As a creative team of 20-50 professionals, balancing your passion for your craft with the business side of things from managing clients, tracking projects, and keeping up with follow-ups can be overwhelming.

A dedicated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system designed for creative teams can help you stay organized by managing client interactions, automating administrative tasks, and keeping track of project timelines.

With the right CRM, your team can focus more on creative work while ensuring your business runs smoothly.

In this blog post, we'll explore the best CRM options for creative teams like yours, highlighting tools that will streamline your workflow, enhance client relationships, and help you grow your creative agency of 20-50 professionals.

👉🏼 Try folk now to organize your team's pipelines and keep all client follow-ups in one place

Why creative teams need a CRM

As a creative team of 20-50 people, having the right CRM in your tech stack can make a huge difference on your workflow and team coordination.

Challenges without a CRM

Chances are your team might already be experiencing a few challenges without realising how much time it takes from your collective productivity.

• Disorganization: Without a CRM, keeping track of client information, project details, and deadlines becomes chaotic across your team of 20-50 creatives.
• Missed opportunities: Potential leads and follow-ups can easily slip through the cracks when multiple team members are handling different clients, resulting in lost business.
• Inefficient processes: Manual tracking and communication consume valuable time that could be spent on creative work, especially problematic when coordinating across 20-50 team members.
• Lack of insight: Without centralized data, making informed decisions about client needs and project progress is challenging for teams managing multiple concurrent projects.
• Inconsistent communication: Disjointed communication leads to misunderstandings and delays, affecting project outcomes when multiple creatives are involved.

Benefits of a CRM

Once your creative team has the right CRM in place, there are a few direct benefits you can look forward to. Including not having team members switch context so often.

• Centralized information: All client and project data is stored in one place, ensuring easy access and organization for your entire team of 20-50 professionals.
• Enhanced efficiency: Automating routine tasks frees up time for creative work and strategic planning across your team.
• Improved customer relationships: Personalized interactions based on comprehensive client data enhance satisfaction and loyalty, with seamless handoffs between team members.
• Better decision-making: Data-driven insights enable more accurate forecasting and strategic planning for teams managing multiple client accounts.
• Increased sales: Efficient lead management and follow-up processes help convert more prospects into clients, with clear visibility across your team.
• Consistent communication: Streamlined communication tools ensure clear and timely interactions with clients and team members, crucial for teams of 20-50 people.
  

How to boost your efficiency as a creative with a CRM

There are a few ways a CRM can help your creative team with the client side of your operations.

1. Map your process

Understanding and documenting your creative workflow is crucial for teams of 20-50 professionals. Identify key stages such as brainstorming, client approvals, revisions, and final delivery. A CRM can help you track each project's progress across multiple team members, ensuring no step is overlooked. Use visual tools like Kanban boards within your CRM to map out these stages clearly and enable seamless collaboration.

2. Lead qualification

As a creative team, distinguishing between high-potential leads and less promising ones can save you time and resources. Implement scoring systems within your CRM to assess leads based on criteria such as project budget, timeline, and client engagement. This helps your team of 20-50 prioritize efforts towards leads most likely to convert into substantial projects.

3. Outreach and follow-up

Automate your outreach to maintain consistent communication with leads and clients across your team. Use your CRM to set up automated email sequences for onboarding new clients or following up on proposals, ensuring no team member drops the ball. Additionally, integrate LinkedIn campaigns to connect with potential clients, showcasing your portfolio and services consistently across your team.

4. Nurture existing client relationships

Maintaining relationships with existing clients is vital for upselling and cross-selling opportunities. Use your CRM to segment your client base and tailor marketing efforts across your team of 20-50 creatives. Create personalized email campaigns to introduce new services or special offers, ensuring your agency stays top-of-mind for future projects with coordinated team efforts.

How to evaluate and choose a CRM

1. Define your requirements

As a creative agency with 20-50 team members, it's crucial to first identify the key features that will support your team's needs. Look for CRMs that offer project management, client communication tools, and creative collaboration features. These functionalities are essential for streamlining your workflow and ensuring that your entire team and clients are on the same page.

