Best CRM Features & Tools for 2022

The average ROI on a CRM is 771%.

Shape’s all-in-one customer relationship management suite has all the features you need to optimize and streamline your business processes.

Whether you’re using click-to-call to launch an integrated call or building an automated email campaign with one of over a hundred professional templates, these critical CRM features will support your success with lead generation, increasing brand awareness, and closing more deals.

Shape’s CRM features are one step ahead to keep you on top –

• Integrated Phone
• Texting and MMS
• Email and Video Marketing
• Productivity Tools
• Marketing
• Contact Management
• Sales Automation
• Account Administration
• Add-On Tools

Integrated Phone

Connect to customers faster with Shape’s all-in-one integrated phone system. With click-to-call, power dialing, and inbound call routing functions, you can ensure that your team members never miss a thing.

Complete CRM Integration

Consolidate all your communications with one easy-to-use dashboard through click-to-call, inbound and outbound calling, and tracking and recording functions. Never miss a call and never fail to connect.

• Connect from anywhere with integrated, cloud-based system
• Launch and record calls from within the CRM platform
• Keep phone, email, and text communications on a single screen

Power Dialing Call Queues

Improve the effectiveness of your outbound campaigns by leveraging the power dialing call queue. Shape users will easily identify the leads that are most likely to answer—and most likely to commit.

• Leverage prioritized lists to complete more calls
• Keep users focused on call strategies rather than connecting
• Ensure that all your sales rep time is fully utilized

Live Call Monitoring, Listening, and Recording

Ensure the quality of your sales team through live call monitoring, listening, and recording. Improve training processes, take notes, and provide feedback after each call.

• Listen to calls live to provide better feedback
• Monitor calls during training or for analysis
• Record calls for future review

Round Robin Call Distribution, Call Blasting, and Call Routing

Use round robin call distribution, inbound call routing, and external call routing to ensure that connections are always made and communications are never missed. Calls can be forwarded and automated to ensure that customers always get to the right destination.

• Always connect calls with round robin call distribution and call blasting
• Route calls more effectively throughout departments
• Ensure that clients don’t just connect but that they connect to the right agents

Pre-Recorded Voicemail Drops and Inbound Voicemail Recording

Leverage voicemail features to ensure that connections are made. Pre-record voicemail drops to reduce the amount of time team members spend on calls—and create effective inbound voicemails to encourage customers to leave a message.

• Digitally record voicemails to improve client connections
• Pre-record voicemail drops to streamline outbound calling
• Quickly respond to voicemails left by customers

Texting and MMS

SMS open rates are as high as 98%². Connect with your customers wherever they are through Shape’s comprehensive texting features. Modern customers are busy and they want to communicate on their terms. With Shape’s communication history and conversational views, it’s never been easier to get a customer on the line.

SMS and MMS Messaging

Send SMS and MMS messaging directly through the CRM. Connect with customers through the most convenient option for them, and ensure that all text messages are tracked and consolidated.

• Connect to customers with SMS/MMS messages
• Engage more customers by communicating on their terms
• Send MMS messages with files such as PNGs

Mass Texting Blasts

Send out mass, automated texting blasts to your contacts. Foster communication, improve connectivity, and ensure that you remain on their mind. Send out messages for promotions or automate text messages to be triggered at any stage of the buyer’s journey.

• Bulk text customers regarding events and promotions
• Trigger automated texts to foster engagement
• Test different types of text messaging content for effectiveness

Conversational View and Message History

Reference message history, manage replies, and send individual messages to customers within text. Ensure that customers have a positive and seamless communication experience.

• Look back at message history for greater context
• Hold conversations in text to improve client relationships
• Maintain visibility and control over the buyer’s journey

Automated Follow-ups

Use automated rule-based text follow ups to engage and re-engage customers. With automated follow ups, you can make sure customers receive the right messages at the right moments. Plus, you minimize manual time spent.

• Automate messages to re-engage customers
• Ensure that messages are sent to customers at the right time
• Reduce the amount of time it takes to nurture leads

Email and Video Marketing

The average conversion rate of email marketing is 7.13%³. You can boost those numbers by improving your email marketing campaigns. Shape provides next-gen email and video marketing tools to boost your engagement and improve your results.

Drip Campaigns

Nurture customers through built-in automated campaigns with a series of triggered and scheduled actions that occur over a long period of time. Keep customers engaged and ready them for conversion.

• Use pre-built, automated drip campaigns
• Build relationships over time
• Automate lead nurturing

Automatic Status Emails

Send automated updates and “congratulations!” emails based on the status of each account. Reduce the amount of time you spend micro-managing your clients while still maintaining an active relationship.

