CRM Platforms for Print Companies

What is the best CRM for a print company? What CRM platforms are actually good for print companies? The truth is there are a few different ways to think about CRMs, there is the operation side, the niche specific functionality and the marketing side of these platforms. And not all CRMs can accomplish all three and not all print CRMs are created equal.

In this article we are going to discuss the different CRMs that print companies can use and share the knowledge you’ll need to make the best decision on which CRM you should use.

 

Does a Print Company CRM Actually Exist?

Yes! There are companies out there that make CRM platforms specifically for print companies. But from a marketers perspective we think of CRM tied into marketing automation and for that there really are no CRMs that have been made solely to serve print businesses.

 

Let’s look at a few of the CRMs that say they are made just for print.

 

PrintPlanr

https://www.printplanr.com

This print focused CRM has a number of capabilities that allow you to efficiently run your shop and gives you the ability to easily implement Web 2 Print. But like we pointed out in the beginning of this section there is no good marketing automation component to this CRM.

Printing In A Box

https://www.printinginabox.com/

Again this print CRM does much more than just manage customer relationships. It too has Web 2 Print, design online and website capabilities in addition to contact management, but no marketing automation.

Hoops CRM

https://hoopscrm.com/

Like the others this CRM for print is a well designed overall tool for communicating on orders, facilitating the operations of print and managing contacts. But the missing element again is marketing automation.

 

And there are actually quite a few more just like these, but the same common theme is that none of them effectively satisfy the need for integrating into a marketing automation solution or do that marketing natively inside the platform.

So what can you do?

 

Marketing Automation for Print Companies – CRM Platforms that Work

If you want to effectively run marketing campaigns then a key component is communicating with customers and prospects. If you want to close more sales then a key tool for sales is having a CRM. By marrying those two critical components you have the need for marketing automation. By using a platform that can help scale your marketing and sales efforts you will…

• Save time & money
• Close more sales
• Gain insight into making better marketing & sales decisions in the future

*That’s a long last bullet! Lol

 

So What Are the Best Marketing Automation Platforms for Print Companies?

If you’ve ever gone looking for a marketing automation tool then you know that there are A LOT out there. Most of them do similar things, but the biggest difference across all of them is total capability and flexibility, integration and price. And for most print companies price is the biggest determining factor.

Here we’ll explore 3 marketing automation platforms for print companies that are different in both price and their capabilities to give you a better understanding of which may be the best fit for you.

 

Hubspot

https://www.hubspot.com/

Is Hubspot good for print companies? Yes it is, but it comes at a cost.

Hubspot has a seamless solution that combines powerful easy to use marketing automation capabilities with a just as strong CRM, making marketing and sales simple & effective. Plus it has the ability to integrate into almost any system due to it having an open API. But the downside is that it is one of the most expensive marketing automation tools out there. If you want the full functionality you’ll end up paying between $800 and $1000 per month for Hubspot.

*As a side note we are aware there are platforms out there which are more expensive such as Oracle, Netsuite and Salesforce / Pardot, but these are not recommended for mos print service providers unless you are of a certain size in revenue, employees and operations overall.

Active Campaign

https://www.activecampaign.com/

This marketing automation tool is a perfect middle ground for most printers.

It has all of the functionality you’d need, can easily integrate with other platforms and the price is about half (and less depending on your need) of Hubspot.

There are some downsides though. For example, they are very strict on “spam” compliance which can make onboarding difficult and until you run a campaign for a while without getting a lot of unsubscribes your account is kind of under supervision and they will freeze the account anytime they think something “fishy” is going on.

Mailchimp

https://mailchimp.com/

We include Mailchimp with a caveat. It’s not really a marketing automation tool and it doesn’t really have a CRM included. So why are we listing it? Well, the truth is that this platform does have marketing automation functionality and is a highly popular email marketing platform so it’s able to be integrated into almost everything out there (even your print MIS or niche CMS).

The automations are very basic and fairly restricted but it can get the job done.

Plus it is extremely cheap!

 

As you can see, there is basically no ONE CRM for print companies or Marketing Automation tool for print companies that we can name as the single go to platform. But based on what we’ve shared here we hope that the journey you take into picking the best tool for you is a little easier.

If you’re looking to get more print leads and sales then you’re in the right place. We guarantee you get more print leads when signing up with us here at Pryntbase. You can try us out free for 30 days.