Key features of a CRM for creatives

• Automated processes: Streamlines tasks by automating repetitive workflows, allowing your creative team of 20-50 to focus on what they do best—creating. This feature ensures that mundane tasks like follow-ups and data entry are handled efficiently across your team.
• Contact enrichment: Automatically finds leads and customers' email addresses and contact information, enhancing efficiency for teams managing multiple client relationships. This means your team spends less time searching for details and more time nurturing client relationships.
• Structured pipeline: Tracks leads and customers through defined stages, ensuring process clarity and effectiveness for teams of 20-50 handling multiple concurrent projects. A well-structured pipeline helps you visualize your sales process and identify bottlenecks, making it easier to manage projects and deadlines across your team.
• Mail merge and email sequences: Increases communication efficiency with follow-up templates and automated sequences, essential for teams managing multiple client touchpoints. This feature allows your team to maintain consistent communication with clients, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks.
• Social media integration: Seamlessly imports leads and customers from LinkedIn and tracks conversations within the CRM. This integration makes it easier for your team of 20-50 to connect with potential clients and keep track of all interactions in one place.
• Analytics: Provides essential data analysis and predictive insights for better planning across your creative team. With robust reporting tools, you can analyze performance metrics and forecast future trends, helping your team make informed decisions for creative projects.

2. Budget considerations

Balancing cost and return on investment is vital when selecting a CRM for your creative agency of 20-50 professionals. While it might be tempting to opt for the cheapest option, consider the long-term benefits of a more comprehensive solution. A slightly higher investment in a robust CRM can lead to significant productivity gains and better client relationships across your entire team, ultimately boosting your bottom line.

3. Selection process

Start by researching CRM vendors that specialize in tools for creative teams of your size. Read reviews, seek recommendations from industry peers managing similar team sizes, and evaluate the customer support offered by each vendor. Make a shortlist of potential candidates and delve deeper into their offerings to ensure they align with your team's specific needs.

4. Get a demo

Once you have a shortlist, take advantage of free trials or demo versions to test each CRM platform with your team. Pay attention to user experience, ease of integration with existing tools, and the scalability of the platform for teams of 20-50. Compare the features, pricing, and support options to make an informed decision that best suits your creative agency's requirements. Start by getting a demo of folk to see if it fits your creative team's processes.

3 tips for implementing a CRM

At this stage, it's all about getting your team of 20-50 creatives familiar with your new CRM to see how it can fit with your workflow.

1. Import your data in your new CRM

Transitioning to a new CRM can be seamless if you start by importing your existing data across all team members. Most CRMs allow you to export your data as a CSV file, which you can then import into your new system, ensuring all 20-50 team members have access to the same client information.

2. Create your first pipeline

Once your data is imported, the next step is to create your first pipeline that works for your team of 20-50. This is where you can customize stages that reflect your creative projects, such as "Concept Development," "Client Approval," "Production," and "Final Delivery." Tailoring the pipeline to fit your creative workflow will help your entire team track progress and manage tasks more efficiently.

3. Onboard your team

After setting up your CRM, it's essential to onboard your team of 20-50 effectively. Provide them with training sessions and resources to ensure they understand how to use the new system collaboratively. Encouraging your entire team to fully utilize the CRM will maximize its benefits, leading to improved collaboration and project management across all 20-50 team members.

The 5 best CRMs for creatives

1. folk

folk is the ideal CRM platform for creative teams of 20-50 professionals, offering customizable pipelines, AI-driven tools, and seamless integrations that enhance deal management and prospecting for growing creative agencies.

