CRM With Email Marketing Integration: Best Software of 2024

What is a CRM for email marketing?

A CRM for email marketing is customer relationship software that either has native email marketing features or allows an easy integration with an ESP. Using CRM for email marketing means automating, managing, and analyzing your campaigns with your customer relationship management software instead of tools designed only for bulk emails.

CRM with email marketing integration allows you to:

• Collect and store more data from various sources, for example, different departments of your company, marketing channels, and so on.
• Segment and personalize your emails based on customer behavior, preferences, and history.
• Track and measure the performance and impact of your CRM emails on business goals.
• Build and maintain long-term relationships with your customers and turn them into loyal advocates for your brand. Connecting CRM with an email marketing service gives more information about contacts to work with. You can make your emails more personalized, relevant, and better targeted. 

As a result, it can help improve your email deliverability, open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and retention rates. You’ll be able to monitor marketing ROI for each campaign, see the leads, sales and income they bring, and further optimize to get the most out of them. 

Benefits of using CRM with email marketing software integration

Here are some of the benefits of this combination:

• Improved efficiency. Automate your email campaigns and integrate them with your CRM data and other marketing channels like SMS and push notifications. You can also reduce human error and duplication by having a single source of truth regarding customer information for yourself, your colleagues, and your employees. It’s important for better productivity — according to the Forrester Opportunity Snapshot study, 63% of employees waste time searching for information or the right colleague when there is no good system in place.
• Advanced segmentation. With CRM and email marketing management integrated, you can segment your email list based on more complex criteria compared to a regular ESP. This will let you send more relevant and targeted messages. 
• Better personalization. You can personalize your emails with dynamic content, such as names, products, offers, etc. based on your CRM data. According to Dynamic Yield, 70.67% of Asian, 45.45% of North American, and 50.75% of European customers claim that a personalized experience would influence their decision to open and read brand emails.
• Real-time analytics. You can track and measure how your email marketing efforts affect sales and customer satisfaction by linking them to CRM data.
• Increased sales. All of the things listed above can boost your sales. Plus, by connecting information from your CRM, you can run effective cross-sell and upsell campaigns — for example, suggest a complementary product to people who just bought something.

And this is how you can boost your average order value — automatically! These are just some of the benefits that a good CRM with email marketing automation brings.

Tips for choosing CRM with email marketing integration

Consider these factors when choosing CRM software with email marketing integration:

• Key CRM features available. Does the tool have features to help you manage your business goals? Key features include pipeline management, functionality to manage customer support, project management, marketing automation, reporting, and analytics. For example,  Engagebay and Brevo platforms offer all or most of the options from this list as native features. 
• Email & marketing automation. The software should help you create and send automated triggered, behavior-based, and transactional email campaigns. For example, ActiveCampaign, one of the most powerful platforms on the market, has advanced email automation and personalization options.
• Usability. A platform that is easy to use and has a short learning curve will make it easier and quicker to start with.
• Tracking and analytics. You need to find a tool that tracks and reports customer data, email data, and sales data, so you can measure and improve your performance.
• Third-party integrations. Look for CRM with email marketing integration software that can integrate with your other apps directly. For example, Zoho, HubSpot, and Salesforce have many integrations available. Plus, there are more integrations to choose from if you use an automation tool like Zapier.
• Security and compliance. Non-compliance with the relevant laws and regulations like GDPR or CCPA can lead to legal and financial fallout. So when choosing a platform, make sure it can help your business comply — for example, by giving a conspicuous opt-out link in emails. It’s important to protect user data so you can avoid hefty fines, maintain trust with customers, and uphold your company’s reputation. 
• Pricing and plans. There are different pricing options — from a fixed annual payment to flexible monthly plans that depend on the number of your contacts or the type of emails you want to send. There are also pay-as-you-go plans (for example, Mailchimp has such), and some platforms offer free plans with basic features. 
• Customer support. How quickly do they answer? How many channels are available? Is support available on all pricing tiers? These are some of the questions to consider.

You can get an idea about the tool’s overall performance if you check out the reviews on G2, TrustPilot, or other sites. But the only way to see if it’s right for you is to try it out. Thankfully, most platforms have a free trial between 7 and 14 days for their paid plans. All of the software companies from our list (except Copper) offer a free trial, and some even have a free plan that could cover the needs of a small company. 

10 best CRMs for email marketing

HubSpot

HubSpot CRM is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses of all types and sizes track and nurture leads, manage sales pipeline, automate email marketing, and analyze business metrics. 

