The Eight Best Social CRM Tools

Revised January 13, 2022
Revised September 9, 2021
Revised January 23, 2020

Social customer relationship management (CRM) was being written about as a distinct product category as far back as 2008, but market interest really began to take off the following year. According to Google Trends, the average number of monthly web searches for the phrase “social CRM” quadrupled from June 2009 to June 2011. Market interest has remained fairly strong since then.

How does social CRM differ from traditional CRM? Both capture prospect and customer contact data, organizational structure, and interaction history. Both help sales, marketing, and customer service personnel plan and schedule follow-up activities.

But social CRM extends traditional CRM features by adding social media accounts to each contact record, and capturing social interactions as well as more traditional communication like phone calls and email messages.

Social CRM systems don’t simply track a larger amount of customer data, however. More significantly,  they shift the focus of CRM from data collection to prospect and customer engagement. Social CRM tools may be integrated with promotions management software to communicate specific promotional offers (sales, discounts, coupons, etc.) to select groups of customers.

According to Data2CRM, “the dynamic engagement with the leads and prospects, instead of uninvolved messages, is the striking difference of social CRM” compared to traditional CRM. “Social CRM extends the boundaries of digital marketing with two-way interaction while traditional CRM focuses on the promotion of its product or service…social CRM places customer interests instead of data into the core of company’s strategy.”

Here are eight of the best social CRM tools for capturing and scoring leads, facilitating prospect and customer social media engagement, and managing sales processes, customer relationships, and marketing programs.

1) Infusionsoft now Keap
Google Review Count: 242

Small business CRM system that lets you import and organize contacts and collect data about contacts based on behaviors and marketing interactions. Includes marketing automation features to capture, follow up on, and nurture leads, as well as sales workflow automation, ecommerce, and analytics.

Sample review: “Infusionsoft is a CRM designed to cater to small businesses. It’s helpful for organizing customer relationship management, marketing, lead generation, sales, and all manner of automation.” — Express Writers

Pricing: five levels from $199 to $599 per month, plus one-time setup fee of $999 to $2,999

Showcase reviews: AppStorm, Express Writers, Robbie Richards

2) Nimble
Google Review Count: 209

A social sales and marketing CRM tool that “automatically updates itself with relevant prospect and customer information from dozens of data sources,” tracks customer engagement activities across sales and support teams, and integrates with popular social networks and social media management apps.

Sample review: “Nimble…merges the feeds from each (major social network) into one centralized inbox. When you add a contact from LinkedIn into Nimble, it automatically checks to see what other networks it is on. It prompts you…but also adds the conversation or engagement triggers like birthdays on Facebook and job/career-related updates from LinkedIn.” — ArCompany

Pricing: $25 per user per month

Showcase reviews: ArCompany, RazorSocial (Software), RazorSocial (Tools)

3) Crystal
Google Review Count: 191

Crystal applies the DISC personality assessment to your peers and team members to help improve communications. DISC insights can be applied and displayed in communication tools like Gmail and LinkedIn to help understand different communication styles.

Sample review: “CrystalKnows.com is a web tool and GMail plug-in that analyzes public information (LinkedIn, media quotes, blogs, etc.) written by or about an individual and help you better communicate with them by using algorithms to determine personality, communication style…With Crystal, you’ll be making better introductions, deeper connections, faster meetings and more.” — TNW News

Pricing: contact vendor for pricing

Showcase reviews: TNW News

4) Insightly
Google Review Count: 149

Manage leads, contacts, and partners; track project activity and progress; auto-detect social media profiles for contacts; analyze results in dashboards and reports; and integrate with email, file sharing, accounting and other business apps.

Sample review: “Insightly is a tool that combines CRM and project management software into one. It keeps track of all your contacts, leads, and tasks in one spot. Good news for sole proprietorships – Insightly offers a free version if you only need 1-2 users.” — B2B PR Sense Blog

Pricing: free or four levels from $12 to $99 per user per month

Showcase reviews: AppStorm, B2B PR Sense Blog

5) Pipedrive
Google Review Count: 143

An activity-based selling and social CRM tool that helps plan actions so nothing important is missed, tracks all interactions and conversation, helps with forecasting, and keeps sales activities organized.

