11 Tips for Efficient Digital Agency Client Management

Digital agency client management can be a tricky process. It often begins with high hopes. Your team has just landed a new client, and everyone is excited to start. From the client’s perspective, they expect your agency to have a well-organized plan for executing their project.

As the Marketing Agency Operations, or internal processes, become more complex and evolve, they can make client management cumbersome and even chaotic. The good news is that this blog will offer valuable insights to help you tackle your goals, like creating and growing your productized service efficiently.

One valuable tool to help you achieve your objectives is Orchestra’s solution, grow your productized service. With this tool, you can take a proactive approach to client management that enables you to create a more organized way to work with clients.

Key Services of Digital Agencies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 

Enhance your website's visibility and search engine rankings with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services offered by digital marketing agencies. These services encompass on-page optimization and off-page strategies. On-page optimization involves refining individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.

It includes optimizing content, HTML source code, and improving site architecture. On the other hand, off-page strategies focus on improving the website’s reputation and authority through link-building and social media marketing. Digital marketing agencies can significantly enhance your website’s search engine visibility by implementing both on-page and off-page techniques.

Local SEO is another crucial aspect of SEO services, especially for businesses targeting specific geographic areas. It involves optimizing your online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches. This includes claiming business listings, managing reviews, and ensuring accurate information across all online platforms. Conversely, international markets require a different approach. Digital marketing agencies can assist in tailoring your website to target global audiences, including multilingual SEO, international link building, and geotargeting.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) 

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) allows for targeted ad placement, ensuring your message reaches the right audience at the right time. PPC is a cost-effective marketing method and provides measurable campaign results, allowing you to track the success of your ads in real-time. Digital marketing agencies implement targeted ad placement through Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) to maximize your reach and engage with potential customers. Ad targeting and audience segmentation are crucial components of this strategy.

By understanding your audience’s demographics, interests, and online behavior, digital marketing agencies can ensure that your ads are shown to the most relevant audience. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of capturing the attention of potential customers who are more likely to convert. Ad placement also involves behavioral targeting, where ads are displayed based on a user’s previous online behavior. This allows for a more personalized and tailored approach, ensuring that your ads are shown to individuals who’ve demonstrated an interest in similar products or services.

You can optimize your marketing budget using Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) as a cost-effective method to reach your target audience and drive website traffic. With PPC, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, making it a highly efficient way to allocate your marketing funds. This approach enables you to set a budget aligning with your business goals, ensuring you get the most out of your digital marketing effectiveness. Additionally, PPC allows for precise targeting, ensuring that your ads are seen by the right people at the right time.

Achieve measurable campaign results through Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) to track and analyze the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts. By utilizing PPC, you can ensure that every click is accounted for, helping you understand the impact of your advertising dollars. Here’s how PPC can help you achieve measurable campaign results: Track and measure the specific actions users take after clicking on your ads, such as purchases, form submissions, or sign-ups.

Analyze the collected data to gain insights into user behavior, preferences, and trends, allowing you to refine your marketing strategies. Monitor key metrics like click-through rates, cost per click, and return on ad spend to gauge the success of your campaigns. Use data-driven insights to optimize ad performance, optimize targeting, and maximize ROI.

Social Media Marketing 

In social media marketing, you can engage with your target audience through various platforms and build brand awareness. You can effectively expand your reach and connect with potential customers through influencer partnerships and strategic engagement strategies. Influencer partnerships involve collaborating with individuals with a strong presence and following on social media, allowing you to leverage their influence to promote your products or services. This can significantly enhance brand awareness and credibility within your target market.

Moreover, implementing engagement strategies is crucial for fostering meaningful interactions with your audience. Encouraging likes, comments, and shares can create a sense of community and belonging among your followers. By consistently providing valuable and relevant content, you can establish a loyal customer base and increase brand loyalty. Community building is essential to social media marketing, enabling you to cultivate a dedicated following that actively engages with your brand.

Furthermore, social media provides a platform for two-way communication, allowing you to listen to feedback, address concerns, and demonstrate transparency. This level of interaction humanizes your brand and fosters trust among your audience. As a result, social media marketing goes beyond just promotional content; it’s about creating an inclusive and engaging online environment for your audience.

Content Marketing 

Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. It’s a strategic approach focused on creating and sharing content to engage and connect with your target customers. Here are some key elements of content marketing:

Developing a well-defined content strategy is crucial for successful content marketing. It involves identifying your target audience, understanding their needs and preferences, and creating a plan to deliver valuable content that resonates with them. Content marketing aims to engage the audience by providing them with content that isn’t only informative but also compelling and relevant to their interests. This can be achieved through various content formats such as blogs, videos, infographics, and social media posts.

Effective content marketing often involves brand storytelling, focusing on creating a narrative that resonates with the audience. This storytelling approach helps build a strong emotional connection with the audience, fostering brand loyalty and trust. Visual content, such as images, videos, and interactive graphics, plays a significant role in content marketing. It helps capture and retain the audience’s attention, convey messages more effectively, and enhance engagement. Incorporating these elements into your content marketing efforts can significantly improve your brand’s visibility, credibility, and customer relationships.

Email Marketing 

To effectively engage and connect with your target audience, email marketing is a valuable tool for delivering personalized and relevant content directly to their inboxes. Through email segmentation, digital marketing agencies can tailor content to specific groups, ensuring the right message reaches the right people. By utilizing A/B testing, these agencies can determine the most compelling subject lines, content, and calls to action, optimizing your email campaigns for better engagement and conversion rates. Email automation allows for timely and consistent communication with your audience, ensuring they receive relevant content at the right moments in their customer journey.

Digital marketing agencies also focus on conversion optimization through email marketing. They analyze and refine each element of your emails to drive better results, whether increasing click-through rates or boosting overall conversions. By constantly refining and improving email content and design, these agencies can help you achieve your conversion goals.

As we transition into the subsequent section about ‘web design and development,’ it’s important to note that a cohesive strategy between email marketing and website design is crucial for a smooth user experience. Your digital marketing agency can integrate your email campaigns with your website to create a unified brand experience, driving traffic from email to your site and maximizing the impact of your digital marketing efforts.

Web Design and Development 

For a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, your agency provides expert web design and development services tailored to your business needs. When establishing a strong online presence, your website is the cornerstone of your digital marketing efforts. Here’s how our web design and development services can benefit your business: We prioritize creating a smooth and enjoyable experience for your website visitors. By focusing on user experience, we ensure your website is easy to navigate, visually appealing, and provides valuable content to engage your audience.

With the increasing use of mobile devices, having a responsive website is crucial. We design and develop websites that adapt and function smoothly on various devices and screen sizes, enhancing user experience and maximizing your reach. Our team understands that every business is unique, and we offer customized web design and development solutions tailored to your specific industry, brand identity, and target audience. We integrate search engine optimization (SEO) best practices into the design and development process to ensure that your website isn’t only visually appealing and optimized for search engines, helping you rank higher and attract organic traffic.

Analytics and Reporting 

Regarding analytics and reporting, digital marketing agencies offer data-driven decision-making tools to help you understand your audience and optimize your strategies. Performance measurement tools are also provided to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and make informed adjustments. Additionally, customized reporting dashboards give you a clear overview of your campaigns, allowing you to focus on key metrics that matter most to your business. You use data-driven decision-making to inform your digital marketing strategies, utilizing analytics and reporting to measure and optimize performance.

This approach allows you to gain valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences, enabling you to tailor your marketing efforts effectively. Here’s how data-driven decision-making can benefit your digital marketing strategies: Digital marketing agencies offer performance measurement tools, including analytics and reporting, to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Conversion tracking is a vital component of these tools, allowing you to monitor user actions after engaging with your digital content.

You can optimize your strategies for better results by understanding which elements drive conversions. Additionally, audience segmentation within analytics enables you to categorize your audience based on various criteria, such as demographics, behavior, and interests. This segmentation provides valuable insights into how different groups interact with your marketing efforts, allowing you to tailor your campaigns to specific audience segments for improved engagement and conversion rates. With these measurement tools, you can make data-driven decisions to enhance the performance of your digital marketing initiatives.

