How To Improve Your Email Marketing With CRM Data

With an average open rate of nearly 36% across industries, email marketing is still a powerful channel for engaging customers. But many marketing teams aren’t unlocking its full potential because they’re stuck with incomplete customer data. 

Generic messages only go so far—the success of your email marketing comes down to how well you use your customer relationship management (CRM) data. 

When you fuel your email strategies with CRM insights, the stars align. Suddenly, you can create campaigns that speak to what your customers need, how they behave, and what they prefer. 

Caught your interest? Let’s explore how integrating CRM data can transform your entire customer engagement strategy, starting with your email marketing. 

Do you need a CRM for email marketing? 

Sure, basic outreach is possible with a simple email marketing platform. But when you want to move beyond generic batch-and-blast campaigns, you should consider bringing a CRM into the mix. 

For enterprise marketing teams, CRMs are non-negotiable for targeting complex customer segments, coordinating cross-channel experiences, and tracking the customer journey. 

When you integrate your CRM with email marketing software, you can build those personalized experiences everyone’s talking about, basing them on real behaviors, buying history, and how people engage with your content. 

All savvy email marketing campaigns have CRM data at their core. With a CRM, you can finally focus on metrics that matter—instead of the vanity metrics that look great in presentations but don’t move the needle. 

Why CRM data is essential for email marketing success 

It’s the tale of two email campaigns: Some drive significant revenue, while others are so generic they’re destined for the digital trash can before they’re even opened. The difference comes down to the quality of data powering them.

CRM data takes your email marketing from an isolated channel begging for attention to a powerful tool that drives business results. It gives your marketing team the contextual customer insights they need to create email content people want to read. 

CRM-driven email campaigns offer three major advantages that traditional email marketing tools simply can’t touch: higher engagement, conversions, and retention.  

Boosted engagement 

CRM data lets you craft email content that feels tailor-made for your subscribers. Whether you’re showcasing products that complement previous purchases or addressing pain points, CRM data makes it possible to create a genuine dialogue with customers, so it doesn’t feel like you’re just talking at them. This kind of authentic dialogue keeps them engaged with your brand. 

Increased conversion rates 

CRM data helps marketing teams deliver what buyers need, exactly when they need it. It’s like being a mind reader, but with data. 

By analyzing previous purchases, website visits, and email engagement, you can trigger automated follow-ups at key decision points, presenting personalized offers based on what you already know a potential buyer is interested in. And it works! Consumers are also more likely to convert and purchase from a personalized email. 

When customers abandon their shopping carts, browse a specific product category without buying, or download a whitepaper, CRM-powered email campaigns spring into action. They send out targeted messaging that addresses objections before they even arise and speeds up the path to purchase. 

Improved customer retention 

CRM data is the secret sauce for building and nurturing relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. It helps you transform those one-time buyers into loyal brand advocates who can’t stop talking about you. 

By tracking their purchase frequency, the products they love, and their engagement patterns, you can trigger personalized re-engagement campaigns that feel almost uncannily relevant. 

For example, many companies send automated messages when they notice customer activity dropping off or surprise their VIP customers with exclusive offers to make them feel special. 

Being proactive pays off in a big way. Automated win-back emails generate a whopping 42.5% open rate, an 18.27% click-through rate, and a 10.34% conversion rate. That’s 2.5 to nearly 8 times higher than the industry average. Who wouldn’t want to show off those kinds of numbers in their next performance review? 

How can CRM data enhance the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns? 

When email strategies and CRM insights unite, every campaign becomes a genuine customer experience. CRM data paves the way for more customer-centric email marketing that makes people feel understood. 

So let’s dig into some of the ways integrating CRM data can take your email marketing efforts from “meh” to “wow.”

1. Advanced segmentation for targeted messaging 

Those generic mass emails that treat everyone the same aren’t cutting it anymore. Customers expect personalization, and with audience segmentation, it’s easy to target your emails. 

But instead of just splitting up your email list by basic demographics, you can create dynamic segments based on all sorts of juicy customer data—what they’ve purchased, how they browse your site, their unique engagement patterns, and where they sit in the customer lifecycle. 

Take a financial services company, for example. They might segment clients by portfolio size, typical investment vehicles, and recent account activity to deliver tailored market updates that matter to each group. This type of multidimensional segmentation ensures every message resonates with the intended audience. 

The best part? You can improve the relevance of every email you send while reducing the list fatigue that makes people hit “unsubscribe.” And with the right marketing automation solutions, these segments update automatically as customer behavior changes, so your targeting stays spot on without you having to manually update lists every week. 

2. Personalization that drives engagement 

Adding a customer’s first name to an email only scratches the surface of personalization. Customers want relevant content that reflects their unique relationships with your brand. 

CRM data allows you to provide personalization based on the customer journey. A retailer might show different product recommendations to customers who browse versus those who regularly make purchases. A B2B technology company might adjust its messaging based on which solution documentation a client accesses. 

Personalization also extends beyond content. You can customize timing, channel preferences, and even tone, creating emails that feel like natural extensions of ongoing conversations rather than disruptive marketing messages. 

3. Automated email workflows for efficiency 

CRM-powered email automation takes the manual work out of email campaigns, turning them into perfectly triggered customer interactions. By mapping customer journey touchpoints within your CRM, you can create workflows that deliver the right message when it will resonate most. 

When a prospect downloads a whitepaper, the system can trigger a nurture sequence tailored to their industry. Or maybe a personalized retention campaign activates when a customer reaches a contract renewal date. 

