Marketer's Space - Get effortless subscription management for CRM-synced contacts using Journeys

Marketer's Space - Get effortless subscription management for CRM-synced contacts using Journeys


Hello, marketers! Welcome to another post in the CRM Integration Series in Marketers’ Space. We’ve been exploring how integrating Zoho CRM with Zoho Marketing Automation (ZMA) can enhance your marketing efforts, especially via the Journeys feature. This week, we’ll focus on how you can automate subscription management for contacts synced from Zoho CRM using Journeys.

Why automate subscription management?

Both your team and your customers can update subscription preferences. To stay compliant and ensure your communications are relevant, it’s crucial to manage these updates efficiently. You can:
  • Manually update subscription lists.
  • Automate subscription updates using Journeys.
Let’s see how Zoho Marketing Automation’s Journeys make this process effortless.

Sync CRM contacts with a targeted list

Since we're working with contacts synced from Zoho CRM, start by adding them to a specific list during the sync.
This enables you to target them later using Journey triggers like the following:
  • “Added to list” trigger: Starts a journey when a contact is added to a list. 
  • “Criteria match” trigger: Targets contacts based on their list memberships and other criteria.

   

Capture customer interests in Zoho CRM

Your sales team can capture customer interests in a custom field in Zoho CRM. For instance, they could create a text field called “Interests,” which sales reps can update with values like “sale” and “new product launch.”

Add topics in Zoho Marketing Automation

In ZMA, you can create topics to categorize your campaigns:
Go to Contacts > Topics and click on Add Topic.
Group topics under relevant categories, such as:
  • Newsletters
  • New product launches
  • Exclusive member content
  • Sale announcements

Create an automated subscription journey

1. Set up the trigger

  • Create a new journey and add the “Added to list” trigger. Then select the list where your CRM contacts are synced. This ensures that only relevant contacts enter the Journey.
  • Alternatively, you can use the “Criteria match” trigger and set list membership as a condition to filter contacts. For even more precision, refine the entry criteria further based on additional conditions or custom CRM fields.


2. Segment based on interests

  • Add a multi-way split component and configure it by setting criteria: “Interests”.
  • Create branches for each interest, like “Sale” or “New Product Launch.”
  • Add “No Interests” for the “Else" branch.

3. Automate subscription updates

  • Under each branch, add the “Subscription Management” action.
  • Configure it to subscribe contacts to a relevant topic.
  • For the “Sale” branch, select “Add Subscription to Marketing Topics” and select the topic “Sale Announcements”.
  • Repeat for other branches.
  • For the “No Interests” branch, select “Unsubscribe From All Topics” to avoid sending irrelevant emails.


If your business runs exclusive member campaigns, you can also do this by adding a “Customer Type” field in Zoho CRM (e.g., Members and Non-Members). With this segmentation, you can create a separate Journey that automatically assigns “Members Only” topics to eligible contacts, which ensures exclusive content reaches the right audience while keeping non-members in a separate communication flow.
Idea

Handling Multiple Topic Subscriptions

If a customer wants to subscribe to multiple topics instead of just one, use the “contains” modifier instead of “is” when setting up conditions. This ensures that contacts interested in more than one topic are correctly identified and subscribed to all relevant categories, allowing them to receive communication related to multiple topics without restrictions.

Automate subscription management with the “Added to Segment” trigger

You can also achieve the same automation using the “Added to Segment” trigger. If you prefer not to sync CRM contacts into a list, you can set up a segment instead and define the criteria to be matched.

Once the segment is created, you can build a new Journey using the “Added to Segment” trigger and configure the appropriate subscription management actions for that segment.

This ensures the following:
  • The segment is automatically updated whenever a contact meets the defined criteria.
  • Any new contact entering the segment is immediately enrolled in the Journey, which triggers the relevant subscription updates without the need for manual intervention.
With Journeys in Zoho Marketing Automation, your subscription management can be completely automated and dynamic. No more manual updates or guesswork—just seamless, automated audience segmentation. Try it out, and let us know how it works for you. See you next week with more ways to supercharge the Zoho CRM + ZMA integration. Until then, happy marketing!

Regards,
Pearlin Nitika
User education | Zoho Marketing Automation

    • Recent Topics

    • Move email between inboxes?

