5 Techniques for Using CRM to Create Better Emails

create better emails

A surprising number of businesses treat their customer relationship management (CRM) systems as little more than a digital Rolodex or elaborate sales database. That’s understandable, as CRMs are excellent resources for managing essential customer data and tracking sales activities, but this view also barely scratches the surface of what CRM technology can do when integrated with other tools. The most obvious and impactful example of this hidden potential is using CRM to create better emails.

In the days before CRM systems, most companies had very little data about their individual customers. There was no easy or cost-effective way to personalize email content beyond the very basics — including the customer’s name in an email, for instance — resulting in email messaging that was far too broad, generic, and impersonal. This resulted in painfully low open rates and truly anemic clickthroughs and conversions.

Integrating CRM with your email marketing tools changes the game. By using the extensive customer data that is already stored within the CRM, it becomes possible to create engaging and personalized email content. This not only allows for greatly improved targeting, but it also enables companies to build new kinds of email-related sales and marketing resources, from enhanced lead scoring to detailed campaign analytics.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at five techniques for leveraging your CRM to dramatically improve your email marketing results.

Personalize, segment, and refine.

No one knows more about your customers and prospects than you do. By using the data you already have in your CRM, you can create extremely targeted and specific segments for your email campaigns. CRM data also allows you to create highly persuasive messaging and promotions. You can focus on the unique interests of renewing subscribers, first-time customers, and even recently churned former customers.

Customize and streamline using templates.

You don’t need to highly design your marketing emails to be effective. In most cases, marketers need a simple, drag-and-drop template that can be easily customized. These customizations include: graphics, text blocks, and any needed HTML elements (like clickable buttons for landing pages or social media links). With the right integrations, you can create emails inside your CRM, which greatly streamlines the overall marketing workflow.

Nurture and automate where possible.

A well-designed company website is an unbeatable engine for lead generation. It collects both contact information and general insights about what the visitor is looking for. In addition to automatically populating the CRM with lead information, this data should also be used to trigger new, engagement-building conversations targeted to that lead’s interests. These automated nurture sequences require a relatively small up-front investment, 3 to 5 emails per sequence, typically. Yet, they also save a tremendous amount of time (and money) by automating the first steps of the qualification process.

Experiment to develop deep insights.

Email marketing is inherently complex, making it difficult to create the right message for every potential recipient. There are countless variables at play. Each marketing segment responds differently to even tiny changes in the copy, design, and promotions of each email. Getting the optimal results from each cohort requires testing, analysis, and revision. With the right integrations, your CRM is the perfect tool for generating these A/B tests, crunching the results, and refining your approach.

Invest in cost-effective marketing that improves ROI.

By integrating your email marketing tools with your CRM, you’re doing more than leveraging your data. You’re also saving valuable time, and removing friction and bottlenecks from your marketing and sales workflows. Personalization improves response rates, while email templates make it faster and easier to create targeted messaging. Nurture sequences (and other drip campaigns) allow your sales team to spend less time qualifying leads. A/B testing and analysis make it possible to continually improve the effectiveness of your marketing. All of these elements serve the crucially important goal of reducing costs. It also allows your sales teams and marketers to spend more time on revenue-generating activities. CRM and email integrations make these ROI-improving results possible.

If your CRM solution isn’t fully integrated with your email marketing tools, it’s time for an update. As CRM specialists with years of experience in email marketing and automation, we can help you create better emails. Contact Faye today for a free consultation.

By Ciara McNeely, VP Marketing

Ciara McNeely is a results-driven marketing executive with 10+ years of experience, leading high-performing demand generation teams and executing growth strategies for B2B technology companies. She has a proven track record of driving scalable, repeatable pipeline growth through integrated marketing programs for organizations later acquired by industry giants like Accenture and Zayo.