What (Really) Goes Into CRM Email Marketing to Make it Work

Every business is using CRM systems in order to optimize their day-to-day tasks with the help of technology advancements, which facilitates more effective interaction with the customers and builds stronger relationships. CRM tools offer great insights into the customers and that can help you to send relevant communications. Irrespective of the size of your business and its niche, every business is making use of CRM to aggregate, organize, and analyze customer data. 

That makes it pretty clear why 91% of companies having over 11 employees take help of CRM software. Furthermore, as CRM is expected to reach a revenue of $80 billion by 2025. As a result, it has become inevitable to include CRM in your business plan. 

Brands who have made use of CRM email marketing features have taken their lead acquisition, engagement, and conversion to the next level.

So, how is CRM email marketing different from “traditional email marketing”?

What do CRM email marketers do differently?

While conventional email marketing was a lot about ‘batch and blast’ communications, CRM email marketers strive to send out personalized email messages based on their previous interaction, past purchases, and other preferences. They are tailored to add more value to the subscribers, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversions by creating symbiotic connections with them. It is just like deep marketing where you nurture a lead and convince them to make a purchase with persuasion and relevance. In other words, CRM email marketing facilitates the marriage of content with context. 

Integrating CRM with email marketing will work as a channel to converse with the clients directly. For each dollar you invest in CRM, you get a revenue of $8.71. On the other hand, spending $1 on email marketing gives you an ROI of $51. Now that you have an idea about how effective CRM email marketing can be, first let’s take a look at the advantages of email marketing in CRM. 

• As you get access to the personal data of the prospects or customers, you can take a holistic approach and build emails based on all those factors. 
• You can build tailored communication journeys for every prospect. It will help you chalk out the email schedule for them and send timely emails rather than irrelevant ones. 
• CRM gives you access to pre-designed email templates with the help of which you can design aesthetically consistent communications. 
• CRM email marketing will enable the creation of responsive designs that render flawlessly across the diverse email clients and devices. In turn, it will impart a pleasant subscriber experience. 
• The three building blocks of effective email marketing are segment, automate, and customize. CRM tools will help to strengthen all these aspects of email marketing. 

I am assuming that you are quite convinced about the power of CRM email marketing by now. So, let’s discuss the top 6 functionalities it comes with. 

Powerful Segmentation

The first step to effective email marketing is segmentation. Without segmentation, you will not be able to understand which customers will be the most receptive to your products and services. Your CRM software will help you to filter out information and divide the customer base according to factors such as their age, sex, location, purchase history, personal interests, and previous interaction to name a few.

Superoffice has created a nice chart to sum up the results from email list segmentation. 

With a CRM tool like HubSpot, you can segment the contacts into static lists and active lists. Static lists include the subscribers who do not get updated when new criteria are met. They are unchanging. 

Active lists on the other hand constantly change as and when the particular criteria are met. For example: Contact location and industry. 

When new contacts fit the criteria predetermined by the active lists, they will get added in the list while the contacts that no longer meet those criteria will be deleted automatically. 

Examples of Static Lists:

i. Employee lists to send internal newsletters or important company updates

ii. Registration lists for events, including the people who did not show up

iii. Contacts collected during conferences or networking events

Examples of Active Lists:

i. A list of people who have expressed interest in a particular product or service

ii. Block lists

iii. Registrants of the free trial 

More effective personalization

Campaign Monitor has revealed that segmented and personalized campaigns can boost revenue by 760%. With the help of CRM, you can collect detailed information about the customers and then send personalized emails based on their interests. 

Take a look at the personalized email subject line by Carnival Cruise Line. 

Besides first name personalization, you can go a step ahead and customize the email copy to match the customer’s persona and position in the sales funnel. 

You can create innovative tailor-made email templates that would resonate the most with the readers. 

Here’s an email from Travelocity in which they have shared relevant getaways based on the subscriber’s browsing history.  

DAVIDsTEA sends out a personalized email giving the customers detailed insights into their journey. 

See how they have taken their email personalization game a level up in their 10th anniversary email. It is a classic example of hyper-personalization in emails.  

Compelling Follow-throughs

Follow-ups are a story of the past. Now is the time of following through and nurturing the customers. CRM has the feature of sending real-time alerts with the help of which you can touch base with your customers at regular intervals. Whether you are a SaaS business or an ecommerce website, you can send out personalized emails based on the consumer behavior. It will, ultimately, contribute to a better open rate, higher conversions, and greater profitability.

