CRM and email marketing: what you need to know

Email marketing is a fantastic way to communicate with your customers, grow your brand recognition, and convert more of your audience into buyers. So, how do you approach the subject of email marketing and your CRM? Should you integrate the two or use the built-in email tools your customer relationship management software offers? And what else do you need to know about the topic?

Read on to learn the essentials on CRM and email marketing tools.

Email marketing statistics

Email marketing is one of the best ways to convert your audience into customers. In fact, effective email marketing campaigns can play a critical role in the success of your business.

Here’s some evidence to back that up:

64% of small businesses use email marketing
81% of marketers say that email is their most effective type of content marketing
50% of people buy something they saw in a marketing email at least once a month
Automated email campaigns (e.g. abandoned cart emails) create 320% more revenue than ones that don’t use automation
Personalised emails get 6x more transactions (think about those recommendations you get from Netflix and Amazon).

What is CRM email marketing?

CRM email marketing is using the tools your CRM offers to send out email marketing campaigns to your customers.

Many of the popular CRM software out there now have built-in email marketing functionality, like HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and Zoho.

In fact, there are likely to be many marketing services available within your CRM system. So, some businesses choose a CRM with email marketing software and stick to the native tools it offers.

Is it better to use an email marketing tool than my CRM?

You may think you need to consider when choosing a CRM how many additional marketing features it has, but that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, many businesses keep their email marketing and CRM software separately.

Dedicated email tools like Mailchimp and Mailerlite make it much easier to send automated email campaigns, create personalised email campaigns, and generally convert more of your email list into customers – boosting the success rate of your overall digital marketing efforts.

After all, when you have more functionality and information at your disposal, you can use it to inform your email marketing strategies and generate much better results.

Within this method, you have two choices:

Transfer contact information from your CRM platform and your email tool of choice manually
Integrate your CRM and email marketing systems so they speak to each other and every marketing contact syncs automatically.

Email marketing with CRM

As we touched on above, customer relationship management systems do offer different functions, like email marketing features.

So, you can organise your data and send out emails directly through your sales CRM.

However, there can be limitations to what your CRM email function can do. So, depending on your needs, you may be better off having a separate email marketing platform to manage your marketing and sales funnel.

The good news is that you can integrate your email marketing platform with your CRM so they speak to each other.

Limitations of running an email campaign using CRM

OK, so it may be possible to send emails from your CRM (or even create an email marketing automation). Many CRM features do include email marketing after all.

However, its email marketing capabilities are likely to be limited.

So, you could run into issues like:

Data limits – there may be a limit to how many contacts your CRM can store
Fewer features – platforms like Mailchimp have many more email marketing features than your CRM tool, so you may struggle to access good analytics, personalise, segment and automate your campaigns if your approach to email marketing is to stick to your CRM’s native functions
Low deliverability – CRMs may lack the sophistication of email tools to get your emails through spam filters and actually land in your target customer’s inbox
Design challenges – dedicated email tools have a host of impressive email templates to make it simple to build an email marketing campaign that wows your audience, whereas an all-in-one email marketing and CRM solution may not deliver the look and branding you’re after.

At the end of the day, while email marketing may be one of the functions of your CRM, an email marketing system is specifically created for effective marketing campaigns, so it’s bound to do the job much better.

Should small businesses integrate CRM with email marketing platform?

Even the best CRM with email marketing won’t allow you to access all of the functionality of the best email marketing tool out there for your business.

Integrating email marketing with CRM allows you to sync all your contact information and have a clear record of all customer interactions by email.

Customer data is added to your email tool instantly, which avoids duplication and errors, as well as streamlining how you manage and communicate with your customers.

Your sales and marketing teams will thank you!

Why integrate sales CRM with email marketing?

We’ve already touched on some benefits of integrating your CRM with your email marketing software, but let’s dig a little deeper into the many advantages to your business.

Better customer management – access more detailed customer data in one place to view purchase history, communications, open rates, and conversion stats
Build a stronger brand – having all the info listed above means you have the tools you need to build a stronger brand that inspires repeat custom, long-term loyalty, and better recall (after all, consumers remember and talk about a good brand experience)
Save employee time – if your CRM and email tools aren’t connected, you’ll spend a lot of hours on manual data entry which slows down productivity and isn’t where your colleagues’ time is best spent
Prevent mistakes – when your team has to input every contact by hand, errors happen. Integrating the two improves accuracy and avoids embarrassing slip-ups
Run better campaigns – the best marketing focuses on the individual – and with an integrated setup you can segment data, automate email marketing campaigns, and personalise marketing messages – all of which seriously boosts the success of your marketing.

How to integrate your CRM and email marketing

Your CRM is one of the most powerful assets you have to elevate how you interact with your audience, and when you invest in a CRM it’s a great move for your business.

However, the way you use CRM and email marketing together has the potential to amplify your results – while making your working life much easier.

When you work with a specialist CRM integration expert like Hanley Digital, you can integrate your CRM with any email marketing platform you use to improve your sales and marketing processes and get better results.

Data is added to your CRM instantly, so your internal team can concentrate on what they do best.

Need help choosing a CRM email marketing solution that works for you?

We specialise in connecting a wide range of customer relationship management systems with different email tools, so let’s book in a chat to see how we can make you more productive and boost your bottom line.

After reading this blog post, you may have questions about email marketing and CRM integrations – we’re here to answer your queries and come up with a solution that works for you and streamlines how your business operates. Contact us on hello@hanleydigital.com or 0114 4055 330 and let’s make things happen.