CRMs aren’t just for sales—they’re incredibly powerful marketing tools too (and are great for customer support, reporting, and much more). Marketers can use their CRM data and many of the functionalities CRMs offer to create better-targeted campaigns, engage with leads, automate marketing processes, and more.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how marketers can use CRMs and give you some CRM marketing examples you can try yourself. Keep reading to learn how you can use your CRM in various aspects of your marketing strategy.
CRM marketing refers to using CRM software features and data for marketing, whether to improve targeting with customer data or send email campaigns. Using your CRM in marketing is an important (and effective) strategy because it allows marketers to create fine-tuned marketing campaigns that better target their audiences for a successful return on investment (ROI).
Why is CRM important for marketers?
CRM software and CRM data are extremely valuable to marketers because, ultimately, marketing is about relationships. Some of the specific benefits CRM can provide to marketers include:
1. Learning more about your audience
CRM data helps you better understand your audience’s needs, interests, characteristics, and more so you can create campaigns that better speak to them.
2. Evaluating your campaigns
Using a CRM, you can see which channels leads are coming from, which channels are driving the most conversions, and how leads interact with your content, helping you evaluate and improve your strategies over time.
3. Keeping leads and customers engaged
CRMs help you manage all of your interactions with leads and customers so you can improve customer service by keeping them engaged, nurture them toward conversion, and build relationships with them.
4. Automating marketing processes
CRMs help marketers save time, use personalization, and reduce errors by providing automation capabilities. With the help of automation, marketers can spend less time on repetitive administrative tasks and more time on activities like marketing strategy where they can have the biggest impact.
CRM marketing examples to try right now
How do CRMs provide these benefits for marketers? Below, we discuss CRM marketing examples across:
Customer data collection
Using customer data to inform campaigns
Email marketing
Reporting and analytics
1. Customer data collection
One of the main uses of CRMs is collecting and managing customer data. This is also an important element of marketing, and CRMs can help marketers with this in several ways.
Collecting data through website forms
A key step in any marketing campaign is capturing lead information, and a CRM like Nutshell makes that process easy.
Nutshell Forms enables marketers to easily create forms, customize the included fields, and embed those forms on their websites. Whenever a new lead fills out that form, that new lead is automatically added to Nutshell.
Pulling in data through integrations
CRMs integrate with various other tools, from social media platforms to customer service software, enabling them to automatically pull in customer data from other tools in your tech stack. This additional data helps marketers learn even more about their audience and better address their needs.
2. Using customer data to inform marketing campaigns
Once that customer data’s been collected, a CRM can also help you put it to use to improve your marketing campaigns.
CRMs can collect many different types of customer data, including demographic and firmographic data, information about interests and preferences, and even data about how users interacted with your website and content, such as which pages they visited on your website and which of your emails they opened.
Marketers can use this information for things like:
Improving targeting
The more you know about your audience, the better you can target your campaigns to them. For example, you can use demographic information to target ad campaigns. Or, if your audience often views content about a certain topic, you might write an email newsletter about that topic.
A CRM also makes it easy to segment your audience so that you can tailor your messaging more to different audiences. For example, you could group your customers by industry and then send different emails to each group tailored to their industry.
Personalization
Customer data also enables you to personalize your content to individual leads or customers. For example, you can automatically include a customer’s name in the subject line of an email newsletter. By integrating your CRM with other tools, you can also show personalized content on your website.
3. Email marketing
Some CRMs, including Nutshell, feature built-in email marketing. With an email marketing tool like Nutshell Campaigns, you can easily create email audiences from your CRM contacts, automatically send emails based on various triggers or schedules, and track your results.
Below are several CRM campaign examples using email marketing.
Connect with subscribers right from your CRM
Catch your buyers’ attention at every stage of the funnel with Nutshell Campaigns—an email marketing solution that’s built right into your CRM.
When a customer fills out a form on your website and enters their information, like a name and email address, use CRM marketing automation to send a welcome email to them. These email greetings are a great way to start establishing a relationship with the customer and begin initiating their first transaction.
You can personalize these emails by using your customer’s name in the email as well. This personal touch sends customers the message that your brand is paying attention to them and gives the impression that you’re committed to connecting with all customers.
(Pssst— Nutshell Campaigns can help you set up automatic drip sequences for all your welcome emails!)
