The Top CRM for Investor Relations you need to know

Maintaining strong relationships with investors, managing communications, and tracking engagements can be complex and time-consuming. A dedicated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for investor relations can help you stay organized by centralizing investor data, automating follow-ups, and providing insights into investor activity—all in one platform. With the right CRM, you can enhance communication, streamline reporting, and strengthen your investor relationships.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the top CRM options for investor relations managers like you, focusing on tools that will help you manage your investor communications efficiently and drive long-term growth.

What is investor relationship management software?

Investor Relationship Management software, often referred to as an IRM, is a specialized subset of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The software is specifically designed to manage and streamline communication between a company and its investors. It aids businesses in attracting potential investors, maintaining positive relations with current shareholders, and improving investor satisfaction. It provides features like investor profiling, investment tracking, and reporting tools, making it an essential tool for businesses aiming to enhance their investor relations strategy.

Why you need a CRM

Managing investor relations effectively is crucial for the success of any business. A CRM can be a game-changer in streamlining these interactions and ensuring no opportunity is missed. Here's how.

Challenges without a CRM

Whether you lack a CRM or have one that doesn't fit your tech stack, you're likely to face common challenges.

• Disorganization: Without a CRM, keeping track of investor details, conversations, and follow-ups becomes chaotic.
• Missed opportunities: Important meetings and follow-ups can easily fall through the cracks, leading to lost funding opportunities.
• Inefficient processes: Manual tracking and communication processes are time-consuming and error-prone.
• Lack of insight: Without centralized data, gaining insights into investor behavior and preferences is challenging.
• Inconsistent communication: Maintaining a consistent and professional communication flow with investors is difficult without a systematic approach.

Benefits of a CRM

Fortunately, the right CRM can help you address these challenges – and provide some extra benefits.

• Centralized information: All investor data is stored in one place, making it easily accessible and manageable.
• Enhanced efficiency: Automating routine tasks saves time and reduces errors, allowing you to focus on strategic activities.
• Improved customer relationships: A CRM helps in building and maintaining strong relationships with investors through personalized communication.
• Better decision-making: Access to detailed analytics and reports aids in making informed decisions.
• Increased sales: Streamlined processes and better relationship management can lead to more successful funding rounds.
• Consistent communication: Automated follow-ups and reminders ensure that communication with investors is timely and professional.

How to evaluate and choose a CRM

With a lot of CRMs to choose from, it can be hard to figure out which one suits both your team needs and business goals. To help you with your decision making process, we've put together some tips you can adapt according to your needs.

1. Define your requirements

Identifying the key features needed for your investor relations is crucial. Look for capabilities like investor tracking, communication history, reporting, and integration with other tools you use. A CRM for investor relations should also offer robust security features to protect sensitive financial data and customizable dashboards to meet your unique needs.

Key features of a CRM for investor relations

• Automated Processes: Streamlines tasks by automating repetitive workflows.
• Contact Enrichment: Automatically finds Leads, Investors, Investments opportunities email addresses and contact information, enhancing efficiency.
• Structured Pipeline: Tracks Leads, Investors, Investments opportunities through defined stages, ensuring process clarity and effectiveness.
• Email Sequences: Increases communication efficiency with follow-up templates and automated sequences.
• LinkedIn Connection: Seamlessly imports Leads, Investors, Investments opportunities from LinkedIn and tracks conversations within the CRM.
• Reporting & Forecasting: Provides essential data analysis and predictive insights for better planning.

2. Budget considerations

Balancing cost with return on investment is essential. While some CRM platforms may seem expensive, consider the long-term benefits they bring to your investor relations, such as improved communication, better data management, and streamlined operations. Look for a CRM that offers scalability, so you can start with a basic package and upgrade as your startup grows.

3. Selection process

Choosing the right CRM vendor involves thorough research. Start by reading reviews and case studies specific to investor relations. Attend demos and webinars to see the software in action. Reach out to other startup founders to get their recommendations. Ensure the vendor offers excellent customer support and training resources to help you get the most out of the platform.

4. Get a demo

Before fully committing to a CRM for investor relations, it's crucial to get a demo. A demo allows you to see the software in action and determine if it meets your specific needs for managing investor communications and data. It provides an opportunity to ask questions and understand the functionality better. Get started with a personaized demo of folk, to see how it can support your goals.

A list of the best CRM software for investor relationships

1. folk

Best for: Multi-business function, plug and play CRM and collaboration

If you love Notion, you'll love folk. We might be biased, but we think it's the best investor relations CRM platform out there.

The CRM specifically allows you to source opportunities, track deal data, current investors and optimize your network all in one tool so that you have your fundraising management tools and relationship management tool for potential investors under one roof. It's perfect for managing relationships too. Contact management has never been easier - you can easily keep that up to date to show when you last spoke to someone.