Key features

• Contact enrichment: Automatically enriches contact details by finding emails and LinkedIn URLs, enabling efficient outreach across your team of 20-50 without manual data entry or additional costs for email services.
• LinkedIn integration: Seamlessly import contacts from LinkedIn, track conversations within folk, and use templates for quicker, streamlined communication across your creative team.
• Email integration: Full email sync, templates, and tracking features, enabling your team of 20-50 to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• AI-Powered features: AI tools assist teams in managing contacts and relationships, automating routine tasks, and suggesting actions to improve productivity across all team members.
• Integrations: folk integrates seamlessly with over 6,000 apps, including Gmail, Zapier, and Make, allowing creative teams to centralize their workflow and reduce manual data entry across all 20-50 team members.

Pros

• Ease of use: folk CRM is praised for its intuitive interface, making it accessible even to non-technical team members with quick onboarding and a minimal learning curve for teams of 20-50.
• All-in-one: folk streamlines your team's workflow by allowing you to import contacts from LinkedIn, automatically find their emails, reach out through customizable email sequences, and track interactions in a pipeline, eliminating the need for multiple tools and saving time and money for growing creative teams.
• LinkedIn integration: Seamlessly import contacts from LinkedIn, track conversations within folk, and use templates for quicker, streamlined communication across your creative team of 20-50.
• Customizability: Custom fields, pipelines, and workflows perfectly suited for creative teams managing multiple concurrent projects.
• Integrations: folk integrates seamlessly with over 6,000 apps, including Gmail, Zapier, and Make, allowing creative teams of 20-50 to centralize their workflow and reduce manual data entry.

Cons

• Reporting and analytics: folk CRM offers advanced analytics, including pipeline and deal stage reporting, revenue forecasting with weighted probabilities, performance breakdowns by owner, channel, industry, region, or any custom field, plus revenue insights.
  

Price and plans

You can try folk for free with a 14-day free trial. After that, monthly or annual subscription plans are perfectly sized for teams of 20-50:

• Standard: $20 per user, per month - ideal for growing creative teams.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month - perfect for established teams of 20-50.
• Custom: Starts from $60 per user, per month - tailored for larger creative agencies.

‍

2. HubSpot

HubSpot CRM is a user-friendly, scalable platform offering integrated tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations, though it can become costly for creative teams of 20-50 as they scale.

Key features

• Marketing Hub: Includes email marketing, ad tracking, landing pages, and lead generation tools, though can be overwhelming for creative teams of 20-50 looking for simplicity.
• Sales Hub: Provides deal tracking, pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting, but may be overly complex for creative workflows.
• Service Hub: Offers customer service tools like ticketing, live chat, and knowledge bases, which may be beyond the needs of most creative teams.
• Operations Hub: Syncs and automates business processes across different systems, but requires technical expertise that many creative teams lack.
• Lead scoring: Prioritize leads with predictive scoring, though this feature may be too advanced for most creative agencies of 20-50 people.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: HubSpot is known for its intuitive interface, though not specifically designed for creative professionals.
• Comprehensive free plan: Offers a robust free version, but with significant limitations for teams of 20-50.
• Seamless integration with marketing tools: HubSpot integrates well within its ecosystem, but may be overkill for creative teams.
• Automation capabilities: Provides powerful automation tools, though they require significant setup time.
• Extensive learning resources: HubSpot Academy offers training, but requires substantial time investment.

Cons

• High cost at higher tiers: HubSpot's pricing becomes prohibitively expensive for creative teams of 20-50 as they scale, often costing $22,500+ annually for the team.
• Limited customization in free plan: The free plan has limited customization options, restricting flexibility for growing creative agencies.
• Complexity in advanced features: Advanced features have a steep learning curve and may require additional training for creative teams.
• Email marketing limits: Email marketing functionality in the free plan is restricted, which can be problematic for creative teams with larger client lists.
• Additional costs for add-ons: Many useful features come as paid add-ons, significantly increasing costs for teams of 20-50.
  

Price and plans

For an annual subscription on HubSpot's CRM hub, prices quickly become expensive for teams of 20-50:

• Starter: $15 per user, per month ($3,600+ annually for 20 people).
• Professional: $450 per user, per month ($108,000+ annually for 20 people).
• Enterprise: $1,500 per user, per month ($360,000+ annually for 20 people).

