Digital Marketing Brief

The Importance of Integrating CRM with Email

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In a recent customer survey conducted by Lyris, more than half of respondents said they currently integrate or plan to integrate CRM with their email marketing solutions. Though use is less widespread than might be expected, the importance of integrating CRM and email solutions is critical for gaining a 360-degree view of customers that enables digital marketers to engage them with relevance.

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About Lyris Inc:

Lyris (@Lyris ) is a leading global provider of digital marketing solutions that help companies engage with customers in more meaningful ways. Lyris products and services empower marketers to design, automate, and optimize data- driven interactive marketing campaigns that facilitate superior engagement, increase conversions, and deliver measurable business value. Lyris’ high-performance, secure, and flexible digital marketing platforms improve marketing efficiency by providing automated digital message delivery, robust segmentation, and real-time digital channel analytics. The Lyris solutions portfolio is comprised of both in-the-cloud and on-premises offerings – Lyris HQ and Lyris LM – combined with customer-focused services and support. More than 5,000 companies worldwide partner with Lyris to manage and execute sophisticated digital marketing campaigns across email, social, Web, and mobile channels. Learn more at www.lyris.com.

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Fifty-six percent of the survey respondents said they integrate their email solutions with CRM data “very often” or “sometimes,” and 57 percent of respondents considered CRM integration to be effective. Most CRM solutions are proprietary to companies included in the survey, the majority of which are mid-size and enterprise-level companies with monthly email volumes of 50,000 or greater. Among the branded CRM solutions mentioned in the survey, Salesforce is most frequently cited. It is not surprising that Salesforce is the most frequently used CRM solution, or that 44 percent of respondents have no CRM solution integrated with email – this supports the finding indicating that integration with email is still not yet fully practiced.

Additional survey findings revealed that email behaviors, Web behaviors, and transactional data are the top three CRM data needs for integration with email marketing. At the same time, individual campaign performance, summary performance dashboard, and campaign comparison performance were cited as the three CRM reporting features considered most important.

Key Takeaway – Integrate to Engage

These findings indicate that digital marketers understand the value of integrating data – that high levels of engagement with subscribers on their marketing email list are dependent on understanding email and Web behaviors, and having access to data in regard to transactional activity. The findings also suggest that measuring performance provides a two-fold benefit to digital marketers: they can gain a better understanding of the practices that drive meaningful customer engagement, and can therefore allot resources and budgets more appropriately.

The objectives of the Lyris survey were to identify and describe the extent to which various digital marketing practices and techniques are used, and to learn about digital marketers’ views as to the results experienced from each technique. The survey’s intent was also to explore the expectations about continued use of these practices and identify anticipated changes in practices for the near future. The survey sample consisted of 294 respondents, mostly Lyris customers, who described themselves as professional digital marketers knowledgeable about their company’s email campaign management practices and are influential in marketing purchase decisions and budgets.

Download our guide, 2012 Lyris Digital Optimizer Report, to learn more about the importance of integrating CRM with email.

Summary