It offers a range of tools across five hubs: Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, CMS, and Operations. Its CRM platform comes with all the software, integrations, and you’d need. 

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop builder with free goal-based email templates
• List segmentation based on triggers, behavior, or transactions
• Automated follow-ups, reminders, and other workflows
• A/B testing
• Built-in customizable dashboards for monitoring sales performance, email marketing effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and overall business growth
• The public beta version of a generative AI for better and quicker email copies
• Integrations with many popular apps and an API for custom integrations

Advantages:

• There is a free plan that comes with a lot of functions. 
• The learning curve is short and HubSpot offers various resources and tutorials to help you get started and learn more about the platform.
• It is a powerful and comprehensive platform that covers all aspects of your business needs. It also allows you to customize your platform with different hubs, plans, and features according to your specific goals and preferences.
• HubSpot has an ISO 27001:2013 certificate, which is an internationally recognized security standard. This standard provides guidelines for organizations on how to effectively handle the security of their information. It involves creating an Information Security Management System (ISMS) and includes tasks such as implementing security measures, keeping an eye on them, ensuring they stay in place, and continually enhancing the ISMS.

Disadvantages:

• It can get expensive if you need to upgrade to a paid plan or add more features or users to your platform. The pricing of HubSpot CRM is based on a per-user-per-month basis, which can add up quickly for larger teams or businesses.
• You have to upgrade to the Professional plan to get phone support from HubSpot’s team, and for free users, support is not available at all.
• HubSpot pricing can be confusing with all of the options to consider. 

Pricing (CRM Suite):

• Free: $0/month, has limited features and a limited number of templates, contact lists, automated email sequences, and more.
• Free trial: 14 days for Professional and Enterprise plans.
• Starter: $30/month or $240 annually.
• Professional: $1,781/month or $19,201/year.
• Enterprise: Starts at $5,164/month but has to be paid annually at $60,000/year.

You can also buy additional features. For example, the Starter plan includes 1,000 marketing contacts and up to a million of non-marketing, meaning those you do not market to. You can increase this limit by paying $20 on top of its price for every additional 1,000 contacts. 

Zoho

Zoho CRM is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses of all sizes and types manage their sales, marketing, customer service, and operations.

Zoho consists of several apps for sales, marketing, finance, HR needs, and more. Since email marketing and CRM are our main interests, let’s take a look at their Campaigns and CRM apps:

Key features:

• Condition- and topic-based segmentation mechanics.
• Dynamic personalization.
• Drag-and-drop automated workflow builder with templates.
• Send time optimization.
• Contact path tracing.
• Analytics and revenue tracker.
• Lead and deal management, performance management, KPI tracker, predictive sales, and more advanced CRM features.
• Zia, the conversational sales AI assistant.
• Integrations with 800+ third-party apps, such as Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Zapier, Shopify, WordPress, and more. There are also Zoho’s APIs and plenty of integration options via Zapier.

Advantages:

• It is easy to use and understand, with a simple and intuitive interface that guides you through the setup and usage. The learning curve is short and comes with various tutorials to help you get started.
• It lets you customize the CRM to your specific needs and preferences. You can use Canvas, Zoho CRM’s drag-and-drop interface editor, to tailor how your CRM looks and works without relying on developers or consultants.
• Upgrading to a paid plan gives access to 24/7 phone and email support from Zoho’s team, in addition to online support via email or chatbot.
• Zoho has the ISO 27001:2013 certification.

Disadvantages:

• The pricing of Zoho CRM is based on a per-user-per-month basis, so it can rise quickly for larger teams.
• There is limited customer support for the free plan users. You can only access online support via a community forum, a Twitter account, or email. There is no phone option available. You’d need to upgrade to a paid plan to get 24/7 phone and email support from Zoho’s team.
• The structure of Zoho’s services is a little complicated, so new users may get confused choosing what they really need to pay for.

Pricing:

To get both CRM and email marketing features, get a bundle called CRM Flex. It starts at $14 per user per month and works like a Lego puzzle — you can choose the apps you need, for example, CRM and Campaigns. Here’s how it works:

Copper

Copper is a cloud-based CRM software that natively integrates with Google Workspace — Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sheets.

Key features:

• Custom email templates for Gmail
• Automated sequences for nurturing, follow-up communications, triggered emails, and more
• Lead scoring
• LinkedIn integration for adding new prospects and integrations with other ESPs and marketing software
• Merge fields for personalization
• Web tracking to learn where the leads come from

Advantages:

• Copper mimics the look and feel of Google Workspace apps, that’s why the platform is easy to use and its learning curve is short. You can access Copper from their Gmail or Inbox accounts, and sync data across Google Workspace apps.
• Integrates with many popular apps — Zapier, Slack, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, and more. There is also Copper API to build custom integrations.
• Copper offers robust reporting and analytics tools to measure and improve performance. Users can create custom dashboards, charts, and reports to visualize data and gain insights.

