How to get product data into your CRM

In the era of marketing-led growth, product-led growth, usage-based pricing, and the user-centric go-to-market, there's one thing every SaaS business needs to succeed: deep visibility into how users engage with your product. And that product usage data needs to be in the hands of every revenue team, in the tools they use every day. In other words, it needs to be in your CRM.

But for most companies, getting product data into their CRM is easier said than done. CRMs simply weren't built to handle the volume and variety of data that today's SaaS businesses need to track. Trying to force-fit that data into your CRM's rigid structure is a recipe for headaches, at best. At worst, it can grind your revenue operations to a halt.

In this post, we'll dive into why product data in your CRM is mission-critical for growth, the challenges that make it so hard to achieve, and how Ripe makes it simple for any revenue team to take action on product insights.

Why do you need product data in your CRM?

For any SaaS company, success hinges on whether users find continuous value in your product. 

If they don't, they'll churn before you can even think about expanding their account or collecting a renewal.

That's why product engagement data is so critical. It's the strongest signal of user value that you have. Website visits and marketing email clicks only tell you a small part of the story. How a user or account interacts with your product is what really indicates whether they're fully bought in - or on the verge of slipping away.

This means your revenue teams need a clear line of sight into what's happening inside your product, at every stage of the customer lifecycle:

• Sales needs to prioritize leads based on product qualified scoring, not just marketing qualified leads

• Sales needs to know which features prospects care about most, so they can tailor their demos and discussions

• Customer Success needs to track core feature adoption and usage frequency, so they can step in to help struggling users

• Customer Success needs to spot accounts that are nearing usage limits, so they can proactively pitch an upgrade

• Marketing needs to trigger the right onboarding messages based on each user's in-app behavior

• Marketing needs to identify the power users most likely to advocate for a contract expansion

The only way your revenue teams can do any of that is by having product engagement data at their fingertips, in the CRM that acts as their central source of truth. But that's where things get tricky.

Why getting product data into your CRM is so hard today

Most CRMs are built around a simple data model of leads and accounts. 

Each lead or account record has a set of fields and attributes that you can use to store key information like demographic and firmographic data, contract details, and sales activity.

The problem is, product engagement data doesn't fit neatly into that structure. A single user can generate thousands of events per day - everything from page views to button clicks to feature usage. Rolling all that data up into a set of static lead and account fields is a massive challenge.

Even if you can aggregate raw event data into meaningful metrics like activation rate and engagement score, you still need a way to sync those metrics to the right fields on the right CRM records, and keep them updated on a regular basis.

Trying to build and maintain that kind of data pipeline in-house is a huge drain on your engineering resources. Most companies end up with a fragile "Frankenstein stack" of data capture tools, warehouses, and sync mechanisms that need constant babysitting just to keep from breaking.

The other common approach is to stand up a separate Customer Data Platform (CDP) to ingest and wrangle product data, then attempt to funnel it into the CRM with a reverse ETL tool. But CDPs and ETL tools are built for data analysts, not revenue teams. The data that comes out of them is often too raw and unstructured to be useful.

Adding to the complexity, you need to ensure that your product data is tied to the right user and account records in your CRM. This requires a way to map user IDs and account IDs between systems, which can be a painstaking process if done manually.

And even if you do manage to get your product data into your CRM, you still need a way to keep it up-to-date as user behavior changes over time. Stale data is almost as bad as no data at all when it comes to driving revenue.

Funneling product data into your CRM shouldn't be this hard. Your revenue teams should be able to:

• See exactly how leads and accounts are engaging with your product, without having to jump between different tools

• Slice and dice that data to build actionable user and account segments

• Route accounts based on a combination of product usage and ICP fit

• Trigger the right outreach based on specific product signals

• Trust that the data they're looking at is always complete and up-to-date

That's why we built Ripe - to make it dead simple for revenue teams to put product data to work.

