My Best Sales Hack
I recently was on a screen share and saw an inbox on the other end of the screen that was immaculately organized! I was actually suprised and a tad bit jealous to see such a clean looking inbox to be honest. If you're an avid emailer you probably understand my pain of owning a mess of an inbox. Working at ToutApp I've become completely email obsessed, so of course this discovery of a poster child for a perfect inbox got me pretty excited.
Here is how I came to love Gmail's multiple inboxes.
The Problem
I live and breathe email (and a lot of Salesforce) so Gmail for me is where I spend a lot of my time. The big problem was my Gmail inbox looked like a Rubix Cube before it was solved -- a complete jumble.
The bigger problem was the important email responses from hot leads that were getting buried in my inbox. 
Writing sales emails and follow ups with the goal in mind to get a reply is always at the top on my mind. With ToutApp I've been able to hone my messaging to identify what email messaging and follow up typically generate replies.
Too many replies is a good problem to have, but a messy inbox makes it difficult to prioritize and manage following up efficiently. I needed to find a way to make it easy to identify the most important email replies in my inbox.
The Solution
Multiple inboxes. Beyond just the ability to organize your read, unread and starred emails, I discovered creating filters was the best way to keep important replies easy to identify in my inbox.
If you're not feeling my excitement just yet, here's how I've put this solution into play.
New ToutApp users are typically put on a 5X5 drip. This is made easy with templates and auto-follow up. One of my inboxes filters only replies from new ToutApp users on the drip.
My most important inbox filters what I deem to be important replies. I've named this inbox "big deals" Example: I send over an email to set up some time to chat with a decision maker connected to a "big deal" I've followed up a handful of times and receive a one-liner "10am Wednesday".
How to get started?
- Head on over to Gmail Settings. Go to labs and enable multiple inboxes.
- You should now have a "multiple inboxes tab". Once you click on the tab you'll see the option to create different searches.
- Create your search queries. This is the key to organizing your inbox. Example: subject:(re:type in your subject line)in:inbox
- Rearrange. Choose the positioning of your new inboxes.
- Lastly, enjoy your new organized inbox!
Take your game to the next level, learn more tips to streamline your email process with email tracking for Outlook and Gmail, analytics and templates. Check out ToutApp or sign up for a free trial.
Life without ToutApp would mean “Less Deals Done”
Our featured User of the Week entry comes from Matt Ellsworth, VP of Growth, at Storefront. Every week or so, we'll profile a different user who uses our app to improve their email productivity. If you would like to be featured in the future, you can apply here.
Storefront is a marketplace for short term retail real estate. Artists, eCommerce companies, designers, online retailers and sellers often times are in the market looking for short term real estate which can be difficult to find. What we do is take the legwork out - our team works with brokers and landlords in order to find amazing retail spaces for people to lease on a short term basis so they can sell their products and connect with their customers.
Storefront makes it easy for people with something to sell to find space to sell it.
How do you use ToutApp?
Along the lines of why a lot of people use Tout and the most addictive part is knowing when people are opneing you emails, knowing that someone had read your email and you can acknowledge the fact that they did recieve it. Tout allows us to stay on top of our prospects and give us the ability to know how successful our email campaigns are on an individual as well as a team basis.
What success can I attribute to ToutApp? Honestly, a whole lot of time saved.
Why Matt Loves ToutApp
- Real Time Email Tracking: Knowing when people are opening your emails - that something is happening with the emails you send. It's the no clue zone and I like having a clue about that zone.
- ToutApp Meeting Times: Being able to give a list of times you are available to meet or chat on the phone is a game changer. This function can save you 3-4 emails in any given email chain and if you do that five times a dat you are talking about a significant amount of time saved.
- Tout Templates: Eliminates that repetition and saves you a whole lot of time.
- Tout Group Emails: Being able to send a personalized email to a group of prospects is really amazing. It fills the void between marketing emails like mailchimp and copying and pasting the sames email over and over again.
- ToutApp Happiness: The ToutApp team is always there to answer any and all questions when you need it.
My life without Toutapp would mean less deals done.
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.
ToutApp for Outlook introduces Advanced Email and Presentation Tracking
Today, we're announcing Version 2.0 of ToutApp for Outlook. With it, you get a rock solid battled-tested plugin that adds Tout email tracking, templates and our newly introduced presentation tracking to Outlook versions spanning from 2007 to 2013.
Watch the Video Overview
How is it battle tested?
Since releasing our Outlook plugin last year, we've been hard at work working with customers across major enterprises spanning Outlook versions 2007 to 2013 and Windows versions XP, 7 and even Windows 8.
Tout already offers you the most advanced email and templating in the sales communications space, and today we're happy to announce support for presentation tracking right from inside of Outlook.
Why Tout for Outlook?
For those of you unfamiliar with Tout or email tracking in general, Tout's sales communications platform plugs into Outlook, Gmail, and your CRM to help solve these key problems in your day-to-day sales process:
- Not knowing what happens to your important sales emails after hitting "Send."
- Constantly jumping back and forth from your Outlook into your CRM having to manually upadate your sales communications.
- Having to constantly re-attach files, or re-write the same emails over, and over, and over.
Key Features
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Email and presentation tracking with real-time feed: You know when your email is opened, links are clicked, presentations are viewed down to the page and even when someone replies. See who is engaging with your emails as it happens right from Outlook so you can manage your time and follow up effectively.
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Customizable templates. Write emails faster with saved templates. You can also draft an email up on the fly and save it as a template. Bonus - add a trackable attachment just as you're about to send the email.
- Auto-update your CRM. Forgot to update your CRM? No need to include a BCC or hop into your contact record. Tout auto updates your CRM once you send your email.
To get started with ToutApp for Outlook, you can download the latest version here.
If you don't have a ToutApp account yet, start here.
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.