Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves the creation and delivery of highly focused, value-driven content via email to a list of subscribers in order to establish and maintain a relationship. There are two main goals: first, convert prospects into paying customers; second, turn first-time buyers into recurring customers.
Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a technology for managing interactions and relationships between an organization and its contacts. In other words, a CRM system is used for contact management, sales & marketing strategy management, and business productivity.
By integrating email marketing with CRM, a company can organize, streamline, and automate business processes to make it easier to connect with a target audience, win clients’ loyalty, and improve profitability.
Read on to get a better understanding of the business benefits of email integration with a CRM tool.
1. Send automated emails
An integrated email marketing CRM tool allows users to send content-specific emails based on a subscribers’ response, action, or activity such as:
Welcome Email
- First form of communication with potential prospects to establish a business relationship
- No product/service offering or sales pitch
- A way to introduce contacts to the organization or illustrate the industry expertise
Email Newsletter
- Foundation of your email marketing strategy
- For brand awareness or to provide updates, news, and tips about the business
- A way to stay top of mind of subscribers
Dedicated Email
- Stand-alone email that contains the main message, goal, or call-to-action (CTA)
- Similar to content on a landing page but with a few tweaks to make it appropriate for email marketing
- Customized and delivered to a specific group of recipients with similar demographic or characteristics
Lead Nurturing Email
- A carefully curated series of emails with event and/or behavior-based content for a target set of recipients
- Content creation is strictly guided by buyer personas to effectively match user needs and expectations
- Multifaceted content types to move recipients down the sales funnel and turn warm leads into loyal customers
Transactional Email
- Messages to facilitate agreed-upon transaction or engagement between sender and recipient
- Delivered to your contacts based on their action which hopefully will trigger another response that will lead to closing a sale
- Not too pushy or intimidating (unlike one-size-fits-all email promo/seasonal campaigns) which can encourage higher user engagement)
Post-Purchase Drip Email
- Follow-up email after a customer makes payment for a product or service from your company
- Includes customer support option, review request, or discounts for re-orders
- A way to up-sell or cross-sell anything within your line-up offerings
Re-Engagement Email
- Follow-up email for inactive subscribers
- A way to reel them back in, establish good will, and encourage them to complete the sales cycle
- If they remain unresponsive or they unsubscribed, it’s a signal to remove them from your email list and improve your email deliverability rate
2. Get all-in-one view
An integrated email marketing CRM tool allows you to gain access to all information from a single dashboard. This comprehensive, visual report of essential data is crucial for improving your sales & marketing strategy including creating more meaningful messages for specific target audience.
Market segmentation is the act of dividing email subscribers according to demographics or specific characteristics. Customizing your contacts is essential to determine the suitability and improve efficiency of your email marketing campaigns.
When you integrate your email marketing with a CRM system, you have a single, comprehensive database for streamlining data management. All information from different sources is stored in a centralized repository which all team members can access 24/7 in real-time.
3. Eliminate data duplication
Duplicate contacts are one of the biggest threats to data integrity. Also, multiple email notifications are annoying for recipients. A synchronized email marketing CRM tool has filters to flag possible duplicates caused by human error and to make sure nobody receives multiple emails from the same campaign.
4. Track key performance indicators (KPIs)
A synchronized email marketing CRM tool provides a clear picture of email marketing performance based on the following metrics:
- Open rate
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- Click-through rate
- List growth rate
- Email sharing/forwarding rate
- Spam complaints
- Number of unsubscribes
- Engagement over time
5. Work better together
Like sales and marketing teams, an integrated email marketing strategy and CRM tool promotes more effective collaboration and more results-driven teamwork.
If the sales team is aware of the active campaigns the marketing team is working on, and marketing provides prompt notification to the sales, the resource-draining ‘spray and pray’ marketing approach is eliminated, and you’re enabled to successfully achieve your market goals. Every time.
Implementing a unified platform solution brings efficiency to business operation processes and guarantees an increased ROI and customer base.
Want to leverage this kind of integration technology? Want to maximize your email marketing potential? Speak with a CRM + email marketing expert today.