Ripe: The Easy Button for Product Data in Your CRM

Ripe is a product data and customer engagement platform that's purpose-built for go-to-market teams. 

We take the pain out of capturing behavioral data and piping it into your CRM, so you can turn product insights into revenue, without any engineering support.

With Ripe, revenue teams can:

• Track the user actions that matter most, either through their CDP or the Ripe SDK

• Roll up raw event data into actionable metrics like engagement score, churn signals, product qualified lead score, and feature adoption rate

• Build laser-targeted user and account segments based on any combination of product data and CRM fields

• Sync key metrics and segments to the right lead and account records, and keep them updated automatically

• Trigger personalized outreach and in-app experiences based on a user or account's real-time product engagement

And they can set up all this at once and then do all the work from right inside the CRM or Slack, without toggling between different tools or bugging the data team for help.

Here's how it works:

1. Capture behavioral data Connect to Ripe via your CDP (no engineering required) or install our SDK (insert a small javascript into your app),

2. Build out-of-the-box metrics that matter. We take the guesswork out of defining product metrics. Ripe comes with pre-built recipes for key indicators like product qualified leads, activation rate, engagement score, feature adoption, and more.

3. Create actionable user and account segments Our segmentation builder makes it easy to define the exact audience you care about based on any combination of product usage data, CRM fields, firmographic attributes, and more.

4. Keep your CRM in sync, automatically Our bidirectional CRM integrations keep your product data and CRM records in lockstep, with intelligent conflict resolution and customizable sync settings. No more manual CSV dumps.

5. Orchestrate targeted, multi-step campaigns and workflows Turn any product signal into a trigger for automated outreach across email, in-app messaging, sales alerts, and more. Our workflow builder lets you create multi-touch campaigns in minutes.

With Ripe, you can go from siloed product data to revenue-driving insights in a matter of days, not months. Which means you can start capitalizing on upsell opportunities, saving at-risk accounts, and converting high-intent users faster.

From Insights to Action: How to Drive Growth with Product Signals

Once you have product data flowing into your CRM with a tool like Ripe, a whole new world of revenue-driving plays opens up. 

Here are just a few ways you can turn product insights into bottom-line impact:

For Sales:

• Prioritize outbound efforts based on product qualified leads, not just MQLs

• Tailor demos and value props to the features an account uses most

• Trigger alerts when key prospects hit usage or adoption milestones

For Customer Success:

• Identify churn risks early based on declining engagement

• Proactively offer help to accounts that are underutilizing key features

• Spot expansion opportunities based on accounts nearing usage limits

For Growth:

• Deliver the right onboarding message at the right time based on a user's unique journey

• Nurture and convert free-tier users who fit your ideal customer profile

• Drive paid feature adoption with targeted in-app messages

The best part is, you can orchestrate all of these plays without ever leaving your CRM. Ripe turns your CRM into a true command center for product-led growth.

Beyond the immediate revenue impact, getting your product data and CRM in sync can also have far-reaching benefits for your business as a whole. With a complete, unified view of your customers, you can:

• Make more informed decisions about product roadmap and resource allocation

• Identify the features and user segments that drive the most value for your business

• Improve cross-functional alignment and collaboration between Product, Marketing, Sales, and Success

• Measure and optimize the ROI of your go-to-market efforts more accurately

In short, bridging the gap between product data and your CRM is key to building a truly customer-centric organization.

Stop Flying Blind, Start Growing with Ripe

If you made it this far, fantastic! 

For too long, SaaS revenue teams have had to rely on incomplete data and educated guesses to understand what their users and accounts need. Ripe puts an end to the guesswork.

With Ripe, you'll have real-time product insights at your fingertips, right where you work. 

So you can stop flying blind, and start driving the outcomes that matter most:

• Converting more high-value free trialists to paid

• Expanding more accounts, more often

• Improving net revenue retention

It's time to put product data to work for your business. See how Ripe can help and book a personalized demo today.