Disadvantages:

• Copper does not have a free plan or a pay-as-you-go option. The cheapest plan costs $25 per user per month when billed annually. 
• As for emails, Copper doesn’t offer a lot design-wise, so it may not be a good email marketing tool for B2C businesses with strong brands that require bold visual expression. Still a solid B2B tool though!

Pricing:

• There’s no free plan available, only a 15-day free trial for all the plans.
• The Basic plan costs $29 per user per month when billed monthly or $25 per user per month annually, for up to five users and 2,500 contacts. It comes with basic CRM features like contact management, pipeline management, email tracking, reporting, and integrations with Gmail and Google Workspace.
• The Professional plan costs $69 per user per month when billed monthly or $59 per user per month annually for unlimited users and records. It includes all the features of the Basic plan plus email templates, bulk email sending, workflow automation, project management, and integrations with Zapier and other apps.
• The Business plan costs $129 per user per month when billed monthly or $119 per user per month annually for unlimited users and records. It comes with all the features of the Professional plan plus multiple pipelines, lead and activity insights, priority support and more.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is one of the best email marketing tools with an in-built CRM on the market. It’s popular among small and midsize businesses.

Key features:

• Email segmentation — for crafting targeted emails.
• Workflows and sequences to automate your email campaigns based on triggers, actions, conditions, and logic.
• Templates, drag-and-drop editor, or HTML editor for creating stunning messages, and more. 
• Email testing.
• Forms and landing pages for list growth.
• Create forms to collect contact information, track website visitors, and segment them based on their behavior and interests.
• Analytics for email performance, campaign revenue, attribution, and customer lifetime value. 
• Integrations with 940+ apps, including Zapier, Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce, Facebook, Google Analytics, and more.

Advantages:

• ActiveCampaign can automatically send your emails at the optimal time for each contact, based on their previous interactions.
• ActiveCampaign allows you to send text messages to your contacts as part of your marketing campaigns or as a standalone channel.
• ActiveCampaign can assign scores to your contacts based on their actions, such as opening an email, clicking a link, visiting a page, or making a purchase. This helps you identify your most engaged and qualified leads.
• ActiveCampaign offers live chat and email support for all plans, as well as phone support for Professional and Enterprise plans. It also has a comprehensive knowledge base, a community forum, webinars, podcasts, and courses.

Disadvantages:

• ActiveCampaign offers marketing automation (including emails) and CRM. You either pay for them separately or get a bundle that offers both CRM and emails. However, it can get expensive.
• There are a lot of features and options, which can make it overwhelming and confusing for some users.

Pricing (for Marketing Automation + Sales CRM):

• No free plan but there’s a 14-day free trial for all the pricing tiers.
• The Plus plan starts at $93/month billed annually or $116/month billed monthly for 1,000 contacts, 12x contact email sends a month, and 5 users.
• The Professional plan starts at $386/month billed annually or $482/month billed monthly for 10 users, 2,500 contacts, and 15x contact email sends a month.
• The Enterprise plan is custom, it’s designed for scaling businesses and includes more advanced features not added to previous tiers.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM software that focuses on sales pipelines and workflows.

Key features:

• A user-friendly drag-and-drop email builder.
• Workflow automation for lead nurturing and triggered sequences.
• List segmentation.
• Real-time email campaign analytics.
• A seamless integration with the native CRM for leveraging the most out of customer data.
• CRM features include lead and pipeline management, workflow automation, reporting and forecasting.
• Custom reports and dashboards for visualizing data and tracking metrics.
• Integrations with over 400 apps, such as Gmail, Google Workspace, Zapier, Mailchimp, Slack, and more, and a Pipedrive API to build custom integrations.

Advantages:

• Pipedrive is very easy to use and has a drag-and-drop interface for managing sales pipelines. You can create unlimited and customizable pipelines and stages to suit their sales process.
• Pipedrive supports workflow automation for most plans.
• There is a machine learning-powered sales assistant for all plans, which offers insights and suggestions to improve sales performance. 
• Pipedrive has the ISO 27001:2013 certification.

Disadvantages:

• Pipedrive does not have a free plan or a pay-as-you-go option. The cheapest plan costs $14.90 per user per month when billed annually. 
• There are limitations on the number of users, contacts, custom fields, workflows, and integrations depending on the pricing plan. 