Utilize customized reporting dashboards provided by digital marketing agencies to gain real-time insights into the performance of your marketing campaigns. These dashboards offer a range of benefits that can significantly enhance your marketing strategies: Tailor the dashboard to display the specific metrics and KPIs that matter most to your business, allowing for a deeper understanding of your performance.

By leveraging reporting tools and data visualization, you can present clear and impactful reports to your clients, enhancing transparency and trust—accessing up-to-the-minute data on campaign performance and enabling quick adjustments and optimizations for better results. The ability to visualize data in meaningful ways facilitates informed decision-making and the implementation of effective marketing tactics.

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Importance of Client Management for Digital Agencies

1. Building Trust and Transparency

Effective communication fosters trust, which is the foundation of successful client relationships. Regular updates and honest reporting are essential.

A marketing agency worked with a startup on a social media campaign. The agency gained the client's trust by providing weekly performance reports, including successes and challenges. The client was supportive when issues arose because they were already informed of potential risks.

2. Understanding Client Needs

Good client management involves listening to clients’ goals and tailoring strategies to their needs.

A digital agency revamped an e-commerce site for a fashion brand. They identified a need for mobile-friendly design and integrated payment options by conducting thorough client interviews. The result? A 40% increase in mobile sales within six months.

3. Preventing Scope Creep

Transparent contracts and project scopes help manage expectations and avoid extra work. Client management ensures all parties agree on deliverables.

An agency working with a tech firm avoided scope creep by using a project management tool to track agreed tasks. When the client requested additional features, the agency referred to the initial agreement and proposed a new contract for the extra work.

4. Enhancing Collaboration

Client management fosters a partnership rather than a transactional relationship, improving collaboration and creativity.

A web design agency partnered with a real estate company. The agency created a user-friendly platform inviting clients to co-create wireframes during workshops. The client felt valued, and the project exceeded expectations.

5. Increasing Client Retention and Referrals

Satisfied clients often become loyal advocates, bringing repeat business and referrals.

A small digital agency grew its business by 30% in one year due to referrals from a satisfied client. Their secret? Exceptional client management, with regular feedback sessions and personalized thank-you gifts post-project.

Launch your productized service effortlessly with Orchestra's all-in-one growth toolkit. Designed for creatives ready to scale, Orchestra provides a branded, white-labeled client portal, task management, and real-time analytics, with no coding needed—just your Stripe account. Whether you’re a designer, developer, or copywriter, Orchestra streamlines your workflow, letting you collaborate with clients smoothly while maintaining a private workspace with your team.

Add integrations like Slack and webhooks to customize your setup and deliver a branded experience. Boost your service with a platform built to grow alongside you. Try Orchestra for free and develop your productized service today!

11 Tips for Efficient Digital Agency Client Management

1. Use Orchestra

Implementing efficient client management strategies is essential for running a successful marketing agency. To improve client communication, use Orchestra – a tool designed to streamline, automate, and boost how agencies manage client relationships. Orchestra helps you set up a branded client portal to manage all communications and processes so your internal team can collaborate privately while keeping clients in the loop.

With Orchestra, you can automate client onboarding, project updates, and feedback collection to improve organization and reduce stress for both teams. Plus, the customizable platform lets you integrate with your other favorite tools to enhance your client management processes further.  Ready to see how Orchestra can help your agency grow? Try it for free today.

2. Create a Communication Schedule

Taking a haphazard approach to communication isn’t how you manage client relationship levels. A client shouldn’t have to wait for random calls – or start those calls themselves – to discover how a project is going. Enter a communication schedule. Ideally, you’ll speak to your client at least once a week, even for something as simple as a catch-up when they don’t have an active project with you.

How you communicate is up to you – emails, calls, and even instant messaging are all options – but what’s imperative is that you and the client agree on the how and the when. It’s all about keeping a dialogue running – great for helping you gauge a client’s satisfaction level and keeping them updated on their work.

3. Keep It Transparent

Your clients believe that transparency is more important now than ever before. That’s especially the case in the United States – 86% of people say businesses must be open and honest with them for trust to form. How does that apply in the agency setting? Projects often run into unexpected roadblocks. A key team member may get sick – necessitating a delay – which compromises the initial projections for the project. Be open about that. Rather than leaving your clients in the dark when the unexpected happens, be transparent about any issues and what you do to resolve the problem.

4. Follow Up on Everything

Has your agency completed a project? Follow up with the client – perhaps with a debriefing call – to figure out how they feel about the work they’ve received. That’s the obvious setting for follow-up calls or emails, but there are many more. When you send a proposal – and especially when you don’t receive a response – you have grounds to follow up. The same goes for clients who get in touch about your services and even lapsed clients who may need you again.

The point is to show the client they’re at the top of your mind. As with the first two strategies, it’s all about one thing – strong communication. Streamline and Improve Client Relationships Today! Use the client engagement worksheet to map out strategy and plan opportunities to wow your clients along the project pipeline, keeping them impressed from pitch to project completion.

5. Set (And Manage) Expectations

How can you expect to manage client relationship parameters if you don’t set expectations from the beginning of the relationship? The lack of firm expectations leads to many agencies experiencing scope creep – over 50% of projects go beyond their initial scope, with 40% over their budget. This is where you see another crucial side of managing clients: Ensuring your relationships don’t negatively impact your agency.

Setting expectations involves defining exactly what I’ll deliver to the client in return for the money they’re paying. It also means ensuring the client understands what I need from them – the issues that arise if they don’t deliver – and what will happen if they want to bolt anything onto the original project’s scope. Ultimately, a client relationship is a two-way street. Without expectations, you’re just as likely to get frustrated with the client as they are with you – a recipe for a relationship destined to crumble.

6. Throw Pettiness Out of the Window

Speaking of frustrations, they can lead to an agency becoming a little petty with its clients. You may have experienced this yourself – every roll of the eyes when you receive a phone call from a troublesome client is an example of that pettiness at play. The problem is that what you may think about the client in private can spill over into the work you deliver to them. In the above example, it’s far too easy just to ignore the call – you might decide I only want to talk on my time – which can leave the client on the other end starting to feel just as petty as you are.

There’s no place for that kind of behavior in an agency. So, remember this one thing – just because a client is somebody I may not want to hang out with doesn’t mean they deserve any less of a service from you. They’ve paid their money – and you accepted the work – so you must treat them respectfully. The end of a project is a perfect time to evaluate my relationship with those types of frustrating clients. In these cases, client management may be about letting those troublesome clients go – at an appropriate time – so I can focus on delivering my best to the clients I want.

7. Use CRM Software

Communication breakdowns happen when an agency can’t track what’s happening with its existing and potential clients. That will be a problem for any agency with a decentralized way of managing clients – people get lost in the system (especially as you scale), leading to damage occurring in a relationship. Worse yet, you won’t even know that damage is happening to a relationship until it gets to the point where it leads to the client going elsewhere.

How could you? The client got lost in your convoluted systems. That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) software comes into play. Get CRM software to help you manage client relationships smoothly by centralizing key communication with that client. Function Point offers an excellent example of this. Its software keeps track of how you communicate with clients as they move through your sales pipeline – meaning what you learn doesn’t get lost in the ether – and allows you to deliver transparent information through rate cards and client-facing estimates.

8. Understand Your Team’s Strengths (and Its Weaknesses)

Figuring out how to manage clients isn’t just about building processes that facilitate relationship building and communication. It’s also about figuring out who handles the client. For instance, let’s say you operate a web design and development agency. You have a fantastic designer on my team. They work wonders with client requirements, but they’re not the most personable people in the world. Perhaps they’re shy or tend to stick their foot in their mouth when dealing with the pressure of speaking to a client.

