CRM’s role in marketing
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CRMs aren’t just for sales—they’re incredibly powerful marketing tools, too (and are great for customer support, reporting, and much more). Marketers can use their CRM data and many of the functionalities CRMs offer to create a better-targeted CRM marketing strategy, which engages with leads, automates marketing processes, and more.
CRM marketing connects sales and marketing efforts by centralizing customer data, enabling teams to create personalized, targeted campaigns that drive higher engagement, conversions, and ROI.
With CRM data, marketers can automate and optimize the entire buyer journey—from segmentation and email drips to landing pages and performance tracking—leading to better lead nurturing and faster sales cycles.
A CRM-powered marketing strategy leads to measurable business impact, including increased revenue, reduced churn, and stronger customer relationships, especially when sales and marketing collaborate using shared insights.
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In this resource, we’ll explore how marketers can use CRMs and give you some CRM marketing strategy examples you can try yourself. Keep reading to learn how to use your CRM in various aspects of your marketing strategy.
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CRM marketing refers to using CRM software features and data for marketing, whether to improve targeting with customer data or send email campaigns. Using your CRM in marketing is an important (and effective) strategy. It allows marketers to create fine-tuned marketing campaigns that better target their audiences for a successful return on investment (ROI).
A CRM marketing strategy is a marketing plan formulated by your marketing team in collaboration with sales, customer support, and other relevant departments. The plan revolves around your CRM system, and the objective is to enhance how your business reaches and connects with your audience to build trust and stronger relationships.
Your marketing strategy will include tactics for attracting new customers and retaining existing customers, all of which will be managed through your CRM software.
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CRM software and data are extremely valuable to marketers because marketing is ultimately about relationships.
CRM software primarily informs marketing strategies by telling you exactly who your ideal customer profile (ICP) should be. An ICP is a list of traits matching your ideal audience, including demographic, geographic, and behavioral characteristics.
When it comes to building an ICP, your CRM is the perfect resource. Using the first-party data you import about your audience, it can tell you exactly what kinds of people or companies are likely to buy from you. Plus, a CRM with lead attribution can help inform a more precise marketing return on investment (ROI) calculation.
Your CRM can tell you which marketing strategies are the most cost-effective, giving you information on reallocating your marketing spend more efficiently to improve your ROI.
These are some of the specific benefits CRM can provide to marketers.
CRM data helps you better understand your audience’s needs, interests, characteristics, and more, so you can create CRM campaigns that speak to them. It’s all about providing your customers with as much value as possible. Providing value in alignment with their needs builds brand trust, often leading to a conversion and, ultimately, brand loyalty.
Using a CRM, you can see which channels leads are coming from, which channels drive the most conversions, and how leads interact with your content. This information can help you evaluate and improve your strategies over time.
Observing user behavior on those channels helps you learn more about them. You can gather information on their preferences and interests, which you can use to build out your ICPs and improve your marketing.
Your CRM can help you see beyond the total number of leads and make decisions based on the actual value you’re driving through your marketing efforts.
CRMs help you manage all of your interactions with leads and customers, so you can improve customer service by keeping them engaged, nurturing them toward conversion, and building relationships with them.
Through your CRM, you can track prospect and customer interactions and engagement in a timeline view within each contact’s record. You can also monitor your lead’s journey through the sales funnel, pinpointing bottlenecks preventing conversions and taking action to enhance engagement.
CRMs provide automation capabilities that help marketers save time, leverage personalization, and reduce errors. With this help, marketers can spend less time on repetitive administrative tasks and more time on activities like developing marketing strategies, where they can have the most significant impact.
Automate email drip campaigns, reporting, and more to reinforce your marketing efforts at multiple touchpoints. You can improve your team’s efficiency and productivity through time-saving automation tools and increase revenue.
CRMs let you track specific customer traits and behaviors to constantly refine your audience targeting, allowing for much greater personalization. Personalized marketing campaigns are a great way to better appeal to your audience because they help each audience member feel a closer connection with your brand.
Personalized messaging encourages increased customer engagement, higher conversion rates, and improved customer loyalty.
Every business should keep track of its marketing funnel, observing the buyer’s journey from user to lead to customer. But if your conversion rate is particularly low, it may be because there are holes in your funnel that you could patch up. A CRM can help you identify those holes. You can see where users most commonly exit the funnel and which groups of users most commonly do so.
Use your CRM to segment customer and lead contact lists for more targeted marketing CRM campaigns. Divide your contacts based on specific criteria pertinent to your product and target audience.
