How to Supercharge Your Email Marketing with CRM: Best Practices and Top 10 Tools

How to Supercharge Your Email Marketing with CRM: Best Practices and Top 10 Tools

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If you are a small business, it’s safe to say that relationships are your bread and butter. After all, people love to buy goods and services from businesses and people that they know, like, and trust. 

Here’s the thing: those relationship-based sales require business owners to nurture customers. Customer acquisition becomes very relationship-focused as a result. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that among small and medium-sized businesses, some 81% still use email as their main sales engine. Email not only reaches customers through the ever-present phone, but it’s a highly personal method of communication–even bulk email with only a name customized.

Sending out emails at scale can be an involved process. Businesses need to keep track of email addresses, perform personalization, and present the right messages to the right person for email lists to be most effective. In order to optimize this critical marketing channel, a CRM should be utilized to make the most of your marketing emails and any email marketing efforts you put forth. 

What is a CRM?

A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a software tool that helps manage customer relationships by tracking client emails and recording preferences, thus alleviating the burden on human memory and organization. Unlike the traditional Rolodex, modern CRMs (think Salesforce) empower sales managers and salespeople to efficiently manage their pipelines.

The data supports the power of CRMs: These tools can boost sales by 24%, enhance productivity by 34%, and predict future sales 42% more accurately. CRMs also serve as a central data hub, allowing businesses to tailor marketing methods and messages to different customer segments. For example, a clothing store can track customer preferences and send targeted emails when specific items are in stock, enhancing marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

How a CRM Can Boost Your Email Marketing

One of the bigger challenges of email marketing is sending the right email to the right person. After all, even within a company that makes different ranges of the same products, there will be different items for different customers. Trying to sell products that were designed for a different consumer probably won’t work unless that person is giving a gift. Email templates are essential to make the most of your sales pipeline. Luckily, using a CRM email marketing reduces these problems because you:

  • Have all customer and prospect data in one central place. This is convenient because it means you don’t have to ask other people for information that you already gathered. It also gives some accountability across your organization to stay on top of your contact list and contact details for follow-up emails and other email templates.
  • Gain a clear picture on the activities of every single one of your email subscribers and customer database entries. This lets you see at a glance which people are prospects, customers, and regular clients. In addition, you can use combined information to try and predict who will become more dedicated in their customer journey.
  • Better segment your email marketing. Suburban moms are likely to buy different things than single men who live in the city, even though some needs overlap. Sell the right things to the right people for better results by properly segmenting your audience and sending email newsletters to the right people.
  • Create extremely personalized email marketing campaigns depending on where your prospect is in the funnel or pipeline. In some situations, a small discount is all it’ll take to sell something and turn someone into a regular customer.
  • Nurture your prospects more effectively through augmenting sales activities with marketing automation. If you know about someone’s interests, it’s easier to pitch the right product. For instance, a travel company that knows someone enjoys luxury getaways can use this knowledge to pitch somewhere they haven’t been yet and create relevant content for all segments of their audience.

Simply put, integrating CRM with email marketing is like having a supercharged tool in your marketing arsenal. It centralizes all your customer data, lets you personalize emails, automates workflows, and provides detailed analytics in custom reports. This means better customer engagement and higher conversion rates.

With CRM software insights, you can segment your audience more accurately, tailor messages to specific needs, and measure the impact of your campaigns precisely. This not only leads to higher open rates and conversions but also boosts ROI. Plus, it strengthens customer loyalty by ensuring timely and relevant communication, ultimately driving business growth.

Top 10 CRM Email Marketing Platforms

If your business already has a CRM as well as email marketing software, try to find ways to integrate them together. Using the right CRM email marketing can make your life easier. For many tools, there are integrations already built in, which can make integrating information automatic for marketing teams. Failing that, good communication between teams or an independent, centralized database will help coordinate efforts and make a marketing strategy more effective.

If your company doesn’t have a CRM or would like to use an email marketing software platform that includes CRM functionality, these would be my recommendations from my best email marketing tools post:

The Leaders in CRM Email Marketing

I’m dividing these recommendations into the leaders and the rest. That’s because three of these tools stand out for their great features and comprehensive functionalities.

