The Power of CRM Email Marketing with the 11 Best Software
Customers are central to any business, therefore, it's essential to optimize your relationship with them.
That’s where CRM email marketing comes into play as one of the most potent tools to help your business develop a customer lifecycle, by enhancing interactions, adapting customer retention strategies and ultimately driving sales growth!
In this article, we'll give you the lowdown on what you need to know about CRM email marketing and its benefits, before reviewing nine leading emailing CRM software, for you to choose the one that best fits your company needs.
It’s time to think inside the inbox! 📩
7 Benefits of using a CRM for your email marketing campaigns
Using a CRM will undoubtedly benefit your company and your results, but is that all? Let's dig deeper into the benefits of Using a CRM in your work.👇
1. Centralizing Data
A CRM platform centralizes consumer information, allowing businesses to access all customer data from a single source.
This streamlines business processes by ensuring that everyone in the organization has up-to-date information about customers, improving customer service, and enhancing overall productivity.
Also, by having a complete view of customer interactions and history, businesses can respond more effectively to customer inquiries and tailor their services to meet specific needs.
2. Collaborative Approach
CRM systems facilitate a seamless transfer of data across different teams and departments, promoting a collaborative approach.
This integration ensures that sales, marketing, and customer service teams can share information and insights without barriers, leading to more cohesive and efficient operations.
👉 For instance, the marketing team can access sales metrics to understand which campaigns are driving conversions for the current month, while the customer service team can view customer history to provide better support.
3. Planning Email Campaigns
The info collected by CRM systems is invaluable for planning future email campaigns.
By analyzing:
- user behavior,
- consumer trends,
- sales data,
- and growth metrics,
businesses can design targeted campaigns that address the specific needs and preferences of their audience. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of sending the right emails to the right consumers, thereby improving engagement and conversion rates.
4. Email Creation
CRM platforms often come with pre-designed email templates that can be customized with personalization features.
This integration saves time and ensures that emails are not only professionally designed but also tailored to the individual recipient.
👉 Personalization can include:
- addressing the recipient by name,
- referencing past purchases,
- or suggesting products based on their browsing history,
which can significantly increase the effectiveness of email marketing efforts.
5. Marketing Automation
The marketing automation features of CRM systems streamline routine tasks such as:
- sending welcome emails,
- follow-up messages,
- and promotional offers.
Automation saves time and ensures that the right content is delivered to the right audience at the right time.
👉 For example, a CRM can automatically send a discount offer to a customer who has abandoned their shopping cart, encouraging them to complete their purchase.
6. Increasing Sales
CRM systems provide access to detailed reports and analytics modules, making it easier to create emails that resonate with leads and convert them into sales.
By analyzing data such as:
- open rates,
- click-through rates,
- and conversion rates,
businesses can refine their email strategies to better meet the needs of their audience. Additionally, CRM analytics can help identify the most effective sales tactics and highlight areas for improvement.
7. Accurate and reliable information
CRMs collect information from multiple channels, ensuring that data is comprehensive and up-to-date.
This high level of data completeness helps businesses maintain accurate records and identify real leads. Reliable information allows for better decision-making and more effective marketing strategies.
👉 For example, by having accurate data on customer preferences and purchasing history, a business can tailor its marketing messages to align with what customers are most likely to respond to, increasing the chances of successful engagement.
Which CRM is Best for Email Marketing?
☝️ Choosing the right email marketing CRM solution is crucial for optimizing your marketing efforts and enhancing customer relationships.
And, with a myriad of options available, finding the perfect fit for your specific needs can be challenging... To assist you in this endeavor, we have meticulously reviewed and analyzed the 11 best email marketing CRM solutions.
Our comprehensive review aims to provide you with detailed insights into each software, highlighting their key features, advantages, and unique offerings.
Whether you are a small business looking to streamline your email campaigns or a large enterprise seeking advanced automation and segmentation capabilities, our guide will help you identify the software best suited to your current or future needs.