Automated workflows keep communication consistent, even as your customer base grows, so you don’t have to worry about opportunities falling through the cracks. 

The more integrated your customer data, the more you can fine-tune your triggers. This could look like initiating account review communications when usage metrics decline or sending upgrade opportunities when usage increases.

4. Customer journey mapping

CRM data shines a spotlight on the full customer lifecycle, enabling marketers to visualize and optimize every touchpoint in the email journey. Instead of treating each email as a one-off campaign, you can create a thoughtful progression of messages that guides prospects from “Oh, what’s this?” to “I can’t live without this.” 

A journey-centric approach ensures your prospects receive educational content before you hit them with sales pitches or onboarding instructions before you start suggesting they buy more stuff. The catch? You’ll need the right integrations to get these granular lifecycle insights.

For example, Tenon’s solution integrates with ServiceNow to give you a unified view of the customer journey. In other words, your marketing engagement data and customer service insights connect in one place. 

Tenon also synchronizes your customer service data with marketing automation so that every email reinforces a positive, consistent customer experience. With this comprehensive visibility, you’ll have fewer embarrassing communication missteps, like sending promotional emails to customers with open support tickets. 

5. Optimize timing and frequency of emails 

You don’t have to guess when to send an email by playing email timing roulette. By analyzing engagement patterns—like when customers open emails, click on your links, or make purchases—you can learn when your audience is most receptive to hearing from you. 

Maybe your emails perform best in the early morning on weekdays when B2B customers are sipping their first cup of coffee and checking emails. Or maybe your retail promotion gets more traction on weekend evenings when customers are relaxing on the couch and casually browsing. 

Beyond the time of day, CRM insights reveal individual engagement patterns that help you avoid the twin dangers of overcommunication and missed opportunities. 

Some of your customers might love weekly touchpoints, while others only want to hear from you quarterly. If you take the easy route with a one-size-fits-all approach to frequency, you’ll likely see your unsubscribe rates climb.

6. Tracking performance metrics

While vanity metrics might make for great dashboard charts, CRM-integrated email marketing helps you uncover more meaningful business insights. Most basic email platforms will give you open and click rates, but when you integrate your CRM data, you can see those engagement metrics alongside business outcomes. This is the stuff your CEO cares about. 

From this comprehensive tracking, you can figure out which email campaigns drive results. Your team will know which content types have people clicking, which subject lines get your emails opened, and which calls-to-action (CTAs) resonate with specific customer segments. 

Even better, with a solution like Tenon, you can automatically attribute revenue influence to specific campaigns and content pieces. No more guessing which email campaign deserves credit for that sales spike. You’ll have clear evidence showing exactly what’s drumming up the most business, and that makes for more confident conversations in your next budget meeting. 

How to choose the best CRM with email marketing 

Now that you know how CRM data can take your marketing performance up a notch, the next step is choosing the right CRM. You want a solution that can seamlessly unify these capabilities, but as you’ve probably discovered, not all CRM software offers the same level of email marketing integration. The differences can make or break your team’s efficiency and results.

Let’s look at three essential factors to consider when you’re shopping around for CRM platforms with email marketing capabilities. 

Evaluate the features you need 

First things first, choose a CRM that meets your email marketing needs. This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many teams get distracted by fancy demos and end up with tools that don’t solve their specific problems. 

Start by taking a hard look at your current workflows and identifying pain points. Are you struggling with list management? Do you need better personalization capabilities? Are you desperate for deeper campaign analytics that show the impact of your work? Look beyond flashy interfaces to the depth of segmentation options, automation capabilities, and personalization tools. 

And don’t forget to make sure the platform offers A/B testing functionality. This will allow you to optimize subject lines, content, and send times based on actual data, rather than hunches.

Check for scalability and customization 

Your marketing strategies and needs will change over time, so choose a CRM system that can keep pace and won’t buckle under pressure as your marketing team’s capabilities expand. Many platforms offer tiered capabilities you can activate as you’re ready to implement them—like training wheels that come off as you become more confident. 

The solution should also allow for customizable workflows that adapt to your processes, not the other way around. Look for systems with flexible APIs and integration capabilities that can connect with new tools as your tech stack grows. Many marketing teams start with core email functionality and add more advanced capabilities like predictive analytics as they go. 

Ensure integration with your tools 

Here’s a hard truth: If you have a powerful CRM but it doesn’t talk to your existing tech stack, you’re only benefitting from a fraction of that power. Customer data should flow between your email platform, website analytics, advertising channels, and business systems automatically without you having to resort to manual imports and exports. 

Take the time to explore pre-built connectors to popular marketing tools, as well as robust API capabilities for custom integrations. For example, since Tenon is powered by the ServiceNow platform, it connects to those critical business systems you’re already using. You’ll find real-time customer service data, sales pipeline information, and product usage metrics in the same unified workflow. 

Design and deploy engaging marketing campaigns with Tenon 

Email marketing and CRM data go hand in hand. When you use rich customer insights to inform your email marketing strategy, you can dramatically improve your engagement rates, boost those important conversations, and keep customers sticking around longer. 

Tenon offers the streamlined solution ServiceNow users need to connect their customer data with powerful email marketing capabilities. Take your email marketing to the next level and put your CRM data to work, all without the headache of complex integrations or disconnected workflows. 

Book a demo with Tenon today and learn how our platform can make your email marketing more impactful!