3. Capsule CRM

Capsule CRM is a user-friendly customer relationship management platform designed for small businesses, though it may lack the advanced features needed by growing creative teams of 20-50 professionals.

Key features

• 1 sales pipeline: Limited to one pipeline, which may be restrictive for creative teams of 20-50 managing multiple project types.
• 1 project board: Only one project board available, potentially insufficient for larger creative teams with diverse project needs.
• 50 custom fields: Offers customization options, though may not be enough for complex creative workflows across teams of 20-50.
• 30,000 contacts: Good contact capacity, suitable for most creative teams' client database needs.
• Task management: Basic task management features, though may lack advanced project coordination needed by teams of 20-50.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: Clean design makes it accessible, though may be too simple for complex creative team workflows.
• Contact and sales management: Efficient basic client management, though may lack depth needed by creative agencies of 20-50.
• Customization options: Some customization available, though limited compared to more advanced CRMs like folk.
• Integration capabilities: Integrates with popular tools, though fewer options than comprehensive solutions.
• Affordability: Competitive pricing, though costs can add up quickly for teams of 20-50.

Cons

• Limited advanced features: Lacks in-depth analytics and complex reporting needed by larger creative teams of 20-50.
• Basic email marketing capabilities: Limited built-in email marketing, requiring additional tools for creative teams' outreach needs.
• Limited customer support: Primarily email support, which may be insufficient for teams needing immediate assistance.
• No built-in phone or SMS integration: Missing communication features that creative teams often need for client relationships.
• Scalability concerns: May not scale effectively with rapidly growing creative agencies of 20-50 professionals.

Prices and plans

Capsule's annual subscription becomes expensive for teams of 20-50:

• Starter plan: $21 per user, per month ($5,040+ annually for 20 people).
• Growth plan: $38 per user, per month ($9,120+ annually for 20 people).
• Advanced plan: $60 per user, per month ($14,400+ annually for 20 people).
• Ultimate plan: $75 per user, per month ($18,000+ annually for 20 people).

4. Zoho

Zoho is a CRM system with a strong sales focus, though it can be overly complex for creative teams of 20-50 who need simplicity and ease of use in their workflow management.

Key features

• Sales automation: Comprehensive automation features, though may be overly complex for creative teams focused on project delivery rather than traditional sales.
• Customizable dashboards and reports: Extensive customization options, though require significant setup time that creative teams of 20-50 may not have available.
• Multi-channel communication: Integrates across multiple channels, though may be overwhelming for creative teams with simpler communication needs.
• Lead and contact management: Robust contact management, though designed more for traditional sales teams than creative professionals.
• Workflow automation: Advanced automation capabilities, though require technical expertise that many creative teams lack.

Pros

• Affordability: Competitive pricing, though costs can escalate for teams of 20-50 with advanced feature needs.
• Customization: Extensive customization options, though may be overwhelming for creative teams wanting simplicity.
• Integration with Zoho suite: Works well within Zoho ecosystem, but may require adopting multiple Zoho products.
• Multi-channel communication: Comprehensive communication tools, though more complex than most creative teams need.
• AI-powered features: Advanced AI capabilities, though may be unnecessarily sophisticated for creative project management.

Cons

• Steep learning curve: Extensive customization options can be overwhelming for creative teams of 20-50 who need quick implementation and ease of use.
• Complex setup: Initial setup can be complex, particularly for creative teams without dedicated IT resources.
• Performance issues: Occasional slow performance reports, which can hinder productivity for time-sensitive creative projects.
• Limited third-party integrations: While integrating well within its ecosystem, third-party integrations can be limited for creative teams using diverse tools.
• Inconsistent customer support: Support quality can vary, which is problematic for creative teams needing reliable assistance.
  
