How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team

Have you test-driven the Sprout Social Salesforce integration yet?

If not, you totally should!

There’s a reason why more and more companies are linking their CRMs with social media management tools like Sprout.

Social media and customer relationships go hand in hand. Want to speed up internal comms and uncover valuable customer insights at the same time? Our Salesforce integration empowers your social, sales and support teams alike. That’s a win-win-win!

In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how the Sprout Social Salesforce integration works. We’ll also highlight how the integration streamlines tasks across your entire business.

Why you need to integrate your CRM with social media ASAP

The importance of social media integrations with your business’ tech tools can’t be overstated.

And your CRM platform should be a top priority.

This is especially true as customers rely on social media as a research tool, support channel and place to sound off about brands.

Looking at the top challenges of B2B marketers, the growing need for social media CRM integrations is clear. These challenges include:

• Engaging buyers at the right time it the right channel (57%)
• Giving the sales team relevant content to engage target buyers (23%)
• Dealing with internal data silos and inefficiencies  (17%)

The good news? The Sprout Social Salesforce integration addresses all of the above.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s dive into some of the key upsides of linking your CRM with your social presence.

Monitor make-or-break moments in the buyer’s journey

CRMs help businesses assist leads and customers on the path to purchase.

And social media is where so many crucial moments happen during that journey.

This rings true for B2B and B2C alike. Let’s assume that the typical B2B buyer’s journey is around eight months. Social interactions are a given for folks doing their homework on a product, right?

Meanwhile, recent research from TikTok describes consumer behavior as an “infinite loop” in B2C. The modern path to purchase is far from linear when people are bouncing between so many channels.

As customers bounce between platforms and content, social media serves as a place to make valuable touchpoints along the way. This includes answering questions and publishing educational content to nurture leads.

The same rules apply to existing customers, too. Data from the 2021 Sprout Social Index™ notes that the majority of people that follow a brand on social media intend to buy from them (or buy again).

Earn (and track) more social sales

The growth of social selling speaks for itself.

Do activities such as customer care and content marketing contribute big-time to closing and retaining leads? Of course.

Still, they’re difficult to track without a CRM.

With integrations like those between Sprout Social and Salesforce, it’s so much easier to attribute sales from social. The ability to quickly answer questions and handoff cases between social, sales and support likewise makes it easier to respond to people quickly.

Gather meaningful customer insights you might otherwise miss

The more info you have about your customers, the better.

Consolidating touchpoints between social media and your CRM gives you a more in-depth understanding of your audience.

Fact: 90% of marketers say data from social enables them to differentiate their brands in the market and stand out from their peers. Also, consider how many people use social media as a place to sound off about brands.

These conversations and activities provide insights for sales and support, including:

• Sales objections
• Pain points and challenges
• Wants and needs
• Competitor advantages (and disadvantages)

With all of the above on hand, your team can approach leads and customers with a much-needed sense of confidence.

How does Salesforce integrate with Sprout Social?

Here’s a quick snapshot of the Sprout Social Salesforce integration and what you can do with it:

• Create Salesforce contacts, leads and cases directly in Sprout. This means you can route social customers to support and sales without bouncing between platforms.
• Paint a complete picture of your CRM contacts with information and conversations via social media.
• Tie your social presence to actual business results with analytics and reporting.

As an added bonus, our Salesforce integration is available on all Sprout plans. Features and requirements below:

• Requirements: Salesforce account
• Data types: messages, contacts, tickets
• Key functionality: create leads, edit contact information, create cases, edit cases, auto-sync

What entities are available with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration?

Below is a breakdown of all the entities that can be created and edited directly within Sprout:

• Leads. Kick off the sales process by identifying potential customers through questions, comments and other social media interactions.
• Cases. Let’s say a customer expresses a concern or raises an issue on social. With our integration, you can route them to your support team without leaving the platform.
• Contacts. Beyond customers, you can keep track of social interactions with contacts such as company partners.

To learn more, check out this detailed breakdown.

4 key benefits of using the Sprout Social Salesforce integration

To wrap things up, let’s look at some of the specific benefits of using a Salesforce social media integration like Sprout’s.

1. Provide better customer care

According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index™, there are two specific actions brands can take to earn consumer trust over a competitor:

1. Respond to questions and concerns in a timely manner
2. Demonstrate an understanding of customer needs

And hey, our Salesforce integration can help you in both departments.

Again, logging social activity means a more comprehensive understanding of your customers’ wants and needs. Not having to bounce between your CRM and social tools is a huge time-saver. In turn, you speed up your response time.

The end result? Answering customers faster and coming up with better solutions to meet their needs. Doing so is a recipe for long-term loyalty and retention.

2. Align your marketing, sales and support teams

Consider that 36% of marketers say they struggle with cross-team collaboration.

When marketing, sales and support are aligned, each team is empowered to do their best work. There’s so much room for error if you only log your customers’ social interactions sometimes.

Think about it. If marketing or sales leaves out key customer details in your CRM, your support team is left in the dark. On the flip side, marketing should be aware of sales and objections and concerns to better speak to customers’ desires.

Here are some specific ways that Sprout’s Salesforce integration can help:

• Save time by eliminating needless back-and-forths between vendors, managers and social managers
• Swiftly route cases to avoid bouncing between tools
• Provide each team the context they need to serve your customers

3. Boost the value behind your marketing content

Again, learning what makes customers bounce or stick around is invaluable for marketers.

Tracking these touchpoints can lead to the answers you need to create more impactful content. This includes:

• Blog posts
• Social posts (think: how-tos, tutorials and content you share to nurture customers)
• Reports, white papers and other lead magnets
• Webinars

Oh, and not to mention making your overall marketing messaging more meaningful.

For example, marketers might learn that high price points are the most common sales objection among lost leads. This information encourages the marketing side to reframe their messaging and how they speak to their audience.

4. More meaningful attribution via analytics

Perhaps most importantly, social integration with your CRM highlights the ROI of your team’s efforts.

This is an ongoing struggle for marketers, in particular. Although social media is a must-have for businesses, determining its business impact can be tricky for businesses.

That’s where Sprout comes in. Through our marketing and analytics features, brands can see how social engagements correspond with dollars and cents. Proving how these interactions contribute to revenue reinforces the value of social to stakeholders.

Food for thought: sales strategy is the number one use case for social data, especially as social has more impact on the bottom line. However, only 65% of marketers use social data for their sales strategy.

This speaks to the importance of integrating social with your tech stack and how many businesses still have some catching up to do.

Ready to try the Sprout Social Salesforce Integration?

From customer insights to better service, the upsides of linking your social presence with your CRM are crystal clear.

Thankfully, getting up and running with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration can be done sooner rather than later. Our platform makes it a breeze to beef up your tech stack and bring your team closer together.

If you haven’t already, we invite you to try out Salesforce features for yourself. Oh, and don’t forget to take a peek at our other business integrations to see how else Sprout can level up your company.

The post How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team appeared first on Sprout Social.

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