'What is the difference between Email Marketing and CRM?' with Dan Roylance

Where does the confusion stem from?                                                    
As someone who’s been in the industry for a while, we asked Dan why he thought people find it difficult to understand the difference.

‘I can see how people get confused as email marketing is very much ingrained in CRM. There is an overlap in what these both do, but the main difference is that email is only a part of CRM strategy.”

What do they entail?
In comparison to email marketing, CRM represents a much broader approach to marketing that envelops additional channels. That’s not to say that email marketing isn’t often an integral part of any business's marketing strategy, CRM simply elevates this to a more consumer-centric, long-term perspective.

So, what does that actually look like in terms of the day-to-day function of a CRM team?

“CRM considers additional channels outside of email, such as: Direct mail, SMS and more recently, even social channels such as WhatsApp.”

These additional channels enable the CRM marketeer to reach their target audience in a variety of locations and approaches that aren’t accessible via email, allowing for more targeted and relevant content. In this way, CRM is more strategic and looks at the bigger picture, asking questions such as: Where do customers come from? How and when have they interacted with us? What has their experience of the brand been?

Putting the consumer first
Here lies the biggest difference between the two:

“Traditionally, email marketing is focused purely on the performance of email campaign metrics. In CRM we focus on the customer’s overall journey and classify them into various groups using segmentation. For example, 1^st purchase, lapsed customers, abandoned baskets, etc. As a result, we can send out the relevant communication, at the appropriate time, through the most effective medium for that customer's specific journey.”

Data, Analytics and Insight
It’s clear to see how this more personalised, consumer-focused approach can prove so successful – by utilizing historical information to inform future activities, campaigns can be optimised. As a result, CRM is also ultimately becoming more and more driven by more thorough data analytics and insight than email marketing.

Whilst email marketing maintains quite top-level analysis or campaign KPI’s, CRM digs much deeper. The sheer quantity of data that can now be captured enables CRM teams to build up a clear picture of who their audience is, and how to target them. Again, this can only be advantageous for the customer as they’ll receive content that is tailored to them, rather than generic emails which adopt the “spray-and-pray” approach.