6 Best CRMs for Email Marketing 2019

Customer relationship management (CRM) software designed for email marketing falls into one of two categories: CRMs with marketing automation tools, and CRMs that seamlessly integrate with third-party email marketing tools. We looked at a dozen CRMs from both categories to come up with the top six CRMs for email marketing.

Top 6 CRMs for Email Marketing 2019

How We Evaluated the Best CRMs for Email Marketing

Businesses looking for a CRM for email marketing need a tool that either includes automated email functionality, or seamlessly integrates with a marketing automation tool. With that in mind, we looked at which email features are included in the CRM, what tracking and list segmentation capabilities are available, and the overall price compared to separate products. We also evaluated CRMs based on how well they integrate with dedicated email marketing tools.

We evaluated the best CRMs for email marketing based on the following criteria:

• Price: Being able to do email marketing from within a CRM means that you are able to save the cost associated with multiple software tools. We looked at the pricing for each option and what businesses save with a consolidated tool.
• Ease of Use: We evaluated how intuitive each option is at creating and managing email campaigns, designing individual emails, and what options are available for importing your existing data into a new software tool.
• Automation Tools: The primary benefit of email marketing tools is that they let you create automated campaigns. With that in mind, we considered what features are included to design drip campaigns and track email interactions.
• List Segmentation: Targeting your message at the right audience is an important part of email marketing, and we looked at how the CRM handles creating segments of your contact lists, including whether it will automatically segment lists based on engagement.
• Integrations: We looked at how easy it is to connect the CRM to not only email marketing software and tools, but other productivity and sales tools like Gmail and Outlook.
• Reporting: To be effective, your email marketing efforts need to be tracked and measured. We evaluated the best options based on what type of reporting is available for your email marketing campaigns, including subscribe/unsubscribe and engagement.

Based on these factors we recommend HubSpot CRM as the best overall CRM for email marketing due to the ease of use, price, and combination of customer relationship and marketing automation features. HubSpot’s marketing hub features make it the most powerful CRM for email marketing, while still being easy to set up and use by any small business.

Best Overall CRM With Marketing Automation: HubSpot CRM

HubSpot’s CRM is free and includes lead, contact, and deal management, while the Marketing Hub includes landing pages for generating subscribers, email templates and mass sending, analytics, and automated workflows starting at $50 per month. HubSpot has the most intuitive interface and includes simple-to-use tools for creating email marketing campaigns built into the CRM, making it the best for small businesses who want a sales tool with email functionality.

HubSpot CRM Pricing

HubSpot CRM is free and the marketing hub features can be added for either $50 or $800 per month depending on the overall set of advanced features added. HubSpot also charges a fee of $20 per additional 1,000 contacts based on the total number in your database, except on the free plan.

HubSpot CRM Tiered Features

Free

HubSpot’s CRM is free to use with up to 1 million records and includes lead, contact, and deal management features. While the free plan does not include mass email sending, it does give you the ability to create and save email templates, track whether an email has been opened, and it integrates directly with a number of email marketing tools like Mailchimp. HubSpot also integrates with Constant Contact, Active Campaign, and Infusionsoft using Zapier.

The free plan is the best option for businesses that are looking to get started with a simple-to-use CRM as they grow. The integration with Mailchimp makes it easy to keep your lists and reporting information in sync across both software platforms, especially for businesses that are just starting to use email marketing to attract new customers since Mailchimp also offers a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers.

HubSpot Contact interface

Marketing Hub Starter

The Marketing Hub Starter is $50 per month for up to 1,000 contacts, plus $20 per month, per 1,000 additional contacts. This tier adds mass email sending and allows up to five times your contact level in email sends. For example, if you pay for 5,000 contacts, you can send up to 25,000 emails per month. This tier also includes list segmenting, allowing you to create both static and dynamic lists that automatically update as contact information changes.

The Starter tier is a great choice for businesses that are looking for an integrated contact management and email marketing tool, and want to create landing pages and forms that integrate seamlessly with their sales tool. Since HubSpot simply adds additional features to the existing CRM based on the marketing hub you select, it is the most intuitive and simple to use.

Marketing Hub Professional

The Professional tier of the HubSpot marketing hub add-on is $800 per month, plus the additional charge per 1,000 contacts. It includes the content management system allowing you to build forms and landing pages and integrate them into your existing website to generate email subscribers. It also includes workflow automation tools that are as powerful as Infusionsoft, but much easier to use to design your email marketing campaigns.

