Getting started with CRM automation: Essential guide & templates included

A CRM can be a fundamental tool for managing and closing deals, but it does its job only if the data is accurate and up-to-date at any moment. Regular updates are necessary to keep track of ongoing deals, correspondences, and team tasks.

That’s where CRM automation comes in.

Read on to discover what CRM automation is, why and when to use it for your business, the integrations modern CRM tools offer, and how to easily automate and customize CRM workflows with n8n.

Let's dive in!

What is CRM automation?

CRM automation refers to the use of technology to streamline and automate various tasks and processes within a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. It aims to reduce manual work, enhance efficiency, and ensure consistency in how customer data and interactions are managed.

Here's what CRM automation typically involves:

1. Automating routine tasks: CRM automation can handle repetitive tasks like data entry, updating records, and managing customer information. For instance, when a new lead is entered into the system, automation can ensure that all relevant details are recorded without manual input.
2. Streamlining sales processes: Automation can help manage ongoing deals by automatically updating their statuses, scheduling follow-ups, and sending reminders. This ensures that sales teams can focus on closing deals rather than managing administrative tasks.
3. Enhancing communication: Automated workflows can be set up to send personalized emails, messages, or notifications based on specific triggers, such as a customer reaching a particular stage in their journey or a deal moving forward.
4. Automating lead management: CRM automation helps in tracking and nurturing leads by assigning them to the right salespeople, sending follow-up communications, and monitoring their progress through the sales funnel.
5. Tracking interactions across channels: CRM systems can automatically log and track customer interactions across multiple channels, such as emails, phone calls, social media, and website visits. This creates a unified view of each customer’s journey.
6. Reporting and analytics: Automation can generate reports and insights without manual intervention, helping teams analyze performance, track KPIs, and make data-driven decisions.

By leveraging CRM automation, businesses can improve productivity, reduce errors, and provide a more seamless and personalized customer experience.

What are some of the benefits of CRM automation?

Workflow automation improves the capabilities of a CRM system by offering numerous benefits that streamline operations, improve customer relations, and drive business growth.

Here's a list of the key benefits of automating CRM workflows, particularly useful in the case of large enterprises:

• Increased efficiency: Automation eliminates manual data entry and routine tasks, reducing the time and effort required for administrative duties. This allows teams to focus on high-value activities, improving productivity.
• Improved data accuracy: Automated processes minimize the risk of human error in data entry and updates, ensuring that customer information is accurate and up-to-date. This leads to reliable and trusty data.
• Scalability: For large enterprises, managing customer relationships manually becomes increasingly challenging. Automation, instead, allows CRMs to scale effortlessly, handling larger volumes of data and interactions without additional strain on resources.
• Personalized communication: Automated workflows enable the delivery of personalized messages based on customer behaviors and preferences. This targeted approach enhances customer engagement and satisfaction, as communications have to be more relevant and timely today.
• Enhanced lead management: Automation helps in capturing, tracking, and nurturing leads more effectively. By automating lead scoring and assignment, sales teams can prioritize high-potential prospects and focus their efforts on closing deals, thus increasing conversion rates.

What CRM has the best native automation?

The "best" CRM for automation can depend on various factors, such as your business size, industry, specific needs, and budget. Here are some highly regarded CRMs known for their automation capabilities:

Zoho CMR automation

Zoho is a sales CRM software that manages sales, marketing, and support. It offers everything you need to increase leads, accelerate sales, and measure sales performance.

Key Features:

• Workflow automation: Zoho automates routine tasks such as sending emails, updating fields, and creating tasks based on predefined triggers and rules.
• Blueprint: It ensures process consistency by defining and automating every step of a sales process, guiding teams through each stage.
• Zia AI: It’s an AI-powered assistant that automates lead scoring, predictive sales insights, and anomaly detection to optimize sales efforts.

Pros:

• Trial plans: Every license presents the possibility for a test with a free trial.
• Intuitively: Its interface is immediately intuitive. The software is easy to learn and use.
• Lots of integrations: Zoho CRM integrates with other Zoho and other 3rd party applications, providing businesses with an all-in-one solution for their operations.

Cons:

• Learning curve: While Zoho CRM is easy to use, it requires some learning, which could be a challenge for businesses with limited resources or technical knowledge.
• Technical complexity: While it is generally considered to be user-friendly, it has a certain level of technical complexity that may not be suitable for businesses with limited technical expertise.
• Updating and fetching records at scale: When dealing with large amounts of data, Zoho CRM may struggle to update and fetch records efficiently. This can cause delays and hinder the performance of the CRM system, particularly for businesses with vast customer bases or complex data sets.

Pricing:

• A standard license to automate and optimize your sales cycle - 15$/Mo (with a free trial);
• A professional  license to improve customer acquisition and accelerate growth - 39$/Mo (with a free trial);
• A premium license to manage global CX operations with the complete CRM - 79$/Mo (with a free trial);
• Contact sales for the custom license.

HubSpot CRM automation

HubSpot's CRM platform is a customer platform that’s designed to scale with your business. It provides tools for social media marketing, sales, content management, and customer service.