Here’s how Great Fermentations has promoted relevant products to the new brewers and helped them to get started. 

If we talk about SaaS companies, Wistia sets the perfect example of “following through” with drip campaigns in the form of gentle reminders.

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Moreover, they also share periodic updates about their products to keep their brand at the top of the subscriber’s mind. 

Here’s how they announced the launch of podcasting to their subscribers. 

1. Persuasive Email Automation Workflows

Through a robust CRM tool, you can chalk out persuasive email automation workflows that would help you convert the leads. Starting from the welcome email to re-engagement email, CRM can help you streamline the entire email automation process. 

You can even set complex automation workflows if you are an enterprise-level business. 

These workflows will let you send out relevant emails according to the subscriber’s action. 

For example: If a subscriber signs up to your business, he or she will automatically receive a welcome email that introduces them to your brand. 

For ecommerce businesses, cart abandonment emails, stock replenishment emails, back-in-stock campaigns, and transactional emails (that inform the users about their orders) are the most effective automation workflows. 

Let’s take a look at the examples one by one. 

Wayfair has sent out a series of 2 cart abandonment emails to their customers to encourage them to check out and complete the purchase. The mechanism behind this workflow is that whenever a prospect abandons a cart, it will work as a trigger for the CRM tool that will deploy the automated email. (The same applies to text messaging and push notifications too)

First email – Subject line: The Lamppost Figurine is just WOW

Second email – Subject line: An item in your cart is very popular!

Similarly, if someone has purchased a product that needs a refill, he or she will receive a stock replenishment email nudging to make the purchase again. It will increase the likelihood of customer retention and get you repeat customers. 

Transactional emails– I am sure you must have received loads of them in your inbox.

Here are a couple of them to inspire you. 

Vidaloka sends out a booking confirmation email to Kate to acknowledge the payment and share the invoice. 

Chewy sends out an email that lets the customer know that the order has been shipped and is in transit. 

Re-engagement email is another type of email that helps to win back dormant subscribers and prompt them to take action.

Take a look at this email by Teespring in which they have used a cute puppy face supported by a compelling copy to re-engage the inactive subscribers. 

All these automated workflows are functional on the common principle that the CRM feeds data and accordingly the subscribers receive these emails. The objective is to make the email communications as appealing as possible and add maximum value to the subscribers. It will eventually get better returns for the business.  

Besides these, you can use numerous other triggers that suit your business. 

Email Template Customization

With CRM email marketing, you can use customized email template designs. You can do so by dragging, dropping, and placing everything the way you want. In short, you don’t need to have any complex coding language to create emails that lead to conversions. As interactivity is the latest trend in emails, you can use interactive elements such as videos, GIFs, kinetic images, and so on in your customized email templates. 

While adding videos in your email can increase click rates by 300%, including a GIF can enhance the conversion rates by 103%. Hence, make sure you get interactive with your emails once in a while and keep your revenues soaring. See how Readdle makes good use of video in their product launch email.

Source: Really Good Emails

Here’s another one from Anthropologie with a quirky use of GIF:

You can also include tappable elements the way B&Q did:

Source: Really Good Emails

Better Analysis

Tracking the response of your campaigns is an indispensable part of your email marketing. CRM can give you a deep insight into all the key email metrics, namely open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe, and conversion rate. The main advantage of CRM is that it can store enormous data that will allow you to manage a number of campaigns all at once. 

Take a look at this report from HubSpot. It gives you comprehensive details about how people engaged with the email, including the people who read it, skimmed through it, and just had a glance. 

Moreover, as CRM presents the analysis through graphs, it becomes even easier to understand what is working and what is not. According to this data, you can then optimize your emails and even the entire marketing strategy.

Wrap Up

CRM email marketing works as a well-thought out strategy that has its roots in segmentation and personalization. Whether you are a small business or an enterprise level company, integrating CRM and email will take your marketing efforts to the next level and help you craft the perfectly relevant and personalized email. Ultimately, you will be able to derive better results from your email marketing campaigns.

If you face any challenges implementing this infallible email marketing strategy, our experts can help. 

Starting from auditing your email strategy to integrating the email marketing tool with CRM, we will help you deploy the most impactful email campaigns to boost your business growth.

You can even hire a dedicated email campaign manager who will cater to all your needs. And you know what? It is a scalable and sustainable option that will continue to yield results as your business grows. 

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