      Is it possible to move emails from one team inbox to another? We would like to be able to have a single "catch-all" inbox for incoming requests, and then move the email to the appropriate department inbox. I was hoping we would be able to accomplish this

    • Updating records through Zoho Sheets View doesn't update timeline or trigger workflow rules

      I have noticed that when i update a series of record with the zoho sheets view (see here http://d.pr/i/ahnR) it doesn't update timeline history or trigger workflow rules. I am using it in the Deals module. Looking forward for some more info. Denis

    • Manage control over Microsoft Office 365 integrations with profile-based sync permissions

      Greetings all, Previously, all users in Zoho CRM had access to enable Microsoft integrations (Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) in their accounts, regardless of their profile type. Users with administrator profiles can now manage profile-based permissions

    • inability to use different primary address on invoice per location

      my company operates in two different locations with different email address. The problems then is the inability to edit the primary to suite the invoice for the second location.

    • AI Search and Record Retrieval Inside Zoho Creator – Is This Possible?

      Is it possible to integrate an AI assistant into Zoho Creator that can intelligently search, retrieve, and analyze records within the application’s forms and reports? Can AI access and query existing Creator data securely using Deluge or APIs to provide

    • Rename Service Report

      Some of our customers are requesting the name of the service report PDF to be in a specific format, for example, instead of REP-001.PDF some are requesting to include their name like customername.pdf. is that possible?

    • AI Search and Record Retrieval Inside Zoho Creator – Is This Possible?

      Is it possible to integrate an AI assistant into Zoho Creator that can intelligently search, retrieve, and analyze records within the application’s forms and reports? Can AI access and query existing Creator data securely using Deluge or APIs to provide

    • Scheduled AU Data Center Database Version Upgrade for Zoho Forms

      Dear Zoho Forms' users, We would like to update you on a scheduled AU Data Center database version upgrade for Zoho Forms. Find the schedule below: Migration window: Sunday, 22nd February 2026 12.00 AM to 12.30 AM AEDT This migration is a part of our

    • Cannot get code to work with v2.mergeAndStore!

      Please can someone help me pass subform items into a repeating mail merge table row using v2.mergeAndStore? I have a mail merge template created in Writer and stored in Workdrive. This template is referenced by a custom CRM function which merges all of

    • Hotmail is blocking the zoho mail IP

      Greetings, Since last Tuesday (5 days ago today) I wrote to Zoho support and I still haven't received a single response (Ticket ID: 2056917). Is this how you treat people who pay for your email service? I am making this public so that those who want to

    • Zoho Bookings and Survey Integration through Flow

      I am trying to set up flows where once an appointment is marked as completed in Zoho Bookings, the applicable survey form would be sent to the customer. Problem is, I cannot customise flows wherein if Consultation A is completed, Survey Form A would be

    • Zoho CRM Community Digest - December 2025 | Part 2

      Hello Everyone! During the final weeks of December, Zoho CRM introduced updates that not only enhanced product capabilities but also offered deeper guidance through Kaizen posts. This section highlights what was released and shared in the last two weeks

    • CRUD actions for Resources via API

      Hello, is it possible to perform CRUD actions through the API for Resources? We want to create a sync from Zoho CRM Car record to Bookings resources to create availabilities for Car bookings. For Test drives, not only the sales person needs to be available,

    • Kaizen #186 : Client Script Support for Subforms

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another exciting Kaizen post on Client Script! In this edition, we’re taking a closer look at Client Script Support for Subforms with the help of the following scenario. " Zylker, a manufacturing company, uses the "Orders"

    • Unable to Assign Multiple Categories to a Single Product in Zoho Commerce

      Hello Zoho Commerce Support Team, I am facing an issue while assigning categories to products in Zoho Commerce. I want to assign multiple categories to a single product, but in the Item edit page, the Category field allows selecting only one category

    • オンライン勉強会のお知らせ Zoho ワークアウト （2/19 参加無料）

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 2月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 ▶︎参加登録はこちら（無料） https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6AyVUxp6QDmMQiDGXGkxPA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは？ Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目指すイベント「Zoho

    • doubts about customer happiness in zoho desk

      Good afternoon, Desk community. The reason for my message is that I have a question regarding the customer satisfaction surveys we can ask our clients to rate our service. I know that in Desk, you can activate Customer Happiness to send a survey to the

    • COQL API in JS Widget only pulling 200 records

      Hello! We've been building a custom homepage widget using the Zoho JS SDK, and it seems that this https://help.zwidgets.com/help/latest/ZOHO.CRM.API.html#.coql only allows 200 records. I thought the limit was 2000 for COQL queries, but am I mistaken?

