CRM Vs. CMS: What is the difference and How Do we Integrate Them

When you are creating a website for your business online, it is easy to see that it needs a stunning homepage.

It is essential to establish processes for building and editing your website. You must also monitor your website’s content performance and keep track of the number of clients you have. This is simpler when these workflows are coordinated.

To achieve this, we will require both of these technologies for designing websites.

If you’re already familiar with these technologies, it’s more beneficial since they are the basis of many well-known websites, and they could also be yours.

Read more: Best Gumroad Alternatives (Cheaper + More Powerful).

If you’re planning to use both technologies, it’s recommended to integrate CMS and CRM functions on your site. The article below will explain the different features of these two tools. After that, I’ll explain how to connect them with different platforms.

CRM Vs. CMS

CRM, as well as CMS, are tools that software developers use for online companies. CRM software for managing customer relationships (CRM) maintains track of all customers and leads by logging and reporting their interactions with your site. A CMS (CMS) is utilized to build and manage websites.

A CMS can help you create a better experience for your visitors, and the CRM assists in tracking visitor experiences. Before we get into how they function together, Let’s look at the functions each performs independently.

Key CRM Features

Businesses utilize CRM software to monitor how each lead and customer interact with your business online. To help you achieve your goals, many CRMs offer the following features:

Contact Management Tools

CRMs keep contact information as records containing pertinent information about the customer, such as the company’s name and contact details. With this data logged and accessible to sales personnel, they can see every customer’s journey, lead at a glance, and look at overall customer patterns in bulk.

Read more: WooCommerce Vs. Magento: Which is The Best eCommerce Plateform?. 

The customer records also document the relationships between sales reps and their customers. Every interaction — whether email or phone call or meeting, for example. These are stored in the CRM to inform sales reps when to follow up with specific prospects.

CRMs also allow users to segment customers into lists according to location, size, or type. It gives a clearer picture of your client base and assists reps in tailoring their sales strategies according to specific segments.

Automated Data Capture

One of the main benefits of CRM is the ability to record communications between sales reps. Instead of copying and pasting numbers, meetings, times, emails, or response forms into your CRM, An integrated CRM can handle all of this for you and eliminates a lot of frustration for your staff.

Deal Tracking

Your CRM must have the option to monitor where each person is within the sales process, and this data is recorded in the contact record. As the contacts move in the buyer’s path, the CRM permits reps to modify the stage of the deal or even have the stage raised automatically.

Content Repository

To help you close more sales, CRMs allow the creation of a repository for content with templates for prospect communication. Reps can design templates for forms, emails, and much more. It helps standardize the sales process and reduces the time required to write individual emails.

Reporting

Ultimately, a well-designed CRM must combine the sales information into digestible reports to ensure you and your sales team can draw out trends and insights. Reports also help your sales team stay aligned with their sales objectives and meet targets. Within a CRM system, reports may be created for segments, contacts, or your entire company’s performance for a specific time.

Key CMS Features

If your CRM functions as your customer management hub and the CMS is your website’s hub. Companies make use of CMS to develop and manage their constantly evolving online presence, with assistance from the following features:

Content Management Tools

Most well-known CMSs comprise two systems within an umbrella of CMS software: a backend for content management and a front-end for publishing content.

A CMS backend manages everything related to organizing and storing all your online assets. It allows users to browse through your content and select items to place on your website’s front. Some tools allow you to modify your content with a powerful editor before putting the content on a page.

Publishing Tools

All CMSs offer an interface to publish content to your website (and other digital channels, such as mobile apps). Front-end tools let you organize your content onto pages to be displayed most effectively.

Read more: How to Unpublish a WordPress Page.

Based on what CMS or extensions you include, Your publishing tool could be basic and based on code or may include a WYSIWYG editor (short for “what you see is what you get”). A WYSIWYG editor lets you modify webpages without coding, usually using a drag-and-drop interface.

Your CMS should also permit you to preview the published content before making it live and to schedule your pages for publication.

Themes and Templates

The theme is the basis for the design of a site, which includes its fonts, colours, and layouts. Themes can also contain special widgets to improve your site’s capabilities. Themes are typically purchased and downloaded from the internet marketplace, but certain themes may be included in your CMS.

In contrast to the theme, A template is a single-page layout (often available within themes) designed to work with specific types of pages. Instead of creating the website from scratch, users may use templates for landing pages, homepages or product pages, blogs, and more.

Templates and themes must be flexible because their layouts adapt to different mobile, desktop, and tablet screen sizes.

Analytics

Alongside the ability to publish and manage the content on your website, CMSs usually have analytics tools that track important performance indicators such as visits, traffic bounce rates, devices, and locations. These indicators can be combined into a dashboard view to give you an overall view of the health of your website. If your CMS does not have built-in analytics, it must be integrated with a third-party application such as Google Analytics.

SEO Tools

A good CMS will not only allow you to manage a website, and it can assist you in getting your site to be seen by more people. Through extensions or native tools, the CMS lets you build sitemaps using XML and include redirects to 301 to improve site performance and enhance the metadata for your pages.

Blogging Tools

Built-in blogging tools for bloggers, such as templates for pages and editors of content, allow businesses on the internet to begin publishing immediately to 

help their content marketing strategies. WordPress, the most widely used CMS, started as a blog and is still widely regarded as a CMS for bloggers.

Extensions

The truth is that no CMS can meet every need of a website. It is the reason we’ve got extensions. From enabling membership and e-commerce functions to improving SEO to improving users’ experience, extensions can handle the entire functionality your website requires. Still, your CMS cannot provide it on its own.

