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Amine is La Growth Machine's content manager. He is responsible for the blog content, covering topics related to prospecting, LinkedIn, growth hacking, and lead generation in general. Apart from writing awesome articles, you can find him creating bizarre cocktails or listening to podcasts while cooking. A psychopath, I know 😱

Although email marketing and CRM are both essential tools, they’re often used separately. This can lead to duplicate data entry and missed opportunities.

That’s why it’s important to unify your email marketing and CRM efforts. By doing so, you can get the most out of both tools and ensure that your customer data is cohesive.

Notably, salespeople have a lot to juggle. Between managing customer relationships, keeping up with industry news, and developing new leads, it can be tough to find time for everything.

One of the most important tools is their emailing game. Not only do they use it to stay in touch with customers, but they also use it to keep track of potential leads. So it’s no wonder that many sales teams turn to email marketing to help them manage their workload.

However, another tool that salespeople need to be effective is a CRM system. This software helps salespeople keep track of their customers and manage their relationships.

What is email marketing? What is a CRM system? And how can you use them together to get the most out of your sales process?

In this post, we’ll show you how to unify the two so you can get the most out of them both. We’ll also share some tips on using email marketing effectively with your CRM. Read on!

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is the process of sending out mass emails to customers or potential customers. Its goal is twofold:

  • Build relationships with your audience, i.e. they think of you when they need your product or service.
  • Promote your products or services to your audience. You can use email marketing to nurture your relationship with your leads and customers.

To do this, businesses send out newsletters, promotional material, and other types of email content.

Quick Tip 💡

It’s important to note that email marketing is different from spam. Spam is an unsolicited email that’s sent without the recipient’s permission. Email marketing, on the other hand, is sent to people who have signed up to receive it.

Email marketing can be a great way to keep your customers in the loop about what’s going on with your business.

When done right, email marketing can also be a powerful tool in your sales arsenal. It can help you stay top of mind with your leads and customers, promote your products or services, and close more sales.

Nonetheless, email marketing is only effective if it’s used correctly. One of the most common mistakes businesses make is not segmenting their email list.

This means that they send the same email to everyone on their list, regardless of whether they’re a potential customer or a current customer. This can lead to low open rates and high unsubscribe rates.

To avoid this, you need to segment your email list. This means breaking it down into smaller groups so you can send more targeted emails.

For example, you might segment your list by:

  • Demographics: Location, Age, Gender, Income level
  • Interests
  • Buying history
  • Buying behavior
  • etc.

You can segment your email list in many ways, but it’s important to do it in a way that makes sense for your business.

Once you’ve segmented your list, you can start sending out targeted emails. This way, your emails are much more likely to be actually read and not immediately thrown out as spam.

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What is a CRM?

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is software that salespeople use to manage as its namesake suggests, their customer relationships. CRMs can be used to keep track of customer contact information, notes from previous interactions, sales data, and more.

These systems can be used to track:

  • Leads: identify potential customers and track their contact information
  • Contacts: store customer contact information
  • Accounts: track sales data and activity for current customers
  • Opportunities: manage the sales pipeline and see what deals are in the pipeline

CRMs are essential for sales teams because they provide a central place to store all of their customer data. This data can then be used to inform sales strategy and help close more deals.

CRMs can also be used to segment customers, something we touched on earlier and how important it is, as well as track customer behavior.

For example, a CRM can be used to see which customers are most likely to buy a certain product or service. How?

Through something called lead scoring, it assigns each lead a numerical score based on their likelihood to buy.

CRMs also have the added benefit of being able to automate some sales tasks.

You can also use CRMs to track your sales team’s performance. This data can be used to see which salespeople are closing the most deals and identify any areas where they might need some help.

CRMs are essential for businesses that want to scale their sales team and grow their business.

So, what’s the difference between email marketing and CRM?

Is there a difference between email marketing and CRM systems?

The short answer is: not really. You’d think there would be a big distinction since one is sales-focused while the other is marketing-focused… but in reality, they’re two sides of the same coin.

They’re both tools that can be used to manage customer relationships and grow your business.

The main difference between the two is that email marketing focuses on sending out mass emails, while CRMs are focused on managing individual customer relationships.

However, the two can (and should) be used together to form a complete sales strategy.

Quick Tip 💡

Make sure you choose a CRM that offers a wide range of integrations. This way, you can be sure that it will play nice with your email marketing software. Integration with other tools is an aspect that should be a deciding factor in your choice.

LaGrowthMachine allows you to bring up your leads in your CRM according to lead qualification triggers.

For example, if they respond, you can qualify them as a hot lead. If they click on a link in your email, you can qualify them as a warm lead. And so on.

To take advantage of the automated qualification, you just have to synchronize your CRM with LaGrowthMachine.

Email marketing can be used to generate leads that can then be fed into your CRM system. Once these leads are in your CRM, you can start using it to track their behavior and score them based on their likelihood to buy.

