How to integrate CRM with cold mailing campaigns in 3 steps

Matt Pliszka | Pipedrive Partner​,​ CRM Configuration​/​Integration

This guide is a part of the below ultimate guides:

An Ultimate Guide to Integrating Your CRM to Grow Sales and Automate Work

Every company and freelancer wants to get more leads. We look for them on social media groups, forums, meetups or try to collect them through lead magnets on our website.

Outbound campaigns still lead the way as one of the most popular ways of customer acquisition. But aren’t we looking at outbound too short-term?

Why would I want to check on cold mailing in my CRM?

After all, why care about monitoring cold mailing in your CRM system?

• Outbound history for future use

Running an outbound campaign can be unsuccessful and it often is. But let’s say you start a conversation with the lead and you know he/she replied to one of your cold mailing campaigns. Why not use this information and revert back to some of the value you delivered in your previous outbound email (like mentioning the conversation you had about your service a few months ago)? That can actually help you improve on your conversion rates, closing more leads during the next attempt.

• Quick sale

For companies with a very short sales process and quick customer onboarding (like a mobile app), information about a click in your mailing campaign can be worth millions. Imagine that a deals pop-up in your CRM system every time a new lead clicked on an element in your outbound email. Call that prospect in 24h and improve your chances to close the lead.

• Focus on the right leads

If you’re running thousands of deals at the same time focusing on the right things and applying 80/20 Pareto rule in practice becomes more and more difficult. Integrating your CRM with cold mailing campaigns can help you do this, informing you about the leads actually interested in your offer (opening or clicking on your campaigns).

How to integrate CRM with cold mailing?

So how to make cold mailing work in your Pipedrive CRM?

You will need to connect and integrate 3 tools:

• Pipedrive
• Woodpecker
• Zapier

1. Create a custom field in Pipedrive for email open and email click.

First of all, you need to set up a way of marking the outcome of your email (whether it’s click or open) in your CRM. While you can put a note in your CRM for every new open or click, it’s also advisable to set up custom fields, letting you filter the prospects or companies which clicked or opened an email.
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To do this, create 3 custom single option fields in your CRM with the “Yes” mark:

• Clicked email
• Opened email
• Replied to email

2. Add your default Pipedrive BCC address as Woodpecker’s CRM email address.

Next, you need to make sure that your CRM’s BCC address is included in your cold mail outreach campaign in Woodpecker.

What is CRM’s BCC address? It’s the address you add to your emails in the BCC field which makes sure the sent email is recorded in your CRM system.

You can find it by entering any contact, deal or organization in Pipedrive and scrolling to the bottom left side.
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Then, you need to copy it and add it by going to:
Email account -> Settings -> Sending -> CRM email address
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3. Connect email clicks and opens in Woodpecker with Pipedrive

Once you have your BCC address working, you need to set up a proper integration.

• Email open -> Find the person -> Update person -> Create note
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Once an email is opened among your cold mailing campaign, the system needs to find the person related to this email address in your CRM system. After finding the person, make sure you update the field created in point 1. with “Yes”. It is advised to create on the deal so that you have a clear history when the change was made.

• Email clicked -> Find the person -> Update person -> Create deal -> Create note.

When an email is clicked, you’d rather also create a deal for your sales team. If somebody clicked on any element in your email, it’s likely that they’re already interested in your product or service (after all, how many of us click on links in the random email).

Try calling them or at least run a follow-up email sales process and see what’s the ultimate click -> close conversion.

• Email replied -> Find the person -> Update person -> Create deal -> Create note.
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When you get a reply, you also need to leave a mark as a custom field in Pipedrive to let you filter out contacts who have actually replied to your email campaigns. Use it to prioritize leads responding to your email campaigns (also negatively) e.g. in your lost recovery campaigns.

Next, create a new deal for every reply to speed up your sales team’s reaction to incoming email conversations.

Run the test and start using to grow your sales pipeline and conversion rate

It’s advised to test the integration after the launch with a sample cold mailing campaign.

Once you have it launched, use it to grow your sales pipeline, improve on conversion rates, and address your sales process more effectively.