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What Are CRM Integrations?

Written by Leeron Hoory      Reviewed by Noa Kaufman
Last Update: February 2025


If you’ve ever wondered how to run your business more effectively, given all the software and tools at your disposal, the answer may be CRM system integration. 

As a business, you likely store all your customer data—like emails, full names, and purchase history—in one place, your CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system. However, CRMs are most effective when they can pull all the relevant information your business generates from different platforms.

For example, what if you could see which customers are engaging with your social media campaigns most frequently, and send them newsletters that specifically speak to their interests? That’s where CRM integration comes in. This article covers CRM integration meaning, benefits, common types and examples of how this process could apply to your business.

What is CRM Integration?

CRM integration is the process of integrating different software your business uses—like Mailchimp or ZenDesk—into your CRM. CRM integration services can streamline workflows, improve marketing strategies, automate business processes and lead to more informed customer insights. The ability to gather data from multiple sources and use it to take meaningful action is the power of CRM integrations.

Before we dive into how CRM integration tools have the ability to take your business to the next level, let’s cover the basics. There are multiple different types of integrations:


  • API integrations rely on an API to connect a CRM with another software.

  • Third-party connectors are tools built to connect CRMs with specific software. Microsoft Power Automate is one example of a third-party connector. 

  • Middleware solutions are also tools that connect CRM with other software, but they have a broader range of capabilities than third-party connectors. 

  • Custom integrations may be a good choice for larger companies with specific needs that are not addressed with the pre-built CRM integration tools on the market.

Benefits of CRM Integration

There are countless ways a CRM integration can be useful for your business. Which integrations will bring the biggest benefit to your company will depend on what you want to accomplish and your specific goals and vision. Here are a few potential benefits:

  • Improve Efficiency, Streamline Workflows and Automate Processes: CRM integrations can pull data from project management software and marketing platforms into your CRM. With all your data in one place, you can streamline workflows that you’re currently handling manually. For example, instead of sending your customers reminder emails about an appointment, you can automate them.
  • Enhance Data Accuracy and Consistency: Another benefit of keeping all information in one place is a unified source of information for everyone in the company. This will reduce the possibility of errors or discrepancies that might occur with manual data entry. 
  • Provide a Unified View of Customer Data:Integrated CRM systems pull data from different software and tools your business uses, making it easier to access more accurate reports on sales performance, customer behavior and campaign effectiveness in one place. 
  • Improve Customer Experience and Satisfaction: When your customer support representatives have immediate access to all customer information and past conversations, they can more efficiently help your customers and are in a better position to meet their needs. 

Common Types of CRM Integrations

Here are a few examples of the most commonly used CRM integrations and how they might be useful for your business.

Email and Calendar Integrations

With email CRM integration, all of your communication history will appear in one place, making it easy to troubleshoot customer problems and understand their needs. Calendar CRM integrations import information from different platforms, like Google Calendar, about all meetings and appointments with customers so you can easily access information like a customer’s appointment history.

mailchimp

Social Media Integrations

Integrating social media platforms with your CRM can consolidate customer interactions with your social media campaigns over time, allowing you to tailor your marketing efforts based on customers’ specific interests.

E-commerce Integrations

E-commerce integrations make it possible to use customer shopping and viewing history to tailor your outreach to specific customers. For example, you could offer specific product recommendations based on past purchases or share coupons based on their interests.

Marketing Automation Integrations

Integrating data from marketing automation tools like Mailchimp and HubSpot with your CRM can create more accurate and specific customer segments and make it easier to personalize marketing campaigns.

Customer Support Integration

Integrating customer support tools like Zendesk can help you access all customer communication in one place. This will allow you to access data and insights about customer support, including response times and customer satisfaction.

How to Choose the Right CRM Integrations

Before you integrate your tools with your CRM, you’ll want to take a step back and consider what new insights you want to learn or what data you want to access. Allow yourself to think big, and consider your business’s future goals and ideal solutions to any problems or frustrations your company is currently facing. Are there any tasks that you’re currently spending a large chunk of time doing manually? This is a good place to start.

Next, make a list of the tools you’re already using: email, social media platforms, marketing platforms, etc. Think about which ones would be helpful to integrate with your CRM. You’ll want to research the integration process for each. Does the tool offer an API, or is there another easy way to integrate it? Consider any additional costs of applying this integration, as well as what options you have for support and if there are any limitations on data if you plan to scale in the future. 

Challenges and Considerations

While CRM integrations can reveal new information and business insights, it’s good to be aware of potential challenges and considerations before moving forward. CRM integrations can expose sensitive customer data to potential breaches. Making sure employees are on the same page about the new data can also be a challenge. 


To address these challenges, make sure you have a strong security system in place. Integrations can also slow down system performance, so you’ll want to implement systems to ensure they are optimized. Introducing formal training on these new systems to everyone on the team will ensure they understand them. 


Once you set up the CRM integrations, continually monitor overall system performance so that the data remains accurate and up to date. Perform online security assessments and identify any potential risks for errors or inaccuracies. User feedback can also help identify issues and improve your overall system.

Case Study

You might be wondering how other companies use CRM integration to improve their workflow, customer experience and revenue. 

For the company Talk London, CRM integration was a huge help in getting their audience to complete surveys. Talk London conducts civic engagement surveys, but since their email platform wasn’t integrating with their software, they needed to manually email their audience about starting surveys and, most importantly, remind them to finish them.

Talk London’s solution was to use Nuuk Digital, a third-party tool that helped them connect to Mailchimp through Mailchimp’s Marketing API. With automated reminder emails, 91 percent of the people who started the survey finished it. “We definitely feel that automation has helped us,” Kate Lindemans, Senior Online Community Engagement Officer of the platform told Mailchimp. “And it's very promising even though it's our first dip in automation. We see how we can use it for next campaigns.”

If you find that you or your team are spending a significant amount of time on repetitive manual processes instead of focusing on long-term growth and vision, it might be time to start looking into CRM integration. Figuring out which CRM integrations you need and how they can help is a process of understanding your specific business needs, goals and pain points. The good news is that once CRM integrations are set up, they greatly improve your business by saving time, generating new insights and making it possible to better understand customer needs.