The Best CRM for Pool and Spa Stores

The Best CRM for Pool and Spa Stores

Curious about the best CRM for pool and spa stores? When we first started The Get Smart Group way back in 2009, we knew that sales and marketing automation were vital to the pool and spa industry due to the “big ticket, long sales cycle” nature of the products. Given that fact, we have always included a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution in our overall marketing and sales offerings. The journey through three different “primary” CRMs, alongside a wide variety of email software, POS software, and others has led us to where we are today. I’m not going to spoil it just yet, because to truly understand the importance of a CRM in pool and spa stores, we need to define a few things first. 

Types of Software in Pool and Spa Stores

There are a couple types of software that we regularly encounter in this industry.

Point of Sale Software (POS)

A few examples of this include LOU (formerly Evosus), RB Retail & Service Software, Lightspeed, Square, and others. These tools range from simple retail ordering systems to full blown inventory and route management solutions. In many cases, these software packages are responsible for the bulk of the operations side of the business but can be quite lacking on the sales and marketing side.

Email Marketing Software

Some smaller businesses use a dedicated email-only program for their marketing communications. Some names you might recognize include Constant Contact and MailChimp. While they’ve definitely added features over the years, these programs are really good at one thing: sending bulk emails. They occasionally include forms, or SMS/Text message functionality, but are quite thin in their overall usefulness.

Enterprise Grade ERP Software

We have seen some pool and spa stores switching to solutions like NetSuite and SalesForce, which are wayyy overkill for 99% of these retail businesses. If you have between 30 and 300 minutes to hear all my thoughts on this, schedule your free 30-minute consultation now.

Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Software

And now to the main event. Whatever CRM solution is used by a pool and spa store, you absolutely must have sales and marketing automation included. Without automation, it’ll be another piece of software that you’re not getting value out of. So, what have we tried?

Back in 2009, I was among the very first Infusionsoft Certified Consultants for a marketing automation called (you guessed it), Infusionsoft. At the time, Infusionsoft was the best automation platform around and we onboarded retail stores nationwide onto the platform. Over the years, the pace of innovation at Infusionsoft (now called Keap) slowed to a near-halt, and we began looking for alternative.

This is where Active Campaign came into the picture. We used Active Campaign for about five years before a similar slow-down in innovation became obvious and we were losing faith that it was the right CRM platform for this industry. (Full disclosure: We still support Active Campaign in limited instances)

Through our clients, we’ve also worked with SharpSpring, Marketo, Pardot, Nutshell, and a few others. Most of these tools started out trying to solve a very specific problem and evolved into their current state. They were good, sometimes? But always had a clunky interface or a glaring feature omission that we couldn’t overcome — so we have never recommended them.

Enter HubSpot. I’ve been aware of HubSpot for years and have always been impressed by their software. The only major drawback was the price. They have always been more expensive than the tools I mentioned above, and it was hard to recommend the platform. However, in the past two to three years, they have come lightyears ahead and now surpass their competitors by a large margin — both in features/functionality and in value.

There are a lot of reasons that we now recommend HubSpot, and I put together a quick six-minute video showing a few of my favorite features.

Ready for the Best CRM for Pool and Spa Stores? 

When it comes to HubSpot, I could also go on for hours about the benefits and how it all ties together. But instead of doing that, I’d like to give you a live demo of the tool and how it can apply directly to your business.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. All you need to do is fill out the form below and I’ll get a demo scheduled right away. We’ll go over sales and marketing automation, salesperson tasks, pipelines, ad-tracking and a few other goodies. The Get Smart Group is here to take your business to new levels of success.

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