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:
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.
Here are some of the benefits of this combination:
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.
Consider these factors when choosing CRM software with email marketing integration:
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.
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.
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Pricing (CRM Suite):
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 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:
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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 is a cloud-based CRM software that natively integrates with Google Workspace — Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sheets.
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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.
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Pricing (for Marketing Automation + Sales CRM):
Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM software that focuses on sales pipelines and workflows.
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Insightly is an all-around CRM for small- to medium-sized businesses.
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EngageBay is an all-in-one CRM software that comes with marketing, sales, and customer support products.
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Pricing (CRM and Sales Bay):
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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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: