CRM Email Reviews
Transactional Emails
The basic CRM email is fine for sending individual emails. For example, sales reps can send and track Opportunity Proposals, and technical support people can send a batch of information to a group of Accounts. These automated emails can be tied into Workflow to give you consistent operations and efficiency.
The basics of sending email from CRM are pretty simple, and the different CRM systems can all:
- Create a template with your standard text
- Include CRM data like account names
- Attach files
- Send an email to a contact
- Batch-send emails
These may be all the features you need for your outbound emails. A simple marketing campaign to existing customers can use the Transactional Email system well. But for more productive prospect marketing to, you need more features.
Email Marketing
The first options to consider deal with your needs for bulk marketing email. If you do need to send marketing emails, your CRM may be only part of the solution. Sure, you can keep your name and address information in the CRM, but unless your CRM has a built-in Marketing Automation system you will find that an independent Email Service Provider (ESP) is almost essential. An ESP maximizes deliverability and provides lots of email design and tracking features. The provider will handle your requirements for CAN-SPAM regulations, which is vital preventing your email domain from getting blacklisted. How? The ESP’s maintain good relations with all of the major email delivery providers, like Google Mail, to make sure that spammers are kept under control.
So if you need bulk marketing email, there are two choices. One is to purchase a CRM with built-in marketing, and the other is to link your CRM to an ESP. Infusionsoft, Swiftpage ACT! and Oracle Fusion all have Marketing Automation features out-of-the-box, which could save you a bundle of money and make your life a lot easier. Of course, the all-in-one solutions can be confining, compared to the flexibility and best-of-breed solutions that you get by hooking up Sugar, Dynamics or Sales
Management
The next set of Email options deal with the traceability of email. How well does marketing email get tied to the campaigns and contacts? Do email replies get linked back to the conversation thread? Can inbound emails get linked automatically to a contact? The answers to some of these questions depend on how well the CRM supports your existing email system.
Management also considers the way you access email. If your company uses Microsoft Outlook, how well does the CRM integrate with the Outlook client? Do mobile smartphone users need to send and manage email from the CRM? How about offline synchronization – will laptop warriors be more productive if they can handle CRM and email while they are away from the network?
Read the Linked Posts: Salesforce Dynamics Sugar Infusionsoft
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