J2 Global Launches CampaignerCRM

Cloud services company j2 Global today launched CampaignerCRM, a comprehensive cloud-based service offering that weds CRM with email marketing functionality.

Geared toward sales professionals at small to midsized businesses, the product was designed to help reps understand, predict, and act in real time for each stage of the sales process, while combining social features and email list campaign capabilities directly within the CRM system.

"One of the things we hear from customers all of the time is they're looking for a simple, easy-to-use tool at an affordable price," comments Rick Faulk, general manager of cloud services for sales and marketing at Campaigner. "They're saying, 'Give me a tool that can help my salespeople actually sell and not just be a system of record to capture data.'"

Campaigner has provided email marketing solutions to the small-business world for more than a decade, and the launch of CampaignerCRM was the next logical step in the process, Faulk says. Many Campaigner customers used multiple tools, such as Constant Contact for email marketing and Salesforce.com for CRM, which Faulk says "are great standalone tools, but it's harder to do trigger-based campaigns if you have different user interfaces, and it's harder to track results."

A critical aspect to CampaignerCRM is its social functionality, which allows users to register their LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter accounts directly in the system and to leverage social platforms to update connection information right in their CRM system. The system also features an integration that lets you capture leads directly from Facebook upon gaining a "like." Through integration with NetProspex, a user can draw additional data on a lead through verified information on thousands of B2B organizations.

Fully integrated email marketing capabilities enable users to tap into link-to-lead generation in CampaignerCRM, set up recurring campaigns, and track click views, conversions, and deal size; once you create a lead, you can track which of those were won and what the value of the deal was in order to calculate ROI on a given campaign.

Another feature of the product offering is live, on-the-go assistance for salespeople; dedicated personal VIP sales assistants are available via phone, email, fax, and chat to perform administrative tasks like updating contract value or to add a lead.

CampaignerCRM is available through a Web-based subscription model starting at $29.99 per user per month.