In this highly competitive world, Customer Relationship Management is one of the most important aspects of building a loyal customer base. Without an automated email CRM, managing your clients and incoming customers will be overwhelming work.
This is where automation comes in, and you can easily complete a host of CRM activities. For example, you can use email CRM to automatically populate your CRM with sales leads and then send personalized emails based on the contact information in your CRM.
In this article, we will learn about CRM email marketing software, the need for such software, and how to choose the right CRM software for your business. The best part is that we will provide you with a list of the top 7 email CRM tools most effective for different business niches.
What is CRM email marketing?
CRM email marketing refers to the use of email for marketing and promoting various products and services to a list of contacts. You can send welcome emails to the contacts who have just entered the sales funnel and automate drip campaigns to attract new customers.
You can personalize and target your emails to people with similar interests or who visited your contacts before. This will provide you with better results with higher click-through rates and lead conversion. Further, with different email funnels, you can categorize various buyers to different stages in the buying cycle.
What is the need for CRM Email marketing automation?
An Email marketing CRM platform will help you manage and automate your email campaigns. So when you choose specialized software for your business, you are bound to get various advantages. Further, with the rapid increase in technology, the need for CRM email marketing automation has increased.
One of the primary roles of CRM is to serve as a bridge between the customers and the business management. For example, if you have a gym and fitness business, your CRM will contain the list of the people who have taken membership in your gym.
This will come in handy when you have to send an email to a set of people in a certain locality regarding the temporary closure of your gym for a couple of days. With CRM you are free from doing a host of manual activities and you can focus more on the typical and complex tasks.
Similar to the above example, you can also use this automated functionality to send promotional and limited-time offers to your members. This ensures that you do not send irrelevant information to different members, ensuring that the unsubscription rate is bare minimum.
These are the two biggest needs for an email marketing CRM where you can use this software for providing information to your clients and promoting your business offerings. This will help you scale up your business and achieve your business goals.
Top 7 best CRM for email marketing
Here is the list of the top 7 best CRM for email marketing that you can use for scaling up your business and planning your email marketing. We have reviewed various tools while working with our clients and are happy with the performance of certain CRM that we have mentioned in this article.
Although the list contains the top 7 CRM software, the numbering is in no way an indication of the exact ranking.
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is one of the few full-fledged CRM platforms that also provides you with email marketing services. This platform has a market share of more than 31.61% in the marketing automation space.
Image Source: HubSpot
HubSpot comes with several powerful features such as email forms, landing pages, contact website activity, and email automation. You can save more than one million contacts on this platform and send up to 2000 emails per month.
Pros
- With the free plan, you can set up your contacts for more than one million users in your CRM
- With easy-to-use automation, you can send up to 2000 emails per month with the free trial
- Hubspot’s CRM is feature-rich and easy to use at the same time.
Cons
- The existing email format looks very plain, boring, and uninspiring.
- The email deliverability test does not work well with Hubspot
Pricing
- The CRM Suite FREE plan with limited features lets you send up to 2000 emails per month, and one deal pipeline.
- THE CRM suite started plan costs $50/month and lets you access 1000 marketing contacts with 10 automated email actions and two deal pipelines.
- The VRM suite professional plan costs $1781/month and lets you access 2000 marketing contacts with 15 deal pipelines and 100 custom reports
- The CRM suite enterprise plan costs $5000/month and lets you access 100 deal pipelines and 500 custom reports.
Zoho CRM
Image Source: Zoho
Zoho CRM provides users with a complete range of CRM from HR management, cloud storage, social media management, and other. The free Zoho plan provides access to three users and has a host of different functions like contact and deal management, email campaigns, and activities.
The Zoho CRM email automation is limited to the sending auto-responder emails. If you want advanced email automation, you will have to sign up for Zoho’s separate campaigns app. This is where you will be able to send up to 6000 emails per month with up to 2000 contacts.
Pros
- With the canvas feature, you can customize how you want to view your CRM record data.
- You can set a limit of 2500 workflow rules even when you are a free plan user
- Zoho CRM provides various pre-defined reports and up to 10 email templates for click rate.
Cons
- The platform is not user-friendly
- Auto-responder to emails can be set up only in premium payment plans
Pricing
- The Zoho CRM free plan provides you with leads, deals, and campaigns for up to three users
- The Zoho CRM standard plan costs $20/user/month that includes mass emails, pipelines, and email insights
- The Zoho CRM professional plan costs $35/user/month that includes automation macros, CRM validation rules, and custom reports
- The Zoho CRM enterprise plan costs $50/user/month that includes customer segmentation, auto-responders, and email parsers
- The Zoho CRM ultimate plan costs $65/user/month that includes Zoho analytics with business intelligence and data analytics software
- The Zoho campaigns free plan lets you send up to 6000 emails per month with up to 2000 contacts and five users.
ActiveCampaign
Image Source: ActiveCampaign
If you are primarily looking for an email marketing automation platform, ActiveCampaign is your best bet. Although the platform boasts of some powerful marketing automation capabilities, certain CRM functionalities are lacking here.
There are no limits to the pipelines that you can have in ActiveCampaign. You can use this platform to manage your deal’s status with personalized options to send emails to your contacts.
However, the pricing is different for both email marketing and CRM functions. You will have to sign up for both of them separately. Further, the prices of various plans are also on a bit higher side.
Pros
- You can build sophisticated marketing automation on this platform
- The email deliverability test score is relatively high
- The platform helps you calculate the win probability for open deals. This will help you to focus on the deals that will help you win.
Cons
- The prices are a bit too high for most businesses
- The CRM reports do not have many customization options
Pricing
- The B2C-oriented pipelines plan starts from %50/month for 1 user
- The B2C-focussed sales engagement plan starts from $150/month for 4 users
Freshsales Suite
Image Source: Freshsales Suite
The Freshsales Suite is a part of the Freshworks product line that provides you with features such as sales pipeline, contact management, workflows, and activity timeline. You can use Freshsales for free, but you can pay a slight premium to unlock the base version.
If you want to integrate email marketing, then the regular Freshsales product will not be sufficient for you. You will have to go for the CRM option called Freshsales Suite. And because Freshsales Suite has the same price as Freshsales products, you can go ahead with Freshsales Suite.
Additionally, AI is a major selling point for Freshsales Suite, which provides you with comprehensive marketing automation, merge tag personalization, campaign analytics, and more.
Pros
- Freddy, an AI assistant can help segment contacts, provide you with detailed insights, and forecast sales. This is one of the few CRMs that provide users with a built-in AI.
- The platform has several different filters for the segmentation of contacts based on their properties, email activity, web page visits, and others.
- Sales representatives can get a complete and detailed idea of which deal they should focus their attention on.
Cons
- The email campaign builder is not flexible. You will not be able to add multiple columns of content to different column containers.
- The Freshsales Suite has a campaign revenue feature that works only with Shopify stores.
Pricing
- The Growth plan costs $11/user/month and has contact and deal management, AI powered content scoring, and email campaigns for up to 1000 marketing contacts.
- The pro plan costs $47/user/month and has AI-powered deal insights and team management for up to 1000 marketing contacts.
- The enterprise plan costs $71/user/month and has AI-based forecasting insights, and a dedicated account manager for up to 1000 marketing contacts.
Salesmate
Image Source: Salesmate
This comprehensive CRM tool helps you organize contacts, manage deals with sales pipelines and activities in one place. You also get access to useful email marketing features for creating email forms, sending automated marketing emails, segmenting your contacts and a lot more.
The one special feature of Salesmate is the built-in feature for calling your contact. You can record and transfer calls on the platform itself. This feature is available in the lowest plan and you do not have to pay more to access these functions.
Pros
- Salesmate provides you with rich customer insights for different contacts including their email correspondence related to deals and other activities.
- You get access to built-in calling and texting to more than 90 countries.
- You can create personalized email templates as per predefined attributes such as company name, city, last communication date, and other details.
Cons
- The learning curve is very steep
- You can send a maximum of 250 emails in one go
Pricing
- The started plan costs $15/user/month that includes deal management and custom pipelines with a limit of up to 250 emails/user/day
- The growth plan costs $30/user/month that adds email scheduling, sequence emails, and custom deal layouts with a limit of 500 emails/user/day
- The boost plan costs $50/user/month that adds team management and workflow limits to 50 with a limit of 1000 emails/user/day
- The enterprise plan with a custom quote provides you with unlimited dashboards, priority support, and dedicated account manager.
- The automation journey add-on starts from $30/month for 1000 contacts for end-to-end marketing and sales automation
EngageBay
Image Source: EngageBay
The EngageBay CRM provides you with a host of user-friendly email marketing capabilities. With so many features and functionalities the dashboard is cluttered and difficult to navigate. This sometimes makes it difficult for users to find features that are typically a click away.
EngageBay provides its users with a free plan that lets you track deals and send out more than 1000 emails every month, along with a host of other features. Additionally, even paid plans are a lot more affordable than other platforms available in the market for email CRM.
Pros
- You can save contacts based on several available filters
- Every contact is assigned a score and you can adjust these scores with automation. You can schedule certain actions for different contacts when they reach a certain score
- The user interface can be customized as per the requirements of the users
Cons
- Automation features are available only in the top and the second-highest paid plans.
- The landing page and the template look rather sophisticated and require time and effort to set up a neat interface.
Pricing
- The all-in-one free plan includes five form embeds, 1000 emails per month, and an approximate predictive lead score of 250 contacts
- The all-in-one basic plan costs $14.99/month/user with a limit of up to 3000 emails per month and 500 contacts
- The all-in-one growth plan costs $49.99/month/user with a limit of up to 25,000 emails per month and 5000 contacts
- The all-in-one pro plan costs $99.99/month/user with a limit of up to 50,000 emails per month and unlimited contact
Brevo
Image Source: Brevo
With Brevo you can install its free Sales CRM app and use the same to manage all your email marketing automation requirements. When you use Brevo, you get a CRM tool with decent email automation functions and the capability to track deals and sales pipelines.
The best part about Brevo is its free plan that gives you complete access to basic CRM and other functions of email marketing. This lets you store unlimited contacts. The only cap is 300 emails per day.
If you are looking to work on a large contact list on a modest budget, Brevo is the best CRM platform out there.
Pros
- You can segment unlimited contacts, send automated email campaigns, and manage your contacts in a CRM with only a limit of 300 emails per day
- The interface is clean, crisp, and easy to navigate
- You can build multiple entry points for advanced email automation using if/else conditions
Cons
- You will have to register “companies” in your CRM before you can associate your email marketing contact with them
- The landing page builder is available only in the business and enterprise plans.
Pricing
- The Sales CRM app is free and provides functions for deal management, customizable signup forms, and task automation
- The marketing platform free plan lets you send 300 emails per day with up to 2000 contacts for marketing automation and contact segmentation
- The marketing platform starter plan costs $9/month and lets you send up to 5000 emails per month. You can remove the Brevo branding for an additional $10/month
- The marketing platform business plan costs $15/month and lets you send up to 5000 emails per month. You also get functions for A/B testing and send time optimization
- The marketing platform enterprise plan costs $1000/month with custom shared inboxes, multi-user access, and enterprise-grade security.
Points to consider while choosing a CRM email Marketing software for your business
When you are considering subscribing to software to manage Email marketing CRM for your business, the following are the points you should consider.
Ease of use
The software that you choose must have a minimum learning curve. You should not spend much time training your team members and onboarding them to the new software. This will not only save time and resources but also ensure that your business performance does not go down in the process.
CRM features
Choose a software that provides you with all the major functionalities that you are looking for in your business. This could be about CRM automation, tracking, and managing contact. Tools like HubSpot, Freshsales suite, Zoho CRM, and others provide you with a host of features that will be beneficial for your business’s growth and scalability.
Reports
The CRM tool that you choose for your business should provide you with detailed reports and insights for you to understand and improve your business performance. With a sales funnel, you should be able to high-ticket contact, the most-clicked campaigns, and lots more. The extensive reporting function in CRM tools provides you with an added advantage.
Pricing
This is one of the key functions that you should consider while choosing the right CRM software for your business. The decision that you make should be a combination of both features and your budget. You should not choose a software just because your competitors are using that particular software. Look for software that provides you with the features that you want in your budget range.
Email marketing features
Since we are primarily looking for CRM software that provides you with the features to manage your email marketing activities, you should look for features such as form and landing page builder, automation, and reports with open and click-through rates. This will help you understand the performance of your campaigns and improve them in the next campaign.
Conclusion
Email marketing CRM platform plays a key role in improving the marketing performance of your business. This article provided you with a detailed breakdown of the role of the software on your business performance. Further, we provided you with a list of 7 tools that will help you set up your first successful email marketing campaign with ease.
So without much delay, grab software that matches your requirements and start an email marketing campaign. Scale up your business and draw in more clients as you progress on the way. You can start with free trials and demo sessions to decide on the best CRM software for you.