Email marketing and CRMs are a match made in B2B SaaS heaven. These tools let you leverage lead data to create automated, hyper-personalized outreach at scale and low costs.
But that’s if you’re using the right tools. Some CRMs have too many tools at too high a cost; others don’t have the essentials needed to make good returns on sales for email marketing.
You need a CRM designed for email marketing to make the most of your email marketing. We’re here to help you find the best CRM for your business.
What to Look for in an Email Marketing CRM
At the fundamental level, CRMs are tools that consolidate and aggregate lead data. The features and tools are designed to help users manipulate and use data for whatever task they need.
Here’s a checklist of CRM features and tools that you need to streamline and automate email marketing at scale:
Ease-of-Use
You won’t just spend money on a new CRM. It takes time to learn the ins and outs of a new tool. Be sure to go for a CRM with an intuitive learning curve.
Information about the key features, use cases, and optimizations that can be performed with that CRM should be easily accessible.
For example, Instantly.ai has the Instantly Accelerator program that you can access for free. In this program, users can learn how to use Instantly CRM best to streamline email marketing.
Contact Management
Every CRM should have a contact management feature. This feature tracks and monitors lead data such as name, location, job position, industry, or company size.
Organizing these data points lets you personalize every email sent. Contact management features should also allow you to update lead info through enrichment or custom variables.
Email List Segmentation
Not all leads are equal. Some could be emails away from closing, while others could be in their research phase. Email list segmentation lets you identify which is which.
This lets your sales reps focus on leads most likely to convert. Email list segmentation enables teams to improve sales performance and align unique selling propositions to better fit customer needs.
For example, you can create an email segment for companies with 50-100 employees and another for 10-50 employees.
You can send one email focusing on your tool's enterprise benefits and the other on its benefits to small businesses.
Outreach Tool Integration
The best email marketing CRM lets you integrate with an outreach tool. Without native integration, you’d be stuck managing leads in your CRM, downloading CSV files, and uploading them back to your outreach tool.
That’s still a ton of manual labor involved. Instantly CRM is found inside your cold email automation tool. You don’t have to switch between apps.
Custom Sales Pipeline
Businesses have their own unique sales process. Some can be complex, and others simple. You need an email marketing CRM with customizable sales pipelines.
This allows you to be flexible, boost sales velocity, and create more complex pipelines as you scale.
Analytics Dashboards
Since CRMs deal with data, you need analytics dashboards to help you make sense of it all. An email marketing CRM must have an analytics feature showing all the required KPIs for email marketing, such as reply rate, open rate, click rate, or opportunity values.
A/B Testing
A/B testing is the best way to iterate on your winning email marketing strategies. This lets you test variations of your email against each other. You can A/B test subject lines, email icebreakers, CTAs, or any other element in your email copy.
With Instantly, you don’t even have to wait for a campaign to be over to iterate. Users can enable the auto-optimization feature that finds your winning email copy. It will then use that email variation for the remainder of the leads in your campaign.
Best CRM for Email Marketing
Now that we have a clear idea of what to look for in an email marketing CRM let’s look at 12 of the best ones that fit the bill:
Instantly Dealflow CRM
Dealflow is one of the simplest and cleanest email marketing CRMs you can find. But don’t let the barebones features fool you. They’re fully optimized for cold email marketing.
You can create custom sales pipelines, add tags to leads, and forecast potential sales revenue for each. Sales reps have the option to reply to leads directly from the CRM.
It also lets you automate follow-ups, add notes for each lead, and see a general overview of each lead.
Dealflow also lets you access Instantly’s Unibox, which centralizes all communication with leads in your CRM. It also categorizes the emails from leads within specific segments or pipelines.
Unibox has an AI email assistant that can reply to prospects' emails for you. The AI learns the context of a lead’s email and will only respond if it is confident enough.
Hubspot
Hubspot has one of the best freemium CRMs for email marketing. It’s not meant for cold emails or scaling cold outreach, but it is one of the best CRMs for nurturing warm leads.
Hubspot can automate email marketing tasks like follow-ups, segmentation, and personalization. It can pull lead data from the CRM to personalize newsletters, follow-ups, or onboarding.
If you don’t know how to optimize your workflow within the Hubspot ecosystem fully, there are tons of blogs, videos, and guides. There are even certification programs you can join.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM with outreach capabilities for email marketing. It’s an excellent tool for eCommerce businesses because it can integrate with apps like Shopify and QuickBooks.
You can create custom sales pipelines, track negotiations, and view data that combine sales analytics and revenue calculations with your email campaign data.
Pipedrive also offers a drag-and-drop email builder or templates to help create product offerings or newsletters.
Salesmate
Salesmate lets you track leads, market your products, and provide customer support all in one platform. Clicking on a lead gives a 360-view of its status in your sales pipelines.
You can see lead information such as their names, company, email address, and phone number. Each contact has lead data and sales activity, such as discovery calls, emails, or SMS.
Salesmate also offers CRM workflow automation combined with automated email marketing. For example, you can tell Salesmate to automate lead nurturing whenever a new contact is added to the CRM.
