About LeadSquared:
LeadSquared is a Marketing Automation software and CRM tool designed for all businesses especially SMBs. It is a complete platform that helps businesses with lead generation, lead management, lead tracking, marketing automation, and also with sales acceleration. Thus, when you get LeadSquared, you don’t need any other software – your entire business process can be easily handled in a single platform.
The advantage here is, when a single software is used across all teams, data flow between marketing and sales team becomes smooth and more transparent! Both the teams can have a complete view of the lead journey, the lead activities and interactions. So, they can sell or nurture the lead accordingly.
Based on the free trial provided by LeadSquared, here’s what I have analysed and what I have to say about LeadSquared.
Dashboard:
The dashboard is where you’ll find a quick overview of all your data. It is the first screen that greets you when you login into LeadSquared. The dashboard is easy to navigate and it is designed with user experience in mind.
From the Dashboard, you can get a glimpse of all the important metrics required for your business. A quick overview of all leads, the best lead generation sources, and also a dynamic list of the latest leads entering your system, can be seen at a glance. It also gives you a Task Summary, to get you started on the most important things to do for the day.
The dashboard is customizable and allows you to add up to 30 dashlets – with metrics most relevant to you.
- Daily lead addition
- Emails open by day
- Group-wise lead count by origin/ owners/ stages/ sources
- Group-wise revenue analysis
- Leads by stages
- My activity pipeline etc.
Are some of the details you can get from the Dashboard, right after you log in.
CRM features:
All CRM features can be found under the “Leads” drop-down menu on the top bar. It consists of three sections:
- Manage Leads
- Manage Tasks
- Manage Lists
“Manage Leads” section is a typical CRM feature. It allows you to add, edit and import your new or existing leads from your system into the platform. Lead addition and import is quick and does not take complicated navigation.
All the leads in your system will be quite easy to find – with specific ‘AND’ / ‘OR’ criteria in the Advanced Search option. This will come in handy when
- You want to search for leads which fulfill particular criteria (Ex. all leads who have visited the web page on a specific date)
- You want to segregate leads based on their Lead Stage or the Industry they belong to.
So, you don’t have to spend hours sifting through your database for these leads. Multiple filter options (that can be saved for future use) and Advanced Search options will make it very easy!
Also, every lead is Scored – Lead Score & Engagement Score is calculated right from the minute a new lead enters in your business. It is indicative of the lead quality and helps you prioritize the leads. Engagement Score is a feature unique to LeadSquared and helps you identify how interested the lead is in your business. Higher the score, more the interest and your sales team should target this lead first. Impressive!
Next in the “Leads” drop-down, is the “Manage Task” feature. Needless to say, as a CRM user, it is essential for you to keep track of your everyday work. You can customize and segregate your tasks into main categories like:
- Follow-Up Call
- Follow-Up Meeting
- Cold-Call
- Demo of product etc.
You can also set reminders for each of these tasks so that you don’t miss out on contacting a lead. A task can also be automatically assigned to another user by a Manager or a fellow-user, if necessary. To help you keep better track of your tasks, you can subscribe to a “Daily Task Report” that will give you an overview of your pending and completed tasks. Thus, with LeadSquared, it is virtually impossible to miss an appointment or forget to take a follow-up. The system will notify, remind and even assign tasks as needed so that the lead is followed up at the right time.
Targeting is an important aspect of selling. You cannot sell the same pitch to all your leads. LeadSquared understands that and allows you to create “Lists” to segregate your customers. Under the “Leads”, you have “Manage Lists”, that allows you to create, modify and edit the lists of customers. Suppose, you attend an offline event and generate 100 leads. As a sales guy, you need to remember to use this context to connect with them. So, you can create a list of these 100 leads in LeadSquared, with the event name and date. Thus, the leads will exist in the system, but you can refer to the list every time to connect with each lead.
Lists can also be created through the “Advanced-Search” feature. You can create a list of leads belonging to particular criteria. For eg. Leads who are in your locality and have shown interest in your email. You can create a list of these leads and work your way down to them, instead of searching every time.
I must mention here that these lists can be used by the marketing team as well. They can use it to send targeted email campaigns (Ex. a “Welcome” email only to one list) and thus use it to nurture their leads with relevant content. This is a classic example of data-flow between teams. The lists created by either team can be used by one-another, achieve a complete customer view, and better precision.
Marketing Automation Features:
Under the tab ‘Marketing’, you can find a host of Marketing Automation tools that will help you nurture and engage your leads. Here, you can create a workflow that will automatically nurture or engage a lead, based on the lead’s behavior.
Suppose I wanted to automate this process:
- Star every new lead that is added to the system
- Send a weekly newsletter to the new lead.
- Wait for two days for the response.
- If the lead opens the email, send an offer to convert the lead. If the lead doesn’t open email, make it an unstarred lead.
So, the Automation will start as soon as a new lead is added. And the lead will be nurtured based on the workflow specified. As soon as you hit “Publish” button, the new workflow is Live. It will automatically follow the mentioned processes when the new lead is added. This part of LeadSquared impressed me because it eases the long and tedious process of marketing. It can help in easing repetitive work so that your team can focus on other important tasks.
Apart from the automation, LeadSquared helps you in email campaigns, drip campaigns, managing your landing pages, and create website widgets.
Email campaigns are used to send out an email-blast to specific leads. It can be made extremely personalized and targeted. The mail-merge fields and the various readily made email templates will improve your click rates. For targeting, you are allowed to add suppression lists – so that the email reaches to the specific leads. The criteria for defining the suppression lists are again similar to the “Advanced Search” feature that allows you to specify multiple criteria to select the leads for each list.
Another important aspect of LeadSquared is that, it offers Landing pages – a solid method of lead capture automation which will save your marketers’ a lot of time and efforts. Your lead database is healthier, with every lead captured (without any manual errors). This is a feature, that you might have to pay for separately with any other CRM+Marketing Automation software.But in LeadSquared, it is part of the package.
App Marketplace:
Here is the part where LeadSquared stands out. It allows you to integrate multiple software from its own marketplace. That means you can connect your telephony systems, chat and other lead capture software to LeadSquared to seamlessly capture leads from all sources.
The integration with Facebook Lead Ads, Twitter Lead Ad card and Re-marketing, will help your marketing team run laser-targeted campaigns on social media. Further analytics, UI customization and integration are also possible. Their API and webhooks can also help you connect systems that are not offered here.
LeadSquared is integrated with Zapier. That means, if the software of your choice does not have integration with LeadSquared, then it can be ‘Zapped’ through Zapier. For Ex. your sign up data is stored in Intercom, and you want your sign up details in your CRM, then Zapier can be used to push that data. This integration can bridge any two software so that workflow becomes extremely easy.
These integrations help you to track down the leads with more convenience. With chat integration, you can transfer your LiveChat data to CRM, with social media integration you can get social media lead generation data to your CRM, and so on…
Bottom line:
LeadSquared aims to make marketing and sales activities smooth for businesses. With its complete set of CRM and Marketing Automation features (and integrations), it certainly achieves it. I loved the way it is designed – clutter-free and user-friendly; and totally love the host of activities it helps you perform – right from lead capture to marketing, sales and then further engagement. Some other features like managing your content, giving pre-made templates of emails, and managing your documents; makes your process easier. The CRM contains pre-designed reports that will summarize your data faster.
To conclude, LeadSquared is a great CRM for your business. And if you are an SMB or growing organization, it is one of the smartest investments you can make.
Please share your views in the comments below. Also, share your queries with us; we will be happy to help.
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