Email Marketing with CRM Technology

In 1978, the first mass-marketing email was sent. While it traversed the fledgling cyber-landscape of the proto-internet to reach approximately 400 ARPANET users, no one could have realized the significance of what had just been discovered. Nearly four decades later, email marketing is crowded with faceless special offers, limited-time deals, and impersonal to-whom-it-may-concern advertisements. With this proliferation of email marketing comes a choice. Customers choose now, by various methods, whether to welcome the marketer onto their screens, and whether or not they’re going to interact with the message.

We all filter email, and you can expect your clients to do the same. After all, a staggering amount of data surrounds us on our screens, in our pockets, and in the Wi-Fi airwaves, and often, the only way to make sense of it is to reduce it. For a message to stay out of the trash folder and actually reach potential clients, it needs to offer more than the same tired, generic, impersonal ad copy that has been in use for so long. To this end, the most successful marketers are taking advantage of CRM marketing.

CRM (customer relationship management) is a term used to describe the practices and technologies companies use to better understand customers, promote positive interactions, and improve business relationships. CRM email marketing is email marketing that makes use of CRM tools to provide a more personalized, more effective direct marketing contact with prospective clients. The purpose is simply to stay foremost in the minds of customers. These include B2B customers — a larger niche now than ever before. Between 2011 and 2014, B2B automated platforms increased usage by a factor of 11, increasing revenue by 60% . Therefore, CRM email marketing focuses on the individual — or individual company — that receives it, rather than on the larger, ambiguous audience that was once so heavily marketed toward, because it is individuals who determine an organization’s success.

There were two advantages of traditional email marketing. First, recipients were able to gauge their interest at a glance without having to invest valuable time. Additionally, the sender had a low-cost medium to reach scores of clients and prospects all at once. The end result was that marketers were able to throw an exceptionally wide net, identifying a large number of interested leads, despite the percentage of interested leads being a comparatively small portion of the total individuals being reached. But while this was a good solution for marketers and interested leads, most recipients of these marketing efforts found themselves overwhelmed with the “spray and pray ” messages being shot-gunned into their inboxes on a daily basis. These unsolicited offerings were labeled as spam, and resulted in the creation of various spam-blocking solutions. As complaints increased, marketers realized courtesy would be a selling point and cooperated — as mandated by the FTC in 2003 . The option to “unsubscribe” from said marketing campaigns became standard.

CRM email marketing is a strategy aimed at keeping customers from exercising that option, by appealing to them in a way that’s much less intrusive. This is done by using a customized approach to email marketing managed for targeted needs, usefulness, and nurturing relationships — hopefully leading to lifelong, mutually beneficial relationships. Companies can personalize each contact, get to know names and shopping habits, and even anticipate customer interests with CRM email marketing. In essence, it turns every marketing interaction into something directly applicable to the needs of each individual recipient. Far from being an unsolicited annoyance, marketing emails become valuable notifications to already-interested parties. With imagery that’s flexible and timely, CRM email marketing is making a difference for firms and vendors who are reaching out more deeply and further than they ever envisioned, allowing for more accurate lead targeting.

Email marketing from a CRM database offers users flexibility, ease of use, and the highest ROI of any medium. For every $1 spent, email generates $38 in revenue . Moreover, it’s 40 times more effective at landing customers than Facebook or Twitter. However, not all CRM platforms offer the same functionality. As such, choosing the best provider for CRM email marketing is critical to business success. Effective marketing automation should offer everything from simple drip campaigns to highly integrated datasets, complete with easily integrated report generation. Triggered campaigns free up time to devote to other aspects of business. Businesses may also want to take advantage of cloud-based versatility and responsiveness. Combining email campaigns with the CRM toolbox provides a range of options and flexibility, especially if you choose web-based CRM with email marketing from Salesforce.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud makes real cooperation between between users and departments possible, creating a seamless customer experience in the process. With Salesforce, every customer-directed message can be personalized. CRM tools can take data from any and all available sources and put that data to work powering promotional, transactional, and triggered messages. CRM can also track email marketing performance indicators in real time, allowing users to optimize their campaigns as they go. By taking into account all available customer data — including demographic information, purchase history, personal interests, and all previous brand interactions — Salesforce provides a platform by which subscribers can be filtered for hyperfocused, data-driven campaigns that yield real results.

Salesforce operates entirely in the cloud, saving infrastructure costs and allowing for better cooperation and coordination between users and departments. Additionally, companies can save on research costs with Salesforce’s tools for business intelligence and analytics.

The digital world has changed a lot since email first became available to the general public. Gone are the days when clients were happy to be just part of the crowd. Today’s customers need to know that their personal interests are being considered. For businesses to remain competitive, they need to adapt to this new, personal world of marketing. CRM email marketing makes it possible to establish real working relationships with interested clients, through personalized, valuable emails that never get classified as spam. After all, with so many marketing efforts all clamoring for customers’ attention, a tool designed to create and manage campaigns that stand out from the rest is definitely worth a second look.