Pricing:

• A 14-day free trial for all pricing plans is available.
• Five pricing plans, starting from $14.90 per user per month billed annually.
• The email marketing toolkit is available starting from the Advanced plan ($27.90 per user per month billed annually) and further.
• Enterprise, the most expensive plan, starts at $99 per user per month billed annually and includes unlimited deals, custom fields, and insight reports, and up to 180 automated workflows per company.

Insightly

Insightly is an all-around CRM for small- to medium-sized businesses.

Key features:

• Email batching so you don’t overload email servers, which is especially useful for businesses with large contact lists.
• Dynamic list segmentation for better targeting in emails
• Prospect scoring and grading based on purchase intent.
• Lead management and tracking, pipeline management, business workflow automation.
• Price book management where you can create a complete catalog of your products and services.
• Project management for organizing team work.
• Insightly has over 2000 app integrations available, including Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Zapier, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp.

Advantages:

• Insightly has a user-friendly interface that is easy to customize and navigate.
• Comes with integrated project management tools to track tasks, milestones, and KPIs associated with your deals.
• Robust reporting and analytics systems can track key metrics and create custom dashboards.

Disadvantages:

• Does not include live support options (such as phone or chat) with its plans. You have to pay extra for priority or premier support.
• Insightly’s inbuilt telephony feature also costs extra and is not included in any of the plans.
• Price plans can get expensive compared to some of its competitors, such as Zoho CRM or HubSpot.

Pricing:

• The free plan includes up to 2 users, 2,500 contacts, 5 email templates, 10 emails per day, and 2 custom fields for data entry. Paid plans come with a 14-day free trial.
• Paid plans start from $29 per user per month.
• The higher plans offer more features, such as workflow automation, custom objects and apps, AI insights, advanced reporting and analytics, role-based permissions, and data validation rules.
• The Custom plan offers additional features, such as a dedicated customer success manager, custom branding and domain name, single sign-on (SSO), sandbox testing environment, and unlimited storage.

EngageBay

EngageBay is an all-in-one CRM software that comes with marketing, sales, and customer support products.

Key features:

• Bulk email service with a WYSIWYG email editor and template builder.
• Email automation with follow-ups, send time optimization, personalization, and segmentation.
• A/B testing.
• Robust analytics that include financial metrics like revenue per email.
• Integrations with 450+ apps by using Integrately. Zapier is also in the list, which opens a path to many more apps to integrate with.

Advantages:

• Comes with a user-friendly interface that is easy to customize and navigate.
• It has a free plan and its paid plans are quite affordable compared to other tools on the market.
• EngageBay has the ISO 27001:2013 certification.

Disadvantages:

• EngageBay does not include live support options like phone or chat in its free plan. You have to pay extra for priority or premier support.
• Phone support is available only on the Pro plan.
• There is no free trial for paid plans. You have to sign up for a free account first and then upgrade later.
• Even the most expensive CRM and Sales Bay plan has a limit of 30,000 branded emails per month.

Pricing (CRM and Sales Bay):

• The free plan includes 250 contacts, all the basic email marketing features, autoresponders, marketing automation, and more.
• Paid plans start from $11.04 per user per month for 500 contacts and 2,500 branded emails a month and differ in available features and contact/email limits.
• The most expensive plan costs $67.99 per user per month and includes call records, call scripts, a tool for account-based marketing, and other advanced sales tools.

Brevo

Brevo (ex-Sendinblue) is a cloud-based email marketing software that offers a CRM with marketing automation, transactional emails, and SMS messages functionalities within a suite.

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop editor with templates.
• Behavior-based segmentation.
• A/B test and campaign optimization.
• An AI assistant that can generate marketing content. 
• Automated personalized campaigns and triggered emails.
• An API for transactional emails.
• Sales pipeline management and reports.
• Phone calls recording and management.
• Workflow automation.
• Native videoconferencing service for holding meetings with customers.
• Shared inbox for team work.

Advantages:

• Easy to use and has a clean user interface.
• Despite simple functionality, Brevo’s CRM allows users to manage prospects with ease, automate repetitive business processes, and grow business faster and cheaper.
• There are many available integrations with popular apps like WordPress, Shopify, Zapier, Google Analytics, and more.
• Brevo has the ISO 27001:2013 certification.

Disadvantages:

• Brevo’s customer support sometimes can not help with technical problems.
• Weaker CRM functionality compared to other products, lacking advanced features.

