The Absurd Beauty Of Zoho Campaigns

A 5

minutes read

Direct marketing has been around for a long time and over the years, the craft of getting the right message to the right people has definitely evolved.

With the “first” instance of mass marketing dating all the way back to when Sears, Roebuck & Co. sent out 8000 postcards in 1892, (and in turn received 2000 orders as a result) the idea of engaging customers using directed and personalised campaigns is something that piques the interest of marketers to this day.

And it’s no surprise either.

With various studies outlining the benefits of customising and personalising engagement with customers, it really comes with no surprise that there’s an evident rise in interest in the field of email marketing.

of consumers only engage with marketing messages that are customized for them

of those who classify themselves as frequent shoppers say they only shop with brands who personalise their experience

Source: Privacy & Personalisation, Smarter HQ

Now in 2025, though we’ve come a long way from postcards and newspaper ads, and are able to utilise a sleigh of tech-savvy techniques to get the message out, we still want the same thing ; customer attraction and conversions and with the tech side of things in constant development, the number of ways we can send out mass advertising is always improving.

But this blog isn’t aimed at giving you a “history of marketing lecture”. No you can get that through a simple Google Search (Here’s a notable mention : The History of Advertising: A Timeline).

No. Instead, what we plan on doing here is giving you an outline of what EDM & Email Marketing is, and a look at it in the context of our favourites, Zoho, specifically, Zoho Campaigns.

EDM vs Email Marketing

So, to start off, let’s look at the two main adaptations of email marketing.

The “traditional” Email Marketing and its more tech-savvy form, EDM or Electronic Digital Marketing.

Email Marketing is exactly what it sounds like. Any sort of operation that involves sending out emails to your customers falls under email marketing and as Wikipedia puts it, “In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing”.

Theories and definitions, however, don’t always translate to practical usage, so on a more pragmatic level, email marketing is the process of sending out emails for the purpose of getting your brand and message out there.

A process that’s vastly integrated into the business processes of most businesses today.

of marketers use email marketing to distribute their content.

of SMEs rely on email as their main source of customer acquisition.

Source: B2B Content Marketing 2020, CMI

The other player in the field is the more technologically advanced EDM. Acronym for Electronic Digital Marketing, an EDM is essentially just email marketing with extra steps.

And the extra steps is what secures extra engagement.

In fact, traditional email marketing can be thought of as one of the key players in EDM.

Where Email Marketing is direct action, EDM is more a strategy that incorporates various different softwares to enhance the effect of an email marketing campaign.

These incorporated techniques are used to maximise user engagement and include approaches like:

Social Media Marketing
Remarketing Campaigns
Pay Per Click Initiatives
SMS Marketing
Offline Advertising

Zoho Campaigns

So now let’s reign it in a little. How does all this relate back to Zoho Campaigns and where does Campaigns lie in this EDM Matrix of applications?

What exactly does it do and what can you do with it?

On its own, Zoho Campaigns is a standalone email marketing application that facilitates a range of email marketing functions. It’s designed to maximise the customizability, reach and engagement of campaigns, and as Zoho puts it “provides a toolkit to meet your email marketing needs“.

Overview of The Toolkit:

Campaigns

As expected, the first in the list of functions Zoho campaigns enables you to do is actually send out campaigns. Being the basic feature in any email marketing software, you’re able to set up your email and list of recipients or contacts and schedule a time to shoot off the emails.

But it doesn’t stop there. Zoho Campaigns gives you metrics and details outlining everything from the number of people opening the emails to how many of them bounce from it.

On top of that, Zoho Campaigns understands that not all campaigns are the same. Each has a different purpose and different specs so you’re given the option to choose between 4 types of campaigns.
- - Regular as mentioned above.
  - Social; where social media marketing is focused on.
  - Advanced; branching out to other apps.
  - SMS; the option to expand to send campaigns directly to your customer’s mobiles.
Automation

If you’re using a dedicated software to manage your systems, you’re probably expecting a whole lot of automation and Zoho Campaigns delivers. With an in built capacity for functions like setting up complex task flows and utilising webhooks within the CRM, automation should be its middle name!
E-Commerce

Zoho Campaigns is built for any business that wants to utilise email marketing. This goes from B2B businesses like us to B2C and online retail businesses, and Campaigns inbuilt e-commerce feature is a testament to that. This caters to e-commerce specific needs like responding to potential interests and reaching out to previous one time customers, or even targeting specific product interest groups one at a time!
A/B Testing

In today’s world, there’s constant innovation and persistent questioning of what if? There are also those choices that marketers need to make. Black or White Theme? Professional or Casual Tone? Should the banner be on top of the email or after the intro?

It’s for these instances that Zoho Campaigns has it’s A/B Testing Funciton. It aims to equip you with the tool to test these options for yourself by conducting an A/B Testing on your clients and analysing their response using key indicators like CTR and Engagement rates, and finally get the answer to whether or not you should be using Comic Sans font in your emails!

Zoho Campaigns – An EDM VIP

So, as an email marketing software, Zoho Campaigns offers an extensive repertoire of options, but its true beauty lies in its EDM capacity.

As a part of Zoho’s One Suite, Zoho Campaigns has default integrations (powered by Zoho Flow) to work seamlessly with a variety of Zoho applications.

Zoho CRM

Combined with a native Zoho CRM integration, Zoho Campaigns facilitates multiple complex streams to further the EDM process.
From simple tasks and follow up reminders in the CRM to designing complex autoresponders, Zoho Campaigns x Zoho CRM is more than merely a versatile combination that gives you the framework to make the most out of your CRM data.
On the other hand, as a prime product of the default integration, all stored contacts in the CRM are easily exportable and manageable as lists in Zoho Campaigns, making the task of sending out 100s of emails all the more easier!
Combined with a native Zoho CRM integration, Zoho Campaigns facilitates multiple complex streams to further the EDM process.

Other Zoho Suite Apps

Zoho Creator (Sync and use data from unique creator apps to send out campaigns! )
Zoho Recruit (Send out the recruiting emails faster and automate the process as a whole!)
Zoho Survey ( Reach out to survey participants with a personalized touch! )
Zoho Forms ( Respond to form submissions instantly! )
Zoho Books ( Send out those built up invoices all at once, and maybe even get fancy by automating follow up reminders through the CRM! )
Zoho Analytics (Utilise existing information and analyse campaigns further to maximise outreach and campaign effectiveness.
And many other Zoho Apps can be incorporated into the EDM for everything from making more sense of mailing data to targeting focus groups of responders.

Non-Zoho Compatibility

So far, we’ve covered Zoho-based applications of Zoho Campaigns, ignoring its amazing non-Zoho compatibility.

Zoho Campaigns doesn’t discriminate with native corporate applications and extends its conglomerate ease to big players in every industry. This includes an extensive selection of marketing and social media applications like :

Facebook
Evernote
DropBox
Google Drive
WordPress
WooCommerce
LinkedIn

So, to wrap this blog up, that’s it. That’s where we find the beauty of Zoho Campaigns. Not only does it function as a standalone Email Marketing software, but it also opens the door to furthering EDM processes through seamless flows with an extensive repertoire of both in-house and out-of-house applications.

Independent, Open-Ended, Beautiful