CRM

What is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and refers to both a strategic approach and the systems used to manage customer and prospect relationships. In a B2B context, CRM enables companies to centrally capture, structure and utilize customer data across marketing, sales and service. Its primary goal is to manage business relationships consistently and data-driven throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

How does CRM work?

CRM systems collect, connect and continuously update data from multiple touchpoints along the customer journey. These include marketing campaigns, sales activities, service interactions and external data sources. All information is consolidated within a central platform and made available to relevant teams in real time. Within marketing and MarTech environments, CRM serves as the foundation for segmentation, personalization and automation across digital and physical channels, including direct mail automation.

Data, triggers and processes

Modern CRM platforms operate on event-driven logic. Specific actions or status changes, such as lead scoring thresholds, deal progression or inactivity, act as triggers for subsequent processes. These triggers can initiate automated marketing activities, sales workflows or personalized communication sequences, ensuring alignment and efficiency across departments.

Typical B2B use cases

In B2B marketing, CRM is commonly used for lead management, enabling structured qualification and handover to sales. Sales teams rely on CRM to manage complex pipelines involving multiple stakeholders and extended sales cycles. CRM also supports account-based marketing initiatives, reactivation campaigns and the orchestration of cross-channel strategies that combine digital touchpoints with physical mailings.

Benefits of CRM in B2B

CRM provides transparency across customer relationships and delivers a unified view of all interactions. Strategically, it enables informed decision-making based on reliable data. Operationally, it increases efficiency and process consistency. From an economic perspective, CRM helps improve conversion rates, strengthen customer retention and allocate marketing and sales resources more effectively while reducing manual effort and system fragmentation.

CRM vs. related concepts

CRM should not be confused with individual marketing channels or isolated tools. Unlike traditional direct mail or email marketing, CRM does not represent a specific campaign type but rather a central data and system architecture. Marketing automation often builds on CRM data but focuses more on campaign execution and orchestration. In this setup, CRM acts as the core data source and integration layer connecting marketing, sales and additional systems.

How does eesii support CRM?

As a direct mail automation platform, eesii extends existing CRM systems with physical communication capabilities. CRM data can be used to trigger, personalize and automate print mailings as part of broader workflows. Campaign responses and performance data can be fed back into the CRM, enabling a unified data model that connects physical and digital interactions.