According to one of the research study by Google, a buyer can take anywhere from 20 to 500+ touchpoints to complete an online purchase. Not only that, but the quantity and type of interactions varies widely based on the purchase and the buyer’s specific needs.
The modern selling process is a complicated and highly personal experience, making it challenging for marketers and salesperson to send the appropriate messages to the right people at the right time.
Fortunately, there are various CRM and email automation tools that can assist you with this:
CRM software is a seller’s most critical tool for building relationships.
CRM and eMail Automation
CRMs assist sales teams in keeping track of discussions, reaching out to prospects at the appropriate time, and automating manual chores, allowing sales professionals to devote more time to high-value activities. CRM’s capacity to make email outreach easier and more successful is, nevertheless, underappreciated.
Given that 80% of customers prefer to be reached by email, your email approach must be concise in terms of messaging as well as time-effective. (You can’t devote 15 minutes to each email when you have dozens of fresh prospects to contact in a single day.) The good news is that many CRMs now include email tools and automation that allow you to speed up your outreach without losing personalisation or quality.
We’ll see seven major CRM and eMail Automation solution to help you figure out which one is best for you and your team.
Why CRM and eMail Automation is needed?
Many marketers use email as a secret weapon in their sales arsenal. You’ll be able to generate much more tailored and effective communications when you mix email with consumer insights stored in a company’s CRM. Email discussions can be saved in a CRM’s customer timelines, allowing any member of your sales, marketing, or support teams to receive a complete picture of your company’s relationship with a customer.
Top 7 CRM and eMail Automation Platform
Which CRM and email automation offer the most robust email features? What’s more, which of these platforms is best for your business? Email is an important part of the feature sets of the eight CRMs listed here. Examine the descriptions of each to see whether it’s the best fit for your business.
For one simple reason, ActiveCampaign is a one-of-a-kind item on this list: it began as a marketing automation software, then later added real CRM features. This does not imply that the platform is incapable of effectively managing your client connections; rather, it indicates that the technology is tailored to individuals that value marketing automation above everything else.
As a result, ActiveCampaign resembles traditional email marketing software rather than the CRMs you’re undoubtedly familiar to. Users can create email newsletters, create fully automated sequences, schedule messages, and view reports once inside the platform.
The template library in ActiveCampaign is large, as are the personalization and list segmentation options. A/B testing is also available, as are connectors with Paypal, Shopify, Facebook, and over 250 other apps.
In conclusion, ActiveCampaign is an excellent choice for individuals looking for a marketing automation platform with CRM capabilities rather than a CRM service with marketing automation capabilities. It’s also one of the priciest choices on the list. Marketing automation and CRM services start at $49 a month and go up from there depending on how many connections a user has.
2. Hubspot
HubSpot is a well-known software firm that provides CRM and sales enablement tools to go along with its popular marketing automation platform. Automated sequences, a template editor, and extensive analytics are among the platform’s email automation features.
Once a user has chosen a template and created an email sequence, it may be automated, freeing up time for other duties and guaranteeing that key leads are never overlooked. Opens, click-throughs, and downloads for user emails can then be tracked. Based on prior data, users may also grade leads and anticipate their chances of becoming customers.
Overall, HubSpot is ideal for businesses that require a complete solution. HubSpot is a good choice if you want to handle your website statistics, manage your blog, organise your contacts, and send emails all in one place, though the cost may be a deal-breaker for small businesses.
Nutshell is a deceptively powerful CRM and sales automation tool that claims to be “simple enough for any team, intelligent enough for any firm.” This principle also applies to the software’s email capabilities.
Email sequencing, shareable templates, easy contact filtering for targeted bulk emails, and powerful connections with Constant Contact and MailChimp for perfectly timed email marketing are all included in the service—everything you need to take the grunt work out of email.
Sales professionals may construct and schedule email drip campaigns at scale with Nutshell’s personal email sequence tool. These email sequences turn off automatically once your recipient responds, and they can even be set up to activate when a lead reaches a certain step in the pipeline, allowing you to nurture all of your new leads without lifting a finger. You’ll be able to readily discover which emails work best and which need to be changed because Nutshell tracks the response rates of your sequences.
Every salesperson understands how boring it is to retype the same emails over and over. The time-saving email templates from Nutshell break up the routine of the workday by allowing users to send messages in seconds rather than minutes. Additionally, Nutshell’s two-way sync with Gmail and Office 365 keeps you organised and productive whether you’re in or out of your CRM. (You can send outgoing work emails using Nutshell even if you use a different email service.)
Nutshell Marketing, the company’s first-ever email marketing automation solution, was published in 2021. Nutshell Marketing allows Nutshell users to send attractively designed marketing emails to thousands of contacts at once, and immediately assess their effectiveness, for an extra monthly charge dependent on your amount of marketing contacts. You won’t have to worry about contacts going out of sync between your sales and marketing tools because Nutshell Marketing is driven by Nutshell’s CRM platform, and you’ll be able to create highly targeted audience lists based on any customer segment.
