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written by
Mateusz Pliszka
Customer Consulting at SoftwareSupport
Once you have a CRM in place, your communication with prospects and customers changes significantly. CRM not only becomes a central place to manage your company’s data but also a tool for customer communication.
However, despite having a CRM, I can see that many customers remain using Gmail, Apple Mail or Outlook as their main system for sending and receiving emails.
So what are the advantages of using email inside or connected with a CRM? How can it impact your business in terms of specific measures and numbers?
There are tons of advantages connected with using CRM-integrated mailing but let me list 3 major ones:
Remembering to CC your whole team every time you email a customer is difficult. Also, this doesn’t look well in the eyes of your prospect if you’d rather keep the conversation private. How many times did you have to keep scrolling through your emails to forward the right message to your colleague while being on holiday?
When using a CRM-integrated mailbox, your team members can access your communication history anytime, on any device. That saves tons of time on forwarding emails, updating your team members on key communication items and training new team members on the way you communicate with the prospect.
Example: With CRM-integrated mailing, your team can take over leads/communication when you’re on holiday or sick leave, without forwarding the emails back and forth.
Most of the emails we write are personal. After all, we don’t want to automate our communication with customers we know in person. However, some of our communication tends to be repetitive, like sending quotes, offers or follow-ups.
A CRM will help you set up email templates you can use in customer communication which will significantly speed up the way you work, saving your time on manually sending emails or copying and pasting templates from your docs. It will also let you share templates with your team for common use.
Example: Create email template for emails with quotes/estimations for customers to save time on manually writing key value points and copying/pasting templates from documents.
Once you send an email from your mailbox, you don’t really know what happens after you click send. You can only hope for the best with the prospect responding to your conversation.
Using a full-fledged CRM-integrated mailing system will let you monitor whether a lead opened or clicked on your campaign providing you with additional insight and a good moment to follow-up. A CRM will also monitor if your email is followed by a prospect visiting your website.
Example: Send email and monitor lead opening the conversation. Send a follow-up email or call the customer once they opened the email again.
So how to make mailing work correctly in Pipedrive? Below, I’m listing 10 tips to help you make the most out of Pipedrive’s mailbox.
This one is pretty obvious but I can’t tell how many times I’ve seen people using a CRM without an email account connected. Definitely, linking your email account is a good first step to making the most out of your CRM emailing feature.
Go to Settings -> Tools and apps -> Integrations -> Email sync
Having an email account linked to your CRM doesn’t mean you’re always going to use the email inside your CRM. You will likely keep using your own email service, using your CRM from time to time.
Still, you need to make sure the emails you send from your regular mailbox are synced with your CRM.
To make it work, add your Pipedrive account’s BCC address to all the sales emails you send from your mailbox.
Go to deal/contact/org -> scroll down -> copy “Universal BCC address”
You might be wondering — can I add Pipedrive’s BCC address automatically to all my emails? Yes, you can do it for Gmail, Apple Mail or Outlook (unfortunately not for iPhone), you can find the respective guides below:
Once you have your emails synced and ready, it’s time to speed up the way you send emails to your prospects/customers.
Instead of sending the same emails many times or copying and pasting your templates, you can use Pipedrive’s built-in template feature allowing you to create email templates (including the custom fields, like customer’s or website’s name).
When sending emails:
Go to Templates -> Manage templates -> Create new template
Use it to send repetitive emails (like follow-ups, proposals or quoting for customers faster).
If you want to send emails and use templates at scale, you should make use of group email feature, letting you send the same email to multiple recipients, at the same time addressing every email individually.
Go to Contacts -> Select the contacts you want to send emails to -> Click on “Send group email” -> Write an email or use a template
Important! At the moment you can send only up to 100 emails at once using the group emailing feature.
Want to send email automatically once you perform a specific action in your CRM?
Using workflow automation will let you send a personal email triggered by specific action inside your CRM, like:
Go to “Workflow automation” -> “Add custom workflow” -> Select the trigger -> Select “Email” as an action -> Choose custom email or a template
This can save you tons of time every day on manual email outreach to selected recipients and checking if you have actually sent the emails/follow-ups to the right people.
Knowing that your recipients actually open your emails is valuable information, isn’t it? Knowing somebody clicks on your link is even more important.
Mark email open or email click field when sending email in your CRM to make sure you track your email opens and clicks.
When sending an email -> Mark open and/or click tracking
Use the “Sales assistant” to check if somebody opens or clicks on the email after some period of time (e.g. a few months) and use this information to close deals coming back to your offer right when they need it.
Integrate with MailChimp using Zapier to automatically add contacts to marketing newsletter campaigns in MailChimp by marking/selecting a custom field.
This will save your time on manually exporting the lists of contacts to MailChimp or adding the recipients one-by-one.
Use MailChimp integration through Outfunnel to track the newsletter recipients’ activity including newsletter opens/clicks or unsubscribes.
Also, monitor leads visiting your website after they receive your newsletter to identify “hot leads”.
Use Outfunnel “lead scoring” feature to score leads based on their activity, email opens, clicks or website visits.
You can use Pipedrive’s built-in scheduling tool to propose times when you’re available for a meeting, either on-site or online.
When sending email -> Select “Propose availability” -> Share link to your availability
Alternatively, you can use an external service like Calendly and share the link to your Calendly availability.
If you’re running cold mailing outbound campaigns, you can use a cold mailing integration to create deals on clicks or on replies.
Use it to run the sales process to the prospects who interact with your campaigns.
You can find more information on how to integrate Pipedrive with Woodpecker cold mailing campaigns in my guide to cold mailing integration.
You will not see the effects of using email integration straight away. Start using it for a few weeks and months and see how it improves your workflow, saving more time for you and your team.
Analyze the impact on your sales and conversion and make sure you implement proper email integration company-wide.
written by
Mateusz Pliszka
Customer Consulting at SoftwareSupport
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