CRM and email marketing software are two technologies that I see people interchange a lot. Considering they are many email marketing software out there doing the work of a CRM and vice-versa, it can be tough to tell which one is right for you.
In this blog post, I’m going to explain these software, outline the major features which differentiates them, as well as what each is best suited for.
Email marketing software allows you to send emails to people typically. Popular email marketing software like ActiveCampaign, Convertkit, MailChimp, etc does much more than sending emails like your personal email apps such as Gmail and Outlook.
Email marketing software helps you to reach lots of people at the same time. They also help you collect, segment and nurture leads on autopilot if you set them up for that. Below are the major features/functionalities of an email marketing software.
AUTOMATION
A significant edge email marketing software has over personal email services is automation. With few clicks, automation allows you to send emails to lots of people at the same time.
For example, if you hosted a virtual event and got access to people’s emails. Traditionally, you or someone on your team would have to send individual emails out to everyone using personal email apps.
You’d risk being perceived as unprofessional if you just sent one email to everyone at a time because your attendees will see each others’ emails. Plus, you won’t be able to address people by their names because it is an email sent to lots of people.
However, with email marketing software, all you need to do is send the email once and everyone would get the emails as if it was sent to them individually. Not only that, you can personalize the email a receiver gets with their names.
Some certain email marketing software like ActiveCampaign even allows you to send an email to a person based on their timezone. Your receivers can get their emails at 10 am irrespective of where they are in the world. IMO, this is really interesting.
SEGMENTATION
With email marketing software, you just don’t have a list of people, you have the option to categorize people based on certain behaviors and actions. Going back to our virtual events example, when sending a thank you email to your attendees, you prompted them to indicate what type of emails they are interested in and at what frequency they’d prefer to receive emails from you.
Based on their replies, you can segment them into tags, lists, or groups. After this, whenever you want to send emails, you can exclude or include certain persons based on the segmentation you’ve created.
One way you can use segmentation is to include a profile update link to your emails during a launch and ask your subscribers if they want to receive emails about this launch.
You’d be surprised how many of your subscribers still want to read from you but have no interest in this particular launch emails. Excluding them from receiving the launch emails not only keeps them on your list but also shows you listen to them.
Another common way you can use segmentation in your online business is to re-engage people who visited your checkout but didn’t make a purchase during launch. By creating an abandoned cart segment, you can reach people who got carried away at checkout or even get more insights as to why they abandoned their cart. It may be a tech glitch.
EMAIL DESIGN
Unlike personal email apps, email marketing software gives you the flexibility to brand your emails. Branding your emails allows you to etch yourself in the minds of your subscribers. Plus, you don’t need to code as most of these email software have built-in drag and drop editors.
Branding your emails is as simple has as changing the URL colors to match your brand color, adding CTA buttons, adding email headers, add background colors or images. You can’t get this level of versatility with personal email apps.
FORMS & LANDING PAGES
Yup, you read that right – Forms and landing pages. Gone are the days you need external page builders to collect email addresses, then connect to your email marketing software with integrators like Zapier which all get expensive to maintain in the long run.
These days, you can design simple registration or signup pages in some of this email marketing software. You can also design smart embeddable forms that fit into your page design if that’s the method you prefer. I’ve helped a client set up these simple newsletter and waitlist signup pages when her website was down due to hosting issues.
USER BEHAVIOUR ANALYTICS & REPORT
I know some Google Chrome plugins notify you when an email is opened and read but there’s more to analytics than just open/read stats. You need actionable insights contextualized to your overall marketing goals. In addition to knowing the open rate, you need to know your total subscribers, how they are growing, how they are falling, where they are falling and how often are you ending up in people’s spam.
I always go back to this Neil Schaffer’s article anytime I need to create email marketing reports for clients. It is explanatory and you can easily track these insights in your email marketing software.
NOT END IN SPAM
Email marketing software work overtime to make sure your emails don’t end up in spam. From the first data import scrutiny to numerous content guides on how to improve your email sending score. They even go as far as flagging your content when it shows signs of spamminess. You can’t get this in your regular email apps. You won’t even know what went to spam or not.
A CRM is a database that consolidates all communications that you’ve had with a prospect or client. It is where you house forms, calls, emails, text messages, meetings, documents, proposals, contracts, and purchases of clients.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software focuses on acquiring and organizing the details you have about a prospect and building relationships with prospects using these data.
I should mention that CRM installation and customization solely depend on the company and industry. For the sake of this article, I’ll be focusing on CRM software for online service-based business owners. Here are some major features/functionalities CRMs have.
DETAILED CONTACT MANAGEMENT
The style of the CRM is made to focus on the prospect/client – names, addresses, social media handles, website, company, company details, forms, contacts, appointments, calls, messages purchase history, and what have you.
For example, whenever a prospect reaches out to work with me, they apply using the form on the contact page. On submission, my CRM stores all their replies under the client’s project. I still have the form submissions, call details, and email interactions of the very first client I worked with in Dubsado.
EMAILING / WORKFLOW
Some CRMs are equipped with the functionality to send emails and even automated workflows. After my prospect’s application is submitted, my CRM is set to filter and segment prospects based on the services they require, which then automatically triggers a workflow to send them an email to schedule a call.
As soon as a call is scheduled, my prospects’ details in my CRM are automatically updated, and receive emails confirming and reminding them of their appointment.
SALES CLOSING
In addition to contact management, CRM software is inherently built to streamline closing a sale. Your CRM should make it very easy for your prospects to become clients seamlessly.
For instance, my CRM allows me to send proposals, contracts, and invoices as a single document to the prospect after our call. As soon as a client signs the proposals, they are prompted to sign the contract and immediately pay the invoice.
My deal closing has significantly increased when compared to the days I had to send each element separately because I didn’t have a CRM.
Other important features of CRM software include lead scoring that helps you predict users’ ability to convert, email integration where you see all the interactions you have with a prospect in one place, appointment setting, reports, and dashboards.
Nope! I like to explain CRM software as a tool that helps you know about your prospects while email marketing software is a tool that allows your prospects to know you.
I am very familiar with all-in-one software and email marketing software that has CRM features and vice-versa. Depending on your industry and the size of your business, this may be fine.
As much as I love Active Campaign for my email marketing, I won’t use it as my CRM because I need a scheduler, invoicing, contact, and proposals to be in one software.
On the flip side, I’ve seen people use Active Campaign for CRM and email marketing. One of my clients who is a CFO uses ActiveCampaign’s CRM features alongside other software for her business and there hasn’t been any hiccup.
CRM and email marketing software are both essential tools for businesses for growing their online service-based business. However, they are used for different purposes. CRM software is used to manage customer relationships, while email marketing software is used to send mass emails to customers. Let me know in the comment section if you have different software for CRM and email marketing or if you use one software for everything.
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