On the other hand, you have somebody who has the gift of the gab, but they’re perhaps not the best on the technical side. Here, you have a balance of strengths and weaknesses. You have a designer who’s great at the technical side but not so great at the talking and somebody who excels in front of clients but may not have a grip on what’s happening in a project—key understanding.

Your job is to facilitate the flow of communication between those two employees – allowing your designer to help my talker to understand what’s happening with the project – so the talker can excel when they’re in front of the client. It’s about knowing who’s best for each role. Getting it wrong – such as forcing my people-averse designer into conversations with clients – leads to client management issues.

9. Involve Clients with Goal Setting

Nobody knows better than you what your agency delivers and the limitations inherent in your services. But by the same token, nobody knows better than your client regarding what they want and how they operate within their industry. There’s a compromise to strike here. What your client wants may not be achievable with my available tech. On the other side of that coin, I may be able to do more for a client than they realize – potentially helping them to grow faster or achieve something beyond the scope of their initial conception.

What does all of this have to do with client management? Goal setting – something you do at the beginning of every project – has to be a collaborative experience. So, get your clients involved. Ask them to tell you about their needs and industry so you can expand – where relevant – or set expectations on limitations from the off.

10. Keep Records

Document everything. Every meeting with a client. Every phone conversation or email. Any information I receive informs me about how a client feels or what they need from my agency. Why? Two reasons. First, documentation keeps you in the loop with the client. This ties back to the earlier CRM points – the more you know, the stronger your communication will be. Second, when I document – especially for contracts, meeting minutes, and anything else your client might sign – I have official declarations of expectations. A client can’t dispute what’s in those documents, making it easier for me to manage troublesome clients trying to get me to do more than what they’re entitled to.

11. Learn to Listen

According to HubSpot, 42% of companies don’t fully listen to their clients. Sure, they’re listening during phone calls and meetings. But they’re not sending out surveys or doing anything to gather feedback from clients, which is a significant problem: How can you expect to understand clients – or how to manage clients – if you’re not showing an interest in their experiences with your agency? Your clients pick up on that lack of interest.

They won’t believe you when you say I put them first because you don’t have customer service protocols. You’re not asking them what they feel you could do better – which would allow you to improve your relationship with them actively – meaning they’re likely to lose interest in you and work with somebody else eventually. Learn to shut up and listen. But importantly, allow your client to talk without interference so I’m forced to listen.

10 Best Digital Agency Client Management Tools

1. Orchestra: The All-In-One Growth Toolkit for Productized Services

Orchestra is an all-in-one growth toolkit tailored to productized services. With Orchestra, you can launch your productized service effortlessly and create a structure for delivering your service to clients. The software is designed for creatives who are ready to scale. It provides a branded, white-labeled client portal, task management, and real-time analytics, with no coding needed—just your Stripe account.

Whether you’re a designer, developer, or copywriter, Orchestra streamlines your workflow, letting you collaborate with clients smoothly while maintaining a private workspace with your team. Add integrations like Slack and webhooks to customize your setup and deliver a branded experience. Boost your service with a platform built to grow alongside you; try Orchestra for free to develop your productized service today.

2. Monday.com: The Client Management Software for Big Teams

Some of the biggest companies in the world, like Hulu and NBC, use Monday.com, and there’s no reason why your agency shouldn’t give it a whirl, either. Monday streamlines workflows and task visualizations. It’s an excellent agency management system tool. You can create boards or visual tables to sync items and updates in real time.

There are status buttons and other presentable options, including Gantt, maps, forms, Timeline, Calendar, Kanban, and more. Available on Android and iOS, this highly responsive agency management software tool allows you to manage and collaborate with remote teams easily. You can assign owners for different tasks and let their AI bots focus on mundane matters. This also reduces the chances of human errors.

