What Is Email Marketing CRM Software?

Melanie Balke
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January 3, 2023

There are plenty of ways to improve your email marketing, but most companies have a secret they don’t want you to know about: Big brands use something called CRM software with marketing automation features, and you can, too!

This handy tool is a useful purpose-built technological suite with various email marketing features, options, and providers. Frankly, I could spend a whole post reviewing different CRM and marketing automation platforms, but that’s not the point of today’s blog post.

Overlapping fern leaves. The heading reads, “CRM Facts: How Well Does CRM Software Work?” Statistics are listed: “60.7% of businesses plan to increase email marketing investments in 2023. 74% of businesses say CRM software is a valuable tool.”

Today, I’ll be focusing on the basics and answering questions such as:

  • What can customer data do for me?
  • What does CRM software do?
  • What does CRM with email marketing look like, and how do I use it?
  • What exactly is CRM software, and why do companies need it?
  • What makes CRM the ultimate email marketing tool?

If you’re ready to uncover one of the greatest secrets of digital marketing automation, now’s the time to join! Get ready for an adventure; keep scrolling and reading to learn more.

What can customer data do for me?

Customer data can be used to inform and improve product offerings, customer service, and marketing. The following are examples of how customer data can be used in each case:

Get Sales Figures at a Glance

One of the benefits of customer data is that you can get all of the sales figures at a glance, which makes it quicker and easier to make decisions. You may want to take action immediately if there’s an issue with your website or product.

Additionally, you can use customer data for internal purposes. You can utilize it for employee satisfaction surveys and Q&A sessions with key stakeholders. Generally, having access to all relevant information about customers allows you to create interesting reports for internal purposes.

Measure Customer Satisfaction

Customer feedback is essential to any business, especially when you have a product or service that changes based on what customers want. The good news is that many companies use consumer data to determine what their customers think about their products and services.

Consumer data is a way to solve problems with existing customers. You can check what's happening in the customer's account and ensure it gets fixed before they leave if they are having problems.

Make Business Decisions and Improve the Operation

Using consumer data is essential to make business decisions and improve your company's operations. You can use this information to tailor your products and services to better meet each customer's needs.

If you notice that some of your customers are spending more time on other websites than yours, it may be worth investing in improving their experience with yours. You can add new features or make existing ones easier to use.

What is Marketing Automation and How it Works

Marketing automation analyzes data from multiple sources. This may include social media and email to identify marketing opportunities for your business. It can also be used to send targeted messages to your customers.

With appropriate email marketing tools, it can help you boost sales, improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs. It’s an important part of any marketing strategy.

Here are four reasons why you need an email marketing platform:

  1. Marketing automation helps you create highly personalized campaigns, which are more likely to resonate with your target audience.
  2. Marketing automation helps you engage with customers where they spend most of their time. You can build relationships with them directly instead of sending them generic messages.
  3. Marketing automation allows you to track how effective your campaigns are and adjust them based on the results you get from them.
  4. Marketing automation allows you to reach out to customers who have previously expressed interest in what you offer.

What Is CRM Software?

A person checking out at a contactless register. “What Is CRM? The Basics of CRM Software.”

I’ll start with the basics.

Like many things in business, “CRM” is shorthand and stands for a real mouthful — “customer relationship management!” There are many layers to this, but I’ll keep things short.

Every CRM platform is based on the concept of customer-first marketing. Regardless of the functions available, customer relationship management is purpose-built to categorize, sort, and track how individuals interact with content.

The application of CRM tools can also be used to analyze and forecast sales and marketing processes. It can also determine which products are most popular with customers and pinpoint areas where additional customer support is needed.

A complete CRM and marketing automation suite will allow businesses to:

  • Coordinate sales and marketing teams
  • Craft targeted campaigns
  • Manage a sales funnel (or many!)
  • Manage social media marketing
  • Organizing marketing campaigns
  • Sales automation
  • Sort sales data
  • Streamline contact management
  • Track customer support tickets
  • Track lead capture tools
  • … and more!

A good CRM platform will eliminate most manual data entry and automate contact details. These tools are all-in-one marketing tools and invaluable assets in the digital age.

What Does Customer Relationship Management Look Like in Email Marketing?

Many people at a store. “Emails and CRM: The Best of Both Worlds.”

Most CRM platforms come with email marketing automation as a feature. Few focus solely on email, but that doesn’t mean your options are limited. A robust marketing system with integrated email marketing features is an investment.

From the email marketing campaigns angle, CRM software is primarily used for automation. Even a basic free CRM platform offers customer sorting options that empower businesses, allowing them to craft personalized email campaigns.

While CRM tools can be used to help your company with sales, marketing, and support functions, they are not designed to help you build a digital product or service. They are often used to manage existing digital products and services — not new ones.

