Marketer’s Space – Automate Subscription Management for CRM Contacts Using Workflows in Zoho Campaigns
Hello, marketers! Welcome back to Marketer’s Space. In this week’s post, we’ll look at how to simplify subscription management using Workflows for contacts synced from Zoho CRM in Zoho Campaigns. There are multiple ways to assign topics to your contacts:
- Default assignment at sync: When syncing contacts from CRM, you can either keep them unsubscribed (no topics) or subscribe them to all available topics. This gives you a clean starting point, especially if you plan to collect preferences later.
- Letting contacts choose: You can send an email campaign with a preference center link, allowing contacts to choose the topics they’re interested in. Their selections are automatically reflected in their topic subscriptions.
- Manual updates via CRM: If your sales team collects customer interests during conversations, they can record them in custom CRM fields such as a field called “Interests.” These fields can hold one or more interest values like sale, product launch, or newsletters. Once these contacts are synced into Zoho Campaigns, you can build a Workflow that reads this data and automatically subscribes each contact to the relevant topics.
In this post, we’ll look at how to use custom CRM fields and Workflows in Zoho Campaigns to automate topic assignment based on customer interests.
Why automate subscription management?
When both your sales team and your customers update subscription preferences, manual handling can get messy. Automating this process ensures that:
- Your contact lists stay up-to-date
- You remain compliant with email regulations
- You send only relevant emails to the right audience
Sync CRM contacts with a targeted list
To begin, sync your Zoho CRM contacts to a specific mailing list in Zoho Campaigns. This list will serve as the foundation for your targeting and automation.
Here’s how you can set it up:
- Go to Settings > Apps > Zoho CRM and connect your account.
- Then navigate to Contacts > Sync Services > New Sync.
Choose the CRM module you’d like to sync (e.g., Leads, Contacts or custom modules ) and map it to a mailing list in Zoho Campaigns.
Once the sync is set up, you can trigger Workflows using:
- List Entry – Triggers when a contact is added to the synced list.
- Field Update – Triggers based on changes to mapped CRM field values.
This setup ensures your Workflows respond dynamically to CRM data and list activity.
Capture interests directly in Zoho CRM
Your sales team can log customer interests in a custom CRM field (e.g., Interests). This might include values like:
- Sale
- New Product Launch
- Exclusive Content
These values become the key to targeting contacts with relevant content.
Create topics in Zoho Campaigns
To align campaigns with user interests, create relevant topics inside Zoho Campaigns.
You’ll find this under Contacts > Manage Topics.
Consider topics like:
- Newsletters
- Member-only updates
- Sale announcements
- Product launches
Organizing your campaigns under topics helps contacts manage preferences and improves engagement.
Build your automated subscription Workflow
Trigger the Workflow
Use the “List Entry” trigger with your CRM-synced list.
Alternately, use the “Field Update” trigger to filter based on interest fields or subscription status.
Split based on Interests
Add the Process Condition component and select the Multi-way option.
- Branch 1: Interest is “Sale”
- Branch 2: Interest is “New Product Launch”
- Branch 3: Interest is empty → default to unsubscribe
Assign subscriptions automatically
For each branch, add the “Subscription Management” action component:
- Branch 1 → Subscribe to Sale Announcements
- Branch 2 → Subscribe to Product Launches
- Branch 3 → Unsubscribe from all topics to avoid sending irrelevant emails
This ensures each contact only receives what they opted in for or nothing irrelevant.
Assigning Multiple Topics Using Comma-Separated Values
If your CRM contacts are interested in more than one topic, you can record multiple interests in a single CRM field using comma-separated values. For example: sale, launch, newsletters
When you use the “contains” modifier, you can match this field against several keywords at once and assign multiple topics in a single branch.
Trigger the workflow
Use the Field Update trigger and select the CRM field where interests are stored (e.g., Interests). This workflow will activate whenever the field is updated in CRM.
Add the Process Condition
- Insert a Multi-way process component and set the condition to: Interests contains sale launch newsletters
- Make sure the keywords are separated by spaces so that each word can be evaluated individually. If the contact’s field contains any of the specified values (sale, launch, newsletters), the workflow will take this path.
Assign multiple topic subscriptions
To that branch, add the Subscription Management action component and add all relevant topics. This ensures:
- A single contact can be subscribed to multiple relevant topics
- No interest is missed out during automation
Advanced Use Case:
Use an additional CRM field like Customer Type (e.g., Member, Non-member). Create a separate Workflow that:
- Filters contacts with “Member” status
- Subscribes them to exclusive member-only topics
This lets you send gated content without mixing up audiences.
Use Segments as an alternative trigger
Instead of using a list-based trigger, you can create a Segment using criteria like CRM fields or engagement behavior. Then:
- Trigger a Workflow when a contact is added to a segment using the “Enter a Segment” trigger component
- Automate topic subscriptions or unsubscribes from there
This is ideal when you prefer dynamic criteria over static list membership.
With Workflows in Zoho Campaigns, subscription management becomes hands-free, precise, and personalized. Whether you’re handling thousands of CRM contacts or running niche campaigns for select groups, this setup keeps your audience segmentation sharp and relevant.
See you soon with more ways to supercharge the Zoho CRM + Campaigns integration. Until then, happy marketing!
Regards,
Pearlin Nitika
User Education | Zoho Campaigns
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