Pricing:

• Sales and Marketing platforms in Brevo are separate services.
• The Sales platform has a free plan with 50 open deals and 1 deal pipeline. The paid plan costs $12 per user per month and includes unlimited deals and pipelines, and more advanced features.
• The Marketing platform has a free plan with a limit of 300 emails a day. Paid plans start from $25/month and differ in features and daily email sending limits.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp calls itself the “#1 email marketing and automations brand”, and there is truth to it. The platform offers three hubs of features — the “Marketing Platform”, the “Website & Commerce”, and the “Transactional Email” hubs, each with its own subscription plans. A simple CRM is included in the “Marketing platform” hub, let’s break it down.

Key features:

• Powerful email marketing tools that let you design, deploy, and automate email campaigns.
• Robust marketing automation, based on the customer’s behavior and interests.
• Intuit Assist, an AI assistant that helps with generating content, segmentation, and marketing automation for ecommerce.
• The CRM system with contact management, automated messages, and tools to analyze your audience. Its functionality is very basic but, if you want more, many integrations with other CRM tools are available.

Advantages:

• Beginner-friendly and easy to use.
• A free forever plan for one user and up to 1,000 emails sent per month — great choice for small businesses and those who are just starting out.
• A very simple CRM system compared to competitors like Salesforce, which can be great for beginner CRM marketers.
• Mailchimp has the ISO 27001:2013 certification.

Disadvantages:

• Mailchimp’s pricing depends on how many contacts you have in your email list, and each “tier” has a cap on the number of emails you can send per month.
• The free plan is too limiting, compared to competitors on the email marketing market like Selzy.
• Mailchimp is an email-centric tool, so the native CRM features are not enough for more advanced tasks aside from automation and data storage — for example, there’s no lead scoring or deal management.

Pricing:

• The free plan includes up to 500 contacts, 1,000 sends per month, and 500 sends per day.

• The cheapest, Essentials, starts at $6.50/month if paid annually, and is a price for the minimal number of contacts — 500.
• Standard starts at $10/month paid annually, for the same number of contacts.
• Premium starts at $175/month, paid annually, for 500 contacts. 

To compare, if your list had 10,000 contacts, the Essentials plan would cost you $50/month, Standard — $67.50/month, but the Premium account would still be $175/month, paid annually.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform that offers a wide range of products and services. It has a few hubs (called “clouds”)  that can be used both autonomously from the others and together with other Salesforce clouds. 

Key features:

• All the email marketing features are a part of the Marketing Cloud.
• Salesforce provides AI-powered segmentation for better targeting.
• Salesforce offers 3 types of email templates: plain text, text with images and links, and regular HTML templates for the no-code email builder.
• Salesforce has a powerful automation tool for sophisticated workflows.
• Salesforce is a tool that’s overloaded with features but if you need more, you can use one of 400+ integrations with other ESPs, platforms for analytics, and other apps.

Advantages:

• Salesforce is one of the most popular and trusted CRM platforms in the world, with over 150,000 customers and a 21% market share.
• Salesforce can grow with your business and adapt to your changing needs. You can customize it to fit your specific requirements or use one of the many industry-specific solutions available.
• Salesforce is constantly adding new features and capabilities to its platform, such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, voice, and augmented reality. You can leverage these technologies to enhance your business processes and customer experiences.
• Salesforce offers a complete suite of products and services that cover every aspect of your business. You can also integrate Salesforce with over 3,000 other apps, or use APIs to connect with your own systems.

Disadvantages:

• Salesforce can be expensive compared to some of its competitors. Extra costs can also occur for paid add-ons.
• Salesforce can be overwhelming and confusing for some users, especially beginners. The learning curve can be steep, and you may need to invest time and money in training and support.
• Salesforce can be time-consuming and challenging to maintain. You may need to hire or outsource developers or consultants to help you with customization, integration, or troubleshooting. You may also need to update or migrate your data regularly to keep up with the latest releases.

Pricing: 

• Salesforce has a convoluted pricing system that depends on clouds, features, add-ons, and more.
• The cheapest Marketing Cloud plan starts from $1,250/month per organization and includes email marketing (no Journey Builder), content creation, analytics, and an integration with Sales Cloud.

Conclusion

CRM with email marketing integration is a powerful tool that can help you grow your business and improve your customer relationships. Consider these factors while choosing a CRM platform for your business:

• Both CRM and email marketing automation features
• Ease of use and learning curve
• Tracking and analytics
• Third-party integrations
• Security and compliance
• Pricing and plans
• Customer support