Introducing: The Sales Communications Dashboard
First of all, Happy Friday.
For those of you that are already ToutApp users, I hope you had a fantastic week of sales communications with new and exciting leads. Thanks to Tout's Live Feed, you already know who your most engaged leads were, and have probably closed a few more deals than you normally would have since you focused your time on the right people.
For this Friday, as you reflect on how the week went and what you want to do differently next week, we want to give you something that helps synthesize how your sales communications went this week.
Today, we're introducing something brand new that is going to take your sales game to the next level. Today, we're announcing something takes all of that amazing analytics and tracking data around your sales emails and wraps it into one meaningful dashboard. Today, we're announcing our real-time sales communications dashboard.
Although its unorthodox to release stuff on a Friday, we thought it would be great because as you wind down on your long week, you can go ahead and log into ToutApp Dashboard, click on the "This Week" button, and see how your whole week looked in terms of your sales communications.
Tout's pulse dashboard will make meaning out of all those individual email views and clicks and tell you:
- Which times of the weeks were busiest for you
- Which times of the week your customers were most engaged
- How many emails you dealt with this week
- Which templates you used the most
- What kind of email content drove the most engagement
- Who your most engaged leads/prospects/customers are
And ofcourse, the dashboard was designed for Managers and Teams in mind first, so it'll also help you tap into the sales communications across your organization and see how everyones doing as a whole.
We've put in a significant amount of investment into the underlying data infrastrucutre for processing our email and engagement data. We think this dashboard is just the beginning.
If you and your sales team aren't on ToutApp yet, what are you waiting for? Get Touting.
If you’re not using ToutApp for PR - You’re doing it wrong.
As a PR veteran, your pitches are awesome. You know this, and your clients know this - but the journalists you're speaking to on a everyday basis don't. Getting their attention in the first place is difficult enough. But gettting them to read through your whole email - let alone respond? Challenging.
If you've been in PR for years, you've amassed your own knowledge of what does and doesn't work with your pitches, but with ToutApp, you're getting actual data. Our solution lets you nurture relationships with reporters, tailor your emails to each recipient, email multiple journalists at once, and learn what does and doesn't work in the world of PR pitches.
Email those pitches faster.
You can quickly send personalized emails to journalists right from inside of Gmail or Outlook using 
ToutApp's customizable email templates. And with ToutApp's group email functionality you can send a single pitch to multiple reporters.
Here is how Toni Antonetti, Founder and CEO of Chicago PR uses Tout:
I send out lots of story pitches, but I like to tailor them to individual reporters - if there's anything the media hates, it's blast emails! I can use the basic template but change it to refer a recent story by a particular editor. Or I can mention the timeliness of a story. I've been able to improce my open rates dramatically by noticing who opens which email and when.
Track those pitches.
ToutApp's Live Feed gives you real-time intelligence into what those reporters are doing with your email at this very moment. By tracking down views, clicks and engagement, ToutApp automatically highlights the people you should be paying attention to and see how the journalist interacted with your pitch.
Ed Zitron, CEO and Founder of EZ-PR, is pitching all the time. And doesn't go a day without Touting those pitches. Here is what Ed has to say about Tout:
I want to keep my emails as honest, upfront and efficient as possible and ToutApp lets me do that. Tout's view, click and engagement tracking allows me to see, in a lot more transparent manner, what clients are doing well and what effort I am putting in different places.
Tim Cox, Principal, ZingPR uses ToutApp for all his media pitching, Why?
Because, in one easy to use app, I can easily manage client-specific media lists and pitches, schedule outreach, and then track engagement (opens and clicks) in real time. It's really useful to see who has opened an email and even how many times he or she opened it - so I then know where to focus my follow-up activites.
What is even more equally useful for Tim is seeing who has not opened an email.
Why not? Was the subject line not appealing? Am I targeting the wrong person? ToutApp highlights those people who are not engaged.
Know what is resonating.
Think of the messages you send to introduce yourself to a journalist, follow up on a pitch or nuture a relationship with a client - ToutApp will help you become smarter with your email. Above all, we eliminate the uncertainity of how journalists reacted to your email. Thanks to our insights, you can measure what kind of messaging drives engagement and successful emails.
Peter Himler, CEO and Founder of Flatiron Communications, works with emerging and established companies seeking to capitalize on the latest tools and technologies available to the communications professional.
Tout helps eliminate much of the uncertainty that has historically existed when PR pros emails a story idea to a journalist. What's more, the app allows the sender to see how the journalists interacted with the emailed query. Needless to say, Tout may one day render the journalist-hated (and PR-dreaded) "follow-up" call obsolete.
