Marketers Space: Smarter Marketing with CRM Integration

Marketers Space: Smarter Marketing with CRM Integration


Hello Marketers!
Welcome back to another deep dive into smart marketing strategies at Marketers' Space! Today, we’re kicking off an exciting series focused on how Zoho CRM and Zoho Marketing Automation (ZMA) when integrated can transform your marketing efforts. Whether you're coming from Zoho CRM and looking to leverage Marketing Automation or primarily using ZMA and wanting to send your data back to CRM, this integration provides a full-circle solution for your marketing and sales needs.
Let’s explore how you can make the most of this powerful connection—from syncing contacts and deal data to running targeted campaigns to ensuring smooth data flow between both platforms for maximum efficiency.
In this post, we’ll cover the following: syncing data from Zoho CRM into ZMA, using ZMA’s Planner for campaign planning and calculating ROI, segmenting and targeting your CRM data, and finally, pushing the most relevant data from ZMA back to Zoho CRM. Let’s get started!

From Zoho CRM to Zoho Marketing Automation:

Seamless Syncing

Zoho CRM holds all of your important lead, contact, account, and deal information, which acts as the backbone of your marketing efforts. Once you sync Zoho CRM with ZMA, this data isn’t just a static list of names—it becomes actionable, enabling you to craft personalized and impactful campaigns.
The first step in this integration is syncing all the relevant data from Zoho CRM into ZMA. This includes Contacts, Leads, Accounts, Deals, and even Custom Modules, ensuring that your marketing team has access to the most comprehensive and up-to-date information. This sync is automatic and continuous, so as new records come into your CRM, they’ll be available in ZMA in real-time for marketing purposes.

For marketers, this sync is invaluable because it enables you to tap into your CRM’s wealth of information for targeted campaigns. Whether you're pulling in contact details or deal stages, you’re working with data that is fresh and ready to be activated in your campaigns.

Setting Smart Goals with the Planner using CRM Data

Once your CRM data is in ZMA, the next step is using the Planner to set clear marketing goals and calculate the ROI based on that data. You can set Goals using the count of leads closed (won or lost) from Zoho CRM. For example, you might aim to close 50 leads within the next quarter.
ZMA will then track this data directly from CRM, helping you monitor progress toward your goal. If you notice that you’re falling short, you can make timely adjustments to your marketing approach, whether that means revisiting your targeting strategies or re-engaging through personalized campaigns.
The Reports provide valuable insights into the performance of your marketing efforts.
It includes Revenue and Deal Stats, showing metrics like Revenue Generated and Deals Closed Won, giving you a clear picture of how much business your campaigns are driving. You’ll also find Expense and ROI Stats, which allow you to track your campaign spend and measure the return on investment (ROI), even across different channels.
Under the Contacts tab, you can view the Contacts Closed with Won Deals, helping you understand how effectively your campaigns are converting leads into customers.

ZMA’s Planner also makes collaboration simple—you can add team members, set tasks, and ensure that everyone is aligned with the campaign’s objectives, creating a coordinated effort between marketing and sales.

Segmentation for Precise Campaigns:

With synced CRM data in ZMA, segmentation becomes not only possible but incredibly powerful. You’re no longer sending generic, blanket campaigns to your entire contact list. Instead, you’re slicing your audience into precise segments with powerful Deal and Account-based criteria.

For instance, you can create a segment of leads in the Negotiation/Review stage of a deal and send them attractive, persuasive campaigns designed to push them toward deal closure.
This could include exclusive offers, limited-time discounts, or additional value propositions that address any remaining concerns, helping to tip the scales in your favor. You have much more deal and account-based criteria such as Deal Name, Deal Amount, Account Type, and Account Owner that you can use to create segments.

Reaching Contacts through Multi-Channel Campaigns:

Thanks to the seamless sync between Zoho CRM and ZMA, you can leverage all the CRM data in your campaigns, whether it’s via email, SMS, or WhatsApp. You can personalize these campaigns by using CRM fields to tailor various elements. The Sender Details can be personalized with the CRM lead owner’s name and email, while the subject line can include specific CRM merge tags to make it more relevant to the recipient.

Inside the campaign, you can incorporate Dynamic Content using Predefined Tags such as Account Type, Account Name, and Account Owner, ensuring the message speaks directly to the contact’s unique context.

You can leverage Merge Tags under both Account Tags and CRM Merge Tags to customize the content further.

This level of personalization ensures that each contact feels like they are receiving tailored communication, rather than mass-marketing messages, and drives higher response rates.

Maximizing CRM Integration using Journeys:

With Zoho CRM integration, the possibilities within Journeys in ZMA expand significantly, giving you more flexibility to automate tasks and create highly personalized marketing workflows.
One of the key features is Criteria Match, which enables you to target contacts based on specific account or deal information synced from Zoho CRM.

When setting up the sync between Zoho CRM and ZMA, you have the option to sync CRM contacts to a list. Once this sync is complete, you can use Journeys to target that specific list containing the synced contacts. By using the Added to List trigger within Journeys, you can then set actions such as sending personalized campaigns.

You can Update Contact Fields that have been synced from CRM, ensuring that your data stays current and relevant before sending a campaign.

You can also create Journeys that automatically move contacts into or out of marketing topics, helping you stay compliant with their communication preferences.
Beyond this, Journeys in ZMA offer specific CRM Actions such as Push Data (sending updated contact details back to CRM), Create Task (automating follow-ups for sales reps), and even Create Deal (automatically generating a deal in CRM when a contact shows strong buying intent).

Pushing Relevant Data back to CRM:

Syncing data from CRM into ZMA is important, but pushing data back to CRM is just as crucial. You may have collected contact details through various forms like sign-up forms, popups, or landing pages using ZMA, but it’s essential to push only the relevant data back to CRM for your sales team. 
ZMA enables you to create automated journeys that filter leads and only push the ones meeting specific criteria back to CRM. This not only keeps your CRM clean but also ensures that your sales team isn’t overwhelmed with irrelevant data. Typically, a lead will be pushed to CRM when it becomes a sales-qualified lead (SQL). In ZMA, leads are nurtured as they move through different stages based on their engagement or lead scores. Once a lead has shown sufficient interest and is ready for sales, you can set up a journey in ZMA to automatically push a lead to CRM. This ensures that the right contacts are passed to your sales team at the right time.
Additionally, this selective sync means that you only pay for the contacts that truly matter. Since ZMA enables you to manage contact limits carefully, you can decide which data gets synced to CRM, optimizing both your budget and your sales strategy.

The integration between Zoho CRM and Zoho Marketing Automation is more than just a sync—it’s a complete, full-cycle solution for marketing and sales teams. By syncing contact and deal data, setting smart goals with the Planner, using targeted segments and journeys, and pushing valuable data back to Zoho CRM, you’ll have all the tools you need to optimize your marketing and sales performance.

Stay tuned for more posts in this series as we continue exploring the powerful features of this integration and how they can elevate your marketing efforts!

Regards,
Pearlin Nitika
User Education | Zoho Marketing Automation

    • Recent Topics

    • Blueprint: multi-select lookup field not available in the criteria option

      I read this old forum post which stated that multi-select lookup fields are now selectable as an option in a Blueprint transition configuration: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/blueprint-multi-select-lookup-field-not-available-within-blueprint-transition

    • Apply Credit Note Automatically

      We need the ability to apply open Credit Notes toward invoices generated by recurring invoice as the first, priority payment. This should be an option that we can enable/disable in the recurring profile and/or the Credit Note. Other invoicing systems can do this. I'm not sure why Zoho Invoice doesn't have it. Here's an example for a Recurring Invoice... If a customer has open Credit Notes, and a saved credit card set for auto-pay, once an invoice goes out, the credit balance gets automatically applied

    • Workflow for "Expenses" module?

      Hi there, over the last 2 years, Zoho Expense has seen tremendous growth and we are happy with it. But, sometimes it is frustrating to see things are being implemented halfheartedly, or so it seems. For example, There is the possibility to create workflows

    • Record Template - Conditionally printing sections

      Is there a way to conditionally print a section of a Record Template? More specifically I am printing records from a Form "Invoice". That Form has 3 SubForms. I'd like to print the content of those SubForms using a Record Template but only if they have at least one line item. If they have no line items, I'd like to hide the headers for that section on the printout.

    • User can choose the PDF report

      Hi. I would like to find out if a user (Creator or customer portal) to choose from the different PDF customised reports that have been built?

    • Query table pull last 12 months

      I am tying to pull the following criteria and the date is always what causes me the issue. I want to pull people (pco_id) who have entries of "event_id" being these 2 events and whos "kind" is Regular or Guest and where the event_starts_at (date column)

    • PLEASE FIX Search options and consider a Global seach option

      A recent update has removed the ability to search for addresses and phone numbers under contacts. We cannot find where this moved to (If it is still available). Please put these options back as we cannot locate specific projects anymore. Also please consider allowing for a Global search. This would really improve the search engine. For example: If I search for "Sally Jones" then all invoices , estimates, vendors etc.. would populate.. Please let me know if you need any more information. Thank You....

    • Customize your calendar based on personal preferences

      Greetings, We're happy to introduce a few new capabilities to the Activities module's Calendar View! Now you can tailor your calendar's appearance and notification settings to suit your needs. In the past, the Calendar View lacked customization options

    • BUG ALERT: Client Script + Commands -> $Page contextual data is not updated

      When using the new Client Script Commands feature, there is an issue with the Client Script $Page contextual data not accurately being updated each time a Command is run. Assuming a Client Script Command called "Client Script Command Bug" with the following

    • Show iFrame of related List inside of Blueprint Transition

      Hey, is it possible to show an iFrame of a related list like this inside of a Blueprint transition?

    • Lookup Fields not Converting

      I manage holiday properties. I have a lookup to the Accounts (Properties) in the Leads module. The lookup is connected to the property address field. When I convert it the lookup field does not update in Deals, although the property address does. There

    • 2024: A Year of Transformation with Zoho Forms

      As we close the curtain on another exciting year, it’s time to reflect on the strides Zoho Forms has taken in 2024. From empowering businesses with advanced tools to simplifying workflows and enhancing user experiences, our updates this year were all

    • Stop selling out of stock Items.

      Hi I have been using Zohobooks for a around 8 month now. I am not involved in selling process but my staff cant stop selling product which they do not hold in stock, this is a big headache for me as physical count never matches what is shown on the books. 

    • Bigin API Token Request ("invalid_client")

      Hi people, I tried to connect to the API without success, I've read all of the documentation multiple time and tried just about everything. I tried to do it with Python Request module and with Postman, passing the information through both the URL parameter

    • Customer Happiness not clickable when using API

      Is there a way to automatically add the Customer Feedback links when generating email drafts via the API? Currently, the feedback links are only added when generating an email draft using the UI. I tried using the endpoint described in https://desk.zoho.com/DeskAPIDocument#CustomerFeedback#CustomerFeedback_Getthecustomerfeedbackplaceholderlink

    • Send To Zoho Sign not Showing

      The button send to Zoho sign is not showing on my Zoho CRM . Is there additional steps I need to take after installing Zoho Sign to CRM ?

    • How to Get An Image's URL once it's uploaded to library?

      I manage to find URLs to the images I uploaded to my library, but after a day, it seems the links stop working like its only temporary. Where can I find the ACTUAL solid URL for my images that I upload to my Library so I can use them for my custom template / HTML coded template? Thanks, Mac

    • 【Zoho CRM】インポート機能のアップデート：既存データへのタグ追加が可能に！

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中のインポート機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 Zoho CRMのタグは、データを効率的に分類、認識するためのラベルです。 タグ付けは次の3つの方法で行えます： 個別タグ付け：少数のデータを手動でタグ付け 自動化：特定のタイミングで繰り返しタグ付け 一括更新：インポート機能でタグを追加または更新 今回のアップデートでは、インポート時に既存のタグを残したまま、新しいタグの追加、既存タグを置き換えできるようになりました。

    • Link to Desk tickets

      Hello, We are using Analytics to analyze data in Desk. Is there a way to embed a link to a ticket in reports?  We'd love to be able to see the drill down data, and click a value in a result row that would launch the Desk Ticket in another window/tab. Thanks in advance for any ideas!

    • Bluerprints: How to connect the created record back?

      I've a blueprint which creates another record as part of an 'After' transition. But the two records don't seem to be linked together. If it's not automatic - how do I get the created record ID to link it to the original record? Thanks!

    • Populate a Related List Item based on a Stage

      I would like to know if I can populate a CLOSED DEAL section in a contact that populates only when a Deal (something in the Deal Module) is listed as Closed - Won. I'd like another section that is just called deals, which shows me all other deals that

    • Being able to draw inside a module ?

