The best CRMs for Digital Agencies: How to Choose Yours

Are you a digital agency looking to streamline your sales process and tap into more clients? It might be time to consider a CRM for your digital agency. A good CRM can help you centralise your data, improve communications, automate repetitive operations, and manage leads and clients more effectively. But the question remains: what is the right CRM for your agency? 

While there are many CRM options available, choosing the right CRM for your agency boils down to your business needs — your services, your team, and your preferred workflows. 

In this article, we’ll break down the best CRMs for digital agencies for each agency type, so it’s easier for you to identify your ideal tools.       

What is a CRM for digital agencies? 

A CRM (customer relationship management tool) is a software specifically designed to help you efficiently manage your interactions with current and potential clients. By incorporating a CRM, you can gather customer interactions across different channels or points of contact, such as websites, social media, emails, ads platforms, messaging apps, and even events. 

Not only that, a CRM can also help you automate repetitive manual tasks that take up hours of your time but doesn’t directly generate sales for you, such as downloading your lead information from lead sources, organising their data, managing follow up schedules, and so much more. 

As a digital agency, you may be managing complex, multi-channel relationships with your clients. CRMs streamline and enhance these interactions at every stage. For instance, while generating leads, CRMs help you instantly capture and organise them at one place from various channels, ensuring no potential client slips through the cracks. 

Additionally, CRMs allow you to track each step of your sales process, automate follow-ups, and manage all communications in one place. CRMs can also be useful to track client satisfaction and gather feedback, helping you make informed decisions to improve your services.      

Here’s more on why agencies need a CRM 

To centralise information 

CRMs store all your client data in one central location. These could be contact details, communication history, contracts, project statuses, and past interactions. This ensures everyone in your team has access to the same information, reducing errors and improving efficiency. You no longer need to jump back and forth between different tools to access the status and information of your leads or clients, even those handled by another teammate.

To improve internal and external communication 

CRM can help you flawlessly manage your communications with clients from a single platform. Whether it’s emails, calls, messages, or social media interactions, the right CRM tracks and organises these communications so you always have the full context. Additionally, CRMs also help you to easily distribute leads and enhance communication within your team. 

To manage clients and leads more efficiently

By providing tools that automate follow ups, track customer engagement, and segment leads based on data and interactions, CRMs help you manage your leads and customers more effectively. You can practise more personalised communication and provide better service for each client.

To streamline processes

Many CRMs automate repetitive manual tasks such as lead download, data entry, lead tracking, and follow-ups. This saves an incredible amount of time for your team, allowing you to focus more on sales, strategy, and client engagement.

To manage projects better

Many CRMs integrate with project management tools to help you keep track of your projects seamlessly. If you handle multiple projects simultaneously, you can use a CRM to track project progress, deadlines, and deliverables. This ensures projects are completed on time and clients are kept up-to-date with the latest developments.

To gain useful analytics and reporting

Analytics play a crucial role in helping you make informed and practical decisions. With the help of powerful analytics and reporting tools CRMs provide, you can track your performance over time. This can include measuring the success of your marketing campaigns, analysing sales trends, and assessing client satisfaction or effectiveness of your sales outreach.    

To increase Lead Conversion

CRMs help you track each of your client’s journeys from the initial contact to the moment they convert. With this, you can take targeted actions at each stage and improve your chances of landing new deals. After all, organising and nurturing leads effectively are crucial to convert more prospects into clients. 

The tricky question is how to know if a CRM is ideal for your agency. Well, apart from managing your customer and sales process, many CRMs also help you in the project management aspect of your business. For instance if you’re a social media agency, you’ll want to incorporate a CRM that not just helps you manage clients and streamline your sales process, but also can assist you in implementing any social media activities you may run. Here’s a list of CRMs for digital agencies based on agency types. 

The best CRM for full-service digital agencies and enterprises: Salesforce

If you’re a full-service agency with multiple teams, it’s crucial for you to have good coordination across diverse service lines, including SEO, PPC, social media, content creation, web development, etc. You’ll also want to allocate your resources to address each client’s needs. Simultaneously, your goal is to bring in more clients and upsell more comprehensive packages to existing ones. 

This demands a powerful CRM capable of handling and managing multiple data points across multiple touchpoints. A CRM like Salesforce can be an ideal tool for this situation.   

Salesforce offers extensive customisation and integration options, making it ideal for agencies that provide a wide range of services. By handling complex customer relationships and large data sets, Salesforce can easily streamline your operations across different departments.

Pros	Cons
Highly customisable Impressive integration capabilities Powerful analytics and reporting	Comes with a steep learning curve Can be complex to set up and run for beginners Can be costly for smaller teams

The best CRM for SEO, SEM and content marketing agencies: HubSpot 

As a content marketing agency, you’ll always focus on developing specialised and well- targeted content services for your customers to stay one step ahead from your competitors. You strive for real-time analytics and SEO performance tracking, while keeping up-to-date with Google’s algorithm changes.

An appropriate tool can help you manage and optimise your customer’s ad campaigns while tracking content performance across multiple platforms. You also need a CRM to maintain and expand client relationships. HubSpot can handle all these needs without requiring multiple tools.

HubSpot provides powerful SEO and inbound marketing tools that directly complement the efforts of your SEO and content marketing agency. The platform offers content optimisation tips, landing page creation tools, and easy integration with Google Ads. 

