If you’ve ever run an email marketing campaign or researched ways in which you can strengthen your customer relationships and simplify your sales management, chances are you’ve heard about customer relationship management (CRM) software.
The line between CRMs and email marketing tools can be somewhat blurry, but the simplest way to tell them apart is to understand email marketing tools as a part of a CRM solution that serves several purposes. It can boost the number of your email subscribers, segment your lists for more targeted marketing, help you customize your email templates, and much more.
While it might sound simple enough, by choosing the right CRM email marketing software you’ll make your customer interactions simpler to track, automate your marketing, collect the critical data, implement sales strategies, win new customers, and boost your business in the long run.
So, to help you choose the right email marketing solution for your business, we’ll go through some of our top CRM picks for small businesses that have mastered email marketing on all levels.
However, let’s clear up what CRM email marketing is first, learn what its main features are, and why you should care about it.
What is CRM email marketing?
CRM email marketing refers to the combination of CRM and email marketing tools with the aim to create personalized, captivating, and consistent content that’ll charm your core audience through emails and take your business to the next level.
Even nowadays email marketing is one of the most popular types of digital marketing around and it’s likely to stay so in the years to come. Powered by a CRM solution, it can significantly strengthen your marketing campaign and build long-lasting relationships with potential and current customers.
If you’re just starting out and wondering if you need CRM software for your small business, the answer to this question depends on its type, scale, and end goal.
Benefits of CRM email marketing
Since a relationship with customers is critical for the survival and growth of any sort of business, let’s see in which ways CRM email marketing can help you strengthen these connections and bring on a bright future for your business.
1. Getting a deeper insight into each customer relationship
Since a CRM solution collects relevant customer data from incoming emails and sorts them into a single database, you can access it whenever needed and get the information you want about each customer.
With the up-to-date information about your customers at your fingertips, you can avoid any superfluous conversations, miscommunication, and loss of sales due to customer frustration.
2. Enjoying the benefits of marketing automation
With an integrated CRM and email marketing platform you’ll be sure that all information is consistent on all your teams and systems, but also that all tiresome administrative tasks are taken care of.
This will save you both time and money, as well as allow your team to focus on boosting your customer base.
3. Turning customer engagement into sales
With constant access to your customer base, you can easily boost customer engagement with targeted email marketing campaigns, build stronger bridges between them and your business, and ultimately turn their enthusiasm into sales.
4. It’s easy to track its effectiveness
With a CRM-based email marketing solution, it’s not only easier to understand your current customer base and bring in new blood, but also to track down the effectiveness of all your marketing endeavors.
Thanks to feedback from the emails, you can better understand what works and what doesn’t so that you can adapt your campaign to reach and affect a wider audience.
5. It’s pocket-friendly and simple to get started
Not having to put your money into printing or delivery (like with billboards or television ads), makes CRM-backed email marketing surprisingly cost-effective and simple to get into. Also, it doesn’t call for a ton of tech-savvy experts to start but only one user-friendly CRM software, a couple of attractive images, and a speck of creative spirit.
What are the features of CRM email marketing?
The core features of any capable CRM software with email marketing tools should include:
Data analytics
Having a steady stream of “up-to-the-minute” information about your customers as well as tools for analyzing the data you’ve collected can work wonders for your ongoing email marketing campaign.
For instance, you can check how many people have clicked on a link in your last email campaign and find out whether the campaign was successful or not.
All-in-one solution
A well-thought-out CRM solution should integrate with other marketing-related software, services, and platforms (such as HubSpot, Zoho, and Salesforce). These integrations will allow you to spread your capabilities across multiple platforms, extend your reach, and act more efficiently.
Automation
By automatically completing chores you or your team would otherwise have to take on manually, a CRM-based email marketing solution will act as a time-saver and let you spend your most valuable resource on more business-critical tasks.
Also, if you wish to start a drip campaign, thanks to automation your email can be automatically sent to your current customers based on specific triggers (such as abandoned cart reminders).