Key features:

• Workflow automation: It automates complex processes like email campaigns, task assignments based on specific triggers and conditions, follow-ups, and more.
• Email sequences: Enables automated, personalized email sequences for lead follow-up and engagement, helping maintain consistent communication.
• Lead scoring: Automatically assigns scores to leads based on their behavior and interactions, prioritizing high-potential prospects for the sales team.

Pros:

• All-in-one platform: HubSpot is an all-under-one-roof platform that makes it easier for sales and marketing teams to work together when growing your business.
• Easy to use: The platform is relatively easy to use with drag-and-drop features and easy-to-follow navigations and systems.
• Access to educational resources: HubSpot educates its users through various knowledge base articles, blogs, and courses through the free HubSpot Academy. When going through the HubSpot onboarding process, you'll have plenty of help to get up and running successfully.

Cons:

• It can be costly: While the platform delivers different package options for different-sized budgets, you need to invest more money to get to its best features as your business grows.
• Templates’ customization can be challenging: Users with a lack of knowledge in skill sets, such as CSS, may find it challenging to customize the templates that HubSpot provides.
• No split testing on lower packages: HubSpot offers split testing only on higher-tiered packages, which might be limiting if your budget doesn't quite allow you to upgrade.  

Pricing:

Each software with specific needs provides two different subscriptions. For example, the sales hub provides the following:

• A sales hub professional license  to automate and scale your sales processes - 90€/Mo/Seat;
• A sales hub enterprise license for advanced control and flexibility - 150€/Mo/Seat.

Pipedrive CRM automation

Pipedrive is a cloud-based sales software company that aims to improve the productivity of businesses by tracking your sales pipeline, managing leads, and automating your entire sales process in one place: this way, you can focus on sales, not on processes.

Key Features:

• Email automation: Campaigns by Pipedrive uses drag-and-drop elements to create email automation layouts. It allows you to segment recipient lists, create an email from scratch or modify an existing one from our template editor, and measure success with analytics to improve your campaigns’ automation.
• Sales funnel: Sales funnel software shows you how many open deals you have, which stage they’re in, and which leads to focus on. It includes features for lead generation and marketing automation to save you time and optimize conversions.
• Marketplace integrations: Pipedrive's Marketplace is filled with hundreds of seamless integrations to perfect your automated workflows. It provides integrations for expanding your automation pipelines to accounting and invoicing, email marketing, lead generation, and many more.

Pros:

• Trial plans: Every license presents the possibility for a test with a free trial.
• Quick importing: You can gather your data from different sources within minutes.
• Scalability: Whether you need a basic contact system or a complete CRM, Pipedrive is scalable.

Cons:

• Extra costs for add-ons: It charges extra for add-ons such as lead generation features like web forms and live chat.
• No lead scoring: This feature isn’t available within Pipedrive, although you can integrate a third-party tool to do so.
• Not too many integrations: Pipedrive provides over 400 integrations, while other tools may offer more comprehensive choices.

Pricing:

• An essential license to get organized and set up simple sales processes quickly - 14€/Mo (with a free trial);
• An advanced license to never miss the next step with easy-to-use email and automation - 29€/Mo (with a free trial);
• A professional license to optimize performance with more customizations and reporting - 49€/Mo (with a free trial);
• A power license to empower larger teams with flexible collaboration and support - 64€/Mo (with a free trial);
• An enterprise license to experience Pipedrive without limits and have ultimate peace of mind - 99€/Mo (with a free trial).

Limitations of CRMs native automation builder

While CRM platforms often include native automation builders, these tools come with several notable limitations:

• High costs: Access to the most valuable automation features is often restricted to premium pricing tiers, making them costly for many businesses.
• Limited flexibility: Native automation tools usually offer less flexibility, confining users to predefined workflows that might not suit all needs.
• Fewer features: Compared to workflow automation platforms like n8n, CRM-native automation typically provides fewer features, lacking advanced AI capabilities, extensive customization, and a broad range of integrations (over 100 in the case of n8n).
• Restricted integrations: Native CRM automation often supports fewer integrations, limiting the ability to connect with other tools and systems seamlessly.

For businesses seeking comprehensive and adaptable automation solutions, these limitations can be significant, leading them to explore more versatile platforms.

n8n offers several advantages over CRM platforms like Zoho, Pipedrive, or HubSpot when it comes to automation:

• Extensive integrations: n8n supports over 100 integrations, allowing seamless connectivity with a wide array of tools and services, far beyond the standard options available in most CRM platforms.
• Advanced customization: Unlike many CRMs that limit users to predefined workflows, n8n offers highly customizable automation workflows, enabling businesses to tailor processes to their specific needs without constraints.
• Cost-effectiveness: n8n provides powerful automation capabilities without the need for expensive premium tiers, making it a more cost-effective solution compared to CRMs where advanced features often come with a hefty price tag.
• Advanced features: n8n includes advanced automation features, such as AI-driven workflows and complex data manipulation, which are often limited or unavailable in CRM-native automation tools.
• Scalability: n8n’s flexible architecture allows businesses to scale their automation as they grow, without being tied to the limitations of a specific CRM system.