For instance, you could segment your contacts list based on demographics, behavior, psychological characteristics, geographic location, and more. Segmentation allows you to deliver specific messaging relevant to each segment for more effective marketing outcomes.
A good CRM solution will give you the option to integrate various apps with your system for added functionality. Most modern CRM platforms allow you to integrate with social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X.
This allows you to synchronize your contacts on your social platforms with your CRM database and add new leads gained through advertising. Monitor leads and contacts brought in through your social channels to gain a better understanding of your audiences on these platforms and use that information to improve engagement.
Because CRM platforms are powerful sales and marketing tools, your marketing team should set objectives and formulate a plan to maximize the software. A solid CRM strategy significantly impacts customer retention and lead generation. In fact, when implemented effectively, your CRM marketing plan can elevate all departments within your organization.
These are some of the core benefits you can enjoy with a great CRM system and constructive strategy in place:
How do CRMs provide these benefits for marketers? Below, we discuss CRM marketing examples.
One of the primary uses of CRMs is collecting and managing customer data. This is also an important element of marketing, and CRMs can help marketers with this in several ways.
A key step in any marketing campaign is capturing lead information, and a CRM like Nutshell makes that process easy.
Nutshell Forms enables marketers to create forms easily, customize the included fields, and embed those forms on their websites. Whenever a new lead fills out that form, that new lead is automatically added to Nutshell.
CRMs integrate with various other tools, from social media platforms to customer service software, enabling them to automatically pull in customer data from other tools in your tech stack. This additional data helps marketers learn even more about their audience and better address their needs.
Once that customer data has been collected, a CRM can also help you put it to use to improve your marketing campaigns.
CRMs can collect many different types of customer data, including demographic and firmographic data, information about interests and preferences, and even data about how users interacted with your website and content, such as which pages they visited on your website and which of your emails they opened.
Marketers can use this information for things like:
The more you know about your audience, the better you can target your campaigns to them. For example, you can use demographic information to target ad campaigns. Or, if your audience often views content about a certain topic, you might write an email newsletter about that topic.
A CRM also makes it easy to segment your audience so that you can tailor your messaging more to different audiences. For example, you could group your customers by industry and then send different emails to each group tailored to their industry.
Customer data also enables you to personalize your content to individual leads or customers. For example, you can automatically include a customer’s name in the subject line of an email newsletter. By integrating your CRM with other tools, you can also show personalized content on your website.
Some CRMs, including Nutshell, feature built-in email marketing. A CRM with email marketing tools like Nutshell’s email marketing, allows you to easily create email audiences from your CRM contacts, automatically send emails based on various triggers or schedules, and track your results.
Below are several CRM campaign examples using email marketing.
When a customer fills out a form on your website and enters their information, like a name and email address, use CRM marketing automation to send them a welcome email. These email greetings are a great way to establish a relationship with the customer and initiate their first transaction.
You can also personalize these emails by including your customer’s name. This personal touch sends customers the message that your brand is paying attention to them and gives the impression that you’re committed to connecting with all customers.
(Pssst— Nutshell’s email marketing software can help you set up automatic drip sequences for all your welcome emails!)
Who doesn’t love birthdays? Consider prompting people to enter their birthdays when creating website forms for your customers. This way, you can send them a birthday greeting each year, along with a special promo code.
This CRM marketing tactic accomplishes two critical things: it strengthens customer loyalty and initiates a purchase.
Often, we forget the information we enter when filling out a form on a website. If a customer forgets they gave you their birthdate and opens their email to find a birthday greeting from you, they’ll be pleasantly surprised. Plus, they might even be a little touched that you wished them a happy birthday in the first place.
Nutshell gives you the power to create forms for your website so you can begin collecting basic customer information and using it to inform your future marketing campaigns.
Customers will see this email as another indication that you care about your customers and pay attention to each one of them. This yearly email can help strengthen your relationships with your customers and encourage customer loyalty for years to come.
Email birthday greetings usually come with some sort of gift, primarily in the form of a promo code. Offering an exclusive promotion on your products or services urges the customers to make a purchase.
If not for the simple fact that they’re getting a sweet discount, it’ll be because of the exclusivity of it. Customers often feel obligated to purchase so they can use their birthday promo because they think they might not get that kind of deal again (until next year, of course).
It creates a sense of urgency and could be the final push a customer needs to finally say yes to that item that’s been sitting in their shopping cart for a while.
