CRM Integrations for Small Businesses

What is CRM integration?

CRM integration is the process of connecting third-party applications and tools with your primary CRM software to merge their functions within one platform.

Think of a CRM as a smartphone for your business. Some CRMs may function like a more basic model with minimal features, such as a way to track contacts and accounts. Others are like the newest smartphones with robust built-in capabilities, such as data analytics, process automations or internal collaboration tools.

CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot act as the systems that store and categorize your customer data, and they provide a wide range of additional tools that can improve how your business makes use of this data. [Read our Salesforce review and HubSpot review to learn more.]

Regardless of which CRM system you choose, however, it likely won’t be equipped with every specific feature your business needs. That’s where integrations come in. CRM integration extends the functionality of your CRM and allows you to use it across more of your organization. You can install or remove any number of the thousands of available applications from your CRM system at any time to best suit your needs, from marketing automation platforms to contact center software.

Benefits of CRM Integrations

Businesses use dozens of software applications, including email clients, accounting tools, customer service platforms and more. These nonintegrated tools create data silos, or pockets of isolated data, inaccessible to some teams and systems. This data segmentation makes it difficult for your company to gain a comprehensive view of business results and limits the ability to take advantage of automations that improve efficiency and outcomes.

Integrating third-party applications positions the CRM as the centralized source of data for your organization. Not only does this data hub enhance your reporting and analytics capabilities, but it also allows for robust process automation and increased user efficiency by lessening the need for users to access multiple systems concurrently to do their jobs. 

When you use a CRM solution as an integrated hub for your various systems, you create an adaptable, integrated workflow with crucial data accessible to everyone. Customers ultimately benefit from a more streamlined, personalized experience with your company. 

Choosing the right CRM integrations for your business

The overabundance of available integrations can tempt decision-makers to install anything they believe carries even the slightest benefit. Many integrations offer enticing CRM features that promise complex CRM analytics or upgrades to core practices.

However, Alex Haimann, partner and head of business development for Less Annoying CRM, said to stay focused on what’s important.

“The biggest mistake is a major focus on analytics reporting or other kinds of high-level tools and not enough emphasis or focus on actual daily use cases,” Haimann said. “It isn’t a failure to jump up just one level. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Following that guidance, here are some essential CRM integrations for every business.

Communication CRM integrations

CRM integrations that help with communication tasks include email and calendar platforms, internal messaging platforms and phone and video applications. 

Email and calendar platforms

Whether you use Gmail, Outlook or another email client for communicating with prospects and customers, you know how easy it is for important information to be lost in an inbox. Integrating your email platform with a CRM lets you choose which emails to log in to the CRM and attach them to relevant contact, account or sales opportunity records. Some integrations even allow you to update contact information in the CRM without ever leaving your inbox. 

You likely also use your email tool for manual meeting scheduling, which can create friction in the sales cycle. Meeting scheduling tools like Calendly or Zoom Scheduler allow people to see your availability and book a meeting time, eliminating the need to go back and forth with scheduling. 

Integrating these scheduling tools with your CRM platform creates one unified calendar, reducing context switching between calendar tools. When an appointment is scheduled via the scheduler, a record is created in the CRM and linked to the appropriate contact record or sales deal. This visibility allows staff across your organization to see a log of which team members are meeting with which prospects and read meeting notes and next steps. 

Most importantly, CRM and meeting scheduler integration allows you to take advantage of CRM automation. Examples include updating contact information in the CRM when a meeting is scheduled or sending meeting reminders and post-meeting follow-ups automatically via the CRM.

Internal collaboration

In recent years, comprehensive internal collaboration tools that include email, chat and virtual meeting functionality have become the norm for most businesses. 

Many email and internal messaging systems like Google Chat or Microsoft Teams now double as virtual meeting platforms, with the ability to launch spontaneous one-on-one or group meetings directly from chat threads. On the flip side, virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and Skype have expanded their chat capabilities to allow for more robust internal communication. 