Sample review: “I’m implementing PipeDrive as my CRM… it’s got a great mobile experience, and is easily accessible.” — Katie Lance

Pricing: $10/$21/$63 per month per user

Showcase reviews: AppStorm, Katie Lance

6) Base CRM now Zendesk Sell
Google Review Count: 129

A social CRM and sales platform that provides full lead tracking (lead capture forms, automatic incoming and outgoing call logging with a native dialer, conversion optimization), sales management, customer management, email intelligence (templates, personalization, real-time notification of opens and clicks,  integration to third-party tools), reporting, forecasting, and win rate optimization.

Sample review: “Base CRM is uniquely suited to meet the needs of…B2B marketing…With Base’s integrated process, (users) can generate unique contact cards connected to their company, as well as the potential client account they’re related to.” — Oktopost

Pricing: $25/$75/$125 per month per user

Showcase reviews: Oktopost

7) Zoho CRM
Google Review Count: 129

Multichannel CRM platform integrating email, telephony (single-click dialing, call analytics), and social media activity. Measure and manage sales performance and ad spending.

Sample review: “Zoho CRM focuses on maximizing sales and customer satisfaction by engaging and communicating with customers via email, phone, chat and social networks all from within the same CRM dashboard. Zoho is very open to other apps too though and allows you to integrate your CRM account with other applications to create a customized solution for your business.” — AppStorm

Pricing: free or four levels from $12 to $100 per month per user

Showcase reviews: AppStorm

8) SalesIntelligent
Google Review Count: 54

A sales prospecting tool that automatically pulls prospect data from social networks then discovers prospects email addresses, phone numbers, and social media accounts and imports all of their data into your CRM.

Sample review: “I only started using this tool a few weeks ago, and absolutely love it. (SalesIntelligent is) great for finding email addresses of editors, content managers, etc. for big publications. It’s also super affordable” — Robbie Richards

Pricing: monthly subscription fee based on number of prospects at rate of $0.17 per verified prospect

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

More Tools

Bitrix24
Google Review Count: 117

A social CRM tool with extensive project management features including task management, document sharing, time tracking, activity streams, collaborative document editing, internal team announcements, workflows, and email collaboration options.

Pricing: free or $39/$99/$199 per month

Teamgate
Google Review Count: 93

An inbound CRM tool for small businesses, Teamgate offers a number of interesting features such as an integrated “SmartDialer” which enables users to make calls from within the application as well as a product catalog, as well as standard functions like lead, contact, and sales pipeline management.

Pricing: $9/$22/39 per user per month

Freshmarketer
Google Review Count: 74

Attract website visitors, start contextual conversations, gather behavior data, and turn your website into a lead generation machine with this CRM platform from Freshworks. Run experiments on your site, improve visitor experiences and optimize your website for conversions. Set up Chatbots to connect with visitors and convert them into leads.

Pricing: free or $19/$149/$299 per month

WakeUpSales
Google Review Count: 73

An intuitive yet full-featured SMB CRM tool, with functionality that includes pipeline, opportunity, project, task, and user role management; sales automation; email tracking; and integration with Gmail, MailChimp, Twilio, and Google Calendar. Unlike most other systems here, WakeUpSales offers both cloud-hosted and on-premises implementation options.

Pricing: free; $9 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

NetHunt CRM
Google Review Count: 69

NetHunt CRM is a sales automation tool that helps you manage leads, nurture customer relations, monitor sales progress, and close more deals. It connects to lead capture tools like LinkedIn, Web Forms, Facebook, Gmail, and Google Contacts, to minimize manual data entry. It nurtures leads with automated email sequences, then uses algorithms to move leads along sales pipelines based on behavior, such as when replying to an email.

Pricing: $24/$48/$96 per user per month; startup pricing by quote

Showcase Reviews

AppStorm
ArCompany
B2B PR Sense Blog
Express Writers
Katie Lance
Oktopost
RazorSocial (Software)
RazorSocial (Tools)
Robbie Richards
TNW News

This was the 39th post in the Best Online Business Tools series.

#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools
#28: The 21 Best Content Curation Tools
#29: The 26 Best WordPress Plugins
#30: The 14 Best Personal Productivity Tools
#31: The 11 Best Social Media Campaign Builders and Ad Monitoring Tools
#32: The 12 Best Landing Page and Form Builders for Conversion Rate Optimization
#33: The 17 Best Photo Editing Tools
#34: The Six Best Accounting and Finance Tools for Small Business
#35: The 15 Best Content Distribution and Amplification Tools
#36: The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools
#37: The 23 Best Google Chrome Extensions for Digital Marketers
#38: The 15 Best Audio and Video Editing Tools
#39: The Eight Best Social CRM Tools