Birthday promos
Who doesn’t love birthdays? When creating website forms for your customers, consider prompting people to enter their birthdays. This way, you can send them a birthday greeting each year, along with a special promo code.
This CRM marketing tactic accomplishes two important things: it strengthens customer loyalty and initiates a purchase.
A lot of times, we forget the information we entered when filling out a form on a website. If a customer forgot they gave you their birth date and they open their email to find a birthday greeting from you, they’ll be pleasantly surprised. Plus, they might even be a little touched that you wished them a happy birthday in the first place.
Nutshell gives you the power to create forms for your website so you can begin collecting basic customer information and using it to inform your future marketing campaigns.
Customers will see this email as another indication that you care about your customers and pay attention to each one of them. This yearly email can help strengthen your relationships with your customer and encourage customer loyalty for years to come.
Email birthday greetings usually come with some sort of gift, primarily in the form of a promo code. Offering an exclusive promotion on your products or services urges the customers to make a purchase.
If not for the simple fact that they’re getting a sweet discount, it’ll be because of the exclusivity of it. Many times, customers feel obligated to make a purchase so they can use their birthday promo because they feel they might not get that kind of deal again (until next year, of course).
It creates a sense of urgency and could be the final push a customer needs to finally say yes to that item that’s been sitting in their shopping cart for a while.
Emails reminding customers about items in their cart and wish list
Speaking of shopping carts, use CRM marketing automation to remind customers about abandoned items in their online carts.
Whether the customer purposely walked away before making the purchase or genuinely forgot about it, it doesn’t hurt to send a friendly suggestion to pick up where they left off.
Along with reminding customers about abandoned items, use CRM marketing automation to notify them about any price changes or sales on items they have in their cart or on their wish list.
Not only does it get them to possibly make a purchase, but it gets them back on your site and browsing your inventory.
Suggested items after purchases
Nutshell’s CRM forms gather customer information for a reason— use it to your advantage!
With the information your Nutshell CRM saves, you can better understand the customers you’re selling to. You can see what products individual people have purchased, then use that information (and marketing automation) to send them suggestions for similar products or services they might also want.
This example of CRM marketing is a way to keep communication flowing between you and your customer after a purchase has been made to improve customer retention.
“We miss you!” emails
Notice on your CRM that some customers haven’t interacted with your business in a while? Give them a nudge with an email enticing them to come back.
Whether you decide to include a promo offer within that email to give your customer an incentive is up to you, but sending those “We miss you!” emails can really come in handy when you’re trying to reengage with them.
Not only do they remind customers about your brand, but they let your customers know that you haven’t forgotten about them. It’s always a nice feeling to be wanted— give that feeling to your customers with CRM marketing automation.
4. Reporting and analytics for campaign optimization
Using the reporting and analytics features available in many CRMs, you can evaluate your campaign performance and use that information to improve your strategies. CRMs can also automate many typical reporting tasks.
Here are a few examples of how marketers can use a CRM for analytics and reporting.
Lead attribution
With Nutshell, you get automatic lead attribution, which enables you to see exactly which channels and sources your leads came from. This feature shows you which channels and campaigns drive the most high-quality leads for your business.
Audience interaction data
Your CRM can also provide data about which website pages, emails, and other types of content your audience interacted with. This helps you determine which types of content perform best with your audience so you can optimize your campaigns.
Frequently asked questions about CRM marketing
Want to know more about using your CRM for marketing? These FAQs may provide the answers you’re looking for:
What are the stages of customer relationship management?
There are six stages of customer relationship management that CRM marketing can help your team work through:
Awareness
Nurturing
Sales opportunity
Closing
Delivery
Follow-up/upsell
How do you choose which CRM marketing examples to use?
Your company may find that some CRM marketing strategies are more helpful than others. But how do you choose which to implement? Below are a few tips that can help you answer that question:
Determine the needs of your target market and use CRM marketing examples that meet those needs
Personalize the customer journey as best as possible
Maintain the relationship without becoming pushy
Use marketing strategies that align with your organization’s brand
Give these CRM marketing examples a try with Nutshell
Looking for an easy-to-use Customer Relationship Management tool that will help you take your marketing to the next level? Look no further than Nutshell. With Nutshell, you’ll get built-in email marketing, lead attribution, reporting, workflow automation, and much more. Plus, all of our plans come with free customer support.