• Save time on your client engagement
• Make customers feel valued
• Push customers through the funnel

Video Integration

Integrate video into your email campaigns with BombBomb. Video marketing through email is personal, convincing, and engaging. Whether you’re scheduling video meetings or sending status updates, video integration helps bridge the distance.

• Increase revenue with a human touch
• Easily integrate email and video campaigns
• Create highly personal customer relationships

Productivity Tools

Shape provides an array of productivity and collaboration tools, designed to keep your team efficient, effective, and in sync. From tracking the buyer journey to ensuring that everyone is on the same page, these productivity tools will keep your team moving forward with the tasks that matter most.

Tasks, Events, Activities, and Notes

Shape gives team members an incredible array of options through which they can manage their workflow. With tasks, events, activities, and notes, teams are fully in charge of their day-to-day and able to sync as needed.

• Tasks and notes make it easier to remember high priority engagements
• Activities and events bring the entire team together
• Shape provides the flexibility required for the modern workday

Multiple Pipelines

Use Shape’s comprehensive pipeline management to monitor buyer journeys, identifying key engagement points and more effectively guiding them toward commitment.

• Monitor sales and business opportunities
• Reveal the entire buyer journey
• Track opportunities until they close or commit

Reminders and Notifications

Never forget another important task with Shape’s automated reminders and notifications. Notifications can alert team members and clients of important milestones and activities, thereby keeping all parties in sync and engaged.

• Trigger custom notifications
• Use pre-built notifications to keep buyers moving
• Keep your team in sync with internal company reminders

Google & Outlook Calendar Syncing

Stay connected through Shape’s calendar syncing. Easily manage appointments, get the team together, and collaborate more effectively.

• Sync Outlook or Google Calendars
• Avoid double booking and improve scheduling
• Integrate your Shape events and activities

Marketing

61% of marketers cite lead generation as their biggest challenge⁴. Shape doesn’t just help you nurture leads—it helps you generate them. Shape includes a wide breadth of marketing utilities, ranging from display ad marketing to automated email marketing campaigns. Build your reach and optimize your marketing spend.

Display Ad Marketing

Position advertising on third-party sites to build awareness and generate leads. Banner, desktop, and mobile ads can all be deployed and tracked through the Shape platform.

• Appear on millions of third-party sites
• Analyze your display ad marketing for effectiveness
• Use video, image, or text elements to advertise your brand

HTML, Email, and Text Templates

Don’t spend your time reinventing the wheel. Shape’s HTML, email, and text templates provide you with professional, clean, and modern designs that are easily customizable for your formatting needs.

• Send emails in 100+ professional email templates
• Modify pre-designed HTML templates in the WYSIWYG builder
• Save time when crafting client and lead communications

Video Marketing

Leverage the power of video marketing and build better relationships with Shape. Through Shape, you can send video messages through bulk, automated messaging, or 1:1.

• Use the power of video to engage your customers
• Send video messages to large groups or 1:1
• Automate video messages to keep customers engaged

Personalization, Birthday, and Holiday Marketing

85% of marketers now believe customers expect a personalized marketing experience. Send out automated birthday and holiday marketing and personalize email blasts, newsletters, and text messages to your customers. Improve client relationships and foster greater levels of engagement through customized communications.

• Customize templates to customers through merge fields
• Send out marketing messaging customized to birthdays and holidays
• Keep customers engaged with positive, personalized experiences

Contact Management

74% of CRM users state that CRM solutions give them increased visibility into their customers⁵. Streamline and consolidate contact management through Shape. Shape’s advanced contact features will validate, analyze, and store your organization’s contracts—so you never miss an opportunity.

Consolidated Contact Repository

Keep up to 100,000 records free in our consolidated contact repository. Shape provides easy management of all your organization’s contacts: customers, accounts, vendors, and more. Improve your customer relationships and your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

• Consolidate your contacts
• Manage contacts by contact type
• Monitor your customer relationships

Automated Data Validation

Ensure that your contact data is always correct, and reduce wasted time. Through Shape, contact information can be automatically saved and validated to protect its accuracy. And with required fields, contact information won’t just be correct; it’ll be complete.

• Find and remove duplicates
• Automatically save data as you go
• Require specific fields

Collaboration Features

Shape’s contact information features engage the entire team. Assign multiple users to each record, manage partners and referrals, and ensure that everyone is on the same page through comprehensive customer histories.

• Assign multiple users to each record for better collaboration
• Track referrals to better quantify your customer relationships
• Manage your entire customer history in a single easy-to-use package

Sales Automation

Do more with less. Shape’s sales automation tools empower your employees to effectively guide clients down the buyer’s journey. AI-powered lead generation, workflow rules, and improved prioritization work together to create a powerhouse of lead closing technology. According to research, automation can improve marketing productivity by 14.5% with a 12.2% reduction in overhead⁶.

