Copper Staff
Contributors from members of the Copper team
If you’re like most marketing teams, you’re always looking for ways to simplify your email marketing campaigns while improving results. Thankfully, there are tools out there to help you do just that. While it may not seem obvious, your CRM software is one of your best assets for improving your email marketing efforts.
Whether you’re a small business or large corporation, integrating your CRM and email marketing service can make running email campaigns more effortless thanks to email automation. CRM email marketing helps you keep your customer information organized and save time by minimizing manual data entry.
Additionally, integrating your CRM with your email marketing tool can help you gain better audience insights and track omnichannel customer data. It can even make creating email sales funnels easier.
We’ve talked a lot previously about creating a CRM email marketing strategy, but we’ve never discussed the ins and outs of setting one up. So we put together an actionable step-by-step system for setting up a simple email campaign using CRM data.
6 steps for setting up a simple campaign using your CRM email list
If you’re brand new to email marketing using your customer relationship management system, here are six steps to set up your first CRM email campaign.
1. Choose your tools
This might be an obvious step, but to have a CRM email marketing strategy, you have to have two platforms: a CRM and an email marketing platform. Choose two platforms that integrate with each other natively. In other words, make sure that you can easily connect your CRM and email platform to each other to share data and automate follow-ups easily and quickly.
There are several popular email marketing platforms out there, including:
- Mailchimp
- Constant Contact
- SendinBlue
- Drip
- And more
If you’re new to email marketing, we recommend Mailchimp, thanks to their easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder, segmenting, tracking and analytics, autoresponders and more. They also have a free option, so you don’t have to commit to a paid plan right away.
Ultimately, it’s important to choose an email marketing service that’s compatible with your CRM. For instance, Copper offers a two-way Mailchimp integration, making it easy for our customers to create and deploy a CRM marketing strategy using marketing automation.
A peek into the Copper-Mailchimp integration experience
2. Collect and create relevant data in your CRM
If you’re already using a CRM, you’re likely already collecting the information you need to create a successful CRM email campaign and clean email list. Remember, the best email campaigns are highly personalized and segmented — in other words, they aren’t cold emails.
By using your existing customer data inside your CRM to craft email campaigns, you’ll be able to really personalize your emails and make sure you’re providing valuable information to the right people at the right time.
Be sure to collect things like purchase data in your CRM so that you can set up automated drip campaigns and follow-up bulk email sequences in the future.
3. Decide on merge tags and custom fields
When it comes to crafting the perfect emails, merge tags are your friend—they allow you to automatically pull in personal information, like the email recipient’s first name, company name, last purchase date and more.
For example, merge tags allow you to take an email template from this:
- Hey. We’re reaching out to see how your previous purchase went.
To this:
- Hey Sandy. We’re reaching out to see how the custom template you purchased on May 1st is working for you.
Before you can set up your first email campaign, decide which merge tags you want to use and then collect those data points in your CRM.
If you aren’t collecting those data points already, you might have to set up custom fields inside your CRM to ensure you’re getting all the information you need for your CRM email campaign.
4. Create mailing lists inside your email platform
Before you add data to your email marketing platform, create a mailing list (or two). You can create just one big list for your CRM data, or you might create a few lists to segment your CRM contacts by type.
For example, you might create an email list for new customers and one for loyal customers, or create lists for customers of certain product or service types.
Do whatever makes sense for your data and email campaigns. The most important thing is that your CRM email campaign will be organized and personalized for maximum results.
5. The CRM email marketing integration: integrate your platforms
This is either the hardest or the easiest step, depending on whether your CRM and email marketing platforms integrate.
If your platforms don’t integrate, this will give you a lot of manual work. Start by downloading all your CRM data to an Excel or CSV file and importing it into your email platform. (Eventually, you’ll want to do the same thing with your email platform data, too, especially if you’re collecting emails from your website that aren’t automatically syncing to your CRM).
If your CRM and email marketing platform communicate with one another, this part will be much easier because your CRM and email platform will automatically sync (learn how Copper customers use our Mailchimp integration here).
It’s easy to add your CRM contacts to Mailchimp from Copper
6. Compose and schedule your email
Once all your CRM data is integrated into your email platform, it’s time to set up your campaign. Every email marketing platform is different, but typically, you’ll need to do the following:
- Create the email – Design and write the email.
- Add your recipients – Choose the list you’d like to email.
- Choose segments – If you’d like to segment your list, you’ll usually have the option to do that.
- Schedule the email – You typically have the option to send the email now or at a future date and time.
Once your email is finished and sent, you should be able to view reports and analytics regarding the email. If you’re doing CRM email marketing, you have the added advantage of this information being relayed to your CRM.
For example, you’ll know which of your contacts are receiving the emails, who’s responding, and you can access other engagement data inside your CRM system.
Getting started with CRM email marketing
Copper is proud to offer a robust two-way integration with Mailchimp. And several of our customers are already enjoying the benefits of utilizing a CRM email marketing strategy. (Take a look at some of their results here).
For more information on how to use Mailchimp and Copper together, start here. If you aren’t currently a Copper customer, you can try Copper free for 14 days to see what a CRM that integrates with one of the most popular email marketing platforms can do for you.
