You are leaving money on the table if your agency does not have a content marketing CRM.
Here’s why. The objective of any marketing channel is to attract new prospects, nurture them, build trust, and to create opportunities to sell your product or services to the target buyer.
Content marketing is no different. As a versatile marketing channel, content marketing can help drive visibility across all layers and steps of the customer journey. For example, a ‘top of the funnel’ blog post can drive visibility to a hitherto untouched audience. Similarly, a webinar or ebook can be helpful in driving a well-nurtured lead towards sale.
This makes content marketing an extremely powerful marketing channel.
But when the same marketing channel can bring in customers across several segments of a customer journey, it can be a challenge to segment them meticulously, and funnel them across the right path.
This is why a content marketing CRM can be so important.
What is a content marketing CRM tool
A content marketing CRM tool is a customer relationship management software that helps businesses capture, track, organize, and manage interactions with leads acquired through content marketing efforts.
A pure play content marketing CRM tool may not be ideal in most scenarios. This is because businesses typically invest in multiple customer acquisition channels, beyond just content marketing.
The ideal content marketing CRM will have all the necessary attributes to make it easy to capture leads across different content formats. Alongside, it also helps segment these leads autonomously, and handle all the nurturing and conversations with the captured leads seamlessly.
Why content marketers using StoryChief need a CRM
StoryChief helps content teams plan, create, publish and distribute content across multiple channels. However, content marketing does not end with someone reading a blog post, or downloading an ebook.
These interactions can create prospects who need to be engaged with, nurtured, and eventually converted into customers. This is where a CRM can come in handy.
For instance, a prospect might discover your blog on Google, land on your website and eventually submit a form to download an ebook. StoryChief can be part of the content marketing workflow to attract such prospects and bring them into your marketing pipeline.
A CRM provides the infrastructure to complement StoryChief in this journey through contact management, lead segmentation, nurturing, and sales pipeline management.
For StoryChief users, the ideal CRM is thus not one with the most features. Instead, it is one that naturally complements your existing content marketing workflow, and turns content engagement into meaningful relationships and revenue.
The best content marketing CRM tools - at a glance
| CRM Platform | Starting Price | Standout Feature |
|---|---|---|
| Nutshell | $19/user/month | Integration with 5000+ apps |
| Accelo | Custom priced | AI-assisted resourcing & capacity planning |
| Heyy.io | $49/month | Messaging automation |
| Wise Agent | $49/month | Centralized content library |
| OutrightCRM | $82/month | Omnichannel communication |
For this article, we looked at several features to identify what makes a CRM tool ideal for content marketing. We especially looked at tools that can integrate into your current content marketing workflow - including integration with StoryChief, and their AI and automation-related capabilities.
Nutshell
Nutshell is an AI-powered CRM tool that is designed to help small teams organize their contacts, track sales pipelines, and automate their marketing tasks. As a content marketing CRM tool, it integrates with over 5000 apps, some directly and several others indirectly. Key connections via Zapier, including StoryChief, 123 Form Builder, ActiveCampaign, Claude, and WordPress, among others.
With Nutshell, you can set up entire landing pages in minutes using their intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You may further set up automation workflows, web forms, and visitor tracking systems to spruce up your content marketing campaign.
Key features
- Nutshell AI: AI agents that can summarize meetings and calls, draft personalized email replies, turn calls and meetings into action items, and quickly research and assess leads.
- Marketing tools: Easy setup tools for email marketing, SMS campaigns, web forms, web analytics, visitor tracking, landing pages, and page automations
- Reporting: Comprehensive reporting tools for the marketing team that monitor the marketing funnel, website traffic, email deliverability, form submissions, and competitor monitoring
- Integrations: Integration with 5000+ apps across marketing, customer support, project management, AI, and scheduling
Pricing
- Foundation: Priced at $19/user/month and includes up to 10 AI outcomes
- Growth: Priced at $32/user/month for up to 20 AI outcomes and also includes activity reports
- Pro: Priced at $49/user/month and includes 40 AI outcomes, 5 custom pipelines and meeting scheduler
- Business: Priced at $67/user/month and includes 100 AI outcomes, and 10 custom pipelines
- Enterprise: Priced at $89/user/month and includes 150 AI outcomes, and unlimited pipelines
Nutshell also has a Marketing Pro plan priced at $49/month/company and includes advanced email marketing tools, SMS marketing, AI email campaigns, A/B testing for email campaigns, landing page builder and more.