Email marketing is different. It’s purpose-built for sending messages at scale to customers directly. Generally, email marketing software allows you to create automated email campaigns that include multiple touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle.

You can segment your audience based on their behavior in other channels like social media and web properties. When an interested prospect opens an email from you, they can see only relevant content in their inbox.

It’s important to understand how CRM and email marketing fit into your overall strategy for customer engagement. In fact, it's part of customer relationship management as it can be integrated with Outlook, Zoho CRM, or other marketing platforms.

Moving up the CRM scale will have even more perks; not surprisingly, paid CRM plans are more powerful than free CRM. Paid plans also offer additional features such as sales tracking, lead management, and other marketing tools to help you with the sales process.

Your email marketing CRM tool's mailing lists can be divided into smaller lists based on your sales pipeline. The features include prospects, contacts, and leads, by extracting client information from your free CRM.

A sales CRM is great for startups that don’t need or want advanced features or customizations. However, if you want to grow your business and gain an edge over a competitor who uses paid CRM platform, there’s no better time than now to upgrade.

As more automation features unlock, brands gain access to tools like automated data entry, contact list management, and sales pipeline optimization.

Automate Email Marketing Campaigns With CRM Software

A mechanical clock mechanism. “Automate It! How Email Automation Features Can Improve Your Marketing Skills.”

When it comes to email marketing, there’s no better way to reach your customers than through a marketing automation platform.

Email marketing CRM can help you automate and streamline your email marketing efforts so that you can focus more on growing your business.

With marketing automation, you can easily build, send and track your emails’ performance and improve your messages’ effectiveness. Automation features can be utilized with targeted campaigns.

Email marketing software can help you scale your email marketing capabilities with sales and marketing processes.

Additionally, email marketing automation allows you to create emails, automate their delivery and track their performance. Creating automated internal alerts is necessary for social media marketing.

With these email marketing tools, you may be able to see who opened your emails, when they were opened and how many times they were read.

Having customizable email templates can get more clicks from your readers and enhance customer relationships.

The best part is that these email templates have modifiable colors, fonts, and images to suit email campaigns. You can even replicate the content of an existing email message if you want.

Once you have created your template, you can easily share them with your team or clients by saving them as PDFs or exporting them as HTML/CSS files.

With automated workflows with your email campaigns, you can ensure that they are constantly in motion and targeting the sales cycle.

Manage multiple marketing campaigns using one central location for your lists. This move can help reduce duplicate email addresses.

Highlight the process of sending emails with customer data that meets the specific needs of each customer group.

The following benefits of a marketing automation platform in email campaigns must be taken seriously:

  1. A more consistent flow of content. Automated email campaigns are more likely to be delivered when customers are most likely to open them. This means you can engage even more with your customers and increase the likelihood of conversions.
  2. Fewer mistakes and errors. With automated emails sent from autoresponders, you won't have to worry about human errors or miscommunications. These errors can sometimes occur between automated data entry from services or humans.
  3. Increased trustworthiness and credibility. Marketing automation must always be directed from a trustworthy source. It must be reliable and highly regarded by its target audience, which builds brand integrity in your business' name.

The key to improving your marketing automation is focusing on the right metrics and understanding what drives them.

Curate Your Contact Management

A person browses through records. “Sort It! Make Marketing CRM Work for Your Contact List.”

After making customizable email templates as part of email marketing automation, sustaining customer relationship management comes in.

It is a daunting task in the marketing system, especially for small businesses. But how do you keep the customers coming back for more?

Using CRM with email marketing tools can let you develop contact management and provide customer support through automated email marketing campaigns.

Firstly, customer relationships must always be considered through marketing efforts. The sales teams have to exhaust the lead management to collect customer data.

When you think of sales and marketing, you probably think of messages that go out to people who have already opted in to receive your messages.

That’s where CRM platforms come in. An effective CRM email allows businesses to continue getting consumer data.

The effect may be for sales automation or before they even sign up for something new. Let your sales and marketing teams capitalize on email marketing platforms.

Secondly, let your marketing teams set up different email marketing campaigns for different types of messages. For example, if you sell products online, send out email campaigns for customers who have recently bought something from you. This strategy can help remind them to buy another item or service soon, increasing their loyalty toward your brand.

Finally, use CRM data to find your store's most effective offers for new customers. This way, when someone else sees the same offer being used by someone else in their network, they may be more likely to take advantage and be added to your sales funnel.

To get the most out of email marketing CRM, it’s important to understand how it works. Once you know what you need from your marketing CRM tools, it may be easier to find the right one for your business.

Again, consider the lead management features stage of the marketing and sales funnel: acquisition, activation, and nurturing.

Streamline Customer Support and Email Marketing Functionality

A 3D printer arm. “Service It! Combining CRM Data and Automation to Boost Customer Service.”