Get smarter with your pitches - get Touting.
Top 5 Email Mistakes You Need to Avoid
I recently sent out a BAD sales email.
Bad sales emails often go under the radar because most likely they won't result in a reply or a sale.
It's a bit easier to identify ideas around what some of our "best" emails look like based on positive responses they've led to in the past. To start writing better sales emails, it's important to take a look into what doesn't work. 
5 Email Mistakes that most likely will result in a "Delete"
1. Typos and basic grammar mistakes. When sending a sales email the impression you make is key, especially within your first communication. Typos and basic grammar mistakes = loss of credibility. The focus shifts from selling to "why is this person wasting my time with an email they didn't edit." Lesson learned from the BAD email I sent. This was the response my email resulted in:
"...even if YOUR a pro."
You still rep Tout or can I call her out on this?
Not the type of reply I was looking for... scoring a meeting would have been better. Simple grammar mistakes, such as Your vs. You're can kill the value of a sales email instantly.
2. Mail merge fail. Similar to typos and grammar, the mail merge fail leads to automatic disregard of your email or just a good laugh. Here's an email one of our Tout developers Steven recieved:
Steven, Richard, As a ruby rails developer in the Bay Area, you are one of the most saught out engineers at the moment. Feels nice huh? Although with every positive, there are some negatives (you do probably get bombarded with recruiters all the time).
We are still wondering who Richard is...No one wants to read an email sent to Dave at Company A when you're name is Ryan at Company B.
3. A long and boring email. Everyone is busy. No one wants to read a 5 paragraph essay from you. Tweet size emails. Keep your emails down to 3 short paragraphs.
4. Don't let marketing write your sales emails. While marketing emails may look fancy and visually appealing, they do not come off as personalized or forge building real relationships. Simply said your lead wants to know their is an actual pulse on the other end. Use Tout templates so YOU can create your own sales templates easily that look just like any email you'd send out from Outlook and Gmail.
5. No follow up. This one technically does not result in an automatic delete. How can you delete an email that hasn't even been sent? Changes are you won't recieve a reply or close a deal after sening out just one email. Strategic follow up is key using a combination of email and phone. Well, unfortunately I can't go back and "un-send" the BAD email I sent.
3 Tips for Successful Sales Emails
- Your subject line. The subject line is like a book cover. While, we are told never to judge a book by its cover, this does not hold true for subject lines. Subjecy lines make it or break it. A good subject line will give your email that "extra-edge" when getting noticed in your leads' busy inbox.
- The intro. An email intro is key. Why should your lead care? Make your intro about them. Mention a referral, boost their ego, keep it simple...just don't jump into a detailed explanation of your company.
- Follow up. You need to follow up. Here's the catch to being successful, "Stop touching base and checking in." This is the best advice I learned from following sales influencer John Barrows. Make sure you are following up with an intent to move along the sales and have a call to action.
How to follow up from a sales email
Did my lead or prospect get my email? This is the biggest question often faced even after spending the time to write an awesome sales email.
- Use ToutApp's Live Feed to see when your email is opened, clicked or when your lead is on slide 5 of your sales deck. Now you can spend you time following up with the most engaged people with a timed call or email.
- We oftentimes forget about the leads or contacts we email and never respond. Maybe a lead you're scheduling a meeting with. Emails get lost, pushed aside, and forgotten just like snail mail. Most likely these people may be interested, opening your email multiple times, clickng on the links in your email to learn more and never take the next steps to reply.
- Use Tout templates. Make it easy for yourself to follow up by creating templates.
Sales emails are tough - let's face it. Spend time selling, not wasting time wondering if Richard and Steven read your email.
Email Tracking 101: Everything you ever wanted to know
Tout helps you track the day-to-day emails you send from Gmail and Outlook in real time. We see this as a way for senders to learn more about who's interested in your emails and use that information to improve your communications.
The principles around email tracking are relatively simple -- however after perfecting our technology over nearly a two-year period, we've found that the devils in the details and edge cases.
We get a lot of questions around the ins and outs of email tracking, so here's a primer on the four different types of tracking we offer and how to use them.
View Tracking
What it means: We'll tell you when a recipient opens an email you sent them.
How to use it: Send an email from our website, or hit the "Tout It" button in Gmail or Outlook.
How it works: We track email opens by placing an invisible image inside the emails you send. Any recipients who have enabled in their email client will show up as having viewed your email.