Another often overlooked feature of CRM solutions are CRM tags – they’ll help you sort your clients into specific groups and monetize your client relationships, so make sure to use powerful CRM tags to help you with that.
Lead nurturing
With data and tools needed for personalized communication with your customers, you can build customer trust seemingly one contact at a time without spending too much time or money to do so.
Bulk emailing
Sooner or later you’ll need to send a bulk email, so make sure that the CRM solution of your choice comes with this feature – it’s the simplest and swiftest way to share your content with your entire core audience.
Recipient engagement reporting
This handy feature will clue you in on how each of your recipients has engaged with your emails – above all, who took the trouble to open your email, who clicked the links, and suchlike.
This newfound knowledge can help you shape up your email marketing campaign and make it more successful.
Top 5 CRMs with email marketing
1. vcita
This cloud-based, all-in-one business management and client engagement solution aimed at small businesses offers an intuitive, user-friendly dashboard from which you can monitor and manage appointments, payments, shared media, client portal, and email marketing campaigns.
vcita manages to stay easy to use without coming shortly on features which makes it a no-brainer for all sorts of email and SMS campaigns.
2. Zoho
Aided by an AI-powered assistant, lead management tools, and a well-designed dashboard with prompt reporting and insight into the sales metrics, Zoho email marketing software is a solid choice for any business looking for a way to integrate their business communications with other productivity software.
3. Hubspot
If you’re just starting out and searching for a simple CRM that’ll help you run an email-heavy marketing campaign, Hubspot might be your best bet.
Besides being exceedingly easy to use, it automates most manual tasks (such as data entry, sync, and updates) giving you the time you need to kick off your start-up to success.
4. Salesforce
This long-standing, highly customizable, and scalable CRM solution is the best fit for large or fast-growing businesses with big budgets. It boasts over 1,000 integration with other platforms, professional-level email marketing software, comprehensive customization options, and resourceful reporting.
5. Keap
This well-thought-out solution adds advanced workflow automation, superb email marketing tools, and payment processing functionality to its core CRM features, as well as exceeding user-friendliness.
What to look for in a CRM email marketing software?
In addition to everything we’ve covered so far (data automation, advanced analytics, real-time reporting, and so forth), you’ll want to check the ease of use, all the available marketing-related features, integrations with third-party software and services, as well as what value for money the CRM email marketing solution offers.
It’s also a smart strategy to look for a free trial or a money-back guarantee, so you can test everything out for yourself without blowing your budget.
Also, it’s worth finding out the scope of customer support services that a CRM provider offers – it would be ideal to have a 24/7 telephone line, live chat, and a well-supplied knowledge base at your disposal.
Top tips for CRM email marketing
If you want to know how to get the most out of your CRM software in your email marketing endeavors, take a look at our top tips:
1. Keep it short, sweet, and straight to the point
Since people often make split-second decisions about whether or not to open an email in the first place, you’ll want to write a catchy subject line and keep the content short, simple to understand, and able to evoke curiosity.
2. Check everything for spam before sending
One thing you want to test your emails for before they are sent is their spam score. By knowing which kind of content could be marked as spam (for instance, trigger words such as “100% free”, “sale”, and “best price”) and switching it with safe content you’ll avoid the headaches of an ineffective marketing campaign.
3. Measure your success and celebrate small wins
To avoid getting ahead of yourself and losing the track of your marketing project’s progress, make sure to measure the success of your campaigns with metrics such as click-through rate, new email subscriptions, and closed sales.
Also, don’t forget to boost your morale by celebrating the small wins while waiting for a big victory.
Maximize the use of your CRM with email marketing
If you’re on the lookout for an all-in-one solution with which to elevate your email marketing strategy, CRM-based email marketing software might be exactly what you need.
However, before choosing one CRM email marketing solution over the others, make sure you understand your business needs, know your target audience, and have figured out your end goal.
Then, pick out the right tool, use it effectively, and start boosting your business straight away.
