How to Choose the Best CRM Email Performance Tool

Finding the best CRM email tool for your business takes a lot of research. Here’s what you should look for – and the pitfalls you want to avoid.

Email is one of the main ways people communicate and is like mission control for everything related to their purchases. From beginning to end, email is right there with them as they make a customer journey. Often, email is where they see the product – and receipts, invoices, and tracking/reservation details also go to that customer’s inbox.

When you consider that 88% of people use email every day, it’s easy to see why learning more about email should be every marketer’s goal. Anything you can do to strengthen email performance is going to benefit your business.

Managing customer data can get messy as your company grows. That’s where a reliable, efficient CRM email tool makes all the difference.

Why email performance tracking matters in a CRM

Data is valuable, but it accumulates quickly. A CRM platform ensures everyone in your team works with the same information and tracks it in real time to make the best decisions. 

Getting near-instant feedback on your email performance allows you to:

• Pull back on initiatives that aren’t yielding results
• Tweak promising projects to boost email engagement
• Double down on your most successful tactics.

Here are some of the essential metrics your CRM email performance tool can provide to help you get more out of your outreach. 

Open rates

If there is one metric that tells you a customer’s level of interest, it’s the percentage of your emails that they open. Are you hitting the average open rate of 21 to 22% for marketing emails?  They’ll open if they view what you do as valuable and interesting.

Low open rates clearly indicate a perceived lower value or disconnect from your messaging. It can also be a way to figure out what communication works best with them and what topics pull them in. For example, you can adjust accordingly if you find they always respond to SMS messages. Whatever the customer’s response is, you must track it in your CRM.

Related: Learn how Apple’s MPP affects email open rates

Click-through rates

It’s helpful to track a customer’s click-through rates because you’ll find essential data to improve your outreach. For instance, you can learn about what buttons or specific language work on a customer, or the type of subject lines they tend to engage with. 

Do your emails create the right amount of urgency? You may inspire them to open your emails, but not the right dynamic to get them to click.

Bounce rates

Monitoring your bounce rates is crucial to your email performance. Getting too many email bounces – more than 2% – is like kryptonite to your email marketing. It’s certain to prevent your emails from landing in the inboxes of all of your customers. So, if an email bounces, don’t send another email to that address. 

There’s a clear connection between effective email tracking and higher customer engagement and ROI. The more you study your email metrics, the more potential you have to convert and increase your sales volume. 

Essential features: How to pick the best CRM email tool

When selecting the best CRM email tool, focus on features that give insights into your customers and adapt as your business grows. Let’s break down these core features so you can find the platform that takes your company to the next level.

Key metrics: Getting insight into performance

An effective CRM should provide detailed reporting on your email performance. More than simply tracking open, click-through, and bounce rates, the best CRM email tool should help you get insight into trends and patterns in customer behavior. 

These metrics give you a clear understanding of:

• Email deliverability: You want your messages to consistently reach customers’ inboxes. If your campaigns are going to the spam folder, a good CRM allows you to pinpoint issues before they affect your outreach.
• Engagement rates: Open and click-through rates are two indicators of how well your content resonates with your audience. Aside from these metrics, the best CRM email tools also report unsubscribes and spam complaints so you can fine-tune your messaging for a more significant impact.
• Conversion tracking: Let’s be honest – it’s not only about clicks, it’s about outcomes. Your job depends on it, and your CRM software should show whether your emails drive purchases, sign-ups, or other actions that are tied to your goals. It’s not the only metric that matters, but it’s what keeps your company growing.

Integrations: Connect your CRM email tool to other platforms

Make your work easier, and you’ll have more energy for creativity. Your CRM’s ability to integrate with other tools is a game-changer. Whether you use marketing platforms like Mailchimp or enterprise software like Salesforce, your CRM should be able to connect easily.

Integrations enable you to:

• Automatically sync contact information and email engagement history
• Use third-party tools for additional data analysis or to enhance email customization
• Create a view of your customer journey across platforms.

The best CRM email tools out there have built-in and third-party integrations to help you be more efficient and successful in your outreach efforts.

Scalability: Can your CRM tool keep up?

As your business grows, so do your email marketing demands. So you need to find a CRM software that accommodates higher email volumes and more ways to segment your audience. 

You may also want a CRM that offers AI-driven insights. Choosing a scalable tool ensures that your CRM can keep pace no matter how complex your email strategy becomes.

Focusing on key metrics, integrations, and scalability features will ensure that your CRM email tool delivers measurable results and supports your long-term growth.

How ZeroBounce supports CRM email optimization

Did you know that almost a third (28%) of an email list goes bad every year? If you rely on email to increase revenue, you must remember to check the validity of your data regularly. 

This process of checking email address quality is called email validation. An email validator scans your database to detect and remove obsolete, fake, and risky contacts. 

Parting with this data has two advantages:

1. You’ll no longer pay to store bad data in your CRM. Instead, you can keep only genuine leads you can focus on converting.
2. Your email deliverability will increase, so more of your prospects will see your emails. 

Your CRM manages your communications and strategies with customers. An email validation service like ZeroBounce is a natural complement to your CRM tool as it ensures your contacts are real and valid. It helps reduce your bounce rates and land in the inbox so you won’t waste your time sending emails that only lead to a dead end.

Take these steps to choose the best CRM email tool

Choosing a CRM is not a decision to take lightly. There are so many aspects to consider – features, reliability, price, and customer support. So it takes some effort in the beginning when you’re trying to find that perfect fit. 

But it doesn’t need to be overwhelming. You can approach it in three steps: research, test, and invest.

1. Research the available CRM tools to identify those with the features you need. Evaluate what your business needs. Can you contact support staff to ask some questions? Try to contact a real person to ask some questions. If you can’t reach someone, it will give you a taste of what may happen if you run into any issues down the road.
   
2. Test the CRM tool. Get a demo or trial period to try the CRM’s features. If unsure, compare two CRM tools to see which works best. Pay attention to all the details and workflows – sometimes, it’s those details that help make you more efficient.
   
3. Invest in the best CRM email tool for your organization. You may not want to go with the lowest-cost option. Weigh the pros and cons, and consider increasing your budget if you find an excellent platform. Then, determine how to set up the CRM and integrate it with your current software. 

As your customer base grows, you need a reliable CRM tool to keep track of your email performance and understand how you can improve. Once you find it, test every feature – it’s there to help you better serve your customers and grow your business.