1 of 10
 Marketing Cloud |  Act! |  ActiveCampaign |  Brevo (ex Sendinblue) |  ClickUp |  Creatio |  Drip |  Freshsales |  MailChimp |  Maximizer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For companies with 2 to 250 employees | For companies with 1 to 5000 employees | For all companies | For all companies | For all companies | For companies with more than 250 employees | For all companies | For all companies | For all companies | For all companies |
| See software | See software | See software | See software | See software | See software | See software | See software | See software | See software |
| Learn more about Marketing Cloud | Learn more about Act! | Learn more about ActiveCampaign | Learn more about Brevo (ex Sendinblue) | Learn more about ClickUp | Learn more about Creatio | Learn more about Drip | Learn more about Freshsales | Learn more about MailChimp | Learn more about Maximizer |
Act!
Purpose-built for small businesses in any industry, Act! combines CRM with powerful Marketing Automation, providing you with a flexible and versatile toolset to engage prospects and customers with response-driven nurture marketing campaigns, all sent to targeted lists on the platform, through criteria and triggers defined by you.
Marketing Automation turns real-time response metrics into sales actions: alerting users of new prospects, prioritizing follow-ups, and delivering a composite view of customer engagement in a single solution. (An additional subscription is required.)
Key features
- Automatic Campaign Trigger.
- Campaigns management.
- Campaigns Reports.
- Direct Mail Advertising.
- Email Designer/Builder.
- Email Templates.
- Email Tracking.
- Emails Scheduling.
- Landing Page.
- Mass Email.
- Opt-out / Unsubscribe and newsletter management.
- Responsive Email.
- Survey.
Advantages
- Adaptable.
- Reliable.
- Business insights.
- Certifications: GDPR, ISO 27001.
Act!
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a multi-channel marketing software ensuring that all customer data collected across multiple channels is stored, to allow you to launch personalized email marketing campaigns. This platform enables you to fine-tune segmentation of targets to make every campaign you send feel personal and accurate. Additionally, it is designed to automate each marketing channel by using the personal and behavioral data of your contacts.
With its new and innovative approach to customer relations, this CRM tool is designed to help you generate more leads and increase conversion at a faster rate.
Key features
- Campaigns administration.
- Custom response.
- Email tracking.
- Marketing scenario templates.
- Mass email.
- Population targeting.
- RSS-to-email.
- Unsubscribe page.
- User IP tracking.
Advantages
- A large library of templates, as well as personalization and segmentation of lists options.
- A/B testing functionalities.
- Easy integration with Paypal, Shopify, Facebook, and 250 other apps.
- Greeting emails and auto-reply functionalities.
ActiveCampaign
Brevo
Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a robust marketing automation platform that helps businesses manage and optimize their marketing efforts across multiple channels.
It centralizes customer data collected from:
- email,
- SMS,
- chat,
- CRM,
- and more,
enabling the creation of personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience. Brevo offers advanced segmentation tools to ensure every campaign is highly targeted and effective.
Brevo’s comprehensive suite of tools streamlines your marketing processes, from initial contact to conversion. Its automation capabilities leverage customer data to deliver timely and relevant messages, enhancing customer engagement and driving higher conversion rates.
Key features:
- Multi-channel marketing (email, SMS, chat).
- Advanced segmentation.
- Marketing automation workflows.
- Customer relationship management (CRM).
- Real-time analytics and reporting.
- Transactional email services.
- A/B testing for campaigns.
- Customizable email templates.
- Landing page builder.
Advantages:
- User-friendly interface with intuitive drag-and-drop features.
- Seamless integration with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.
- Comprehensive customer support and extensive resources for users.
- Flexible pricing plans suitable for businesses of all sizes.
- GDPR-compliant, ensuring high standards of data security and privacy.
Brevo (ex Sendinblue)
ClickUp
A project management and a CRM tool? It’s the challenge taken up by ClickUp in order to adapt to all your various business needs. This super flexible software brings together the features of several applications in one platform, making it easy to organize and grow your customer relationships with tracking, data visualizations, email, and more.
And with his pre-built email marketing template, effectively coordinate with your team and simplify your content scheduling and email performance tracking.
Key Features
- Email Analytics Tracking.
- Email segmentation.
- Templates for marketing, sales, project control, customer service, and other teams.
- Integrate with 50+ tools, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Evernote, and Google Drive.
- Apps versions for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS platforms.
Advantages
- User-friendly interface with drag and drop functionality.
- Comprehensive Free Forever Plan.
- Full customization of the platform .
- Quick sharing of information with collaborators .
- Unlimited tasks and users.
- Available in SaaS mode.
- All-in-one solution for CRM and project management.
ClickUp
Creatio
Creatio is a cloud-based CRM platform that easily automates your workflows. The software includes business process management, sales and service integrated on one platform, along with sales automation software, low-code functionality, professional consulting services, workflow automation, reporting tools and various functionalities to improve the conversion rate and optimize your marketing strategy.
The platform provides service for every type of business, from small and medium companies to large corporations, helping you digitize workflows, and improve your productivity.
Key features
- Combination of CRM and Business Process Supervisory.
- Campaign management.
- Email template library.
- Visual content designer.
- Split testing.
- Trigger emails.
- Response processing.
- Click stats and clicks heatmap.
- Bulk email analytics.
Advantages
- User-friendly interface.
- Full customization.
- Wide range of support options.
Creatio
Drip
Drip is a sophisticated e-commerce customer relationship managing platform designed specifically for online businesses. It consolidates customer data from various touchpoints, enabling the creation of highly personalized and automated marketing campaigns.
Drip's advanced segmentation and behavior-based automation ensure that your marketing messages are relevant and timely, driving better engagement and higher conversion rates.
Drip’s platform empowers e-commerce businesses to deepen customer relationships through targeted marketing strategies. Its user-friendly interface and powerful features make it easy to design, execute, and optimize campaigns that resonate with your audience.
Key features:
- E-commerce CRM.
- Behavior-based automation workflows.
- Advanced customer segmentation.
- Personalized email marketing.
- SMS marketing integration.
- Detailed analytics and reporting.
- A/B testing for campaigns.
- Customizable email templates.
- Integration with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.
Advantages:
- Intuitive drag-and-drop interface for building automation workflows.
- Real-time customer insights and analytics to optimize campaigns.
- Extensive library of templates and automation blueprints.
- Seamless integration with a wide range of e-commerce and marketing tools.
- Flexible pricing plans to accommodate businesses of all sizes.
Drip
Freshsales
Freshsales is an easy-to-use CRM solution, powered by cloud-based software Freshworks. The platform offers basic sales features and email template creation and handling and is fully customizable to fit your business and the buying journey of your customers.
With built-in phone and email capabilities, you can communicate directly with contacts from the CRM with email marketing, setting up custom and flexible lifecycle stages, and building email automation to nurture leads automatically.
Key features
- Customizable email templates.
- Email tracking.
- Emails scheduling.
- Mass email.
- Reporting & Analytics.
- Segmentation based on geography, demographics, and behavior.
- Creation and modification of customized reports on prospects and contacts.
Advantages
- Easy-to-use UI.
- Ability to edit email using drag and drop.
- AI automated email scheduling based on receiver behavior.
- Personalized event tracking using detailed customer data
- Identifies the interactions with the product that have generated the most interest in order to prepare relevant conversations with prospects.
Freshsales
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM offers an all-in-one marketing platform aimed at small and large eCommerce businesses alike. The software allows teams to better manage their contacts and increase productivity and performance.
Because of its native integration, you can personalize your emails for each subscriber based on criteria like device type, country, list membership, or any other custom information you might have on the individual subscriber. It also includes email automation features like access to automated sequences, a template editor, and detailed analytics.
Key features
- AI capabilities for sales automation and data processing.
- Free email template.
- Email scheduling up to a year in advance.
- Automatic and trackable mobile optimization features.
- Live analytics performance tracking for email campaigns.
- Contact and opportunity management.
- Follow-up of the client's life cycle.
- List segmentation.
- Send time optimization.
- High email deliverability.
- A/B testing.
- Centralized, customizable customer database.
Advantages
- SaaS solution.
- No third-party software required.
- Ease-of-use.
- Connected to the HubSpot all-in-one platform.
- GDPR certification.
Mailchimp
MailChimp is primarily an emailing software that allows you to manage your contact databases: personalize fields, correct misspelled emails, manage subscriptions.
The advantage of MailChimp, in addition to its very competitive price, lies in its email creation tool. It allows you to create responsive emails and newsletters (adapted to small and mobile screens) based on templates created by designers.
This intuitive and easy-to-use solution is a great place to start your email marketing program. (Free version does not offer all of the features.)
Key features
- Auto-response (emails).
- Automatic campaign trigger.
- Campaign scheduling.
- Campaigns management and reports.
- Email designer / builder.
- Create, schedule, send, and track marketing emails.
- Drag and drop email editor.
- Templates for newsletters, landing pages, postcards, and social media posts.
- Real-time analytics.
- Advanced contact segmentation.
Advantages
- Extensive customization of email templates.
- Fast email editor.
- Free basic version (sufficient if you only want to send a monthly newsletter).
- Integration with 300+ other online software.
MailChimp
Maximizer
Maximizer is a CRM is a highly functional, scalable, and versatile software solution designed to assist small and medium businesses in any industry in maximizing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and the development of their customer base.
The software includes its own email marketing tools and supports integration with MailChimp. Businesses can easily segment their contacts and build custom web forms to generate new leads.
Key features
- MailChimp integration.
- Email creation, bulk send, tracking.
- In-depth business analytics.
- Dynamic and customizable dashboards.
- Integrated document management system.
Advantages
- Integrations with third-party software.
- Highly customizable.
- Flexible deployment.
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
Maximizer
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive system managing and tracking customer interactions, keeping customer data in one complete and unified platform. It's designed for online marketing professionals who need access to real-time data and insights on their campaigns.
It allows you to generate more quality leads and to create targeted and personalized emails to develop online campaigns and intelligent customer journeys. Additionally, you can analyze conversations from multiple sources through a shared and personalized dashboard.
Key features
- Campaign Scheduling.
- Custom Response.
- Direct Mail Advertising.
- Email Designer/Builder.
- Email Marketing from RSS Feed.
- Email Templates.
- Email Tracking.
- Emails Scheduling.
- Landing Page Template.
- MMS Campaign.
- Mass Email.
- Opt-out / Unsubscribe Control.
- Population Targeting.
- Responsive Email.
- SMS campaign.
- Sending Speed Control.
- Spam Complaints Administration.
- Transactional SMS.
- Voice Marketing.
Advantages
- Highly configurable dashboards and reports for real-time insights.
- Interact with clients via an integrated platform unifying sales, customer service, and marketing.
- Data sharing and team collaboration.
- Assist customers throughout their whole journey.
- Stay connected, on all the channels (email, applications, text messages, social media, advertisements, websites, and more).
Marketing Cloud
FAQ — The Basics of CRM in Email Marketing
What is CRM in Email Marketing?
First, what does CRM stand for? 👉 Customer Relationship Management consists of strategies, processes, and software that manages your company’s interactions with existing customers and potential clients. In other words, it can be seen as a central system of data.
Therefore, CRM email marketing refers to the integration of CRM tools within your email marketing campaigns.
Those powerful and versatile solutions offer features like:
- email templates, bulk email sending,
- ongoing send sequences,
- email analytics,
- list segmentation, and so much more.
This helps you target new leads and improve and personalize customer engagement by aggregating, organizing, and analyzing data, ensuring you stay top-of-mind with them.
So… Does a CRM Send Emails?
As you might have understood by now, YES!
At its core, and because a CRM tool is about managing customers, you can send personalized or automatically generated email. Afterward, the analytics will allow you to keep track of key analytics to improve the whole process.
What is the Difference Between CRM and EDM?
We've already seen what a CRM was, but what about EDM? Is it a similar tool? Let's get into it. 👇
Long story short, Electronic Direct Mail, or email marketing, involves sending promotional messages and advertisements via email to targeted recipients.
EDM focuses on building and maintaining customer relationships through:
- personalized email campaigns,
- managing email lists,
- automating email sends,
- and tracking performance metrics like open and click-through rates.
In fact, the main difference lies in their scope and purpose.
👉 CRM is a broad system for managing various customer interactions and data across the customer lifecycle, while EDM specifically targets communication and marketing efforts through email. Also, CRM systems often integrate various business tools for a comprehensive view, whereas EDM is more focused on the direct email communication channel.
Wrapping up…
CRM email marketing is one of the most efficient ways to track, monitor, and reach qualified leads. But with so many solutions on the market, this review was aimed to shorten your research process.
If you’re just getting started with marketing automation, CRM, and email marketing, it is crucial to define your needs beforehand. Most of the software presented here offers a demo version. This might be the perfect way to get a feel for the interface and test the functionalities before subscribing.