Nutshell is an excellent CRM solution that is both strong and simple to use. It also includes cutting-edge email capability.
4. Zoho CRM
Zoho is a full-featured software suite that includes everything from accounting software to customer service capabilities. One of the company’s various services is a CRM platform that also has email capabilities.
Zoho CRM, like the other solutions we’ve looked at, has an email template option that saves salespeople time from having to write the same messages again and over. Drag and drop capabilities are included in the Zoho template designer, making it simple to add text, photos, tables, and other elements to emails.
Reporting tools in Zoho CRM let users know when their messages were sent, as well as if they were opened and read. Sales managers who use Zoho CRM will be able to see metrics for each salesperson they supervise and identify areas where they can improve.
While bulk email campaigns are available within Zoho CRM, customers will need to combine the platform with another Zoho offering called Zoho Campaigns. Although the connectivity is straightforward, potential users should be aware of this additional step.
Insightly is a well-known CRM platform that focuses on assisting users in developing strong, long-term relationships with clients. Offering email automation services is one of the ways they do this.
Users may design and send emails with just a few clicks inside the platform, as well as monitor real-time metrics for all campaigns. Insightly also has an email template tool that saves time for salesmen.
This CRM has a lot of native email capabilities, from one-off messages to batch mailings, and it interacts with Outlook, Gmail, MailChimp, and Zapier for even more capability.
With its “easy-as-Excel” approach, CompanyHub hopes to simplify all-in-one marketing software while providing all of the functionality smaller businesses require to flourish.
You receive a customised CRM and eMail Automation, lead management, a visual sales funnel, reporting, and sales bots, as well as two outstanding iOS and Android mobile apps for managing deals on the move.
While there is no free plan, CompanyHub’s pricing is competitive with Omnisend and the more economical systems we’re looking at today, starting at $15 per user per month.
Features to look for:
Customizable CRM: Use custom fields, columns, filters, and reports to manage client data in your own way.
Lead management: Keep track of leads throughout the customer experience.
Pipeline management: On the cheapest plan, a single deal pipeline is managed; on higher plans, numerous deal pipelines are managed.
Sales bots: Use native chatbots to capture leads from your website.
Email sync: You can send emails from CompanyHub and your email client using the 2-way email sync feature.
Mass emails: Send emails in bulk without having to rewrite and send each one individually.
Email tracking: All services include unlimited email tracking.
Email templates: All plans provide basic email templates.
Email scheduling allows you to send emails at the most convenient time.
Create reminders to follow up on unanswered emails when you don’t get a response after a certain amount of time has passed.
Allow your consumers to arrange appointments on your website, and then have your employees handle them on CompanyHub.
Lead capture: Use email registration forms on your website to collect leads.
CompanyHub’s CRM is based on the spreadsheet format, which many small firms use to record customer and business data before upgrading to more sophisticated software.
Companies who already use spreadsheets for data storage should be able to pick up CompanyHub and start using it right away, with no training.
It’s a wise design decision, and the format works.
An intuitive drag-and-drop system for managing customer data, prospects, and deals across the whole sales funnel sits under the Excel-inspired top layer of CompanyHub’s CRM.
EngageBay could be the all-in-one CRM for you if your business plans are too ambitious for SendinBlue but you still require a cost-effective platform. EngageBay is, in reality, the best “bang for buck” all-in-one CRM alternative for small businesses.
While the free plan only allows you to save 1,000 contacts, the feature list appears more like that of expensive enterprise plans, and the upgrade route is equally remarkable, with substantial feature improvements and progressive pricing rises.
Features to look for:
CRM: Keep track of contacts, deals, and tasks along the customer journey.
Predictive lead scoring: The free version includes basic lead scoring, while subscription plans include more detailed reports.
Email marketing tools include email templates, tracking, scheduling, segmentation, and other options.
Create and update visual email templates with the email builder (limited access on the free plan).
Autoresponders: Respond to email inquiries from consumers and leads automatically.
Landing pages: Include landing pages on your website to collect leads (limited to 1 landing page on the free version).
Build your own landing pages or edit templates using our landing page builder (limited access on the free plan).
Helpdesk: To manage tickets and address issues, add a helpdesk to your website.
Implement live chat on your website to provide immediate assistance.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Choosing the Best CRM for Your Business
Given how strongly sales staff rely on CRM to form connections with their buyers, it’s critical that your firm invest in the correct CRM and email automation solution. The eight email communication solutions listed in this article are all good possibilities, and which one you choose is mostly determined by what you need from your CRM software.
If Nutshell has piqued your interest, we recommend that you sign up for a free trial. You’ll have 14 days to test our award-winning platform and see if it’s the best fit for your firm. If that’s the case, our Nutshell Sales plans with email communication services start at at $19 per user per month, making Nutshell a cost-effective solution.