This tier is the best option for businesses that want fully-featured marketing automation features built into their CRM. While this plan seems expensive, it includes the most advanced set of email marketing features of any of the options we reviewed except Infusionsoft. It also does not charge per user, meaning that for larger teams it is likely more affordable than comparable plans from Salesforce or Freshworks CRM, who charge per user.

What HubSpot CRM Is Missing

HubSpot CRM does not have direct integrations with some of the common email marketing automation tools. Instead, it requires a third-party tool like Zapier or Automate.io to keep your email and contact records in sync. HubSpot also lacks some of the advanced reporting tools found in Salesforce Essentials or Freshworks CRM’s higher tiers.

What Users Think About HubSpot CRM

HubSpot users give it high marks for the overall ease of use and powerful features like lead nurturing and email designer features. They also like that HubSpot doesn’t charge per user, unlike most other options. At the same time, users mention that it can be expensive to subscribe to plans that fully take advantage of automation features, especially for smaller teams.

Where to Find HubSpot CRM

HubSpot is a CRM and marketing automation tool that includes lead generation, contact management, sales pipelines, and email marketing tools. The CRM is free, and the marketing hub beings at $50 per month for 1,000 contacts. Additional contacts are $20 per 1,000. HubSpot offers a 30-day free trial of its advanced features. Visit HubSpot for more information.

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Best Enterprise-Level Sales Tools With Basic Email: Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials is a small business CRM with powerful sales management features as well as email marketing tools. Essentials is $25/user per month, for up to 10 users, which is more expensive than entry-level plans from other options. However, it is the best option for small teams that need advanced sales tools like reporting and lead assignment routing, along with the ability to send mass emails to leads and customers.

Salesforce Essentials Pricing

Salesforce Essentials is $25/user per month, for up to 10 users, making it more expensive than most of the options on this list, as well as more limited to smaller sales teams. The more advanced Professional tier is $75/user per month, for as many users as you need.

Salesforce Essentials Tiered Features

Salesforce Essentials

Sales Essentials is $25/user per month for up to 10 users, and includes contact management, sales pipelines, and mass emails. Users can create and send target marketing emails to contact lists and track engagement including opens and link clicks. In addition, the Essentials plan includes the service module, allowing users to create support cases within the CRM and link them to a contact’s history.

Salesforce Essentials Deal Pipeline

Salesforce Essentials is more expensive than entry-level plans from Freshworks CRM, Zoho, or HubSpot, but it includes a more comprehensive set of advanced CRM features as well as service and support features built in. While Salesforce does not offer a free plan, it is ideal for businesses that have a small sales team but need a robust set of CRM features for managing the sales process and sending mass emails to their leads and customers.

Salesforce Professional

Salesforce Professional is $75/user per month, and is a fully-featured CRM platform with advanced features like lead scoring, forecasting, advanced reporting, and permission features. It also allows extensive customization of the software making it the most robust overall CRM for email marketing we compared, as well as the most expensive per user. The mass email features are the same as Essentials, however, it does allow for more customizable reporting.

The Professional plan is designed for larger sales teams who need advanced features like automated campaigns, collaborative forecasting, contract management, and rules-based lead scoring. While it is likely to be overkill for most small businesses, this plan is a good choice for established business-to-business (B2B) sales teams that need a comprehensive CRM that includes built-in mass email sending based on customer segments.

What Salesforce Essentials Is Missing

Salesforce Essentials is restricted to 10 users per account, meaning that larger teams are forced to upgrade to Lightning Professional. This makes Salesforce the most expensive option on this list for mid-sized teams. Salesforce Essentials also lacks built-in HR and social media management features, both of which are found in Zoho.

What Users Think About Salesforce Essentials

Users give Salesforce Essentials positive reviews for the updated Lightning interface, which is far more intuitive than the legacy Salesforce platform. Users also rate it highly for its advanced features and customization options as well as its reporting and analytics. However, many users comment that Salesforce requires extensive setup and training.

Where to Find Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials is a powerful CRM for $25/user per month for up to 10 users. In addition, the Professional plan is $75/user per month with more advanced CRM features. Salesforce offers a 14-day trial, allowing users to try out the plan that best fits their needs. Visit Salesforce to start your free trial today.