Pros  

• Forever free plan available for up to two seats

• Modern, intuitive, and visual dashboard

• Highly customizable

• 200-plus templates for creating boards and automations

Cons  

• Confusing pricing plans because of per-seat (user) pricing

• Minimum team size of three for paid plans

• The free trial is only 14 days, whereas most project management platforms give 30

3. Notion: The Best Organization Tool for Creative Agencies

Used by giants like Verizon, McDonald’s, Pixar, and The Wall Street Journal, Notion is a robust agency management software program that you should also be using. It is the ultimate workspace organization app designed to allow your teams and give them unprecedented collaborative control when dealing with different projects. From creating product roadmaps to codifying processes and building CRMs, Notion has it all.

You can use it to create content calendars, prepare notes and documentation, decide on participants, send out meeting invites, and integrate with other apps. If you are using multiple B2B lead generation strategies, you can also track performance with Notion. Many leading tech giants have also introduced their Notion integrations, so if you use other apps like Slack, you can integrate them with Notion to track your data across multiple apps. It’s one of the best ways to collaborate with teams, which is why many web design agencies worldwide are already using Notion. It’s one of the best creative agency management software tools out there.

Pros  

• Great note-taking capabilities

• Very easy to use and customize

• Affordable pricing

• Forever Free plan has enough features for solopreneurs

Cons  

• Lacks advanced project management features

• Keeping multiple projects can get tedious

• Poor security features

4. Productive: The Agency Management Software With a Focus on Financials

Productive is a well-rounded agency management software with robust functionality that gives you the tools and data to keep an agency running smoothly. The tool was built by a team with a decade of experience in founding, managing, and scaling a software development shop, so it's especially well-suited to digital agencies. The tool's features fully satisfy my criteria for agency management tools. You'll find client and prospect management in the Sales Pipeline (manage deal flow, get sales organized).

The Resource Planning feature, time tracker, and task collaboration tools fit the resource and project management criteria I look for in an agency tool or platform. Billing and invoicing can also be managed straight from the tool, along with valuable reports on profitability and costs to help with finance management. The reporting feature goes beyond that, with real-time reports on margins, utilization, and much more—including reports on individual employees' or contractors' history with the company, salary reports, etc. Productive's integrations include Zapier and Jira, Open API, QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Exact.

Pros  

• Customizable Dashboards: Enhanced customization allows users to tailor their workspace to their needs, providing a more personalized and efficient management experience.

• Integrated Financial Management: This feature integrates financial tracking with project management, offering a smooth experience for budget and expense oversight.

• Client Portal: Including a client portal sets Productive.io apart, enhancing client engagement and transparency.

Cons  

• Learning Curve: New users may find the platform slightly complex, requiring time to thoroughly understand and utilize all its features.

• Customization Constraints: While customizable, some users might find the extent of customization options insufficient for their specific needs.

5. Scoro: The Client Management Software Built for Service Businesses

Scoro project management offers a range of features to help you manage your projects and resources. It’s a good option for service-providing businesses looking for a single platform to manage their day-to-day operations, but it can be challenging to onboard. Users like Scoro because it’s a good business management software with many features to help teams collaborate and manage tasks. Since it focuses on project management, time tracking, and invoicing, it can be a good choice for businesses looking to automate daily processes.

Pros  

• Data-focused and detailed, perfect for project managers,

• Offers a continuous and logical flow, from quote to project to invoice to final project delivery, suitable for many different business processes,

• Provides a good onboarding experience,

• Although there’s a lot of data presented, it manages to put the most essential information upfront, like the profit margin for all issued quotes,

Cons  

• It is a lot to take in, quite overwhelming at the beginning,

• Moving to Scoro will take quite a bit of time due to the amount of data we will have to transfer, and the time it’ll take to introduce our team to Scoro,

• The UI, although modern, could use some improvements to package the amount of data it presents or requires better, like in the many numbers we can enter when working on our quotes,

6. Hubspot CRM: The Free Client Management Software for Growing Businesses

HubSpot CRM is a customer relationship management platform designed to help businesses grow. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools to help teams manage client relationships and interactions, from tracking leads and deals to managing customer data. It also features automation capabilities to help streamline workflows for sales reps, customer service agents, and marketers.