Now, here's the catch. If your recipient does not have images enabled, we won't register a view. While Tout tracking tries to capitalize on all images in your email along with some other tricks to track views, view tracking is never 100%... so be sure to concentrate on our 3 other types of tracking!
We also work very hard to filter out your own views from this activity - even if you're using another email address of yours to test our tracking. If you're using a team account with us, too, we'll make a note when a member of your team views an email.
For the tech curious, Tout uses a combination of browser cookies and IP addresses to track engagement around your emails.
Best practices: Put an important image (a screenshot, logo, chart, or graph) that encourages your users to enable images. You'll get much better tracking that way!
Related FAQs:
- How does Tout's tracking work?
- The person I sent a Touted email to already responded to me. Why isn't Tout saying they opened my email?
- Why does it look like someone is viewing my email over and over again?
- Tout got the location wrong for my recipients. What happened?
- How do I see which people opened or clicked on a link from a template?
- Why am I seeing that I viewed my own email?
Click Tracking
What it means: We'll tell you when someone clicks on a link in your email.
How to use it: Send an email from our website, or hit the "Tout It" button in Gmail or Outlook.
How it works: We'll convert all your links to tracking links so you'll know when your recipients click on them and what they click on.
Best practices: Put a call to action at the end of your email in link form - have your recipient go to a page on your website, fill out a form, or access a public calendar of yours to schedule a phone call. Then you'll be able to see who is interested and be able to follow up with them accordingly.
Related FAQs:
- How does Tout's tracking work?
- How do I turn off those go.toutapp.com links?
- How do I see which people opened or clicked on a link from a template?
Site Tracking
What it means: We'll tell you when someone you emailed visits your website.
How to use it: Site Tracking requires you to place a Google Analytics-like script on your website. First, you'll need to be on our Startup plan or higher. Then you can head over here and follow the instructions to paste the Javascript code into your website.
How it works:
- You send an email to a recipient. They view it or click on a link.
- They visit your website, now or in the future.
- We'll track where on your site they're paging around and display it in the Live Feed. Site tracking is fairly similar to click tracking, except it doesn't require a recipient to click on a link in your email. If a lead types your website into their browser two weeks after you've sent them an email and they never responded, you'll know when that happens.
Best practices:
If you have a special campaign running on your site, make sure to paste your tracking code there. We also recommend tracking behavior on your pricing pages, about us, product tour, or any sort of sign up form. You can even set up Site Tracking Actions to know when they make a purchase or sign up for your service.
Related FAQs:
Attachment and Presentation Tracking
What it means: You'll be able to learn when your recipients are viewing, paging through, or downloading a presentation or file you've shared with them.
How to use it: Click the "Link" or "Link to File" button in Gmail or toutapp.com (coming soon to Outlook). Send your emails out through Tout and pull up the Live Feed.
How it works: We'll upload your attachment to Tout servers and add tracking information to it. Attachment and presentation tracking works with PDFs, Word docs, and Powerpoint presentations. As recipients click through to your attachment, we'll tell you in your Live Feed how they are engaging with your content right down to the slide they keep staring at.
Best practices: Use it! If you've uploaded a Powerpoint, you'll see what pages your recipients keep coming back to, or which pages cause them to lose interest. You can use this to tailor your follow-up and also make changes to the documents themselves.
User of the Week: Owen uses ToutApp for Customer Development
Our featured User of the Week entry comes from Owen McGab Enaohwo, Co-founder of SweetProcess. Every week or so, 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.
My co-founders and I are working on a webapp called SweetProcess that will make it easy for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses by helping them quickly and easily create Standard Operating Procedures for their businesses. Our process will allow everyone on their team to know exactly what to do in any given situation and they can make use of the SOPs to deliver a consistent level of results to their customers.
Right now we are in the process of creating a Minimum Viable Product for SweetProcess. Before jumping straight into coding, we decided to call potential customers and interview them to find the burning problems that they have with documenting how processes work in their businesses and the exact solutions they want from a software.
My email process involves sending an email to a list of prospects in my field and having them click a link to answer a simple three-question survey. ToutApp’s analytics let me know who is interested in and who has completed the survey. From there, I have the opportunity to follow up and prioritize my recipients based on who appears to be showing interest. For example, those who complete the survey then get a phone call where we can drill into the problem and the solutions that they want from the SweetProcess software.
ToutApp’s templates, tracking, and follow-up mechanisms help me get my emails done faster and more intelligently. At the end of the day, these features help me stay in touch with everyone, from my initial outreach to my next follow-up to the final phone call.