The Best CMS for SaaS is CRM-Powered

Think about your CMS and CRM. What are they for? If your answers are on the literal side (“a CMS holds content and a CRM holds customer data”), it’s time for a paradigm shift.

SaaS companies typically market to a wide range of audiences, including prospects and existing customers. These groups have very different needs, questions, preferences, and habits.

If you give them all the same exact content experience, someone will always lose out.

Rather than looking at your CMS and CRM as separate systems with separate purposes, consider what they could do if they joined forces to delight your audiences. That’s what we mean by a CRM-powered CMS. 

Static is out, dynamic is in.

In the early days of online marketing, websites didn’t have to do much. They simply served as digital brochures of companies’ products and services, and offered ways for potential and existing customers to get in touch. Everyone had the same experience on the site, regardless of who they were — the experience was static.

Now, websites can (and should) do a lot more, especially in terms of personalization. There’s a lot of SaaS content out there, but your brand can stand out by providing site visitors with dynamic, relevant content that aligns with their goals.

Realizing your site's full potential

When you build a symbiotic relationship between your CRM and CMS (wherein your CRM is the source of truth for your data, and your CMS is a presentation framework for that data), you can create more dynamic website experiences for readers based on factors like:

• Location
• Whether or not they’re a current customer
• Whether or not they’ve visited the page before
• Form fills submitted on a previous visit

Here’s an example: say a prospective customer visits your website and fills out a contact form to download an ebook. They indicate that they’re a VP of Technology in the healthcare industry, and that information goes into your CRM. The next time they visit your site, your CMS can access those details and show the person content that’s curated for their job title and/or industry.

This is often referred to as smart content, adaptive content, or dynamic content.

The best part is, the process doesn’t create more work for your teams. Rather than choosing CTAs for individual pages and performing dev work for each, you can use your CRM data to automatically display the most relevant CTA. That’s why one of the most important features of a good CMS is the ability to integrate with your CRM.

Getting started with smart content

Before you set up smart content on your site, make sure you can answer these questions:

• Does your CRM segment contacts by location, job title, lifecycle stage, etc.?
• Do you need to collect more information from site visitors in order to create more specific segmentation?
• How do your audience’s needs differ between segments?
• For which audience segments do you already have a lot of content? For which segments could you use more?

Your answers can help you decide whether you’re ready to implement a smart content strategy, or if it makes sense to produce more content first. 

Our pick for SaaS marketing: CMS Hub

For most organizations, we think HubSpot’s CMS Hub is the best option for managing content. (For more on why we like it, check out this post.)

With CMS Hub, you can create seamless, personalized experiences throughout the customer journey by adjusting smart rules to display content based on country, device type, preferred language, lifecycle stage, and more.

Credit: HubSpot

For example, if someone already has an account on your site, you can use smart rules to display a “login” button where prospective customers see a “create account” button.

If you already use CMS Hub, but could use some guidance on how to set up smart rules, a HubSpot Partner Agency can help.

CRM data is valuable — use it!

Your website is an extension of your product, and the first touchpoint you’ll have with most users. If every visitor’s experience is the same, you’re missing out on opportunities to impress potential customers and delight existing ones.

With a CRM-powered site, you can curate personalized experiences for your audiences, streamline your marketing efforts, and make the most of your data.