What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Let me take a guess: you check your email.
Salespersons spend an average of 13 hours per week on email and 21% of their day writing emails.
Just imagine how much time your sales teams overall spend writing emails they don’t need to be, only to lose focus on their primary goal—sell. Although email is a crucial part of a salesperson’s job and is here to stay, there’s considerable room to improve your email productivity.
Nowadays, most businesses use CRM systems to manage their data, and often, it is limited to just that. Sales teams view the CRM as just another “tool” in their toolbox that adds more work to their day. A study revealed that sales reps spend only 18% of their time in CRM, the foundational system for sales teams. This is largely attributed to their ignorance and lack of training to utilize the CRM effectively.
So, we’re here to help.
If you’re not sure how to get started, here are six easy tweaks to improve your email productivity and make the most out of your CRM.
1. Connect your email
Stop juggling multiple tools. CRM and email should be connected. A lot of sales reps still switch between the two to communicate with prospects. So, start by connecting your email provider with your CRM.
Freshsales integrates to Gmail, Microsoft 365, and other email clients using your email’s IMAP server. Once you connect your email, Freshsales automatically syncs your email conversations, automatically logs them with the related records, and syncs your calendar appointments too.
How does this make a difference? Well, for starters, it is easier to track your follow-up emails with prospects. You don’t have to put your emails through a sieve to know if you received an email or sent one. Freshsales brings order to your emails in your sales cadence.
Watch this video on why you should connect your email to your CRM.
2. Use email templates
If you’re writing the same email over and over again, what you should be doing is fairly obvious. No, the answer is not copy-paste; it is to create an email template.
Salespersons must learn to save time, and email templates bring you one step closer to doing this. You can create unlimited email templates in Freshsales and even share them with your team. Now, when creating templates, it’s important that you personalize them because personalized emails get 14% more click-through rates.
Freshsales allows you to create personalized email templates to give customers that personal touch. Add placeholders by choosing any default and custom fields when you draft the template. And, if you want better email open rates, you can personalize your subject line too in Freshsales.
Here’s how you can optimize your CRM and make use of email templates to save time and effort of manually writing emails.
3. Automate your email campaigns
Sending emails is an unavoidable routine task for salespersons. Some of these are standard emails that go out to new customers like a welcome email, or follow-up emails to prospects. There are situations when you don’t have to manually send these emails to each because they don’t necessitate your involvement at each instance. How else can you get the job done?
The fastest route to productivity is automation. Freshsales enables you to improve your email productivity in three ways:
Option #1 – Bulk email
The fastest way to email a large group of recipients is using the Bulk email feature in Freshsales. Filter records by specifying your criteria, and select all records to add them as recipients to your email. You can either write your personalized email or choose one from a list of templates.
Watch this video and learn how to simplify sending mass emails using Freshsales.
Option #2 – Workflow
Workflows in Freshsales enables you to automate sending emails based on predefined triggers. For example, you can set up a workflow to automatically send out a welcome email to your leads.
Take a look at the video below to know how to automate sending this email.
Option #3 – Sales Campaigns
Sometimes your emails follow a sequence for lead nurturing, promotional campaigns, etc. There’s a chance that some opportunities will slip away if you have to do this manually each time. Imagine having to remember when to send which email and to whom; it’s hard, ineffective, and unproductive. Sales Campaigns in Freshsales is a time-saving technique to improve your email productivity.
Here’s a video we put together on how to automate a win-back email campaign in Freshsales.
4. Schedule and track your emails
Did you know that most people read emails between 5am and 6am, rather than at any other time period during the day?
So, the key to getting people to read your email is to send it around this time. Sure, you can wake up at 5am, find your device, and hit send. Or, you can choose to do it the smart way, which is to schedule your emails in Freshsales to send at your preferred time. Choose a time zone, pick a day and time, and schedule to send later. Ditch the early morning alarm, and get some sleep instead.
While you’re at it, track your emails too. Enable the Track settings in the compose window before you send out an email. You can trigger real-time notifications as soon as a recipient opens your email. If you’ve included any links in your email, you’ll know if they clicked on it. There’s your perfect chance to follow-up with leads at the right time.
Bonus tip: Give your recipients the option to opt-out of your business communication by adding an unsubscribe link to your emails directly in Freshsales.
Watch this video and learn everything you need to know about scheduling and tracking your emails.
5. Manage your inbox
How many unread emails do you have in your inbox right now? The average worker’s inbox contains 199 unread emails.
According to the KonMari method, when it comes to tidying your things, Marie Kondo tells us to ask one question, “Does it spark joy?” If the answer is yes, then keep and organize. It works for emails too.
Freshsales tidies up your sales emails by grouping them into categories in the Conversations module. The emails that are addressed directly to you are in your inbox, and the ones sent to your sales team goes into the Team Inbox.
To help you focus on what needs your attention, we created an “Awaiting Response” folder in the CRM. It holds emails received from your leads and contacts you haven’t responded to. So, before you begin your day, instantly reach for emails in this folder and start replying.
You can also find your scheduled emails, drafts, and templates in their respective bins. And, if an email doesn’t spark joy, you know what to do. We have a folder for that too; it’s labeled Trash.
6. Personalize your email settings
Productivity is all about the small changes you make that bring a difference in your game. Simplify your work by maximizing the potential of your tools to be more productive on the job. A simple change in your CRM’s email settings can make your day (and life) a whole lot easier. Consider this example:
You receive inquiries about your business services all the time. Now, most of them are potential prospects contacting you out of interest, so you definitely should add these prospects to your CRM. But, is the smart choice to take time out of your busy day to manually add each prospect into the system? Of course not. Like we said earlier, maximize the potential of your CRM to automate those repetitive time-killers.
Freshsales allows you to personalize email preferences that work best for you. You get to choose how you wish to receive email notifications, perform email-based actions in the CRM, create your email signature, etc.
Press play and learn how to personalize your email settings.
Take advantage of CRM and master your email productivity
Emails can be overwhelming. With salespersons highly dependent on email, it’s easy for you to get lost in your inbox, only if you don’t follow the right email management techniques.
To figure out how productive you are at your job, ask yourself a few questions: How good is your CRM’s email capabilities? How often are you checking your emails? How are your time management skills?
Invest the time to incorporate these six easy and effective email management strategies in your CRM, and don’t sweat it, because—
Cover Illustration by Ashna Liza Sunny
