With the increase in remote sales, face-to-face contact and handshakes with clients have become almost impossible, so valuable skills such as charisma and thinking-on-your-feet – once developed for local sales – have become difficult to utilize. Email has stepped in as the medium to communicate to potential customers, with the added advantage of being quicker, faster and more trackable. In fact, over 90% percent of internet users currently hold an email account for private or business purposes- but just using email as a tool is not enough. There are different nuances that you can bring in even within sales email. For instance, your HTML email signatures can help you catch the eyes of your prospects.
This post will give an overview of how sales emails work in a CRM and offer some examples of enhancing your email communication by using a professional HTML email signature on all outgoing email messages.
How a CRM enables omnichannel engagement
Often sales reps lose time communicating across different channels- LinkedIn message, a phone call, a visit in person – all these interactions with a prospect are recorded hastily in their notes or phone. They also have to duplicate this effort and record this in excel when they are back at their desks. A CRM simplifies handling omni channel communication with prospects by pulling all data into one central platform that all sales reps can access.
A CRM like Freshsales provides the means for you to communicate via the customer’s preferred channel: phone, email, chat, or SMS. Thus, you optimize your sales processes and eliminate repetitive tasks. In the end, your sales team becomes more productive, closing more sales and converting more leads.
How Sales email works in Freshsales
Email is the preferred communication channel for many customers, with over 306 billion emails sent and received worldwide in 2020.
Freshsales provides an opportunity to engage with your customers through email with real-time behavioral data.
Some of the sales email features include:
- Email tracking (Opened, Clicked, and Bounced)
- Bulk email
- Email templates
- Scheduling the sending of an email
- Placeholders (for templates and bulk emails)
- Auto-forwarding emails
- Email campaigns
Let’s get into the details of how you can handle sales emails within the CRM.
- Schedule emails: Set your campaigns to go out at a specific date and time when your customers are most likely to read them.
- Forward emails: Sell from any inbox, forward or BCC emails, and follow up on conversations right from your CRM account.
- Customize emails: Switch things up and capture your prospects’ attention with attractive colors and fonts using custom HTML code.
- Automate email communication: Use Sales Sequences and Workflow in Freshsales to automate your outbound email campaigns.
- Set up real-time alerts: Get real-time alerts on email opens, link clicks, and new emails, and connect with your prospects at the right time.
In order to perform these sales email activities, Freshsales provides two types of inboxes:
1. Team inbox:
When your company receives a large volume of sales emails, a sales rep won’t always respond to all the messages assigned to them quickly.
That’s where Freshsales’ Team inbox comes in. Your company gets the first address for the team. You can use them to forward email messages to your Freshsales account, where the entire team can see customer messages.
Typically, this is an address like sales@yourcrmname.freshsales.com. This address is helpful when companies have a generic email address for communication on the website or landing page.
NOTE: You need to set up the email addresses in Admin Settings > Team Inbox.
The team inbox becomes the standard room for all sales reps to read and respond to your company’s emails. By communicating together, the people in your sales team can help each other and respond better.
2. User inbox:
The second email address is the address for each unique user, which will be your sales reps. You don’t always need to share all email messages with the other members of your sales team.
Typically, this is an address like username@yourcrmname.freshsales.com. Email messages sent to this address go to each user’s inbox that is not accessible to other team members. You can add this particular address to an email signature, LinkedIn profile, or business card.
HTML Email signatures for Freshsales
Email signatures are no more just about including your name and company details. They are an overlooked brand touchpoint. It is another way to connect with your prospects. HTML email signatures are a great opportunity to:
- Customize the message for each prospect
- Share social media handles of your company
- Establish what products you provide
- Improve brand awareness
- Track response of the audience
The problem of email signatures with plain text
Some salespeople don’t use any HTML email signature or only use signatures with plain text such as “Regards, Your Name.” But they miss out on an excellent opportunity to strengthen your brand and offer an enhanced experience to customers.
The first problem seen in sales email messages is not having an email signature at the end of the message or only having a simple text signature.
To solve this, Bybrand, a HTML email signature manager, helps you quickly create and deploy robust HTML email signatures.
A perfect professional email signature should have your phone number, email (used in Freshsales), company website, logo, and social pages. Optionally, it could have a banner or link to open or schedule a call.
Sales HTML Email Signature Examples
In our first email signature example, the template provides friendly communication, so your contact will quickly know whom they are exchanging messages with.
In the following example, the email signature features a phone number, email, and website – all essential communication channels today.
Our third and final example is a signature template that reinforces the company’s brand, featuring the logo.
See more professional email signature templates here.
Final thoughts
Email has become one of the primary methods of personal and business communication around the world. So enriching communication is more critical than ever. To do this, you can use email signatures across Freshsales Sales Email features such as bulk email, campaigns, and 1-to-1 messaging with the customer.
With a CRM, you can track key metrics such as clicks on the email and the purchasing behavior of your leads, thereby personalizing your reach and segmentation and improving conversion rates.
In the post-pandemic world, you can expect sales teams to continue to use more digital channels to communicate with their customers. That’s where powerful sales emails and HTML email signatures can make an impact and set you apart from competitors.