AI Lead Scoring

Automatically score your inbound leads for greater sales effectiveness. Shape automatically scores inbound leads based on interest level and conversion probability, assigning points to the prospect’s actions and demographics.

• AI scores and highlights quality leads for you
• Sort leads by probability of conversion
• Find the most qualified prospects

Prioritization and Workflow Rules

Remain consistent with your sales strategies and processes through prioritization and workflow rules. Ensure that sales representatives have the tools they need to quickly move sales toward commitment.

• Define sales processes for your team
• Improve the consistency of your workflow
• Automate tasks and triggers to save time

Status Milestones

Quickly view the status of each lead, get notifications when leads transition into a new stage of the journey, and continually optimize your sales process.

• Manage your leads more effectively
• Optimize and analyze your sales process
• Automate based on workflow status

Trigger Automation

Customize triggered processes to further streamline and improve your workflow and sales process. Customized triggers can kick off complex, automated processes based on status changes, call outcomes, and more.

• Create custom, automated triggers
• Reduce time spent on sales processes
• Ensure responses to critical actions

Shark Tank Lead Pool

The Shark Tank Lead Pool creates a combined pool of old, abandoned leads that can then be claimed, retargeted, and remarketed to. Ensure that no lead gets forgotten.

• Fully utilize old, neglected records
• Let team members collaborate on old records
• Ensure that leads are never overlooked

Account Administration

Shape’s responsive, cloud-based platform improves collaboration and boosts productivity while also improving security and compliance. Manage user permissions, encrypt data, and enforce better authentication standards.

Cloud-Based Platform

Connect from anywhere and leverage the power of the cloud. Shape can be used on tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. And, it delivers the same experience whether employees are in the office or on the go.

• Connect to your CRM from anywhere
• Leverage the resources of the cloud
• Provide consistent experiences across all platforms

Data Encryption and Data Sharing Rules

Through data sharing rules and data encryption, you can ensure that all the data saved within your CRM is protected. Define what data different users, teams, and departments have access to, and ensure that data is always properly encrypted when transferred.

• Encrypt data when transferred
• Protect data from being unnecessarily exposed
• Create data rules for better data security and management

Two-Factor Authentication

Protect accounts through two-factor authentication, ensuring that team accounts and client accounts aren’t compromised. Two-factor authentication reduces the amount of risk to your security landscape and the amount of work your security team needs to do.

• Increase account security through enforced two-factor authentication
• Cut down on password micromanagement and manual security enforcement
• Secure your organization’s digital assets and your clients’ personal information

Video Tutorials and Written Guides

Cut down on training time through Shape’s comprehensive video tutorials and written guides. Team members can consult Shape’s online documentation at any time and learn more about the tools that make it great.

• Learn more about Shape’s advanced features
• Follow easy-to-use, step-by-step guides
• Easily find answers to questions online

Customer Support

When you need support, Shape is there. Shape’s customer support representatives are available to answer issues and resolve problems so you can go back to doing what’s important.

• Connect with fast, responsive customer support
• Get issues and trouble tickets resolved quickly
• Ensure that both team members and customers are supported

Even More Features: Add-On Tools

Extend the Shape platform through robust, easily integrated add-ons. Shape supports Digital Ads, IP Target Marketing, an Integrated Customer Portal, and Shape IQ Lead Scoring.

Integrated Customer Portal (POS)

Provide customers with an all-in-one support hub for document uploads, customer support, and progress tracking. Funnel your document management into one easily accessible client experience.

• Manage all documents in one location
• Get documents signed quickly
• Manage customer requests online

Digital Ads and IP Target Marketing

Target customers with greater levels of effectiveness to ensure that you bring in the audience you want. Hyper-personalize ads across millions of websites to spread your brand awareness.

• Target IPs for customized marketing
• Monitor impressions to improve ad performance
• Analyze in-depth campaign insights

ShapeIQ Lead Scoring

Utilize artificial intelligence to accurately score leads and improve sales and marketing efficiency. Always work with the best forecasting information, identifying which leads are most likely to convert and why.

• Leverage intelligent AI insights
• Automatically score leads
• Improve efficiency through data analytics

What is your organization looking for in a CRM? Consider the features that will make a measurable difference in your workflow, your clients’ happiness, and your bottom line. Shape offers more features for a better price than the competition.

Get everything you need with Shape.

¹ https://nucleusresearch.com/research/single/crm-pays-back-8-71-for-every-dollar-spent/
² https://optinmonster.com/sms-marketing/#good
³ https://instapage.com/blog/email-conversion-rate
⁴ https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
⁶ https://nucleusresearch.com/research/single/marketing-drives-crm-roi/