1. Hubspot 

HubSpot

When it comes to inbound marketing, Hubspot is the granddaddy. They have a great free CRM that lets you turn web forms, chatbot results, and other customer inquiries into database entries. There are also integrations for certain email programs, which makes it much easier to use it as a CRM email tool.

Not convinced? Hubspot helps you automate your email marketing, and they even add information to workflows so that sales teams can follow up as appropriate. The program is designed for you to do most of your basic tasks inside the platform, which means that collaboration is nearly seamless.

Pricing: There are free tools, with paid plans starting at $45 monthly.

Zoho

2. Zoho

Zoho

Zoho is a powerhouse in email marketing services; although it is not an email marketing platform itself, the robust features it offers makes email marketing a breeze. Zoho campaigns are powered by predictive AI, with advanced analytics, and tools that allow marketers to manage an effective email marketing campaign from inception to execution.

The suite of tools offered by Zoho include the ability to track and instigate sales targets, allowing you to measure the progress of your email marketing automations and make adjustments to any sales emails and promotional emails as needed to improve customer experience. Zoho campaigns ultimately benefit from a large-scale suite of tools that allow you to target email users in an organic, natural way while tracking and supporting sales. 

Pricing: From $14 monthly. 

Further Reading: How a CRM Can Boost Your Email Marketing

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a great tool if you are a small business, because of its great customer service. They also have comprehensive CRM email marketing tools and some great integrations with other tools to help boost your email marketing strategies. On a basic level, what ActiveCampaign does is take lead information and automatically feed it into the email marketing queue.

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Ideally, your contact form gives an opportunity for people to tell you what they’re interested in, which helps the sales team. Finally, if you’re a business traveler, there’s an iPhone app that helps you input new information on the go so you never lose track of a prospective customer and you are in constant contact with your team.

Pricing: From $25 monthly.

Other CRM Email Marketing Tools to Check Out

Of course, Hubspot, Zoho, and ActiveCampaign aren’t the only contenders out there. Rather, other entrants to the CRM email marketing field help meet specialized business requirements. Some of them are simpler to use for smaller businesses. This group includes email marketing tools with CRMs, rather than being CRMs with email integrations.

4. Engagebay

Engagebay

Engagebay is a smaller CRM software for email marketing and other tasks. Engagebay is a full-service CRM, designed to help smaller to medium-sized businesses with a larger focus on sales. Although contact management is a part of the Engagebay suite, it may not focus as heavily on relationships with customers as some of its peers, instead leaning heavily into sales management and support. 

Engagebay’s tools are designed to help develop customer profiles that will further improve sales ability. Ultimately, this means automating routine tasks to help focus more energy and attention on converting potential clients. 

Pricing: Freemium, with the least expensive package starting at around $13/month. 

5. Insightly

Insightly

Insightly’s CRM tools were created with project development and management in mind. While repetitive tasks can be automated using Insightly, its main focus is on gathering contact attributes, optimizing email marketing, and developing a mailing list to truly support brand loyalty and strong customer relationships. Because the CRM does lean more toward project management for small and medium-sized businesses, brands can link up all apps and platforms for social media marketing and general marketing tasks to ensure that customer journeys are a top priority. 

Pricing: From $29 monthly. 

Further Reading: The 10 Most Important Email Marketing Benchmarks to Know for 2024

6. Nutshell

Nutshell

Nutshell is a marketing automation platform and CRM with a focus on B2B marketing, rather than B2C marketing. Nutshell’s nature as a B2B platform means that it does have a more significant bend toward sales, with a full range of tools to support effective and efficient sales. Nutshell offers marketing automation features including sales automation, detailed reporting, email automation, and AI-powered automation services. Nutshell’s basic features offer valuable insights into sales funnels and sales direction. 

Pricing: From $16 monthly. 

7. Pipedrive

Pipedrive

As its name might suggest, Pipedrive is another entry in this list that focuses largely on driving sales. Pipedrive’s CRM is less about improving the customer’s buying journey and more about developing a highly efficient sales pipeline. As such, Pipedrive is geared toward small businesses looking to grow, who perhaps do not have as robust a system set up for their sales pipeline. This is a great option for small businesses looking to improve sales and get off the ground with a bang. 

Pricing: From $14 per month per user. 

