What Is Social CRM? A Guide for Marketers, Sales, and CS

No matter what kind of product or service your brand offers, the simple fact is that you are actually in the relationship business. And many of your customer relationships will develop on social channels.

You need to understand social CRM (customer relationship management). Why? In order to develop those relationships. It’s all about nurturing your social contacts from the very first like to the first purchase and all the way through to becoming a brand loyalist.

The challenge is that customers interact with multiple teams on multiple channels. Sales, marketing, customer service, and even tech support might all interact with the same customer. When teams operate in silos, messages get mixed. Replies are delayed, and everyone ends up frustrated.

A solid social media CRM approach connects your customer-facing teams. Everyone gets all the information they need to serve your customers best.

What is social CRM?

Social CRM is short for social customer relationship management. It’s a customer-centric approach that incorporates social data. The idea is to help your teams better understand customers, prospects, and leads

Expanding traditional CRM to include social data makes it easier for all customer-facing teams to do their jobs.

• Offer improved customer service on the channels your customers prefer
• Discover new potential customers and leads
• Understand how best to nurture these developing relationships
• Gain valuable insights into your target audience to focus your content

Social CRM in customer service

A social CRM software allows your care team to engage in more meaningful conversations with customers. No matter which platform they choose to make contact.

Recent research published in the journal Information shows that using social media for CRM has a significant effect on customer relationship quality. That’s not a shock, since social media CRM ensures brands focus on customer preferences.

In Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Media Consumer Report, 53 percent of respondents say that brands responding to direct questions and comments in a timely way is the most appealing aspect of their social presence when deciding to follow a brand.

Maintaining high responsiveness to customers is also important in keeping followers. 28 percent of respondents will unfollow a brand that ignores negative or challenging comments. And 32% will unfollow a brand that fails to interact with or respond to the community.

Starbucks gets a lot of love on their social channels. But they also get negative feedback. They always respond quickly and publicly. They offer a solution if they can or ask for a DM for more details if follow-up is required.

Source: @starbucks

Your customers and followers are reaching out on social channels. Social CRM ensures you keep up your end of the conversation.

Sometimes your social and customer support teams may interact with the same customer on multiple channels. Fortunately, social CRM tools tie data to people, not just profiles. You have a full picture of a customer’s entire history with your brand every time. You can always provide consistent, personalized replies. This keeps customers happy while avoiding duplicate efforts for your team.

Social CRM also improves response time and accuracy. Incoming contacts and requests can be auto-routed to the best team member for the job.

Social CRM in sales

Your first contact with someone on any social media platform is generally not the best time to go in with a hard sell. But social connections can absolutely become real, qualified leads.

Social CRM helps fill your funnel. Focusing on the customer relationship ensures you always put the customer first. Then, you can focus on social strategies that connect the audience with your brand and increase purchase intent.

For instance, after KiwiCo tested ads on Instagram Reels, their paid social marketing manager, Lisann Arndt, said:

“We’ve seen that Reels can be a significant acquisition lever if we engage audiences in an authentic way that reflects an understanding of their needs.” (Emphasis added.)

Source: Instagram

Even better, incorporating social interactions into lead profiles can help qualify leads faster and more accurately. This allows salespeople and brands to build relationships effectively. The idea is to work towards a sale over the longer term.

Plus, a full picture of how social interactions convert to sales gives you a true understanding of the real value of a social lead. This will help you plan your social media budget, especially the amount you plan to spend on social ads.

Make sure you have appropriate offers and campaigns in place to nurture leads discovered through social media. Consider an opt-in newsletter, a drip campaign, or any other valuable resource. This will help establish your credibility while maintaining the relationship as you work up to the sale.

Social CRM in marketing

Connecting CRM and social media provides a fuller picture of who your customers are and what they expect from your brand. Your marketing team can use these insights in a couple of key ways.

First, you can create highly targeted and personalized content. Speak to the direct needs and wants your audience has already expressed.

Forty percent of respondents to the Hootsuite 2024 Consumer Report said they would unfollow a brand that posts boring content that does not appeal to them. Social CRM helps you better understand what type of content will appeal. This is key to keeping those hard-earned followers.

Say you happen to sell filled doughnuts. You suspect your customers want to see what’s inside those doughnuts before they buy. You could just post photos of your doughnuts on social. Or, you could create a series where you rip them open on Instagram.

That’s exactly what doh’hut does. They’ve hit a nerve with their social audience. This recent tear-open Reel got more than 1,300 likes and 57 comments.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by doh'hut (@dohhut)

And think beyond the people you already engage with. You can also use social listening tools to track:

• brand mentions
• customer sentiment
• and industry trends

All of this can help guide your content strategy and build your audience base.

Social CRM tools and data also help you build highly targeted lookalike audiences for social ads. You can base them on characteristics like age, location, customer behaviors, and so on. The characteristics of existing customers are the best basis for effective lookalike audiences. After all, a lookalike audience based on people who have actually bought from you is more likely to create conversions than a lookalike audience based on fans or followers.

Finally, CRM social media data helps you understand the true impact of your social marketing efforts. In Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Trends Report, 33 percent of respondents said they were facing an unsatisfactory connection between social metrics and business metrics.

Connecting CRM and social media helps resolve this disconnect. Actions on social media are clearly tied to business outcomes like a purchase or subscription. This makes it much easier to prove (and improve) your social ROI.

Sure, you build stronger customer relationships. But you also see how the value of those relationships extends beyond your social platforms to impact real business goals.

Cross-departmental benefits of using social CRM tools

As you’ve seen, using social media for CRM allows brands to:

• capture customer data from social media profiles
• monitor conversations
• and engage with customers more effectively.

This benefits all departments that work with customers or leads. It gives everyone a fuller picture of the people they’re talking to. That includes sales teams, customer service, tech support, marketing, and even product development. Here are the benefits you should see across departments:

• Integrate effort and information among the sales, marketing, and customer service teams
• Avoid duplicate effort when a customer reaches out through multiple channels
• Improve response times and resolution rates by automatically routing queries to the right team member in the appropriate department
• Update customer data for all teams in real time, with a more complete record of customer interactions
• Understand your overall brand reputation
• Respond promptly to complaints or concerns
• Spark new ideas for product features and marketing campaigns
• Better understand your audience and target market
• Develop stronger relationships that improve brand loyalty and ROI

5 social CRM tools to get you started

The best social CRM tools provide businesses with the ability to do a lot of things all in one place, like:

• manage customer profiles
• listen to online conversations
• analyze sentiment
• drive social selling efforts
• efficiently manage multiple social media management platforms

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a comprehensive social CRM tool. It allows businesses to monitor social media conversations, engage with customers, and analyze data with clear, efficient reporting. Hootsuite also integrates with leading traditional CRM platforms. So, you can keep using the tools that already work for your business as you transition to social CRM.

Key benefits:

• Track trends, hot topics, popular keywords, brand mentions, and social sentiment to understand what your customers want from you and how they feel about your brand.
• Manage all social conversations in a central inbox and share information between your social inbox and your CRM so all conversations are fully up to date and complete.
• Measure and analyze your social results across all your social accounts in one place, so you can understand social ROI.

Pricing: Hootsuite plans start at $99/month.

2. HubSpot

Source: HubSpot

HubSpot is a CRM platform designed to manage contacts at every stage of the pipeline. It integrates marketing, sales, and customer service functions to improve customer experience and maximize leads. Each functional area gets its own hub, and they are all connected to a Smart CRM.

Key benefits:

• Create lead-generation forms, landing pages, and email campaigns
• Detailed contact tracking and management
• Solid analytics
• Cross-department collaboration features
• CRM social media integration though Hootsuite supports contacts and tickets from X (Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram

Pricing: HubSpot offers free basic tools. Individual plans start at $15/month and professional plans at $1,170/month.

3. Salesforce

Source: Salesforce

Salesforce uses artificial intelligence to guide your sales process and provide insights into your current and future deals. The system is built on Salesfrce’s proprietary “Einstein 1” platform and includes a conversational AI assistant.

Key benefits:

• Metadata framework integrates data sources to provide a unified view of the customer
• Detailed insights and analytics for marketing, sales, and customer service
• AI assistant provides recommended actions after an interaction with a customer
• Connect Salesforce to Hootsuite for CRM social media integration to identify and capture new leads on social media channels

Pricing: Basic small business plans start at $25/month, and professional plans start at $100/user/month/

4. Microsoft Dynamics 365

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers customizable CRM systems to unify your teams and provide a holistic view of your customers. It uses AI to make predictions about customer intent and provide recommendations about new audiences and audience segments.

Key benefits:

• Create personalized customer journeys
• Use AI-based scoring to prioritize leads and opportunities
• Track and report on selected KPIs
• Collaborate in Microsoft Teams
• Connect to Hootsuite to create leads and opportunities from social posts

Pricing: Individual CRM components start at $50 per user per month. Combine the components you need to create a full CRM that connects all teams.

5. SugarCRM

Source: SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a customizable CRM that allows you to choose the focus you need for your team.

Key benefits:

• Get a complete picture of your customers across touchpoints
• Thorough analytics to help you understand what’s working and how to improve
• Business process automation for sales
• Recommended updates after customer interactions
• Link with Hootsuite to incorporate Instagram and Facebook connections for social CRM capabilities

Pricing: Limited plans start at $19 per user per month, with the standard plan starting at $59/month.

Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.

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