It is an intuitive tool that is easy to navigate and customize to meet your team’s specific needs, including investor outreach efforts. It prioritizes ease of use, making it perfect for investor relations teams that don’t have a lot of time on their hands. The clean and straightforward interface allows users to quickly access the information they need to help manage their relationships with investors.

If you're just getting started and not sure who to approach when it comes to building investor relationships, make use of the following lists that you can import straight into your folk account so you can get started today.

You can have a look at this landing page: Why should use folk as your investor relationship management software?

Let's take a look at the features behind this intelligent CRM in more detail.

folk Contact Management Capabilities

On top of the basic contact management capabilities you’d expect from a CRM, folk offers custom fields, it comes with an auto-deduplication feature, which identifies and merges duplicate contacts. If that wasn't enough, folk users also get a contact enrichment feature that automatically fills in missing contact information such as social profiles or company names. Making it easier for you to have complete, up-to-date information about all your contacts.

folk Integrations 

folk is an intelligent CRM that can easily adapt to different needs. For those after something simple and lightweight, folk offers seamless integration with Outlook and Google so that you have all your contacts, emails and calendar events under one roof. For those who are after something that can go further, you can connect folk to thousands of apps through Zapier. 

folk User experience

Good news for new users. With folk, you won't need to worry about a steep learning curve. Its clean design allows users to easily navigate between different contacts, making it simple to access detailed customer information and history. You’ll also have access to their Chrome extension, folkX. It makes it easy to import new and existing contacts from LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere on the web in moments. folkX lets you import entire lists of profiles, complete with profile photos and contact details, in one go.

folk Mail merge 

folk's mail merge feature is packed with some powerful tools. You get an all-in-one messaging solution that comes with analytics and can help you send ultra personalized emails to multiple recipients. With their AI feature 'Magic Field' you can create custom prompts that tell the AI what data to pull out from your database so that you can save time and write personalized emails effortlessly.

Customer Support

folk offers a few ways to help troubleshoot your issues that can adapt to your learning style and urgency. There is a help centre full of step-by-step guides, as well as how-to video guides. On top of that, premium plan users get access to priority support and a dedicated customer support manager. Impressively, Beyond Limit plan users can get access to personalized support through a dedicated Slack channel and dedicated point of contact to help with onboarding, data migration, and any issues.

folk Price and Plans

You can try folk for free with a 14 day free trial. After that, a monthly or annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month,
• Premium: $40 per user, per month,
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

2. Airtable

Best for: flexibility

Airtable is a versatile tool platform that offers tons of customizations.

Airtable provides a wide range of templates, which help users organize their data more descriptively. Users can add fields and manipulate data as necessary, which means they can stay on top of investor relations effortlessly and with ease.

It's not yet built properly to be a CRM so doesn't integrate custom functionalities such as email integration, email marketing, contacts enrichment, and more.

Let's take a closer look.

Airtable Contact management capabilities

Airtable allows you to customize fields, store contacts, track deals and organize tasks. They have a pipeline view feature that helps users to visualize the progress of each deal. However, it is not really built to be a CRM.

Airtable Integrations 

Through Airtable you can get access to standard integrations such as Slack, Google Calendar. Google Drive. You can access their premium integrations such as Zendesk and Salesforce through their Business plan so it gets expensive quickly.

Airtable User Experience

Airtable provides a data-driven user experience that is easy to set up and customize. Users are able to build it according to their preferred use cases through their database library. However, it’s not a true CRM as it’s poorly integrated with contacts tools. 

Airtable Mail Merge

Airtable’s Mail Merge feature doesn’t work without a third-party integration that has not been verified. It is complicated to set up and time-consuming as you’ll have to import the mail merge template using code. 

Airtable Customer Support

Everyone gets access to Airtable’s learning centre and video centre. Only premium plan users on their Business or Enterprise Scale plans get access to email support or professional services which incur an additional cost. 

Airtable Price and Plans

Airtable has a free plan for individuals or very small teams. After that, their plans are as follows.

• Team: $20/seat/month,
• Business: $45/seat/month,
• Enterprise Scale: Undisclosed.

3. Pipedrive

Best for: Sales tracking

Pipedrive is a CRM platform that focuses on sales tracking, making it unique and different from other CRM platforms on this list. Pipedrive’s strength lies in its data visualization, which makes it easy to track sales deals, relationships and other essential KPIs. We've got more on that in our Pipedrive vs Monday article here.

Below is a more detailed exploration.

Pipedrive Contact management capabilities

Pipedrive's contact management capabilities have what you'd expect from any tool. It provides a standard view of all your contacts, and you can add custom fields to store specific information about each contact. The fields can accommodate any data you might need to record, like a contact's role or industry, but nothing groundbreaking. You can also add tags to categorize your contacts and add notes for each contact.