Further Reading: 7 Best Practices In Creating Automated and Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns

8. Keap

Keap

Service industry professionals like plumbers and electricians should check out Keap. That’s because they let you directly text message customers to confirm appointments or let them know if a tech is running late. Another standout feature is that Keap gathers leads passively. For instance, if someone checks you out on social media, Keap will store this information. Later, that person may get an email if Keap could find the address.

Need more than lead gathering? Keap has integrations for a huge variety of other platforms, such as your CMS, billing software, and more. They’ll even do much of your reporting and analytics for you, which saves a lot of time.

Pricing: From $79 per month for 500 contacts.

9. Brevo

Brevo

Brevo is an email marketing platform that allows you to manage all of your messaging from a single platform. In addition to your email marketing, you can utilize Brevo to send out messages through chat, email, and text, as well as other messaging mediums. With customizable templates and tracking, Brevo is an ideal solution for anyone looking for a single platform from which to manage all message-based marketing. 

Pricing: Free for 300 emails per day, then starting at $9 per month for 5,000+ emails.  

Further Reading: The 18 Best Email Marketing Software Tools to Consider Investing in Today

10. Freshsales Suite

Freshsales Suite

Freshsales Suite is a CRM and email automation software that is often used by startups to minimize the number of platforms and dashboards from which to work. The goal of Freshsales is to unify marketing efforts and develop and distribute sales and marketing materials. Freshsales hones in on engagement and customer retention; most of its tools focus on supporting the customer journey from inception to purchase, in order to make the most of each individual indication of interest. 

Pricing: Starting at $9 per month. 

Best Practices for Using CRM with Email Marketing

As you can see, integrating CRM with email marketing can revolutionize your business’s communication strategy. Here are some tips for effective integration that summarize all of the information that I have given until now:

  • Centralize Customer Data: Ensure that all customer information is consolidated in the CRM for easy access and management. This provides a single source of truth and customer insights for your marketing team.
  • Automate Workflows: Set up automated email sequences triggered by specific customer actions or milestones, such as welcome emails for new subscribers or re-engagement emails for inactive customers, allowing you to send out dynamic content on an ongoing basis.
  • Personalize Communications: Use CRM data to personalize email content for your target audience. Address recipients by their names and tailor messages based on their past interactions, preferences, and purchase history.
  • Segment Your Audience: Leverage CRM insights to create detailed customer segments. This allows for more targeted and relevant email campaigns, enhancing engagement and conversion rates and even increasing email engagement rates.
  • Monitor and Analyze Performance: Track the performance of your email campaigns using the CRM’s analytics tools. Measure key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to continually refine and improve your strategies.
  • Ensure Data Syncing: Regularly update and sync data between your CRM and email marketing platform to maintain accuracy and consistency across all channels.
  • Train Your Team: Provide comprehensive training for your team to use the integrated tools effectively. This ensures everyone can make the most of the combined capabilities of CRM and email marketing platforms to make the most of all of your email marketing capabilities.

By following these best practices, you can maximize the benefits of CRM email marketing integration, leading to more efficient marketing campaigns and stronger customer relationships.

Further Reading: 15 Powerful Ways to Use AI in Email Marketing

Conclusion

Keeping track of all your email marketing tasks can seem daunting if you try to do it yourself. The right CRM email marketing can make your life much easier, however, as it can help with sales automation, and implement email marketing features seamlessly. Better yet, CRMs help bridge the gap between sales and marketing, improving overall performance. However, the best reason to get a CRM is arguably the personalization for customers. Remember, when they feel a connection to your business, they’re more likely to buy.

Don’t waste another day: Start a trial with one of the above mentioned CRMs for email marketing tools and start developing deeper relationships through traditional email marketing with your current and potential customers. Your sales reps will thank you later!

Do you use a CRM in your email communication? Which do you use? Let me know in the comments! 

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Neal Schaffer
Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and in late 2019 will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence (HarperCollins), on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.

Articles: 501

3 Comments

  1. Every business owner should know about CRM (Customer Relationship Management). It is really wonderful tool to organize and run business smoothly.

  2. Hi Neal! It is always great to read your blogs. They are very helpful and easy to understand. This one too is an amazing blog as always. Learned a lot about CRM.
    As far as tools are concerned, I have also heard about PursueApp. It would be great if you share your thoughts on this tool too.

    • Thanks for your comment Andik – lots of tools out there so hard to keep up with them all!

Comments are closed.

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