One of the steps to improving customer satisfaction is to streamline the customer support and email marketing functionality within your CRM platform.

Generally, one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses is managing customer relations effectively. The sales teams can innovate on marketing campaigns when they know which lead management has interacted with the most.

They often have complex relationships with their customers and constantly try to improve their customer service and retention rates.

Businesses need to track all interactions they have with their customers. This move allows them to provide better support. Getting data about customer problems can improve the product or service itself.

But there is another benefit of having this type of customer data available: it allows businesses to create targeted emails for customers with issues with their accounts or product.

The benefit would allow them to respond quickly when necessary and give them the information they need to resolve any issues with their account or purchase.

This functionality is available in many CRM systems today. It can also be integrated directly into your current CRM with an email marketing function.

The CRM software market is flooded with options, making it tough for small businesses to differentiate themselves. Therefore, marketers must consider how CRM and email marketing can be enhanced using a single solution.

If you're ready to start streamlining your customer support and email marketing functionality, consider the following ideas:

  1. Create a separate customer service file for each account. This may allow you to use the same template for all customer accounts to send out updates and responses easily.
  2. Build customer chat lines with links to the customer support file. Customers can click into their support file instead of searching through emails or calling their sales reps directly.
  3. Integrate the marketing automation tool into your CRM system. When someone needs help, they can get a response quickly without having to wait until they call sales reps directly.
  4. Provide real-time responses. Bots manage conversations with customers so that they can answer questions in real time.
  5. Give tickets to gauge how good your customer service is by seeing how many tickets are being submitted and resolved. If there is little activity, your customer support could be better.

Why Do Companies Need a CRM Software?

The goal of CRM is to help companies stay connected with their customers and, in return, improve customer satisfaction.

CRM has become an integral part of many business processes because of the importance of maintaining a good relationship with your customers.

Track the Progress of Your Marketing Efforts

A CRM system is a software package that helps businesspeople and marketing managers manage their client's data and records. It can also help you track the progress of your marketing efforts by utilizing marketing CRM to keep track of all related entries.

A CRM with email marketing can provide this information. It may be easier for your sales teams to see what products bring in the most sales and where they stand against competitors' products in revenue generation.

Enable Managers to Communicate with Customers on a Personal Level

Most companies use an email marketing tool or other marketing automation when communicating with customers. These impersonal methods sometimes fail to provide adequate information about the company's products or services.

With CRM software, managers can communicate directly with customers by sending messages via email or text message. Meanwhile, with the help of marketing tools, you can manage all of your sales and marketing information in one place.

Better Manage Customer Relationships

Companies use CRM with email marketing for many reasons.

Some use it for sales, which is where you go in the sales process. But sometimes, companies use CRM software more broadly and try to capture all of their customers' contact details.

Sales teams use marketing CRM to track their sales pipeline, analyze leads, and create follow-up sequences. With these, they can provide feedback to salespeople regarding their performance.

Marketing teams use CRM email marketing to manage campaigns and track which campaigns generate the most interest among potential customers.

Additionally, service teams use CRM email marketing software to collect customer feedback to improve quality and responsiveness.

What Makes CRM the Ultimate Email Marketing Tool?

Many businesses are using CRM to market their services or products. But what makes them do it? Why not use email marketing tools?

Email marketing is still the biggest way that businesses reach out to their customers and prospects. The problem is that it's easy for people to ignore your emails, just like they do with everything else in their inboxes.

But it's not just about communicating with customers; it's also about engaging them in conversations. You can move them through the customer lifecycle from awareness through advocacy, loyalty, and repeat purchases.

And if you want to do all this while increasing brand awareness, understand CRM as the ultimate email marketing tool. It can help you achieve your goals — whether that means sending out an email every day or once per month.

Offload Your Marketing Efforts

Fern leaves. “Find Experts: Let the Pros Amplify Your Emails.”

As convenient as modern CRM platforms may be, they’re still a lot of work! Even the most straightforward drag-and-drop interface takes time to master, and a robust CRM system has a steep learning curve.

Email marketing can be seen as an extension of traditional marketing campaigns. Many experts believe that email marketing and social media work together, offering unique benefits for the business.

Small businesses and entrepreneurs have better things to do with their marketing campaigns, but you need to attract buyers to succeed.

Fortunately, there’s a solution.

I created The Email Marketers to help every business thrive. My team of marketing experts understands the ins and outs of email marketing platforms and customer relationship management. We know the value of sales and marketing and put our combined experience to work for you.

If you’re tired of combing through contact data and want to reclaim your precious working hours, contact me! We’ll discuss what your business needs to succeed and outline how an experienced team can bolster your business.

Not ready to take the leap yet?

That’s okay! I still have plenty of resources available on my blog, so be sure to browse my posts. You’ll find plenty of tips, tricks, and professional secrets to polish your marketing processes.