User of the Week: Creighton Green
I co-founded a startup company called Aptivada. We work closely with TV stations, radio stations, and other media outlets to help them quickly grow their social presence. Our apps, tools, and media-specific consulting drives exciting results.
We send a LOT of the same e-mails every day for customer service, sales, and marketing.
ToutApp helps us work smarter, and much faster by providing a suite of tools and features to make sending e-mails better.
We use ToutApp's templates to save time on the daily hours that we were using to write the same type of email over and over again. One of our favorite features is being able to track opens and clicks. This helps us know who we need to follow up with or send another email to. ToutApp is also very simple and easy to implement. Everything ties in easily to Gmail and Outlook. If you're not using ToutApp for your startup or business, you should check them out.
You can get in touch with Creighton through Twitter: @creightongreen
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.
Tout was Featured as one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s 7 Essential Apps for Sales Teams
This week, we were honored to be featured by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the 7 Essential Apps for Sales Teams. And of course, we're in great company. As the article points out, there are a lot of small details required to for a salesperson to close a sale. If you can't manage the tiny details, there's no way you will be able to be a successful sales person.
A Better Way to Work
Luckily, tools like Tout will help you increase your productivity and manage each step in a smarter way. For example, the ability to schedule emails means that as soon as you've left a meeting, you can follow up immediately, but you won't seem over-eager. The fact that Tout will automatically update your CRM with not only a copy of the email, but also analytic data on that email, means that you have one more step you don't have to worry about. People are raving about it.
A browser plugin automatically scans for any email addresses listed on a Web page, helping you quickly find the person you need. 'Click the [contact] you want, click the template button and you're sending an email in two minutes,' says Beth Morgan, vice president of marketing for Palo Alto, Calif.-based healthcare tracking site Simplee.
It's all about streamlining the process. If we can find ways to help salespeople close deals faster and more efficiently, we ultimately help salespeople partner with their customers to bring them more of the products and services they need, without losing a bit of the personal touch.
Want to streamline your sales email process? Try Tout for free today.
And of course, a big thank you to Entrepreneur Magazine for helping us share our love of workplace productivity with the world!
Step Away from the Computer: Why Your “Breaks” Aren’t Boosting Productivity
We've all heard the same advice about taking small breaks during the day - you will be more productive if, instead of working on one task for hours and hours on end, you take small breaks throughout the day. This advice can be applied differently depending on the type of work you're doing. Many jobs that take a lot of creative energy also require "the zone," so you may stop to breathe every few hours.
Regardless of what kind of work you do, you're probably taking this advice to some extent. Perhaps you're on a "break" right now, this very second. Did you find this post when you were taking a quick Twitter break?
These little productivity "boosts" aren't working.
When you work on a computer, your short computer breaks don't really constitute a break. Sure, you're looking at something different, but there's nothing to really note that break. How long are you going to read that blog? How are you going to refocus your attention when you come back? Jonathan Milligan wrote a great post about how he doubled his productivity, in part by taking real breaks.
A real break is not reading blog posts, checking emil, or watching an educational video online. A "real" break for me is anything that is away from the computer.
Your brain reacts differently to a screen than to the rest of the world, that's why looking at TV, computer and phone screens before you go to sleep results in sleep deprivation. The same goes for breaks. If you want to give your brain a rest, let it do something different.
Step 1: Move one foot, Step 2: Move other foot
If you want a break that will actually help you focus on the task at hand, do something that requires you to stand up and move your body away from your desk. Go get a coffee. Walk around the block. Do some stretches.
Sometimes this can be a bit awkward in the middle of the day, so if you want to be more subtle, try just walking around the office. You can even pop by someone else's desk and get a few questions answered while you're at it.
The point is, a lot of productivity tips, like taking a break, end up being a distraction when they're not done properly. They leave you less productive than before. Why do more harm than good? Just take a moment to stop, get up, breathe, and take a real break.
Scott, an Internet Marketing Specialist, Quadruples Outreach with Toutapp
Today’s featured Toutapp super-user is Scott Redgate. Scott is an Internet marketing specialist at WebpageFX, an Internet Marketing Agency in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Scott has been using Toutapp to create buzz around a website tool that his company created to help websites improve their rankings in search engines like Google.
The Situation: Pre-Toutapp
Scott identified a list of web sites that he believed would benefit from using CrawlerFX, a tool that crawls, analyzes, and scores webpages based on several factors that affect company’s search engine rankings. He began to reach out to these website owners individually, but he became discouraged because it seemed to take forever. For starters, it took several minutes to simply find a simple email address on each site. After that, he found himself writing the same email over and over again, only changing the introductory remarks.
How Toutapp Solved the Problem
Scott heard about Toutapp and decided to try Tout’s templates, scheduling, and analytics. He also used the ToutApp add-on for Firefox – it allowed him to quickly find email addresses on webpages, which was exactly what he needed!
“It took me forever to find email addresses on those sites! I was getting annoyed that I would search every page of a website and still be unable to find anything. Not only did the Toutapp add-on find the email addresses for me, but it also allowed for me to send a templatized email with just a couple of clicks. This saved me hours.”
Scott created several email templates, and he tweaked each email he sent to compliment something unique on the recipient’s site. Toutapp also provided the analytics he needed to finally understand which templates were the most effective, saving him time and money. In fact, Toutapp enabled him to send 4-5 times as many emails per day!
Why You Should Check Out WebpageFX
As one of the leading Internet marketing companies in the country, WebpageFX has delivered amazing results on a regular basis. They have over 100 years of combined staff experience, which is unheard of in the Internet marketing! They specialize in web development, design, search engine optimization, and many other services. Check out their SEO packages and find one that is right for you!
Are you using Toutapp yet?
Scott’s case is just one of many; sending email is tedious and time consuming for anyone. If you find yourself sending the same emails over and over, it’s probably time to give Toutapp a shot!
Don't Let Being Organized Keep You from Being Productive
Chris Edgar of Stepcase Lifehack wrote a cool post about the value of “workplace yoga,” and it had some great insights on the difference between productivity and organization:
“Usually, when we think about productivity, images of well-organized e-mail inboxes and color-coded folders come to mind. But these things alone aren’t enough to make us efficient. If our minds aren’t disciplined — our attention is scattered, or we feel sluggish or anxious — work will be a struggle, no matter how organized our workspace is.”
As someone who spends a lot of time organizing, thinking about organizing, and reading about organizing, I know firsthand that organizing can be an excellent procrastination tool. When you spend time cleaning and arranging your space, it relieves stress and takes time, so it’s almost a positive form of procrastination. At least that’s what I tell myself… But hey, even Alexander Pope said, “Order is heaven’s first law.”
Just because you’re organized doesn’t mean you’re going to be productive. There’s a huge difference between having your time managed and using your time effectively. When you get up in the morning, do you sort through your emails and categorize them, or do you just answer the ones you can and move on? Creating a system to save time doesn’t guarantee you’ll be more productive. Toutapp can save a ton of time on emails, but not if you’re spending your time on Toutapp constantly tweaking and reorganizing your templates. Write one, write it well, label it in a way that makes sense, then send it (over and over) and move on. Focus on the ways that tools like Toutapp make you productive rather than organized.
Tired of re-writing the same Emails? Want to know when someone has Viewed or Clicked on an Email? Use Toutapp.
photo via BLW Photography
