Do CRMs typically support the recording of custom data about a potential customer? Recommend one?
I have no experience with CRMs at all and don't understand their capabilities. I want to use Typeform to capture (with consent) some information about a potential customer, based on their responses to questions on a custom survey that they choose to fill out. The goal is to take their data/responses and record them in a specific customer profile made for them, along with their name & email address.
This is probably a bit more information than you need, but the goal after that is to then integrate this CRM with Mailchimp or another newsletter platform to send them (again, with consent) periodic, custom targeted emails based on their profile.
I've been really interested in the "no code" world of startups lately, and in this use case, I'm looking to get started by connecting the following apps: Typeform-->CRM-->Mailchimp. It will get more complex over time, but this is a good starting point I think. Very barebones.
I think it's safe to say that any decent CRM will support custom fields. I think the more likely place you might run into problems is the sync between the CRM and Mailchimp. Syncing is really hard*, and a lot of CRMs oversell their capabilities. The most common form this takes is that they integrate with Zapier and claim that means they integrate with Mailchimp. But Zapier is extremely limited and doesn't let you build true syncs (e.g. you can't update a record that already exists unless something has changed recently).
If you mostly just need the marketing automation side of things, you might be better off going from Typeform --> Mailchimp directly and use Mailchimp as your CRM for the time being (it's very basic, but can get the job done). If you really do need a CRM, you'll want to test the Mailchimp integration rather than just taking their word for it.
*As an example, my company (Less Annoying CRM) has Mailchimp sync which doesn't sync custom fields (just name and email) and people often praise how well it works. We plan on improving it in the future, but honestly, it's crazy that our current implementation is considered good by CRM industry standards.
Excellent answer, mirrors my own experience.
Yeah, any CRM worth using will allow custom fields.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago