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3 Smart Ways to Empower Your Emails with CRM Data

Yesterday, John received a "thank you" email from a company whose expansive clothing catalog had caught his eye. To his surprise, the message addressed him by name. Having piqued his interest, John was enticed to read further. He was intrigued to see that, not only did the company care enough to deliver him a heartfelt thank you for his purchase, but that information regarding his location, clothing style, and price range was present throughout.

The most curious thing of all was that John had never actually bought anything from the company that sent him the email. He'd been on their website, and even filled a shopping cart, but he had never actually completed the purchase.  

John definitely isn’t going to buy anything from their business now. He figures, "If they're making mistakes like this before I'm even a customer, they'll continue to make bigger mistakes down the road. There are better brands I can buy from."

IT'S NOT ABOUT HAVING DATA—IT'S ABOUT THE WAYS YOU USE IT

The company that sent John that email had lots of data about customers and prospective customers—data about their style, color preferences, location, visits, and downloads. They even had data about purchasing history, but they forgot to incorporate that data into John's email, and likely the emails of countless other prospective customers. The problem for this company wasn't a lack of data, their problem was the absence of a quality tool for managing that data.

By setting up your email automations correctly using key email marketing strategies, you can avoid embarrassing brand blunders.

WHAT IS CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)?

Through personalization and intelligent automation, the right CRM empowers businesses to form stronger, longer lasting customer relationships.

Customer Relationship Management embodies the idea that all functions of growing and managing a business are connected. Data flows between departments, and team members collaborate to create comprehensive processes and strategies that drive a business forward. Technology should empower your process by increasing communication and efficiency, not impede it.

HOW CAN DATA FROM YOUR CRM INCREASE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR EMAILS?

CRM does more than improve the content and deliverability of your emails, it also collects data on the ways customers interact with your messaging. When used effectively, the right CRM can dramatically improve company wide performance by using data to inform strategy and empower team members.

When coupled with an effective automated email strategy, the data in your CRM can be remarkably effective. If we look at the statistics, the power of personalization is self evident.

  • 74% of marketers agree that personalized emails significantly boost customer engagement rates - eConsultancy
  • The transaction rate for personalized emails is more than 6 times higher than for non-personalized emails - Experian
  • Effectively segmented emails produce approximately 760% more sales revenue - Campaign Monitor

WHAT ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS TO PERSONALIZE EMAILS WITH CRM DATA?

No two businesses are alike. Each company experiences their own unique marketing challenges. That's why every organization deserves a data management platform capable of adapting to their unique business needs. 

No matter what industry you’re in, there are three key practices you should know for implementing a personalized email marketing strategy. These strategies enable the intelligent use of your CRM data to boost opens, reads, click-throughs, and finally conversions.

1.  CREATE "SMART" SUBJECT LINES

At this point, using placeholders to address your recipients by name is expected. It’s no longer a luxury, but a necessity to even stand out in an overstuffed inbox. To truly maximize engagements, you should take this a step further by creating “smart” subject lines. Once you’ve collected valuable CRM data through surveys, sign up forms, and meetings, it’s time to use it!

Ex. If your goal is to increase ebook downloads, you might have one group of recipients who've already downloaded an ebook, and another who haven't.  The first group might receive a subject line somewhere along the lines of, "Did you enjoy ‘[previousdownload]_placeholder’?  You'll love [recommendation]_placeholder’!”  The second group may see a subject line personalized to their specific reading interests like, "20% Off All [preferredgenre]_placeholder for First Time Customers."

2.  ALIGN CTAS WITH THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

The calls to action (CTAs) you use in your emails should reflect where a contact is in your buying process. You wouldn’t want to be pressing demo bookings for someone who’s still in the awareness phase of your sales funnel, the same way you wouldn't want a sales qualified lead (SQL) to receive content intended for a marketing qualified lead (MQL).  A ‘Learn More’ button linked to an informational landing page could be a great asset for leads near the top of your funnel, but may seem redundant to someone who’s ready to convert. Similarly, an ‘Upgrade Your Trial’ CTA may seem a bit forward, if your prospect just started their trial an hour beforehand. Correctly aligning your calls to action with a recipient's position in the customer journey will make your emails more effective and relevant to your contacts, thereby boosting engagements!

3.  PERSONALIZE THE BODY OF YOUR EMAILS

Personalizing subject lines and CTAs is a good start to boosting engagements, but that’s just the beginning. Incorporate valuable CRM data into the body of your emails to dramatically improve success. The data you choose to capitalize on will depend on your unique sales proposition. 

Ex. If you want an email to contain the contact information of the sales rep for your recipient’s locale, instead of creating an email template for each regional sales person, you can use dynamic data rules to insert the relevant info, based on the location indicated by a contact’s CRM record. 

“If ‘Location’ ‘is’ ‘New York’

Replace placeholder with:

‘John Johnson

email: john@corporateplace.com

phone: (518) 555-2020’”

The possibilities for dynamic data rules are endless. As a rule of thumb, the more personalization the better, as long as the information provided is strategic and adds value to the customer experience.

CONCLUSION

If the company John was interested in buying shirts from had spent more time mapping out their strategy, they may have actually closed the deal. They dropped the ball by sending a ‘thank you for your purchase’ to someone who hadn’t actually made a purchase. Their mistake not only made their brand appear lazy and unaware, but it cost them money! Worse yet, with all the data they collected, they could have easily avoided this mistake by pairing the right tech with the right strategy! 

When it comes to marketing automation, you get out what you put in. If you take the time to develop a sound strategy and invest in reliable software, your sales power multiplies exponentially.

Using the data in your CRM to create more relevant and compelling emails will increase open rates, boost conversions and drive sales, but strategy is only part of the solution. Make sure everything performs correctly, you need to invest in reliable MarTech. To how GreenRope has empowered small to medium-sized businesses the world over, check out our case studies.

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