  

Price and plans

Zoho's free plan is limited to three users, insufficient for teams of 20-50. Annual subscription costs are:

• Standard: $20 per user, per month ($4,800+ annually for 20 people).
• Professional: $35 per user, per month ($8,400+ annually for 20 people).
• Enterprise: $50 per user, per month ($12,000+ annually for 20 people).

5. Streak

Streak is a Gmail-integrated CRM tool, though it may be too limited for creative teams of 20-50 who need comprehensive project management and collaboration features beyond email.

Key Features

• Advanced CRM: Basic lead management, though limited for complex creative team needs.
• Customizable pipelines: Some customization available, though not as flexible as dedicated CRM solutions for creative teams.
• Email tracking and snippets: Gmail-focused features, though may not meet broader communication needs of teams of 20-50.
• Google Workspace integrations: Good integration within Google ecosystem, but limiting for teams using diverse tools.
• Mobile access: Basic mobile functionality, though limited compared to comprehensive CRM solutions.

‍

Pros

• Seamless Gmail integration: Easy to use for Gmail-focused teams, though limiting for comprehensive creative project management.
• User-friendly and intuitive: Simple interface, though may be too basic for growing creative teams of 20-50.
• Customizable pipelines: Some flexibility, though limited compared to purpose-built CRMs for creative teams.
• Email tracking and automation: Basic email features, though insufficient for comprehensive client relationship management.
• Collaboration features: Limited sharing capabilities, may not support complex team coordination needed by teams of 20-50.

Cons

• Limited advanced CRM features: Lacks detailed analytics and advanced reporting needed by creative teams of 20-50 for project insights.
• Reliance on Gmail: Only suitable for businesses using Gmail, limiting flexibility for teams with diverse email preferences.
• Basic mobile experience: Limited mobile functionality, inconvenient for creative teams needing full access on the go.
• Integration limitations: Few third-party integrations, limiting effectiveness for creative teams using various specialized tools.
• Potential email clutter: Managing CRM data within email can create disorganization, problematic for busy creative teams.
  

Price and Plans

Streak's subscription costs become expensive for teams of 20-50:

• Pro: $49 per user, per month ($11,760+ annually for 20 people).
• Pro +: $69 per user, per month ($16,560+ annually for 20 people).
• Enterprise: $129 per user, per month ($30,960+ annually for 20 people).

‍

👉🏼 Try folk now to manage contact-based reminders and never miss a follow-up across your creative team

Conclusion

Choosing the best CRM for creative teams of 20-50 professionals can significantly enhance your agency's efficiency, client relationships, and overall project management. After evaluating all options, folk CRM emerges as the clear winner for creative teams of your size. With its intuitive interface, affordable pricing starting at $20 per user per month, seamless LinkedIn integration, and AI-powered contact enrichment, folk CRM is specifically designed to help creative teams streamline their workflow without the complexity and high costs of alternatives like HubSpot or the limitations of Gmail-based solutions like Streak. The platform's all-in-one approach eliminates the need for multiple tools, saving your team both time and money while providing the scalability your growing agency needs. Start your journey towards a more organized and productive creative agency by trying folk CRM for free here.

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

FAQ

What is the best CRM for creative teams?

Top options include folk, HubSpot, Zoho, Capsule, and Streak. For teams of 20–50, folk offers customizable pipelines, LinkedIn import, email sequences, and contact enrichment at $20–$40 per user/month.

Why do creative teams need a CRM?

To centralize client and project data, automate follow‑ups, track approvals and deadlines, and keep communication consistent across team members—reducing missed opportunities and speeding delivery.

How much does a CRM cost for a 20–50 person team?

Expect $20–$75 per user/month. For 20 people, that is roughly $400–$1,500/month; higher tiers and add‑ons can raise costs. folk plans: $20–$40/user/month, with a free 14‑day trial.

How to implement a CRM in a creative agency?

Define requirements, map stages, select 2–3 vendors, run a trial with real deals, check integrations and import, set a shared pipeline, automate follow‑ups, and train the team. Assign an owner and measure adoption for 30–60 days.