In our independent editorial review of retail CRM solutions, learn about the top options along with their primary use cases.
Social media CRMs are sales and marketing tools that help you generate and nurture leads via social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more. The top social CRMs help you manage your paid and organic social media activity in an effort to engage with social media leads and add relevant prospects to your sales pipeline for further lead nurturing. To help you choose the right option, we reviewed dozens of options to arrive at the six best social CRM software.
Here are the top six social media CRMs for sales and marketing:
Social CRMs are a type of sales and marketing CRM software specializing in social media integrations and native social media features. In addition to providing core CRM functions you’d expect for successful lead management, they offer features that help with social media lead generation and management, including social posting, social listening, social selling, social media ad management, contact data enrichment, and more.
To determine the best social media CRM software, we broke down our evaluation into six weighted categories, assigning each potential option a score in every category. From there, we tallied all the weighted categories to give each option an overall score out of five. The top six scoring social CRMs made our list, along with a primary use case for each. Check out our evaluation criteria below:
Note: All per-user prices are based on an annual commitment unless otherwise noted.
Overall, we found Zoho CRM to score the highest across our combined criteria and rank as the best overall social CRM software. Check out a detailed breakdown of how each of our top options scored below, including which one is right for you:
Top-rated CRM with sales pipeline and marketing features that include robust organic social media management.
Price Range: Free to $52 per user (15+ day free trial)
Zoho CRM is a leading CRM offering sales features such as pipeline management and reporting as well as social media features like social publishing, social profile enrichment, automated social media lead generation, and a social tab that lets you interact with leads on Facebook and Twitter. Also included are functionalities like AI-powered sales forecasting, product catalogs, invoicing, price quotes, and more.
While Zoho CRM scored our highest social CRM, it's missing some social features like ad management and manual social prospecting. If these are important to you, try Bitrix24for advertising or Nimble for manual prospecting on social.
Full marketing suite offering a free tier and robust paid tiers for full markeing management including social media.
Price Range: Free to $3,200 per month
HubSpot Marketing Hub is an all-in-one marketing platform offering robust social media, email marketing, and blog SEO features as well as seamless integrations with HubSpot CRM. Its social tools let you publish updates, monitor keywords with social whispering, as well as analyze your social performance. Also included is the ability to manage your blog (including SEO recommendations) as well as manage your email marketing efforts.
HubSpot is arguably the most robust marketing option on our list, but its lower tiers don't offer social features and its higher tiers can be pricey for some. If you're looking for a well-priced CRM option that focuses only on social, check out Zoho CRM.
General CRM with a prospecting tool to manually source contact details and data from social media profiles.
Price Range: $19 per user, per month (14-day free trial)
Nimble is a single-tier CRM option offering a sales pipeline tool with a prospecting browser extension that lets you source lead contact information from social media profiles as well as websites and cloud applications. Included with the prospecting tool is company profile enrichment, trackable email templates, and task management for efficient lead nurturing. Nimble even lets you track social signals through social whispering.
However, Nimble charges extra for contact records over 25,000 and doesn't offer social media management. If a well-priced option with social management is what you're looking for, try Zoho CRM instead.
Social media management tool offering a social CRM allowing you to manage lead and customer communications.
Price Range: $89 to $249 per user, per month (30-day free trial)
Sprout Social is a social media management platform with features like social posting, social whispering, social media analytics, and social conversation management. Sprout Social combines inboxes from other sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn, to provide a centralized communication hub for all of your social needs. Also included are social monitoring tools allowing you to proactively reach out to leads and prospects from within the platform.
Even though Sprout Social offers a wealth of social media tools, it's CRM functionality can be lacking when compared to other CRM-specific options. If you need a well-priced CRM with social media features, try Zoho CRM.
Small business CRM from Salesforce that can turn social media interactions into cases (tickets) for customer service.
Price Range: $25 per user, per month (14-day free trial)
Salesforce Essentials is the small business version of Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a robust pipeline and dashboard reporting helpful for managing longer or more complex sales cycles. While it's missing social media management tools, it does offer social media ticketing that turn social messages and interactions into cases for customer service follow up. It even offers internal communication tools so multiple reps can collaborate on a case.
Salesforce is an advanced CRM good for social ticket resolution, but it's missing many social media management features. For a robust CRM with more management functionality, check out Zoho CRM instead.
Collaborative CRM offering core sales features as well as advanced marketing features like social media advertising.
Price Range: Free to $159 per user, per month (30-day free trial)
Bitrix24 is a sales and marketing CRM that includes a sales pipeline tool with team collaboration and marketing features. While it's possible to manage your organic social media on the platform, it's one of the only social CRMs available with native social media advertising management that lets you create social ads and create lookalike audiences from the platform. You can even create and host a website to help with lead generation.
Bitrix24 might be good for paid social media, but its interface can be hard to use and some of its features might not be necessary. For a more usable CRM with robust social media features, visit Zoho CRM instead.
The best social CRMs should offer a mix of sales pipeline and social media management features. Check out the top CRM features found in the best social media CRM software:
The best social media CRMs allow you to post updates from within the platform across all the major social networks. You can even schedule posts multiple months in advance using a social calendar as well as create recurring posting schedules for automated social media interactions.
Social whispering, also known as social monitoring, allows you to monitor top social media accounts as well as specific keywords related to your businesses. This helps you keep track of competitors' and top prospects' social activity including things like brand mentions and macro trends you can include in your social strategy.
Track social media data via powerful reports that can help you assess your social media performance. Also included is social profile enrichment which adds information from lead social profiles to contact records within your CRM.
Many social CRMs let you track, manage, and respond to conversations and social messages directly from within the CRM. This allows you to tie social conversations to contact records so you have a robust chat history. Some even aggregate all conversations into a single inbox for efficient follow up.
Some social media CRMs even offer native paid advertising management or robust integrations with your paid ad tools. Create, publish, and track social media advertising campaigns as well as create lookalike audiences with CRM data.
There are many benefits provided by social media CRM software that can help individual team members as well as your company as a whol. Check out these key benefits of using a social CRM:
From live chat to interactive forms, advertisements, and everything in between, the most successful salespeople and marketers know how to utilize social CRMs to their fullest extent. However, with so many different CRMs available, it can be tough to find the one that’s right for you. By narrowing down your choices to the best general options available, you can easily refine your search and locate the perfect solution for your needs.
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