Integrating internal collaboration tools with a CRM can allow you to attach chat history to relevant CRM records, receive pertinent CRM notifications via your chat tool or trigger actions in the CRM by sending specific chat messages.

Slack (acquired by Salesforce in 2020) has arguably the most robust CRM integration of the various internal messaging systems on the market. Its built-in Salesforce integration allows users to create or update CRM records automatically by sending Slack messages. For example, a sales user may create a new sales opportunity record in Salesforce without ever leaving the Slack messaging platform. 

External users like prospects or customers may also be invited to Slack messaging channels to collaborate with their account or project teams. A chat history log can be captured within the CRM, allowing for visibility and automated next steps.

Phone and video

Sales teams spend much of their time on the phone, and any time spent recording call data or other logistics is time taken away from closing deals or following up on a promising lead. [Learn more about using a CRM system for lead management in our guide.]

An integrated voice-over-internet-protocol system like RingCentral or Aircall allows for click-to-dial functionality directly from prospect or customer records in the CRM and can record every call automatically. A salesperson can click a phone number to call, record notes, trigger next steps and move to the next contact quickly. This collected data remains attached to the customer ID and is always accessible.

Financial and Legal CRM integrations

Popular financial and legal CRM integrations include applications for accounting and billing, proposals and documents and time and attendance tracking.  

Accounting and billing

Accounting software that operates independently of your CRM software requires repetitive manual entry for all transactions. Integrating the best accounting software with your CRM software can simplify contract and invoice creation, automate payment reminders and update the CRM when money is received.

For example, changing a sales opportunity status in the CRM may auto-trigger an invoice to be sent via QuickBooks or FreshBooks, and a payment received in the accounting software may update a contract record in the CRM. Balances remain current and accounting team members can collaborate with their sales or customer success counterparts seamlessly. 

Document generation 

When you have a customer ready to close a deal, the last thing you want is to waste time searching for the necessary paperwork (or creating it from scratch). 

With document generation tools like DocuSign or PandaDoc, you can create, send and track documents directly from the CRM, merging pertinent data from your CRM records into documents automatically. 

Share files securely by connecting document and file sharing services like Dropbox to your CRM and keep relevant files attached to their associated customer profiles.

Time and attendance tracking

Low sales figures can reflect inefficient workflows, so you might want to know how much time your team is spending on its tasks. It’s one thing to ask your team to track its time via one of the best time and attendance systems. It’s another thing to install a time and attendance CRM integration that makes time tracking a seamless, one-click operation. 

Customer Service and information technology (IT) CRM integrations

CRM integrations related to customer service and IT include applications for help desks, live chat and data appending.

Help desk

Customers place enormous value on how quickly customer service can resolve their issues. Help desk systems demonstrate high success rates, but long wait times arise if agents frequently switch between platforms to resolve web or phone tickets.

The best help desk solutions streamline the process by grouping all customer information, support tickets and previous communications on one platform. Issued tickets are immediately available and linked to the originating website. That ticket will link to its issuer’s customer profile, which displays any of their past web tickets or purchases.

Many CRMs even include web-to-case or email-to-case functionality that allows customers to submit cases on your website or via a support email address. These actions then create and route cases to support agents within the CRM automatically. 

Live chat

Live chat is rapidly growing as a customer communication channel. You can use a merged live chat tool as a lead generator, creating prospect records in the CRM automatically after a website chat interaction. Sales teams can more efficiently target these leads using the relevant data the chat service gleaned.  

Live chat can also assist customers better by surfacing pertinent information already stored in the CRM platform, such as their last purchase date or order number. 

Sophisticated live chat platforms can also surface help article suggestions based on a customer’s inquiry, potentially eliminating the need to create a support ticket altogether. 

Data appending

Let’s say a CRM entry includes only a lead’s name and email. That’s not much to go on. How can you gauge the lead’s buying interests? 

