows should be automated.

Pricing

Freshworks' Marketing Cloud (starting at $15 per month) is ideal for (you guessed it!) marketing agencies. We're surprised it's not more expensive, given that it's powered by AI-driven lead generation and answer bots, as well as some of the best behavioral segmentation technology available.

Pros

• Phone and live chat support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• CRM packages that are reasonably priced and feature-rich
• Freshworks CRM's AI-driven analytics and automation bot, 'Freddy,' is included with premium plans.

Cons

• The variety of pricing packages and tiers makes it difficult to determine which one is best for your company.
• Freshworks CRM's customer service team package, 'Freshdesk,' is not included. Read a Detailed Freshworks Overview

Sendinblue 

Sendinblue simplifies direct marketing in the same way that microwaves simplified cooking TV dinners. We'll be honest: Sendinblue is difficult to beat as a single platform for orchestrating your email, SMS, and Facebook ad campaigns. It also includes smart segmentation features for grouping your lists, as well as all of the tools you'd expect for crafting and personalizing clever communications that convert.

Key features

• AB Testing
• API
• Archiving & Retention
• Auto-Responders
• CAN SPAM Compliance
• Campaign Analytics
• Campaign Management

Pricing

Sendinblue offers a free basic version that supports an unlimited number of contacts. However, this plan limits you to 300 email sends per day, which is far from sufficient for a growing creative or marketing agency.

That is why we recommend at least upgrading to Sendinblue's 'Lite' plan ($25 per user, per month, with 10,000 sends included). It removes the free plan's stringent daily send limits and adds email support. Even better, you can easily add features for A/B testing and increase the number of emails sends you're allowed.

Pros

• Highly rated online, with numerous accolades for its customer service.
• Generous no-cost plan
• Features above-average automation capabilities.

Cons

• Landing pages are only available with the 'Premium' plan and higher.
• There is a lack of functionality for sales and service teams.
• Cheap to begin with, but with various add-ons for email sends and extra features, costs can quickly escalate.
  

Copper

Copper may be one of the CRM for creative agencies. While it lacks the brand recognition of HubSpot, Copper still manages to deliver plenty of clouts. It is also used by some of the world's top creative agencies and offers a wealth of out-of-the-box functionality to help you succeed.

Copper was created specifically for integration with G Suite and is entirely cloud-based. This provides enormous flexibility and ease of access, as well as foolproof integration with the tools your agency already uses, such as Google Analytics. Organization, real-time insights from real-time data, deal-tracking capabilities, and task automation – the possibilities are endless. There are also three pricing tiers to help you tailor your capabilities to your budget.

Key features

• G Suite Integration;
• Workflow Automation;
• Bulk Email + Templates;
• Integrations with third-party apps;
• Reporting;
• Sales Forecasting;

Pricing

The Basic plan, which costs $25, is limited to 3 seats and 2,500 contacts. The Professional plan with up to 15,000 contacts costs $59 for unlimited sits. If you require an unlimited number of contacts, you should purchase the Business plan for $119.

Pros

• The 'Basic' plan is cost-effective.
• Simple to use
• There are numerous integrations.

Cons

• Several online reviews criticize Copper's customer service.
• It's difficult to share opinions and reports with people who don't also have a Copper account.
• Cheap to begin with, but with various add-ons for email sends and extra features, costs can quickly escalate.
  
  Read a Detailed Copper Overview

Funnel CRM