Six Ways to More Effectively Integrate Your Email Marketing and CRM Systems | ClientsFirst Consulting

Maintaining and growing your customer base is vital to the success of your business. Building and integrating your email marketing system with your CRM is an essential way to stay in the mind of your customers and keep your business running smoothly.

If email marketing systems are not connected to a CRM system, serious challenges like large amounts of duplicate contacts and duplicate data entry may occur. This results in attorneys and staff wasting time on smaller tasks like entering data into separate systems or analyzing separate data to make important decisions.

Because these systems are so closely related, important considerations about one should not be made without considering the other. As you explore the two systems, here are some features and other things to consider before investing thousands of dollars in either system:

1. Bidirectional

With bidirectional synchronizationIn this way, law firms can ensure that their data remains up-to-date, regardless of which system the data is entered into. Before integrating, check if your email marketing system supports two-way synchronization. Otherwise, you’ll have to manage multiple “data silos” that need to be manually updated, disrupting workflows and reducing end-user engagement.

2. Subscription Forms

One important feature of an email marketing system that law firms sometimes forget is subscription forms. These can be used to provide companies with comprehensive insight into the preferences of their contacts.

They enable firms to create forms that can be hosted on their website, allowing contacts to select and receive communications of interest on a particular legal matter or practice. By integrating an email marketing system with a CRM, contact information and list subscriptions can be automatically captured and updated in both systems.

In addition, these forms allow you to collect and log electronic consent to the processing of contact information, which is required by more and more people global data protection regulations, including GDPR, CASL and CCPA. By recording and tracking this information, professionals can identify individuals who have opted out of communications so they are not re-listed in violation of their privacy laws.

3. Integrate analytics

Businesses use the power of certain metrics to refine the content they send to contacts. Some email marketing systems come with out-of-the-box features providing reports to users Measuring the success of marketing campaigns, audience segmentation recommendations, and data visualization capabilities that help businesses identify trends and patterns in their audience.

Email marketing and CRM integration also allows companies to easily identify contacts with incorrect email addresses. Bounces and returns are real-time data quality indicators that help you keep track of the health of your data. Since bounced emails are most likely to be suppressed from future mailings by your email marketing system, it is important to have processes in place to remove, update and retarget these contacts.

Analytical information enables system users to personally contact these contacts, increasing opportunities for business development – and as an added benefit, driving CRM adoption. This is not possible without good integration between the two systems.

4. Automation

Some email marketing systems can automate various time-consuming manual processes This can streamline a company’s marketing operations, save time and reduce the risk of human error. Systems can be configured to communicate with customers using personalized, targeted messages based on level of engagement and responses to previous communications.

They can also be used to automate processes related to list segmentation, e.g. For example, adding new contacts to lists, segmenting contacts based on predefined criteria, and removing unsubscribes and bounced emails. Tight integration between the two systems allows law firms to shift their focus from repetitive and low-level tasks to more strategic projects.

5. Event management integration

When implemented and integrated properly, email marketing and CRM systems can make your organization’s events management easier and more effective, allowing you to worry less about your communications and more about which restaurant you’re serving. Email marketing systems streamline the planning process, manage attendee data, and promote events to email lists.

Law firms can use their email marketing and CRM system to do this Management of event registration and ticket sales, allowing attendees to register and pay for events directly from their email address. The RSVPs then flow back to the CRM where they are recorded and reported on. You can also use the system to manage attendee data such as contact information, attendance history, and feedback. This can help them personalize their communications with attendees and improve their overall experience.

6. Don’t do it alone

Whether you are evaluating an e-marketing or CRM system for the first time, re-evaluating your existing systems, or considering integrating other marketing technologies, CUSTOMERFirst can help you select and implement the right products to add value and return on your technology investments. We can also help you develop a CRM and e-marketing success strategy and define efficient processes to optimize your marketing technology tasks.