Hubspot also excels in content management and marketing automation, making it an excellent fit for content marketing agencies. With HubSpot you can easily plan, create, and analyse content performance of your customers and integrate these functionalities with the CRM components to nurture leads effectively. You can also integrate these functionalities with CRM components to take care of your leads. 

Pros	Cons
User-friendly interface Powerful inbound marketing tools Free tier includes incredible features	Adding features can be costly for smaller teams Limited customisation options

The best CRM for small to mid-sized marketing agencies: Privyr

With more than 60 percent of internet traffic coming from mobile phones, staying at the forefront of mobile technology, location-based marketing, and app trends is crucial for small and mid-sized marketing agencies. Simultaneously, it’s important to focus on understanding emerging technologies and personalised campaigns. 

If you’re a smaller marketing agency that mainly focuses on mobile marketing activities, having the capacity to manage your leads and clients from your mobile device can be an advantage. However, most apps and tools offer limited functionalities on mobile and you might still need a desktop to effectively manage your sales processes. But not if you have Privyr.    

Privyr is a mobile-first CRM that offers excellent capabilities for managing your sales process and campaigns directly from your mobile phone. It’s super user-friendly and offers integration with lead sources (Facebook, Google Ads, websites, etc.) and messaging apps (WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.), making your communications and sales management much easier. 

Pros	Cons
Light yet powerful tool with simple interface on mobile and desktop Effortless to learn and use Doesn’t require extra tool/software to integrate with other systems or download data	Not ideal for large enterprises that require complex forecasting and analytics.

The best CRM for social media agencies: Sprout Social

As a social media agency, your main focus is on creating creative content and campaign management by quickly reacting to trends and engagement metrics. It’s important to leverage data to prove ROI to clients and to consider expanding services into new, less-saturated social platforms or offering integrated influencer marketing solutions.

You need a CRM that helps not only with your sales process but also with your social media activities. After all, you’ll want to demonstrate you’re the best at your game. 

Sprout Social can be an ideal CRM for social media agencies. While primarily a social media management tool, Sprout also offers CRM capabilities that allow you to track interactions and manage relationships directly through social channels.

Pros	Cons
Excellent for social media integration Strong analytics features Great automation options	Primarily focused on social media Can be costly for smaller teams

The best CRM for web design/development agencies: Zoho

Web design and development agencies need project management tools to keep track of timelines, client revisions, and technical development stages. At the same time, building a reputation for innovative design and technological expertise is essential. You need a tool that allows you to manage your clients and projects simultaneously. 

Zoho CRM integrates well with Zoho Projects, making it a great choice for web design and development agencies that need to manage both sales and project milestones. It provides tools for tracking time, managing invoices, and maintaining client communications in a single platform. This way, you’ll handle your client’s projects as efficiently as your own. 

Pros	Cons
Flexible pricing options  Integrates well with other Zoho products Offers artificial intelligence features	Comes with a learning curve  Limited features in lower-tier plans

The best CRM for digital advertising agencies: Adobe Marketing Cloud

High competency in data analysis and campaign optimization is crucial for the success of digital advertising campaigns with a specific focus on ROI and conversion rates. If you excel in these areas as a digital advertising agency, it’s time to expand your expertise into newer ad technologies and platforms to offer your customers cutting-edge solutions. You’ll need a tool that offers an extensive suite of products that address every dimension of digital marketing while also helping you manage your sales process effectively. 

Adobe Marketing Cloud offers powerful analytics and targeting features. It allows you to efficiently manage, personalise, optimise, and orchestrate cross-channel campaigns. Its robust range of features include analytics, commerce, data management platform, email marketing, personalization, Advertising, content management and more. 

Pros	Cons
Comprehensive digital marketing tools Advanced analytics and targeting capabilities	Complex setup and management Can be costly for smaller teams

The best CRM for email marketing agencies: ActiveCampaign

Advanced automation and segmentation capabilities help you distinguish successful email campaigns from average ones. As an agency you’ll also strive for expertise in A/B testing and analytics so you can continually refine your client’s campaigns. Additionally, you may also want to expand your services to include full-funnel marketing approaches. You need a CRM that provides email marketing tools along with functionalities that help you manage your clients flawlessly.   

ActiveCampaign specialises in email marketing automation and CRM functionalities. It’s an excellent tool for agencies that need sophisticated email campaign management tools combined with effective lead management and nurturing capabilities.

Pros	Cons
User-friendly interface Excellent email marketing automation Detailed segmentation and tracking	Can be costly with growing requirements Advanced features may come with a steep learning curve

Conclusion

Finding an ideal CRM for your digital agency is straightforward if you know exactly what you need. However, it’s wise not to choose a CRM based solely on its appearance and listed features. 

Most CRMs offer a free trial, allowing you to explore their functionalities firsthand. Always take advantage of free trials to understand each CRM’s capabilities and user friendliness before making your final decision. Testing these tools can help you determine how well they integrate with your workflows and whether they meet your unique requirements. 

If you’re a smaller agency looking to connect with more customers and grow your business, consider using a simpler CRM that’s available on the go. Privyr is a light yet powerful tool that works just as fine on a simple device as your mobile phone. The best part is that you do not require additional tools to receive data from marketing platforms or lead sources. It’s affordable and highly effective for small businesses. Try Privyr for free today.