G2 Rating: 4.3/5
Accelo
Accelo is an AI-powered Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform with a built-in CRM and client work management platform. It’s ideal for marketing and creative agencies, and the platform can be integrated with content marketing and lead capture tools like StoryChief, and HubSpot, which makes it ideal as a content marketing CRM.
Accelo’s contact & pipeline management platform helps track client details, sales pipeline, quotes, and emails. The centralized database helps build a single source of truth for all interactions tied to a specific company.
Key features
- Project management: Turn converted clients directly into active projects with milestones and task tracking
- AI-assisted resourcing & capacity planning: Turn weighted pipeline demand into forward-looking capacity plans, model resourcing scenarios, and use placeholder scheduling to prepare for likely work before deals close
- Time tracking & retainers: Monitors billable hours and helps keep track of recurring services and team utilization
- Billing & invoicing: Generate invoices based on the logged hours and completed milestones
Pricing
Accelo does not publicly list a price.Quotes are based on the specific tiers and modules chosen, as well as team size.
G2 Rating: 4.3/5
Heyy
Heyy is a customer communication and messaging automation platform with built-in CRM functionality. Using Heyy, you can create “AI employees” who can autonomously handle tasks like sales, support, onboarding and other internal operations.
The platform is equipped with a mini-CRM that aggregates conversations and leads generated over live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger into a single dashboard. Through its Zapier integration, Heyy can also connect with StoryChief as well as other lead capture tools like Forms.app, and Jotform.
Key features
- Messaging automation: Automates chat cross WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and website live chat
- Unified Inbox: Centralizes all customer conversation in one place
- Mini CRM: Tracks customer profiles, notes, tags, and conversation history
Pricing
- Hobby: Priced at $49/month and comes with 1 AI employee and 3 AI actions
- Pro: Priced at $149/month and comes with 2 AI employees and 8 actions/AI employee
- Ultra: Priced at $499/month and comes with 3 AI employees and 12 actions/AI employee
- Enterprise: Comes with higher limits, SLAs, and migration support
Wise Agent
Wise Agent is an ideal CRM tool for the real estate industry. It may prove to be useful in generating leads, nurturing them, and growing your business for content teams focused on this industry.
WiseAgent integrates with all the popular content marketing tools directly or through apps like Zapier. You can connect your CRM with StoryChief, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Google Calendar, among others.
Key features
- Content library: Centralized content library for emails, letters, and texts, along with pre-built templates, and an AI-powered writing assistant
- Communication tools: AI-powered omnichannel integration with email, text, and calls to handle customer conversations
- Lead generation: Customizable landing page templates, and digital ads integration to capture new leads for your business
- Time management tools: Shared calendars, automated reminders, and task manager to stay on top of deadlines and upcoming client meetings
Pricing
- CRM: Priced at $49/month and includes up to 5 team members as well shared login access
- CRM+WiseSocial: Priced at $69/month and also includes automated posting listing, and branded listing videos
- Enterprise: Custom priced solution with white labeling option and bulk licensing
G2 Rating: 3.6/5
OutrightCRM
OutrightCRM is an ideal choice as a content marketing CRM for teams that need heavy customization as well as workflow automation. It’s ideal for content marketing teams that serve in industries like education, real estate, eCommerce, healthcare, and consulting.
With OutrightCRM, content marketing teams can set up automated outreach, client follow-ups, and email marketing campaigns. You can also build custom workflows that matches your specific editorial pipelines or client approval stages.
Key features
- Omnichannel communication: Integrates with content channels like email, SMS, and WhatsApp
- Drip campaign management: AI-powered automation workflows that nurtures leads, segments prospects, and makes daily operations seamless
- Lead generation: Collects leads generated from landing pages, web forms, email campaigns, and referrals helping build leads pipeline from your content marketing assets
Pricing
- Standard: Priced at $82/month and includes contact management, sales pipeline visibility, and calendar integration
- Advanced: Priced at $119/month and includes generative AI integration, smart prospect management, and revenue forecasting
- Premium: Priced at $189/month and includes location-based mapping, custom news feeds, and intelligent playbook.
Picking the right content marketing CRM tool
Each content marketing team is unique. A content marketing agency has a different workflow and operational constraints than an in-house content marketing team that has a broader pool of stakeholders.
Depending on your objectives, evaluate the various content marketing CRM options based on the features it offers, your audience size, and how well they track user engagement from content to conversion.
Most importantly though, make sure that the content marketing CRM tool that you pick aligns with your core content marketing workflow and integrates with tools like StoryChief. This ensures that your CRM amplifies your content marketing ROI and helps you meet your marketing objectives.