CMS-CRM Integration

In the title, this article could appear to read “CRM vs. CMS”; however, there isn’t any competition. The two tools should be working closely in tandem with one another. Because your customers interact with your site, your customer tracking system must be able to communicate with your web-based management system.

An effective CMS-CRM integration will directly channel your website’s activity to your CRM for immediate analysis, reports, and actionable data. Additionally, you’ll be able to assess how your website is doing concerning your other online channels, which can help inform your content strategy and marketing.

If you’re looking for a CMS, look at the CRM integrations available for each you’re considering. However, nearly every popular CMS integrates with one or more CRMs, and the integration process can differ in price, function, and available options. Make sure you know which CRM-CMS configuration will work best for your particular business.

If you’ve chosen the CMS but aren’t satisfied with the CRM choices, Don’t hesitate to change to one CMS with a better CRM integration. The effort required to change to a CMS is more than compensated by the customers who will benefit from an improved CRM.

The next part will show how to add an integrated CRM system to some CMSs. 

How To Integrate Your CMS Into Yhe CRM

Let’s look at a few of the most effective CMSs on the market and find out how to integrate them with an effective CRM.

CMS Hub 

CMS Hub was built upon the top of HubSpot CRM, providing access to lead capture tools, contacts management, lead capture, and analytics from the same location as your CMS management system. Every interaction on the CMS Hub website is stored in the CRM system for simple reportage. 

Leads generated from your site are also saved to your CRM in the form of contacts which you can arrange into lists and follow from first contact to purchase.

CMS Hub and HubSpot CRM make things easy but robust. With these two tools connected to the same platform, you’ll be spending less time attempting to link with software and spending more time improving your customer service, nurturing your leads, and growing your online business.

WordPress

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Adding a CRM to the WordPress web page is nearly as easy as installing a CRM-related plugin. Add-ons such as HubSpot’s HubSpot WordPress plugin effortlessly connect WordPress with CRM and require no programming.

HubSpot WordPress plugin that integrates your website with HubSpot CRM, which can gather information about your visitors and group it into self-updating contacts lists and analyze your sales performance by generating reports. HubSpot CRM can integrate with applications like WooCommerce, Stripe, and Gmail.

Wix

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Wix has earned a reputation for its presence in the CMS area due to its easy-to-use CRM features. To integrate CRM features into your website, use Wix’s marketing and customer management package, Ascend.

The Ascend CRM is integrated into the Wix CMS interface so that you can easily add its collection of tools for business that are easy to use in your workflow. These tools offer vital CRM features, marketing integrations using Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, and specific templates for automated email and social media posts and videos.

Shopify

Managing customer relationships is an important aspect of any e-commerce company, including those that use Shopify. Shopify can integrate with third-party CRM software that is available on its marketplace. Find CRM integrations on Shopify’s Shopify store or select any of the following suggestions:

• HubSpot CRM: HubSpot CRM is the best Shopify-compatible CRMs. It is also the most effective FREE CRM that is available. It has features that help create strong connections with leads and customers, such as personalized CTAs, email nurture, tracking engagement of content, and extensive integrations with other well-known tools for sales and marketing.
• AgileCRM: If you’re running a modest online company, AgileCRM is a great alternative to begin and expand by utilizing. Its all-in-one function can handle contact management and sales operations, marketing, and customer service at a low cost compared to other CRM applications.
• Metrilo: Metrilo’s CRM software for Shopify highlights its extensive segmentation of customers using advanced activity tracking, in-depth customer profiles, and an extremely flexible filtering tool. The various pricing plans are designed to meet your company’s requirements, regardless of size.

Joomla 

As the second most viewed open-source CMS available, Joomla allows room for extensive customization using extensions and includes some highly regarded solutions for CRM integration. Some of the most well-known Joomla CRM-related extensions include:

• JoomCRM:  It is the top Joomla extension for CRM. JoomCRM includes CRM capabilities for deal and contact management, lead management, team management, and more. It’s an excellent place to begin.
• vBizz : viBizz for an even more comprehensive business solution with CRM capabilities, check out this Joomla vBizz extension. It provides an incredibly flexible and powerful set of business management tools, such as customer relationship management solutions that can be used for planning project activities tracking, communication with leads, and analytics.
• CiviCRM: CiviCRM is specifically designed for non-profit websites. This extension allows users to establish solid relationships with partners and funders. It is a set of tools designed to help collect donations, event management, and site membership.

Drupal

You can select one of the many highly-rated CRM software for integrating a CRM using Drupal. Drupal is more user-friendly than other CMSs, meaning you can expect a more involved process for linking an existing CRM with your site. We suggest you try these Drupal-specific modules:

• HubSpot: The Drupal HubSpot module uses HubSpot’s API to link your Drupal site to HubSpot’s tools, such as HubSpot CRM. Users can fill out the forms on your Drupal website with their data, which is stored in the HubSpot system.
• AgileCRM Agile’s robust CRM module can integrate with your Drupal website without much lifting. It lets you easily make landing pages and forms for your website, create automated emails, and monitor the engagement of your visitors.
• RedHen: This open-source CRM addresses the primary requirements of a CRM for non-profit organizations: engagement tracking, contact management events registration, contact management, and members’ profiles. RedHen is built specifically for Drupal, which lets you customize it lightly and provides access to the backend for those familiar with the code.

CMS and CRM: The Ultimate Duo

There’s much to consider when trying to grow your business online. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the myriad of software offerings marketed under the pretence of “essential” or “must-have.”

However, having a strong CMS-CRM relationship as the foundation of your business plan can help you save time, money, and lost leads. The earlier you start this, you’ll better know your audience and apply your understanding to earn their trust.