8 Ways CRM plays a vital role in boosting email campaign performance

There was a time when marketers had to use a different tool for every marketing channel.

But then came a savior –  The Customer Relationship Management or CRM software. The various CRM tools have made it possible to integrate all the channels into a single platform and take a holistic approach rather than a siloed marketing strategy. 

A CRM software is used to get information about your prospective clients as well as customers. Based on this information, you can formulate an impactful marketing strategy that would help you drive more conversions and better sales. 

If you are an email marketer struggling to enhance the performance of your email campaigns, CRM email marketing would allow you to get clear insights into how your leads or customers are interacting with your brand and target them with more relevant communication. 

Below are top ways in which CRM can play a crucial role in amping up your email engagement and ultimately the performance of your campaigns:

1. Segmentation

The first step to successful email marketing is segmenting your target audience. CRM solutions provider SuperOffice has revealed that hyper-segmentation can help your company in several ways as enlisted below.

It is clear from the chart above that email list segmentation with the help of CRM amped up the open rates for 39% of the respondents. While it helped 15% of those surveyed in customer acquisition and 18% in increasing transactions, 21% witnessed an increase in customer retention, and 24% noticed an increase in deliverability, sales leads, and revenue. 

ESPs allow basic segmentation based on age, geographic location, demographics, etc. On the other hand, CRM allows you better filtering of the audience according to advanced segmentation criteria like past purchases, previous interactions with the brand, resources downloaded, and frequency of purchases, to name a few. Integration of email marketing into the CRM can facilitate better segmentation that would, in turn, enhance your email marketing campaigns. 

2. Hyper-personalization

CRM not only allows you to do basic personalization in your emails but also lets you incorporate other information gathered through the tools CRM. By doing so, you can target your subscribers with hyper-personalized emails according to their preferences. Furthermore, if you are using a CRM like Salesforce or Marketo, you can use predictive content and analytics to employ AI in your email marketing strategy. This will, in turn, let you send specific emails triggered based on the customer’s action in real-time. 

For instance: If you are an online retail store, you can send out different offers to your audience based on their gender or geographical location. In case you want to send more specific emails, you can consider their past purchases or browse history to send personalized emails. Assume that a female customer has bought a pink party dress from your store. You can send an email promoting pink stilettos or matching earrings that would entice her to purchase from you again. On the other hand, if a male customer has purchased a white shirt from your e-commerce site, you can consider sending matching ties, shoes, or suits to go with it. 

3. Lead Nurturing

Email marketing is the best channel to nurture your leads and persuade them to take action. Once you have a consistent influx of leads in your CRM, you can gather more information about them and reach out with emails that deliver more value. Unless you touch base with the subscribers with relevant information, you cannot expect them to convert. With CRM tools, you can recognize the challenges of your leads and present your product or services as a tool to overcome those problems.

The lead scoring feature that comes with CRM tools like Marketo helps to assign scores to the leads according to their engagement metrics. According to this information, the sales executives can approach the customers with useful content and follow-up emails.  

4. Customized Email Templates

CRM tools come with customizable email templates with the help of which you can create winning email designs to woo your customers. You can use the drag-and-drop editor to create interactive emails with complex design elements, even without any coding expertise. 

5. Social Media Integration

You can integrate your social media channels into the emails and boost your brand visibility through CRM tools. Several brands organize a social media contest and promote it in their emails to generate tweets and social media posts across Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. CRM allows you to combine all this information and get insights into which subscribers are taking action. It will give you a broad view of the performance of your marketing campaigns. 

6. Integration of Third-party Software 

CRM tools give you the provision to add third-party software programs that let you carry out several functions. In other words, you will have a centralized system that will carry out all actions for you, without the need to switch tabs or platforms. Furthermore, you can use the developer API that comes with CRMs to make your own integrations the way you want. Note that integrations are also known as feature extensions and add-ons in some platforms. 

7. Email Automation

Email automation is one of the crucial tactics if you want your marketing strategy to work. CRM email marketing lets you set up numerous automation workflows according to different triggers that are set in your business sales cycle. If you are an e-commerce store, you can automate your email campaigns and send out cart abandonment emails, re-engagement emails, stock replenishment emails, notifications when a product is back in stock, etc. You can also send product recommendations according to the past purchases of the customers and products he or she has searched for.

8. Elaborate Analytics

Using CRM will give you clear and detailed insights into how your audience is resonating with your email campaigns. By using a CRM like HubSpot, you will get access to the entire buyer’s journey starting from the first interaction to the number of emails opened or clicked-through, follow-up emails sent, products purchased, etc. You will be able to compare the performances of your email campaigns and test what works best for your subscribers. You can then optimize your emails based on these results. 

Wrapping Up

In an intensely competitive marketplace, it is impossible to make your business grow with batch and blast email campaigns. Therefore, CRM email marketing is the way forward. Not only does it give you an insight into historical analytics, but it also allows you to get predictive analytics with clear graphs, third-party data reviews, and comprehensive monitoring of subscriber activity. 

If you are still using an ESP with limited functionality, now is the time to switch to a powerful CRM like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Marketo. 

In case you need any help with migrating to the new ESP or choosing one, Email Uplers would be more than happy to help you out.