Toutapp gets an iPhone App, Email FollowUp Will Never Be the Same Again

We all know networking is one of the most important and valuable ways to improve your career, but it’s also one of the biggest time drains, and it’s very difficult to manage. At Toutapp, we spend a lot of time thinking about the major pain points around sending and receiving email, and our new iPhone app is our latest innovation in email efficiency.

The Toutapp iPhone app is the fastest, easiest way to connect and follow up with people you’re meeting at conferences and networking events. You can also send product information, details about your company, or just that initial email that gets you talking! Below is a video that shows everything you can do with the Toutapp iPhone app:

Send or Schedule Any Template

Once you’ve captured someone’s name and email address, you can click any template in your Toutapp account to send. Your most frequently used templates will show up on the first page. Once you choose the template you want to send, you can send the email immediately, or schedule it for delivery in three hours, or in three days, depending on when you think it’s best for the other person to receive it.

Quick View of Toutapp Analytics

The home page of our app gives you an awesome overview of the success of your recent Toutapp emails. You’ll be able to quickly see who’s opened your emails, how many times they viewed or clicked on your message, and which messages are still unopened.

What is the Toutapp Team up to next?

We’re hard at work preparing for 500 Startups Demo Days, but we’re not just working on our pitch. Check back this week and next for more product announcements as we roll out the features you’ve requested! Tired of writing the same emails over and over? Try Toutapp.

The Art of Outreach: How to Get People to Actually Read and React to Your Emails

How frustrating is it to send someone an email, only to find out that five days later, there’s no response, no action, and no help? While you can’t actually make other people read their emails, there are a few tricks that can help you be more effective when reaching out, especially to people you don’t know.

Don’t Blindly Reach Out (if you can avoid it)

By far, the easiest way to get someone to read your email is to get in contact with them through an introduction. Obviously, this isn’t always possible, but with the power of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, you might be more closely connected than you think. Take five minutes to quickly scan social networks and see if anyone you know can provide an introduction.

Re: The Subject Line

Make the subject of your email catchy, honest, and informative. If at all possible, provide a relevant point of reference for the recipient, like “Jane Smith suggested I contact you,” or “Thanks for your blog post on best practices for outreach!” Focus on crafting a subject line that makes someone want to open your email. As Jared Goralnick said: “Sound interesting, but be honest and get the gist across in your subject.”

Create Value

So your email is in the inbox, complete with a strong subject line. Now what? You want the recipient of your email to just. keep. reading. You already know what you want, you need to make it clear why your reader wants the same thing. By focusing on how your message will benefit the other person, you’ll get much better results. As for the length, Jared Goralnick suggests keeping it under 250 words. That’s a good benchmark, but if you have to make it longer, try to break up the email into multiple short paragraphs so it’s not visually daunting.

Ask for something – specifically

The key to getting what you want is knowing what to ask for.  You’ll never get help or feedback if you don’t ask. As Kiss Metrics’ Cindy Alvarez says, “limit yourself to one “ask” and make the commitment level clear.” The ideal ask identifies what actions will provide you with the maximum benefit, but requires minimal effort from the other person. Of course, it never hurts if coffee is included! If you get nervous asking someone for help, just remember that as long as you’re polite and considerate, the worst thing they’re going to say is no.

Don’t attach, and other common courtesies

You’re presumably sending an unsolicited email, so be consider and don’t clutter someone else’s inbox with attachments. Send the email at a time you think will be good for the other person. Alex Taub wrote a post indicating that the best time to reach out is on Sunday, but that may be different if you know the specifics of someone’s work schedule. As always – remember please and thank you… especially if the person politely declines to help. There’s no sense in burning bridges, after all.

Tired of wondering whether your emails have been opened?

It’s hugely valuable to know whether your email has been opened, clicked through or left unopened in outer space. The way you would follow up to all three of those situations is completely different. Want to know who’s reading what you write? Try Toutapp.

Farzad Firoz Wins a Year of Toutapp VIP for Discovering Our Secret LinkedIn Feature

We’ve been seeing an awesome response from our customers about the LinkedIn integration we announced last week. Although we made it super easy to hook into your LinkedIn connections and use Tout to start messaging them faster, I still wasn’t completely happy with the workflow and the experience that we had.

People browse LinkedIn profiles, they view the rich information that is in there, and then they choose to message people they want to talk to. Given that workflow, it became pretty obvious to me that we needed to be as close to the Profile viewing experience as possible.

So I took a few hours two nights ago and hacked together an update to our Chrome and Firefox extensions that would place an additional button inside of LinkedIn profiles—which you could click to quickly send a Tout-based LinkedIn message to the person whose profile you are viewing.

As 4am rolled around, to make things more interesting, I decided to kick off a little scavenger hunt (instead of just announcing the new feature). Here’s the tweet that kicked it off:

In a matter of hours, Farzad, who already happens to be a paying customer at Tout, tweeted at me with his discovery. He had found the LinkedIn update! My hypothesis proved true—this was indeed the natural workflow and even such a simple button injected into a profile was discovered pretty quickly by Farzad: because it makes so much damn sense for it to be there!

Anyway—I’m really excited about the potential LinkedIn+Tout holds and am looking forward to giving more of what our customers want. But for now, Congratulations Farzad! You just won a full 1-year of Toutapp VIP.

If you’d like to be able to quickly send Tout-based LinkedIn messages, just install our Chrome or Firefox extension.