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Best eCommerce CRM With Email Marketing: Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is an all-in-one marketing automation and CRM that includes both contact management, sales automation, and email marketing tools. It is designed for ecommerce businesses as it is an all-in-one software tool that generates leads, creates automated email marketing campaigns, and allows you to sell products and services in an online shop. Pricing begins at $199 per month and increases based on the number of contacts in your database.

Infusionsoft Pricing

Infusionsoft offers three tiers based on the number of contacts you have. Pricing ranges from $199 to $399 per month depending on the number of contacts (starting at 2,500). Each tier offers the same set of features, although the top tier does also include an online shopping cart not offered at the other levels.

Infusionsoft Features

Infusionsoft includes both contact management and email marketing features that are designed to generate and nurture leads for ecommerce businesses. It allows you to capture leads online, market to them via email, and send them to your online store, all from one software tool.

Some of the features included with Infusion soft are:

Contact Management

Infusionsoft includes the ability to manage leads and contacts, as well as keeping track of your sales process. Infusionsoft feeds leads generated through landing pages and forms into your contact database where you can move them through your sales process. Because the contact management and email marketing tools are a part of the same software, Infusionsoft gives you a detailed history of the lead’s email engagement, as well as lead scoring based on their activity.

List Segmenting

Infusionsoft allows you to create different contact lists in order to send targeted email marketing based on factors like recent activity, website interactions, locations, or even past purchases. You can also create lists that are automatically updated based on new email subscribers, or changes in existing ecommerce customer profiles.

Email Designer

The email designer allows you to choose from pre-designed templates, customize, or create your very own designs using a drag and drop interface. Only HubSpot has a similar feature in the products included here. The designer will also save past emails so that you can simply reuse the layout and design for your future email sends. The designer is intuitive and makes it easy to create professional-looking marketing emails.

Marketing Automation

Infusionsoft has the most advanced marketing automation tools of the options we considered, with the exception of HubSpot, though it is significantly less expensive than HubSpot’s Professional tier. It allows you to design campaigns that include A/B testing to optimize your email marketing efforts, and the automation tool allows you to map out campaigns with multiple layers of action triggers.

What Infusionsoft Is Missing

Infusionsoft doesn’t have a traditional deal pipeline that many other popular small business CRM include. This is primarily because it is designed for online sales, usually for B2C sales teams. Infusionsoft also lacks some of the integrations with third-party providers found in Salesforce, Zoho, or Freshworks CRM for example.

What Users Think About Infusionsoft

Users give Infusionsoft positive reviews for its ability to fully automate your marketing and sales process, which saves time and effort when it comes to nurturing a large number of online leads. They also like how easy it is to design emails, however, some users commented that they wish there was a larger library of existing templates that could be used as a starting point.

Where to Find Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is an ecommerce CRM with marketing automation tools that makes it easy to generate leads, send automated email campaigns, and win new customers. It includes one of the most robust sets of email marketing features, with pricing beginning at $199 for up to 2,500 contacts. Visit Infusionsoft to get started today.

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Best For Social Media Lead Targeting: Nimble CRM

Nimble CRM is a contact management tool that includes basic email marketing in addition to the ability to manage your sales process. Nimble costs $19/user per month and includes social media lead generation, sales pipeline management, and email marketing with up to 100 emails per day, per user. Nimble is the best choice for businesses that generate leads through social media and want to give their sales team the ability to send group email marketing messages.

Nimble Pricing

Nimble charges $19/user per month, for contact, lead, and deal management, along with social media features like monitoring, publishing, and lead generation. It also includes group email messaging and tracking.

Nimble Features

Nimble offers simple tools for generating leads via social media, segmenting them into contact lists, and sending marketing emails as a part of your lead nurturing process. Users can send up to 100 email marketing messages per day, which is more limited than other options on the list, but a good choice for sales teams that want to be able to follow up with groups of contacts as a part of their lead nurturing process.

A few of the features of Nimble CRM include:

Contact Management

Nimble includes contact management features including the ability to organize your leads and customers, and create segments based on a variety of criteria. It also automatically enriches contact records with information pulled from their social media profiles.

Nimble Contacts Management Courtesy Nimble CRM

Group Email Marketing

The group email marketing feature allows users to select a list of contacts and send them an email that can be tracked and measured. For example, a sales rep might send a follow-up email to a group of contacts who completed a specific form, or to a group that is requesting a product demo. While these features are limited compared to HubSpot, Infusionsoft, or Salesforce, they are ideal for businesses that want to be able to send basic, target email marketing messages.