    • Standard Description Field - Can I change label or add dd tooltip

      Is there a way fo you guys to allow the customer to change the label name for the description field in the customer portal when submitting tickets. Or at least allow us to add a tooltip to clarify what description we need from them. I know I can create my own separate multi line description field but if I do that, it doesn't have the nice toolbar with Bold, Italic, Underline, color, font, indent, etc. Can you please allow us to add a tooltip to the zoho standard description field?

    • Introducing parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk [Early access]

      Hello Zoho Desk users! We have introduced the parent-child ticketing system to help customer service teams ensure efficient resolution of issues involving multiple, related tickets. You can now combine repetitive and interconnected tickets into parent-child

    • Ability to CC on a mass email

      Ability to CC someone on a mass email.

    • Different Task Layouts for Subtasks

      I was wondering how it would be possible for a subtask to have a different task layout to the parent task.

    • Shift Question

      Can someone explain why it says weekend during Monday-Friday? Manager set Zoho up and has handed over to me and I can't get figured out how to change this.

    • Compensation | Salary Packages - Hourly Wage Needed

      The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says 55.7% of all workers in the US are paid by the hour. I don't know how that compares to the rest of the world, but I would think that this alone would justify the need for having an hourly-based salary package option.

    • Customizing Helpcenter texts

      I’m customizing the Zoho Desk Help Center and I’d like to change the wording of the standard widgets – for example, the text in the “Submit Ticket” banner that appears in the footer, or other built-in widget labels and messages. So far, I haven’t found

    • Ability to Edit Ticket Subject when Splitting a Ticket

      Often someone will make an additional or new request within an existing ticket that requires we split the ticket. The annoying part is that the new ticket maintains the subject of the original ticket after the split so when the new ticket email notification

    • Automatically Update Form Attachment Service with Newly added Fields

      Hi, When I have a Form Setup and connected to a 3rd Party Service such as OneDrive for Form Attachments, when I later add a new Upload Field I have to remove and redo the entire 3rd Party Setup from scratch. This needs to be improved, such as when new

    • Reopen ticket on specific date/time

      Is there a way that we can close a ticket and setup a reopen of that ticket on a specific date and time? (without using the "on hold" ticket option)

    • API credit COQL COUNT

      The docs describe API credits in COQL from the LIMIT perspective: https://www.zoho.com/crm/developer/docs/api/v8/COQL-Overview.html When using aggregate functions such as `COUNT` or `SUM`, is that billed as 1 API credit?

    • Weekly Tips : Save Time with Saved Search

      Let's assume your work requires you to regularly check emails from important clients that have attachments and were sent within a specific time period. Instead of entering the same conditions every time—like sender, date range, and attachments included—you

    • Remove 'This is an automated mail from Zoho Sign' in footer

      Hi there, Is it possible to remove or change the text under the e-mail templates? I can't figure out how to do that: Would love to hear from you. Kind regards, Tristan

    • Organize and manage PDFs with Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard

      Hello users, Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard is a one-stop place to upload, sort, share PDF files, and more. This article will explore the various capabilities that Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard offers. A few highlights of Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard: Upload

    • Custom function return type

      Hi, How do I create a custom deluge function in Zoho CRM that returns a string? e.g. Setup->Workflow->Custom Functions->Configure->Write own During create or edit of the function I don't see a way to change the default 'void' to anything else. Adding

    • Passing Info from Function to Client Script

      Hello, I have recently started making use of client script for buttons, allowing me to give the user information or warnings before they proceed. This is great. However, I have never quite managed to pass back any extra information from the function to

    • Drag 'n' Drop Fields to a Sub-Form and "Move Field To" Option

      Hi, I would like to be able to move fields from the Main Page to a Sub-Form or from a Sub-Form to either the Main Page or another Sub-Form. Today if you change the design you have to delete and recreate every field, not just move them. Would be nice to

    • Zoho Payroll for Canada

      Is anyone else having problems getting setup for Canada?

    • Passing the CRM

      Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

    • One Contact with Multiple Accounts with Portal enabled

      I have a contact that manages different accounts, so he needs to see the invoices of all the companies he manage in Portal but I found it not possible.. any idea? I tried to set different customers with the same email contact with the portal enabled and

    • User Automation: User based workflow rules & webhooks

      User management is an undeniable part of project management and requires adequate monitoring. As teams grow and projects multiply, manual coordination for updating users & permissions becomes difficult and can give way to errors. User automation in Zoho

    • Disable Zoho Contacts

      We don't want to use this app... How can we disable it?

    • Next Page