      I was wondering if anyone know of a solution for this request. We would like to be able to draw directly from one module in the CRM and have it attached to that record. Here is an example. Paul would go to the customer once he as done the measuring, he

    • 2 serial numbers for 1 item (Mac address and Serial number)

      There is a way to track 2 serial number type for 1 Item. Ex: Some electronic devices have a MAC address and a serial number. I need to track those 2 numbers

    • Holidays

      Hi; For defining Holidays, you need to add logic to handle the year as well as the month & day. We need to be able to enter Holidays for the next year. I need to add a holiday for January 2, 2017, but I can't until January 1st, which is a Sunday and we

    • Delete a department or category

      How do I delete a Department?  Also, how do I delete a Category? This is pretty basic stuff here and it's impossible to find.

    • Remove or hide default views

      I'm looking to only have the views pertinent to my organization.  Is there a way to show only my custom views (or separate them to a different area or something)? If not, this should be a feature as switching from Zendesk we had this option...

    • Analytics Module: Can you move items from one dashboard to another?

      Is there a way to move items from one dashboard to another? I want to rearrange my dashboard now that I know what i'm doing but i don't want to remake my various widgets? Edit: Hey Zoho, This would be a good feature: to be able to move/copy widgets to

    • Copy Widget to another Dashboard

      I can see the option to clone a widget to the same dashboard but is it possible to copy it to another dashboard?

    • Is there a way to print the dashboard?

      I would like the capability of printing the dashboard - is that possible?

    • Custom Deal Name in Lead Conversion Mapping

      I know there are ways to change the name of a Deal after conversion using a custom function, so no need to repost that information. I would like to see the CRM Improved with Deal Name Customisation and I think the Lead Conversion Mapping page would be

    • Introducing Record Summary: smarter insights at your fingertips

      Hello everyone, Building on the recent launch of Zoho's in-house Zia Large Language Model (Zia LLM)—a major milestone in Zoho CRM’s AI capabilities—we’re excited to introduce the Record Summary feature. This powerful addition makes use of Zia LLM to simplify

    • Suppress "spreadsheet will not be saved" message on published sheet

      I have published a sheet and have one column on that sheet that the user can edit (a dropdown picklist where the user can select the status for each line). Is there a way to suppress the Zoho Sheet message "Any changes made to this published spreadsheet

    • Missing "Email Authentication" tab

      Backstage is alerting users about "Unauthenticated Domains" with a large prompt in the backend. It adds a link to learn more. On this tutorial page, it shows where to find the "Email Authentication" tab in this screenshot. However, in our Backstage, that

    • Show item Cost value on Item screen

      The Item screen shows Accounting Stock and Physical Stock. It would be very helpful if value information could be displayed here as well, for instance Cost Price. Currently, to find the Cost Price (as used for inventory valuations) from inside the item

    • Zoho Analytics to Zoho Sheets - automatic update?

      Hi all, If I create a zoho sheet from an Analytics Report or Analytics Data, is there a way for the zoho sheet to automatically update as the Report / Data in analytics updates?

    • Integration with Moodle

      Greetings, I hope find all doing well and safe. I've recently returned to using Zoho Flow after a break and was hoping to connect my WooCommerce store with Moodle, the world's most widely used learning management system. My goal was to automatically enroll

    • How to Record Loan with interest

      I have received loans from friend he give me like 2 loans so far one is one year repayment and one short, how to properly record his payment, and repayment and give him statement  for each loan he give me 

    • Task status - completed - other options

      I have a dumb question I know i can make custom statuses for the tasks - but is there anyway to make additional "completed" statuses like for instance if i have a task "call back customer" and i leave a vm for them to call back marking it "completed -

    • Task module and related-to field

      In modules other than the Task Module I can add several lookup fields to provide a variety of relationships. In the Task module lookup fields are not available. There is only one "related to" field which I want to use for Company. But I want to relate

    • Add Lookup Field in Tasks Module

      Hello, I have a need to add a Lookup field in addition to the ones that are already there in the Tasks module. I've seen this thread and so understand that the reason lookup fields may not be part of it is that there are already links to the tables (https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/custom-fields-on-task-module).

    • Next Page