Social Media Lead Generation

Nimble allows you to monitor your brand mentions on social media, view engagements and respond accordingly. It also allows you to schedule posts and interact with your leads and customers via social media. As a result, you are able to generate leads and move them through your sales process using social media, features that aren’t available in any of the options we reviewed other than Zoho.

What Nimble Is Missing

Nimble does not offer the ability to send mass automated email campaigns, or drip email marketing, which is available in HubSpot and Infusionsoft. It focuses on allowing users to send group emails to a selected list. Nimble also lacks the advanced reporting features found in CRMs like Salesforce or Freshworks CRM.

What Users Think About Nimble CRM

Nimble users like that they are able to easily capture social media leads and create targeted group emails on the fly. They also like that there are extensive integrations available to connect your contact information with the other business tools they use. On the downside, users comment that they wish that it had more robust reporting tools.

Where to Find Nimble CRM

Nimble is a CRM that makes it easy to send target group emails to leads generated from social media, and move them through your sales process. Nimble costs $19/user per month for lead, customer, and deal management as well as social media listing and profile enhancement, and a free trial is available to see if it’s a good fit. Visit Nimble for more information.

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Best CRM With Email Marketing for Large Teams: Freshworks CRM

Freshworks CRM is a robust CRM that includes contact and deal management tools along with the ability to send mass emails. Freshworks CRM features an intuitive interface that can easily be configured for any sales organization. With a free-forever plan and paid plans starting at $12/user per month, Freshworks CRM is the best choice for larger sales teams since it offers an affordable pricing tier that includes mass email sending.

Freshworks CRM Pricing

Freshworks CRM offers four pricing tiers, including a free plan that offers basic contact management for unlimited users. Advanced workflows, lead assignment routing, automated lead scoring, and email marketing features are available ranging from $12/user per month to $49/user per month.

Freshworks CRM Tiered Features

Sprout

The Sprout plan is Freshworks CRM’s free-forever plan and includes entry-level contact management features for an unlimited number of users. The free plan does not include mass email sending capabilities but is a good basic contact management database, though it lacks features found in the free HubSpot CRM.

The Sprout plan features the same intuitive interface and mobile app that are part of why it is considered among the best CRMs for small business. While it is not a CRM with email marketing, it is still ideal for sales teams that are looking primarily for an affordable tool for managing basic contact relationships and sales opportunities.

Freshworks CRM contact landing page (Source: Freshworks CRM)

Blossom

The Blossom plan is $12/user per month, which makes it one of the more affordable entry-level paid plans, similar in price to Zoho. In addition to customizing your sales pipelines and workflows, users can send up to 250 marketing emails per day. It also allows you to create and save templates and includes email tracking, which has become standard for CRMs with email marketing features.

The Blossom plan includes a sales pipeline tool that makes it easy to move opportunities through the stages of your sales process. Users can even initiate emails from this pipeline, which makes it easy to reach out to leads and customers in a timely manner. Freshworks CRM also includes email scheduling at this plan level, making it a good choice for reps who need an easy tool for scheduling prospect and customer appointments.

Garden

The Garden plan is $25/user per month, and adds more advanced team management and territory management features, as well as account hierarchies. The email sending is increased to 500 emails per day. Like Zoho and Salesforce, this plan also includes the ability to automatically assign incoming leads based on criteria you set up, and then trigger automated emails to nurture leads.

The Garden Plan is the best overall choice for mid-sized sales teams that manage large numbers of leads and are looking for a simple-to-use CRM that allows them to send targeted email messages to selected lists of contacts. The Garden plan is more expensive than Nimble and Zoho’s mid-level plan, but does offer more advanced workflow management and reporting but lacks the social media lead features found in both.

Estate

The Estate plan is $49/user per month, and adds advanced reporting as well as the ability to customize multiple sales pipelines. It also includes automatic profile enrichment that adds context based on your contact’s email address. Automatic lead scoring available in this plan also incorporates website activity as well as email engagement in the lead scoring, which is a unique feature among the options we considered.

Email sending is increased to 1,000 per day, and the smart forms feature allows you to capture lead information from existing forms on your website using a code snippet. This allows you to easily funnel new subscribers into your CRM and move them through your sales process using automated email campaigns. This plan is comparable in price to other top-tier plans we reviewed, and is a great choice for larger teams looking for a CRM with marketing automation.