Speaking of shopping carts, use CRM marketing automation to remind customers about abandoned items in their online carts.
Whether the customer purposely walked away before making the purchase or genuinely forgot about it, it doesn’t hurt to send a friendly suggestion to pickup where they left off.
Along with reminding customers about abandoned items, CRM marketing automation should be used to notify them about any price changes or sales on items in their cart or on their lists.
It encourages them to make a purchase, gets them back on your site, and allows them to browse your inventory.
Nutshell’s CRM forms gather customer information for a reason— use it to your advantage!
With the information your Nutshell CRM saves, you can better understand the customers you’re selling to. You can see what products individual people have purchased, then use that information (and marketing automation) to send them suggestions for similar products or services they might also want.
This example of CRM marketing is a way to keep communication flowing between you and your customer after a purchase has been made to improve customer retention.
Notice on your CRM that some customers haven’t interacted with your business in a while? Give them a nudge with an email enticing them to come back.
Whether you decide to include a promo offer within that email to give your customer an incentive is up to you, but sending those “We miss you!” emails can really come in handy when you’re trying to reengage with them.
Not only do they remind customers about your brand, but they let your customers know that you haven’t forgotten about them. It’s always a nice feeling to be wanted— give that feeling to your customers with CRM marketing automation.
Using the reporting and analytics features available in many CRMs, you can evaluate your campaign performance and use that information to improve your strategies. CRMs can also automate many typical reporting tasks.
Here are a few examples of how marketers can use a CRM for analytics and reporting.
With Nutshell, you get automatic lead attribution, which enables you to see exactly which channels and sources your leads came from. This feature shows you which channels and campaigns drive the most high-quality leads for your business.
Your CRM can also provide data about which website pages, emails, and other types of content your audience interacted with. This helps you determine which types of content perform best with your audience so you can optimize your campaigns.
Looking for an easy-to-use Customer Relationship Management tool that will help you take your marketing to the next level? Look no further than Nutshell. With Nutshell, you’ll get built-in email marketing, lead attribution, reporting, workflow automation, and much more. Plus, all of our plans come with free customer support.
Ready to get started? Sign up for a 14-day free trial of Nutshell’s flexible CRM to start experiencing the benefits today.
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Table of Contents
There are six stages of customer relationship management that CRM marketing can help your team work through: Awareness, Nurturing, Sales opportunity, Closing, Delivery, and Follow-up/upsell
Your company may find that some CRM marketing strategies are more helpful than others. But how do you choose which to implement? Determine the needs of your target market and use CRM marketing examples that meet those needs. Personalize the customer journey as best as possible. Maintain the relationship without becoming pushy. Use marketing strategies that align with your organization’s brand.
CRM manages customer relationships and stores contact data throughout the entire customer lifecycle, while marketing automation focuses on executing and automating marketing campaigns like email sequences and social media posting. Think of it this way: CRM is your central database for customer information, and marketing automation is the engine that nurtures leads before they reach sales. The good news? Modern platforms like Nutshell combine both, giving you an all-in-one solution.
Most businesses see initial benefits within 90 days and positive ROI within 6-12 months of implementation. Early wins include better data organization and automated workflows, while measurable gains like increased conversions and shorter sales cycles typically appear around month 6. Full optimization with advanced analytics usually happens after 12-18 months. The key is consistent use—companies with high CRM adoption rates see results significantly faster.
No technical expertise required. Modern CRMs like Nutshell are designed for everyday users, not IT specialists. You can set up email campaigns, create automated workflows, and generate reports without writing a single line of code. Most platforms offer drag-and-drop builders, pre-built templates, and guided setup wizards. If you can use email and spreadsheets, you can use a CRM for marketing.
Focus on five core metrics: conversion rate (leads to customers), customer retention rate, sales cycle length, customer lifetime value (CLV), and email engagement rates (opens and clicks). These directly connect to revenue and show whether your CRM marketing efforts are working. Most CRMs like Nutshell provide built-in dashboards that track these automatically, so you don’t have to manually calculate anything.
Small businesses often see the biggest impact from CRM marketing. You don’t need a massive budget or team—71% of small businesses have adopted CRM systems, with many implementing within their first five years. CRM marketing helps small teams do more with less by automating repetitive tasks, personalizing outreach at scale, and preventing leads from falling through the cracks. Platforms like Nutshell are specifically designed for small-to-mid-sized businesses, offering enterprise features without the complexity or cost.
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