EMAIL MARKETING AUTOMATION & CRM INTEGRATION

Connecting your customer relationship management software with your email marketing system allows you to track the entire customer journey. Managing your audience profiles, email campaigns, and engagement metrics from one unified dashboard helps streamline your workflow and prevents duplicate efforts or missed leads.

When your sales and marketing teams are divided into their own silos, each with its own management software, your business loses money on duplicated efforts. Your email marketing software can automate email campaigns while your CRM tracks purchase history, but getting them to work together is when you will start to see real efficiency and increased sales.

According to Aberdeen Research, an overwhelming 96% of organizations report that the data in their CRMs is hard to access, understand, and make use of. This causes lost revenue and even overpaying for multiple software packages that perform similar functions. 

How can you make your customer data accessible and usable to all members of your team? Integrating your management software is a great place to start — we’ll show you how. 

Email and CRM Integration Help Marketing and Sales Work Together

Integrating your email and CRM platforms creates a seamless flow of data between the two, helping you manage the entire customer journey — from the very first email through sales follow-up. 

This integration leads to better outcomes in your email campaigns, since you can segment audiences based on previous customer interactions. It also improves your sales efforts, as you can track leads’ interest based on their interactions with your brand. Since both teams use the same data, you will eliminate costly overspending on duplicate software — a huge concern, since 36% of teams report that toggling between too many software platforms actually makes routine tasks take longer! 

Lead Capture, Trigger Automation, CRM Sync

One of the main benefits of integrating your CRM tool with your email marketing platform is the ability to complete automations for the same customers across both sales and marketing sides. 

For the vast majority of customers, this will start with an initial lead capture that triggers a predetermined action, called an automation. For example, a potential customer may download your lead magnet, a free e-book titled “12 Ways to Get Your Real Estate Business Off the Ground.” In exchange, they enter their email address on the download form.

Once the email enters your CRM, it triggers an automation that sends a series of lead nurture emails. Perhaps the customer clicks on the second email, showing interest in your next workshop. This triggers another automation that will send them reminders and discounts for your workshop, and so on. 

Most importantly, each step of this is synced to your CRM in real time! That means you won’t keep sending the same top-of-funnel information to a lead who is already engaged with your business, and you won’t waste time selling your high-ticket items to basically uninterested leads. 

Some of the most common automations include:

• Lead scoring
• Audience segmentation
• Call tracking
• Integrating SMS, email, and call marketing 
• Triggering retargeting campaigns 

Of course, to make the most of these automations, you need a robust system of triggers and predetermined pathways set up across the funnel. That leads us to the next step — setting up drip campaigns and nurture sequences.  

Drip campaigns are time-based and usually spread out between two and four weeks. Too many, too fast, and your customers will unsubscribe. Too far apart, and they forget you exist. As with everything else in marketing, detailed data tracking will help you refine your timeline as you monitor which spacing works best for your industry. For example, people tend to make snap decisions about clothing purchases, but not about buying a new roof. Still, drip campaigns are useful marketing tools for both industries. 

A lead nurture campaign is slightly different from a drip campaign. The next step in a nurture campaign is triggered by customer actions, instead of sending each email in a sequence. For example, a customer who browses your e-commerce store and adds some items to their cart without checking out will receive a cart abandonment email. These are surprisingly effective — one study showed that 44% of abandoned cart emails are opened, and 29% of those opened resulted in a completed sale. That’s a ton of recovered revenue! Of course, if they get a cart abandonment email when they haven’t added anything to their cart, that would come off as strange — that’s why lead nurture campaigns are based on customer actions. 

Data Segmentation & Personalization Strategies

Your CRM and email marketing efforts will only bear fruit if they are selling something that your target audience wants to buy. That’s why the next step in our process is data segmentation and personalization. 

When it comes to email marketing campaigns, segmentation is absolutely crucial. Customers are 75% more likely to open emails from segmented campaigns than non-segmented ones. This aligns with common sense — if you regularly browse for dog food on a website like Chewy.com, you probably aren’t interested in receiving marketing emails for parakeet feed. 

This is where your CRM data needs to inform your marketing campaigns. At a minimum, your CRM software should ensure that customers are receiving relevant information that matches their name and shopping interests. 

With proper automations and email list segmentation, each customer can receive communications that feel like a personalized email tailored to their interests — making them more likely to click, browse, and purchase, regardless of the industry. 

CRM Integration & Data Flow Architecture

Are your automated marketing emails using the correct information? The next step our team will take is to make sure that your marketing system is actually using CRM data to update your campaigns in real time. 

Your email automations should import customer information directly from your CRM into your lead nurture or drip campaigns so you don’t have the dreaded “Dear {NAME}” showing up in your email sequences. Customers should feel like your brand is speaking directly to them and their interests at all times. 

Reporting & Analytics Setup

The old saying is true — “What you measure, you improve.” How do you know that your email nurturing sequences are resulting in more purchases or leads? Data. 

Our team will create a robust reporting and analytics dashboard that you can access 24/7. In other words, you won’t have to wait for our marketers to produce a report for you — you can access your business’s data at any time and make improvements to your strategy as you gather more information. 

Platforms We Work With

The key to choosing the best CRM and email tools for your business is to decide what marketing automation features you want it to handle, what metrics you will track with it, and how much you might need it to scale in the future. We can help you identify the best tools for your goals. 

At SEO Design Chicago, we specialize in custom-quoted digital marketing solutions tailored to your business goals — not in selling you a predetermined product. In other words, we want to set up the best marketing automation platform for you — one that grows your business and actually makes it easier for your sales and marketing teams to do their jobs. 

Do you have the best CRM supporting your email marketing efforts? SEO Design Chicago will design a customized strategy that puts data and insights at your fingertips. Request your free consultation today!