The platform’s integration capabilities allow businesses to connect HubSpot CRM with various third-party tools, such as email marketing platforms and payment processors. With its intuitive user interface, comprehensive suite of features, and integration capabilities, HubSpot CRM is an ideal tool for businesses of all sizes.

Pros  

• Contact and pipeline management

• Email and prospect tracking

• Contact website activity

• Email template builder

• Landing page builder

Cons  

• Expensive pricing plans compared to other client management software

• Lacks intuitive tools for workflow automation

7. Zoho CRM: The All-in-One Client Management Tool

One of the areas where Zoho CRM stands out as a client management tool is its omnichannel approach. This allows firms to engage with clients via whichever medium they prefer, whether email, telephone, or something else. Zoho CRM makes a great effort to be an all-in-one platform. It allows businesses to monitor lead activity and customer buyer preferences and view price lists or documents without changing applications - everything your company needs for client management is right here.

Given that AI is such a hot topic right now, it should come as little surprise to hear that Zoho offers users its assistance. You won’t find ChatGPT levels of intelligence here, but personal assistant Zia Voice can retrieve information, update accounts, and generate performance reports. It’s certainly a handy addition that improves Zoho’s ease of use. Although there is no free tier with Zoho CRM, a free trial is available. Given that the platform is currently used by more than 150,000 businesses across 180 countries, a free trial may be all you need before you’re convinced this is the right client management software for you.

Pros  

• Workflow automation

• Customization

• Email marketing

Cons  

• Steep learning curve

• Limited customer support

8. Freshworks CRM: The Client Management Software With AI Features

Freshworks CRM makes it easier for teams to track leads, automate marketing campaigns, segment customers into different categories, manage customer data in one place, and quickly build customer relationships. Through features like contact management, lead scoring, customer segmentation, task automation, and customer insights, businesses can increase revenue and better understand their customers.

The CRM tool also helps teams stay organized by providing detailed reporting on customer interactions and allowing users to set up rules-based workflows that can be used to automate repetitive tasks. Additionally, Freshworks CRM integrates with popular third-party applications like Google Apps, Zapier, and Mailchimp, making it even easier for teams to get the most out of their customer data!

Pros  

• Pipeline management to visualize the entire sales process organized by stage

• Sales Goals to set and track goals based on revenue or the number of deals

• Filter, sort, and search functionality on the mobile app

• Deal performance dashboards

• Drag-and-drop interface

Cons  

• Project management features are only available on expensive plans

• Limited reporting capabilities to customize key metrics

9. Creatio: The Highly Customizable CRM Software

Sales Creatio has undergone many name changes, but it remains a top CRM choice. Its specialty is larger sales organizations, and it does a good job catering to their needs. Creatio also offers tools for business process management (BPM), marketing automation, and help desks, enabling customers to address multiple business objectives in a unified way.

Pros  

• Multifaceted and highly customizable unified business solution

• Rooted in solid CRM functionality

• Creatio CRM helps SMBs streamline processes from lead management to closing

Cons  

• Relatively short trial period

• Hefty feature set

• Customization can be daunting at the outset

10. Accelo: The Client Management Software for Service Businesses

Thanks to its CRM and management features, Accelo can be a good choice for agencies interested in supporting their entire project lifecycle, from client acquisition to project delivery. Something to consider is that Accelo’s price of entry is less affordable than comparative solutions on the market, such as Productive, which similarly offers integrated sales and management features. Additionally, some users have noted that the tool can be somewhat inflexible.

Pros  

• Easy to learn to use.

• Feature-rich.

• Billing and expenses management capability.

• Quality and responsive customer support.

Cons  

• Expensive compared to its competitors.

• Core and Professional plans lack ticket and retainer management features.

• Limited integrations.

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Try Orchestra for Free to Grow Your Productized Service Today

Orchestra is a business operations software designed for digital agency client management. It helps you launch and streamline productized services. With Orchestra, you get a branded client portal to deliver a sleek and professional experience for your clients. The software also includes task management tools to help you organize and automate your workflow as you provide your productized service. There are even built-in analytics to track your progress and keep clients in the loop.

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