Zoho
Zoho is a robust AI-driven sales CRM focusing on an omnichannel marketing, outreach, and customer support approach.
One of the best tools in Zoho’s CRM is its in-depth analytics. It lets you see everything from sales KPIs to team performance. You can improve sales strategies, set suitable commission structures, and create custom reports and dashboards.
Zoho also integrates with over 800 sales and marketing apps. You can seamlessly add Zoho to your tech stack to streamline and automate your sales and marketing workflows.
Systeme.io
If you want an all-in-one marketing platform within a CRM, then Systeme.io is a must-try. The best part is that it’s free forever with some powerful tools in the free plan. You can send unlimited emails, have unlimited file storage, and no transaction fees for Stripe or PayPal.
It’s one of the best CRMs for combining eCommerce and email marketing. You can create custom sales pipelines and workflow automation for upsells, product recommendations, and promotions and have them all A/B tested.
Freshsales
Freshsales is a CRM that leverages the power of AI through Freddy, its AI sales assistant. Based on sales data, Freddy can make recommendations for your sales process, craft personalized emails for leads, and automate your replies.
However, despite the advanced AI, Freshsales keeps its CRM view simple with Kanban views and simple drag-and-drop cards for moving each lead down the sales pipeline.
Freddy also analyzes lead data in your CRM to help sales reps find sales-ready leads based on lead-scoring metrics. And, they offer a generous 21-day free trial to help you get started.
Engagebay
Like Systeme, Engagebay is another all-in-one marketing platform and CRM. It allows you to store unlimited contacts, create custom pipelines in your CRM, and automate outreach campaigns.
Engagebay also provides tools for help desks and live customer support. If you want to focus on email marketing, Engagebay offers email template builders and lead generation tools.
But Engagebay doesn’t stop at email marketing. It’s an omnichannel platform can do outreach via SMS, calls, or site messaging.
Streak
Streak is a CRM that’s built into your Gmail account. Think of it as a customizable spreadsheet you can access directly in your Gmail. You can upload lead lists, create personalized emails, and automate SMS messaging.
Streak also has Streak AI. It can collect insights from the CRM and use them for lead scoring, creating summaries for discovery calls, or even acting as an AI assistant.
For example, you can ask Streak AI questions about specific leads, such as, “Have we met the decision maker for x company?”
Nutshell CRM
Nutshell offers several ways to view data. The Kanban-style board view, list view, and map view are perfect for reps doing outside sales.
The map view lets you find prospects' locations and includes tools for scheduling meetings and routes for specific lead segments.
Nutshell uses CRM data to find hot leads reps can focus on. Moving leads down the sales pipeline is also automated. You define how the CRM auto-assigns leads, tasks, and email outreach sequences.
BIGContacts
BIGContacts is a CRM built for small businesses. Its free forever plan includes premium features like unlimited custom fields and tags, webform connections, and automated email workflows.
You can customize lead records, track leads from social media, and automate sales tasks. The dashboard lets you see a birds-eye view of your pipelines, including upcoming activities, hot opportunities, and any custom field you want.
BIGContacts lets you create custom sales pipelines that trigger personalized emails based on the segment leads are in, reducing the nurturing process to just a few clicks.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a CRM that focuses on building custom, automated sales pipelines. It’s also cross-channel, allowing you to create holistic sales cadences.
Sales reps can automate SMS alerts, email nurturing, or Slack messaging. For example, you can use ActiveCampaign forms on your website to capture leads.
ActiveCampaign sends an email or SMS with an opt-in form for a free class, demo, or webinar when leads are captured. ActiveCampaign sends a confirmation email with crucial details if the lead signs up. However, when the lead doesn’t respond, ActiveCampaign will notify your team via Slack for follow-ups.
Key Takeaways
Access to the correct lead data makes for successful email marketing campaigns. The best tool for consolidating and aggregating lead data into a centralized platform is CRMs. To recap, here are 12 of the best CRMs for email marketing to look into:
- Instantly CRM is the best cold email CRM for hyper-personalization, automated sequences, and A/B testing.
- Hubspot and Pipedrive are great for nurturing warm leads in your CRM. They have drag-and-drop email builders for newsletters, product promos, or onboarding.
- Salesmate and Zoho are CRMs that focus on automating the sales process. Both have hundreds of integrations for sales and marketing.
- Systeme and BIGContacts offer premium features even with their free plan. They’re great for small businesses looking for a simple CRM with outreach automation features.
- Engagebay and ActiveCampaign offer omnichannel outreach within their CRM. You can send automated emails, call leads, or send an SMS.
- Freshsales and Streak leverage AI for lead scoring, forecasting, and sales process insights. Their AIs act like virtual sales assistants for your team.
- Nutshell CRM includes a powerful map view feature for prospecting, perfect for outside sales teams.
Instantly CRM offers the most streamlined and intuitive workflow for scaling your business with cold email marketing. No more switching between third-party tools—everything is on one platform. Try it out for free today.