Pipedrive Integrations 

When it comes to integrations, Pipedrive is great with popular tools like Mailchimp, Slack, and Google Apps. However, the integration process is not always seamless and may require some technical expertise. 

Pipedrive User Experience

Pipedrive offers a clean user experience that is designed for sales teams. The layout is intuitive and straightforward making it relatively easy to use from day one. Each feature is clearly delineated, reducing the learning curve and empowering users to quickly locate the tools and information they need. However, its simplicity may not cater to all needs and preferences, and some users might find that it lacks the depth or customization options available in other CRM systems.

Pipedrive Mail Merge

Pipedrive's offers a standard mail merge function. It allows users to send personalized bulk emails to their contacts directly from the CRM. You can customize your emails with variables from Pipedrive, such as the contact's name, organization, or deal specifics.

Pipedrive Customer Support

Pipedrive offers a variety of ways to get support. On top of email and chat support, they also have a knowledge base with help articles and tutorials covering setup and usage to advanced features and integrations. Pipedrive also offers a community forum where users can connect, share experiences and exchange insights.

Pipedrive Price and Plans

Pipedrive's annual subscription plan basis is as follows.

• Essential plan: Starts from $24 per user, per month.
• Advanced plan: Starts from $44 per user, per month.
• Professional plan: Starts from $64 per user, per month.
• Power plan: Starts from $79 per user, per month.‍
• Enterprise plan: Starts from $129 per user, per month.

4. Streak

Best for: Email tracking

Streak is a CRM platform that focuses on email tracking and organizing email conversations with their mail merge feature.

Email tracking is vital in your investor relations Strategy, helping you monitor your conversations and ensure you are communicating effectively and efficiently with investors. Streak also offers multiple templates for email responses, saving your team many hours of work.

It's stays yet limited when it comes to proper deal flow management and investor pipeline. Let's explore it in a bit more detail.

Streak Contact Management Capabilities

Like most basic CRMs, Streak will also let you search, filter, group and sort your data into any configuration or save them with a custom view. Streak also allows you to see a timeline of emails, notes and more no matter who worked on it last.

Streak Integrations

Streak users get access to native integrations with tools such as Calendly, Google Forms, Typeform, Slack, and Google Hangouts chat. On top of access to 1000s of integrations via Zapier. 

Streak User Experience

Streak is easy to set up and has excellent mail merge capabilities. However, it doesn’t work outside Gmail as there isn’t a separate web app or application and can clutter your Gmail interface.

Streak Mail Merge

On top of basic features such as sending multiple emails at once, Streak goes further and also allows you to see your pipeline alongside emails, see when someone sees your message and the ability to send a message later.

Streak Customer Support

Streak offers support that is limited to its help centre articles and live chatbot. There are also video tutorials in their learning hub called Streak University.

Streak Price and Plans

Streak’s annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Pro: Starts from $49 per user, per month.
• Pro +: Starts from $69 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: Starts from $129 per user, per month.

Conclusion

No matter which direction your full investor relations strategy takes you, choosing the best CRM for your investor relations team is important. While Airtable, Pipedrive, and Streak offer solid CRM solutions for investor relations, folk is best suited for its flexibility, simplicity, and focus on relationship management. Unlike other platforms, folk allows investor relations teams to create tailored workflows, automate follow-ups, and maintain strong connections with investors. Its user-friendly interface and customizable features make it the perfect fit for investor relations professionals looking to streamline their processes and nurture valuable relationships effectively. Try folk today, free.

Need a helping hand? Use our free tool to find your perfect CRM match.

Useful links

• How to use folk as your investor relationship management software
• The best private equity CRM of 2024: a comprehensive guide
• folk pricing

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do investor relations managers use a CRM?

Investor relations managers use CRMs like folk, Airtable, Pipedrive, and Streak to efficiently manage investor relationships, track communications, and organize crucial data. Airtable offers customization for tracking investor information, while Pipedrive excels in pipeline management, and Streak integrates directly with email for streamlined communication. folk stands out for its flexibility and relationship-focused tools, making it an ideal choice for managing investor communications and staying organized across multiple touchpoints.

Do I need a CRM?

Yes, if you manage investor relationships, a CRM is essential. It helps you centralize all investor information, track every interaction, and automate follow-ups. A CRM ensures you can nurture relationships consistently, provide timely updates, and maintain organized communication, all of which are critical in investor relations.

How does folk's CRM help investor relations management?

folk’s CRM is designed to support investor relations management by offering customizable workflows and relationship-building tools that streamline communication and data organization. It allows investor relations managers to easily track investor interactions, automate updates, and maintain a clear record of all communications, helping to build stronger relationships and manage investor inquiries more efficiently.

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