CRM integrations for data appending can help. These integrations can connect your CRM software to the third-party platforms that are home to this data, such as ZoomInfo, LeadIQ or Apollo. This way, your sales reps have all the data they need to target their leads with pertinent and personalized messaging.

Marketing CRM integrations

Marketing CRM integrations include applications for outbound email campaigns, social media and marketing automation.

Outbound email campaigns

Disconnected data can disrupt an email marketing campaign by poorly translating customer segments between email creation tools like Mailchimp or Constant Contact and your CRM platform. For example, marketing users may need to create recipient lists manually by exporting and importing data from the CRM into the email platform. This manual list creation can lead to inaccurate or incomplete audiences, ultimately risking the email campaign’s effectiveness. 

Combine your email marketing software with your CRM solution to create target or exclusion lists based on CRM data with a few clicks. Use this real-time data sync to personalize email content and trigger automated emails based on subscriber data and actions.

Social media

The social media dashboard is another calendar to tie to your overall company schedule. You can install different social integrations for each network, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, or install complete social management platforms like Hootsuite or Sprout Social. 

These platforms detail your customer data further by appending social media handles to contact records and tracking how users engage with your channels. They can also eliminate time spent on mundane tasks, such as researching which subscribers to your email newsletter might be most receptive to a discount shared through social media. That history is already attached to their profiles.

Event management

If your business hosts external events, such as virtual webinars or in-person conferences, you may use an event management tool like EventBrite or GoToWebinar to collect registration and attendance information. 

Integrating event management tools with the CRM allows for contact records to be created or updated in the CRM automatically upon registration, as well as real-time reporting on registration and attendance numbers. You can also take advantage of CRM automation for targeted event follow-up communications, like sending meeting recordings to no-shows or personalized thank-you emails to attendees. 

Marketing automation

Marketing automation software goes several steps beyond email marketing to automate timely and relevant content and actions for both prospects and customers. 

Marketing automation tools like HubSpot, Marketo and Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly known as Pardot) not only allow you to send mass emails and create recipient lists easily but also create forms and landing pages to collect lead information, score and qualify leads and assign to sales reps and automate lead nurturing with automated emails and email drip programs. 

Integrating marketing automation tools with a CRM maintains a seamless flow of data between both systems, allowing for more effective marketing and sales collaboration. 

How to integrate applications

Before integrating any apps with your CRM, conduct an audit of all of the digital tools at your organization and what they are used for. Think through how a CRM integration would be useful, including which data should be passed between systems and what automation you’d like to take advantage of. Then, evaluate your integration method options.

Prebuilt Connectors

The simplest and most common integration method leverages prebuilt connectors designed for simple installation. Similar to the App Store or Google Play for your smartphone, many CRMs offer their own app marketplaces listing all available integrations. Because these connections typically do not require extensive technical knowledge to configure or maintain, they are the preferred method for most integrations. 

Connector Apps

If a prebuilt connector does not exist for your CRM and third-party application, a connector app may fit your needs. Connector apps like Zapier and Workato serve as a bridge between CRMs and apps and can typically be configured without a developer. They pass data to and from your systems and automate processes without code.

Custom Integrations

If you require a more customized integration or can’t find one for a specific program, web developers can create code tailored to your needs using an application programming interface. Although this is a viable option to merge certain tools, it can require extensive upkeep. Any update to your CRM or the application could invalidate that code and prevent it from operating alongside newly installed applications. 

As such, a custom integration should only be utilized if a prebuilt integration does not exist or will not meet your integration needs.

Do you need CRM integration?

CRM integration is not just important — it’s imperative. While a CRM should serve as the data hub for your organization, it likely doesn’t cover every piece of functionality your business needs. Integrating the CRM with third-party applications allows you to extend the CRM’s functionality. 

A fully integrated CRM increases visibility and efficiency across teams and allows for more robust reporting and automation, which ultimately drives customer satisfaction and revenue.