You can also use your CRM to set up email drip campaigns that automatically send out targeted emails to your leads.

Email marketing and CRM systems are two essential tools for businesses that want to grow their sales. If you use them separately, you can still do really good work. But when you use them together, the result is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

How to use a CRM to improve your email marketing?

We went over the distinction (or lack thereof) between email marketing and CRM, but how can you actually use a CRM system to improve your email marketing?

The first way is by using your CRM to segment your customers.

Remember earlier when we talked about how important it is to segment your customers? This is where that comes into play, it allows you to:

  • Send more targeted emails
  • Personalize your email content
  • Increase your open and clickthrough rates

This may seem quite obvious, but you’ll be surprised at how many businesses don’t segment their email lists.

The second way you can use your CRM to improve your email marketing is by using it to score your leads. Lead scoring is a great way to prioritize your sales efforts and make sure you’re spending your time on the right leads.

Finally, you use your CRM to set up email drip campaigns. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but a quick refresher: email drip campaigns are a series of emails that are automatically sent to your leads at specific intervals.

⚠️Don’t forget to adopt email warmup practices before you hit send on that drip campaign if your email address is relatively new or unused. This is very important because it’s what allows ESPs to trust you and not throw your emails in the SPAM folder!

You can use your CRM to set up these campaigns and make sure that your leads are getting the right emails at the right time.

With LaGrowthMachine you will be able to save even more time:

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Your team can track the performance of your campaigns, step by step

Additionally, do not hesitate to set up a data cleansing strategy and devote time and resources to it regularly to allow you to work with quality data to eventually improve your ROI.

LaGrowthMachine allows you to clean up your lead bases before they even become customers.

Thanks to our intuitive interface, you can boost your lead management and organize your prospecting as you see fit.

You can edit each record individually, or use rules to manage your entire file

Quick Tip 💡

Use your CRM to create a system that automatically adds new leads to your email drip campaigns. This way, you can be sure that every lead is getting the same great treatment.

If you’re not using a CRM system to improve your email marketing, you’re missing out on a ton of potential.

6 Best CRM software to refine your email marketing

So, you’re convinced that you need to start using a CRM system to improve your email marketing. But which CRM should you choose?

There is a myriad of CRM software on the market, and it can be tough to know which one is right for you.

One of the best combos we can recommend is to integrate sales automation software with your CRM.

With a B2B lead generation software like LaGrowthMachine, you can automate your prospecting process, by doing large-scale multi-channel sequences, and get new leads into the pipeline.

Here are the results of one of our sales prospecting campaigns:

stats

Here is a list of 6 of the best software we could find:

HubSpot Sales:

HubSpot Sales is a great choice for businesses that want to increase their sales. It offers a wide range of features including:

Zoho CRM:

Zoho CRM is yet another great option for businesses that want to increase their sales. It offers many of the same features as HubSpot Sales.

However, one of the things that set it apart is its ease of use: it’s very user-friendly, even for businesses that are new to CRM.

Salesforce:

Salesforce is a CRM that needs no introduction. It’s one of the most popular CRM systems on the market and for good reason: it’s very powerful and offers a comprehensive set of features.

However, it can be a bit pricey, so it might not be the best choice for businesses on a tight budget.

Insightly:

Insightly is a CRM that’s designed for small businesses. It’s very affordable and offers most of the features that you would expect from such a piece of software (such as the ones mentioned 2 examples ago).

Pipedrive:

Pipedrive is a CRM that’s specifically designed for sales teams. It is user-friendly, offers a wide range of features, and is very affordable. Its features include:

  • Visual sales pipeline
  • Lead scoring
  • Email integration

If you’re looking for a CRM that serves your sales team especially well, Pipedrive is a great choice.

Nutshell:

Nutshell is another CRM that’s designed for small businesses. It’s user-friendly, offers a wide range of features, and is very affordable.

Nonetheless, it lacks some of the features that are offered by its competitors, such as lead scoring and email drip campaigns.

Still, it’s a great choice for businesses that want an affordable and user-friendly CRM.

LaGrowthMachine Corner 🔴

HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce all can be integrated easily with LaGrowthMachine’s solution. You can simply connect your HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce account with LaGrowthMachine and start your email campaigns right away! So make sure you use our free trial to test it out with your data

There you have it: 6 of the best CRMs on the market, each of which offers a different set of features.

So, which one should you choose? The answer, as always, depends on your specific needs and requirements. So, take some time to think about what you need from your CRM, and then make your choice accordingly.

In unity there’s strength

Email marketing and CRM software can seem like two different worlds, but with the right tools, they can be consolidated. By unifying your efforts, you can take your business to the next level.

There are many ways to do this; some are effective, and some are less so. But one thing is for sure, if you’re not using a CRM system to improve your email marketing, you’re missing out.

Now that you know a little bit more about email marketing vs CRM and how to unify the two, it’s time to put this knowledge into practice.

Happy emailing!