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Integrating CRM with e-marketing

05 Apr 2012

In the last few years, e-marketing has really come into its own. More people are using the internet than ever before to research information and make purchases, and the internet economy has been growing even as other areas have struggled since the recession. All of this has helped to contribute towards the growing trend for e-marketing.

However, this has also created some new challenges for marketers. Web users are now frequently bombarded with information online, much of which inevitably gets ignored. The question this inspires for e-marketers is: how can you ensure your marketing material is seen by web users? And, once they’ve seen it, how do you ensure that yours is the marketing they act upon?

Of course, there is no exact science to this as you can never properly predict what people will respond to – but you can measure their responses to e-marketing and use that information to inform your campaigns in the future. CRM software is something that can help you with this. Many businesses make use of customer relationship management techniques on a regular basis, but if your company has not yet applied it to the world of e-marketing, this could be the time to make the change.

For example, email marketing campaigns are one of the most popular forms of online marketing. This typically involves sending out an email newsletter or other promotional material to your contacts in the hope that it will inspire them to take action, such as paying a visit to your website or taking up the offer of a product or service.

One of the benefits of this is that it is quite a cheap form of marketing to send out, but if you get your e-marketing strategy wrong, the time you waste by sending people ineffective marketing can add up to a fairly significant loss and a poor ROI. This is why good quality CRM systems are important. For example, you can use CRM software to manage your email contacts and track customer data, so you have an accurate record of who your customers are and key profile information.

This can help you when you are trying to put together an email marketing campaign as it will give you an idea of the kind of details you should be including. Some CRM software will then let you send out several different test email newsletters to select groups of customers. The results of these tests can then be analysed – which newsletter got the best response from your customers? You can then use these results to choose the most successful option and send it out to the rest of your contacts.

This means that good CRM systems allow you to develop more targeted marketing strategies. This is beneficial, because when web users are frequently bombarded with information online, it is only the information that appears to be most relevant to them that will provoke a response. You can then use your CRM system to track the progress of campaigns, utilising the other features to complement and enhance your marketing strategy.

For example, if someone takes action as a result of your e-marketing campaign, such as registering their interest in a particular service, you can then utilise the sales functions of your CRM software to track the progress of their interest. This can include updating details as you learn more about the customer so that you are able to provide them with a more targeted service – and even if they end up deciding not to take up your offer, the fact that they even registered their interest can be a useful piece of information to record and remember for the next time you send out an e-marketing campaign.

If, however, they do decide to progress with the sale, you will be able to track this through your CRM system. This can be a useful evaluative tool, giving you vital data to let you know what works and what might need improving in your processes, something that will be beneficial for your entire business, not just the sales and marketing aspects of it.

You can also utilise CRM software to analyse the outcome of e-marketing campaigns. For example, you might choose to produce a report to find out how many people acted as a result of your marketing, or a report to demonstrate the actions that you took as a result, or how many sales you managed to make.

Overall, CRM systems will not do all of your e-marketing for you, but they can make targeting and managing your campaigns much easier, providing you with vital information that could help your e-marketing to be more of a success.

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