What are CRM automation examples in n8n?

Let’s now take a look at what CRM automation means in practice.

Qualify new leads in Google Sheets with AI

We know that a lot of companies use Google Sheets as databases and this is why we created an automation for this particular case:

Here’s what this automation does:

1. It is triggered when a new row is added to a Google Sheet of your choice.
2. The OpenAI node processes the lead’s information. To do so, the system query contains detailed qualification rules and the response format.
3. The JSON response from the OpenAI node is processed to extract the response. The response is then merged with the original lead data.
4. Finally, the Google Sheets node updates the original lead entry in the Google Sheets document with the qualification result ("qualified" or "not qualified") in a separate column: this allows for easy tracking and sorting of the qualified leads.

Gmail AI autoresponder

If you receive a high volume of email and need a little help, here’s an AI-powered workflow for you:

Here’s what this CRM workflow automation does:

1. It’s triggered by any received email.
2. It uses the OpenAI integration and a JSON parser to determine if a response is necessary to an incoming email.
3. It crafts a reply with the OpenAI integration.
4. It saves the response as a new draft in Gmail.

Note that this automation doesn't send the message, so you're still in charge of editing and approving emails before sending them.

AI-powered WooCommerce Support-Agent

If you have an e-commerce we can guess that your customers frequently need answers on the status of their purchases.

If it is so, n8n provides an automation that definitely helps you out with that:

This workflow gets you an AI-powered support agent for a WooCommerce webshop. It allows customers to request information about:

• The status of their order;
• The ordered products;
• Shipping and billing address;
• The current DHL shipping status.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

• It receives chat messages from a website-integrated chat where users can request information about their orders.
• The AI agent supplies the needed information by using a custom tool that calls a sub-workflow to retrieve the required information, including the shipping information from DHL.

Note that you can use other shipping providers rather than DHL. You just need to adjust the get shipment block with the credentials of the shipping providers you use.

How do I get started with CRM automation in n8n?

As you’ve already checked some practical CRM automation examples, how about diving deeper into automating your first CRM workflow with n8n?

The workflow, we’ll be looking at, reads every reply received from a cold email campaign and determines whether or not the lead is interested in a meeting. If the lead is interested, a deal will be made with Pipedrive.

Requirements

To use this template, you need:

• At least one active Gmail account;
• An active Pipedrive account with a valid API token;
• An active OpenAI account with a valid API key.

Step 1: Credentials setup

When you use the template for the first time, you have to complete the setup that consists of the following:

• Adding your Gmail account credentials;
• Adding your Pipedrive API token;
• Adding your OpenAI API key.

Step 2: Configure your Gmail account

This template has two Gmail triggers.

If you use only one Gmail account, delete one of the two nodes.

If you use more than two, duplicate a Gmail node as many times as you need, connect them to the Get email node, insert your credentials in the Credential to connect with field, and you’re ready to use the triggers.

Step 3: Configure Pipedrive

In Pipedrive, click on your credentials. Then, go to company settings > Data fields > Person and click on add custom field; call it in_campaign.
In the n8n’s template, the blocks Search Person in CRM and Get Person from CRM are already set up to search for and get persons in Pipedrive.

Step 4: Configure the OpenAI integration

The Is interested? block manages the integration with OpenAI.

The most important field here is Content.

Here you have to:

• Write the message that will be delivered to the people retrieved in Pipedrive to understand if they qualify as interested leads. The block already provides a predefined message, but you can customize it to fulfill your needs. A message template idea could be the following:
  “As a top-notch [describe the role of the lead], you excel at [describe the result the lead provides]. We understand that your role involves [describe the goal reached by the lead], so we’d love to learn more about your approach and share some insights that could help us both improve our strategies. Could we schedule a virtual coffee sometime soon?

Looking forward to connecting with you!”

• The second part of the predefined content provides a structure that must be followed to make the workflow work correctly as it retrieves the email of the user and asks if they are interested in a meeting. You can leave it as is to be sure to make no mistake.

Step 5: Get the response and make the deal

The last three blocks of the CRM automation workflow make the following:

• Get response. This Code node block gets the response of the user.
• If interested. This If node block defines whether the response qualifies the user as interested in a meeting or not. Create deal in CRM. This node block creates a deal in Pipedrive for the leads interested in a meeting. Here make sure that the field Resource is set on Deal and the field  Operation is set on Create.

And... here you go! You’re ready to launch your CRM marketing automation workflow!

Frequently asked questions about CRM automation

Wrap up

In summary, CRM automation offers a powerful way to optimize your business operations by:

• Enhancing data accuracy
• Streamlining workflows
• Improving customer engagement

By understanding the basics of CRM automation and exploring different platforms like Zoho, HubSpot, and Pipedrive, you can choose the right tools for your needs. For those looking to push the boundaries of what's possible, n8n provides advanced integration and customization options that can further elevate your CRM processes.

Whether you're just beginning your journey or seeking to refine your approach, this guide equips you with the knowledge and resources needed to harness the full potential of CRM automation.

What’s next?

If you want to automate your CRM workflows, start with these n8n’s templates: