Should you integrate your website CMS and your CRM?

At 3chillies of the most common integrations we carry out is between a website’s Content Management System (CMS) and the backend Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This integration can improve digital marketing, support marketing automation, drive lead generation, reduce inefficiencies and more.

We often get asked whether it is worth integrating a CMS with a CRM. It’s one of those things that web teams often ponder, but never quite action. In this post we’re going to consider the potential value an integrated website CMS and CRM can bring, and whether it is worth making the investment.

How difficult is a CMS and CRM integration?

Some teams wonder how difficult and expensive it is to carry out a CMS and CRM integration. This depends very much on which systems you need to integrate and the details of actual integration, but we invariably find that the it is more straightforward and cheaper than digital teams think.

The major CMSs offer out-of-the-box connectors for some of the more popular CRMs, which makes integration easier:

• Sitecore offers connectors to Salesforce, Dynamics and HubSpot.
• Umbraco offers connectors to Salesforce, Dynamics and HubSpot.
• Optimizely offers connectors to Salesforce and HubSpot.

But beyond using connectors, each CMS support custom integrations with any third-party CRM, such as Interaction or even legacy solutions. We’ve carried out CMS and CRM integrations multiple times, including for some of our law firm clients; even if you’ve been using a CRM solution that’s nobody heard for a decade, an integration with your CMS is usually perfectly possible.

Why integrate your CMS and CRM?

There are a number of reasons why it is worth integrating your CMS and CRM.

One source of truth for customer data

When you integrate your CMS and your CRM it means every time a visitor fills in a contact form, downloads a resource, signs up for a newsletter or updates any mailing preferences or make some other kind of action on your website, this data flows directly into your CRM. 

Unifying this data means you have a one source of truth for your customer data – including user actions and preferences – and avoids the situation of having two information sources which may not align or even contradict each other.

For example, in professional services firms, contact with individuals might be done via email. If a contact tells you via an email discussion that they want to be removed from a mailing list, this might contradict information in your CMS where that person originally signed up to a mailing list. There is very unlikely to be any manual reconciliation of any conflicting data.

However, through integration you maintain a single, accurate record of every interaction rather than siloed data across two systems.

Reduced manual work and data errors

One of the biggest benefits of integrating your CRM and CMS is to automate some of the unnecessary manual tasks that can arise if you need to then input data into your CRM. If a customer completes a form via your website and then that information needs to be re-entered into your CRM or has to be transferred with fiddly manual data downloads and uploads using CRV files, then it is extremely inefficient.

Automating this process through a CMS and CRM integration:

· Eliminates duplication of effort and avoids wasting staff time.

· Reduces the risk of making mistakes and damaging errors.

· Further avoids developing inconsistent records of customer data.

Supporting business development and lead capture

Website behaviour such as pages visited and content downloaded can be rich information that indicates interests, priorities and level of engagement for individuals and organisations.

Subject to user consent, when this data is automatically stored in your CRM it means BD, sales and marketing teams have access to useful information that provides additional context for calls, tenders, marketing efforts and more. When you have a CMS / CRM integration, these teams have more data to in order to win new business.

Joined up customer service

In fast-moving work environments BD, sales, marketing, customer service and professional teams don’t always fully align; it can appear to clients that different teams across your organisation are not fully working from the same page.

When everyone has access to the same base client data it is much easier to appear aligned and consistent across different customer touchpoints and also avoid tiresome issues such as asking a customer for the same information on a call that they provided via a website form the day before.

Digital marketing automation

The integration of a CMS and CRM with the efficient flow of data opens up more possibilities for digital marketing automation at scale. This not only drives efficiencies and allows faster responses but also enables you to take advantage of any native digital marketing features within your CRM or within your CMS.

While this kind of marketing automation avoids bottlenecks created by manual data entry, it also means actions on your website can automatically trigger workflows that might rely on data held in your CRM.

Personalised content delivery

When you integrate CRM and CMS data there is greater scope to carry out personalisation and audience segmentation in order to tailor particular messages, drive relevant calls to action, optimise experiences and more. With more AI-powered personalisation features being introduced into platforms like Sitecore and Optimizely, integrating your CRM can make more sense as it provide additional data and context to take advantage of these new capabilities.

Better support for data privacy and consent management

Managing user consent is critical to respect data privacy and supporting GDPR compliance. When your CRM and CMS are integrated, user consent around areas such as cookie preferences and marketing opt-ins is captured in one place, minimising risks around sending communications to people without their consent.

More advanced digital services

If you are creating more advanced digital services such as a portal for suppliers or a place where customers can interact in some kind of authenticated environment, then a seamless CMS and CRM integration allows you to build services and interactions that are based around customer data and preferences. Overall, the integration can unlock opportunities to develop new digital services.

Integrating your CMS and CRM

Integrating a CMS and CRM has many benefits, and it is generally easier and cheaper than you think. Want to discuss integrating your CMS and CRM system? Then get in touch!