Should you bother sending your Sales Emails on Cyber Monday?
After successfully avoiding Black Friday, my next challenge is Cyber Monday. There is no dodging this day as my email inbox is full with subject lines, “Tara we have a deal for you” and “Cyber Monday 50% off.”
If you’re a fan of email marketing and jump-for-joy deals today is your day. Inboxes are bound to fill to the brim and traffic on the email freeway is likely to get a little backed up.
On Friday I stayed inside, eating Thanksgiving leftovers shielding myself from the aggressive crowds at the local shopping centers. Even sad to say I did not part take in Small Business Saturday. Well, I obviously cannot boycott checking my inbox or sending emails today and so face-to face with Cyber Monday here I am.
Tips for Sending your Sales Emails Today
1) Schedule a follow up. Even if your subject line is incredible today, some emails are destined to get lost under a pile of others. Use Tout to schedule an automatic follow up email. After creating your template select:
2) Keep your eye on the Live Feed. The good news is your recipients will be glued to their email today. If you see someone going click happy engaging with your email jump on the opportunity to pick up the phone to call.
3) Use Tout to send your emails later. Avoid the Cyber Monday traffic hours. Don’t send emails between 12:00-2:00pm. Schedule your emails to be sent before or after the traffic.
User of the Week: Eric Wu from Bracket Labs
I'm one of the founders of Bracket Labs. We're a Boulder, CO startup building enterprise software apps for the Salesforce AppExchange. Our apps are TaskRay and Campaign Calendar, and together they're helping thousands of sales and marketing people around the world work more productively in Salesforce.
We're a small company, so as a founder I wear a lot of different hats. One of my primary roles is sales, so I spend a lot of time talking to customers who have found our apps through the AppExchange and are looking for more information so they can make a purchase.
I love ToutApp for three big reasons:
1) It helps me do more faster! We have a set of emails we send to new leads to help them understand the apps and determine whether there's a good fit for their team.
ToutApp has allowed me to send (and schedule) my emails in a way that has reduced my time per lead by about 30%.
2) The ability to deliver nicely formatted, trackable follow-up email responses from within the Salesforce Leads tab but sent from my own email address (rather than Salesforce's mailer) is great because I don't always trust the deliverability of the Salesforce mailer.
3) The Live Feed of activity on my sent emails is awesome and gives me new insight on customer engagement with my emails. I can prioritize my follow-ups based on their activity and interest level, timely response to an engaged customer is a big part of showing them you're paying attention and you are ready to help.
Every other week, we'll profile a different person who uses our app to improve their email productivity. If you would like to be featured in the future, you can apply here.
Maximize your Sales Responses with Reply Tracking
ToutApp just got a little smarter
It's always been our goal to give you real-time insight into your daily emails so that you can be more productive. We'll tell you when someone views your email, clicks on a link, and most recently when a recipient visits your website.
Replies matter
But real conversations aren't just about tracking. For lack of a better word, they're about... conversing, the give-and-take of replying back and forth. Having to wait around for your dream customer to respond to your email is frustrating.
That's why we recently rolled out reply tracking for the vast majority of our users. Now, if a prospect responds to your email, we'll display this in the Live Feed along with all of our other tracking information.
Here's a video that shows reply tracking in action:
Right now, reply tracking works for our Gmail and Google Apps users. We'll be extending this to our other integrations soon. We're also looking to roll out some cool new features with this technology soon, such as alerting you if an important email does or doesn't recieve a reply after x days.
Custom Mail Merge for Outlook and Gmail Users
Generic Emails Blow
The average person receives tons of newsletters and email marketing every day addressed to “Dear Sir or Madam.” These generic emails are far from effective at generating a good amount of user replies. The best way that we’ve seen to get your messages read is with custom tailored text.
We introduced dynamic fields like {{first_name}} and {{company}} to ToutApp over a year ago so that you could personalize your group emails. Being able to use mail merge fields saved all of our users a ton of time. They still restricted personalization to a number of preset options, though.
Introducing a new level of personalization for your emails.
We’re giving you more: you can upload and email groups in Tout and reference whichever mail merge fields you’ve created. For those in Gmail and Outlook, you’ll need to use our web app at www.toutapp.com to send group emails. You’ll be able to reply and have your follow-up tracked right from with your email client, though.
Here’s how to get started with custom fields:
1) Create a CSV file with all of the contacts you’d like to email at once. Put any information you want in your columns.
2) Create your group in Tout, click “Import CSV,” and upload your file.
3) Map your fields to the ones we currently offer in ToutApp. For all your custom fields, click “Add a new custom field.” Create a name for your field.
4) Click add to group.
5) Now you can send everyone a really personalized email that may look something like this:
Alexander, Hannah, Charlie, and anyone else being emailed here will get a unique email delivered to their inbox. Sending group emails like these doesn’t mean you don’t care about the people you’re emailing. It means you care about the time you’re saving.
ToutApp: Managing your Email, saving your time, allowing you to get back to doing what you love. Start your free trial today.
New to ToutApp? How I am managing my new email.
I just entered the world of ToutApp. My email received a makeover and I joined the team as a Happiness Officer. Let’s talk about what’s important here. As a new ToutApp user I came to an important realization.
It is always difficult to make a change.
I was accustomed to the glaring subject lines in my inbox. In the chaos of my inbox, where were the emails and replies I actually cared about? With an outbox full of emails the one pondering question in my mind was the big uncertainty of who read my carefully handcrafted email send out the day before.
My email is now an outlook for productivity, helps me manage my workflow and discover what communication is working and what is not working thanks to ToutApp. In real- time I see who viewed my email. My questions are answered. Did my prospect engage with the information I sent? When should I make my move and call?
Some highlights from my week
- Discovering and becoming addicted to the Live Feed
- Learning the ins and outs of integrating ToutApp with my Gmail and Salesforce
- Crossing Market St. during the Giants parade to get to work
If you have a cool tip or best practice to share about how you make ToutApp work for you, we'd love to hear! Submit your own tip here.