What Freshworks CRM Is Missing

Freshworks CRM doesn’t include order management, pricing, or invoicing tools, which are available in alternatives like Zoho and Salesforce. Freshworks CRM also does not include support features built in like Salesforce and HubSpot have. It does, however, integrate with Freshdesk, one of the best support desk tools available for small businesses.

What Users Think About Freshworks CRM

Freshworks CRM users like the intuitive interface, and give it high marks for a relatively easy setup process, especially compared to Salesforce and Zoho. Users do wish the automated workflow features were more robust and that the lower-tier plans had more customizable reporting options.

Where to Find Freshworks CRM

Freshworks CRM is a flexible CRM for small businesses with email marketing tools that make it easy to send targeted messages to your leads and customers. The simple setup, intuitive interface, customizable sales pipeline, and workflows make it a powerful tool to manage your customer relationships. Freshworks CRM offers a free-forever plan as well as a 30-day free trial of any plan.

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Best Email Marketing CRM With Productivity Suite: Zoho CRM

Zoho is an all-in-one small business CRM with contact, lead, and order management with paid plans beginning at $12/user per month. Zoho CRM also integrates with Zoho Campaigns, a dedicated email marketing tool. Most importantly, Zoho features a robust set of productivity software including word processing, order management, business email, and accounting software making it ideal for businesses that want an all-in-one solution.

Zoho Pricing

Zoho offers a free plan for up to three users that includes contact and opportunity management, but also social media connections. Additional functionality and customization are offered through its paid plans, which range between $12/user per month and $20/user per month, keeping it in-line with other products we compared.

Zoho Tiered Features

Free

Zoho’s Free plan supports up to three users and includes lead and contact management, which is similar to other free plans, though HubSpot offers far more in the way of features for a free CRM. It also has more unique activity tracking features, such as phone logging and social media connections, which are not available on many other free plans.

The Free plan, however, lacks the email marketing features in the higher-tiered plans. However, it is still best for teams of three or less that want to integrate their CRM with the overall family of productivity software.

Zoho Contacts Interface

Standard

The Standard plan costs $12/user per month and allows users to add custom fields and create custom reports that can then be scheduled and delivered to users. Like the Free plan, the Standard plan integrates with Twitter and Facebook.

It also allows you to send up to 250 bulk emails per day and track website visitor interactions. It also includes sales forecasting, which is a feature that is usually only found in higher-tiered plans. Since it connects with the overall Zoho suite of software, it’s a good option for sales teams that want to be able to send and track emails, while keeping all of their business software in one place.

Professional

The Professional plan offers product management functionality, like Salesforce, but also offers purchase order and invoice management and costs $20/user per month, keeping it in line with similar product pricing tiers. The Professional plan also includes access to Zoho’s proprietary SalesSignals functionality, which automates lead scoring, helps you better prioritize lead follow-up, and increases email sending to 500 emails per day.

Its custom field offering and conditional follow-up rules that can be tied to CRM field updates make it great for teams looking for either a tool with a high degree of customization potential or workflow automation. The Professional plan is also best for those who would like to capture leads directly from social media.

What Zoho Is Missing

Zoho CRM does not have the advanced sales pipeline customization or reporting found in Salesforce. Zoho also does not have as advanced real-time integrations with third-party tools like Mailchimp, especially in lower-tier plans.

What Users Think About Zoho

Zoho CRM users like that you can configure the software to fit your sales process, and give it positive reviews for the overall software family. Zoho users also like using the setup wizards, which make it far less cumbersome to get started than options like Salesforce. However, one area where reviewers express frustration is with Zoho’s customer service response times.

Where to Find Zoho

Zoho CRM is a comprehensive CRM with contact and deal management, and integrations with other Zoho software like Campaigns, word processing, email, and accounting. It’s a great choice for businesses wanting a CRM with email marketing as well as an all-in-one productivity suite, with plans starting at $12/user per month. Visit Zoho to sign up for a 15-day free trial.

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Bottom Line

Finding the best CRM for email marketing for your business means looking at options with marketing automation built in, or that integrate with third-party providers like Mailchimp. Depending on your specific needs, these six providers offer a balance of customer relationship management and email marketing.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that offers a powerful CRM and advanced email marketing automation features like drip campaigns, lead scoring, email tracking, and templates, HubSpot is the best option. The CRM is free, and the Marketing Hub starts at $50 per month for up to 1,000 contacts. HubSpot offers a 14-day free trial. Visit its site to get started.

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