Feature
Anyone who doubts the importance of email marketing needs to talk to Cirrus Insight, which just announced a new service that automates email sync between Gmail and Salesforce.
It builds on the an existing integration with Salesforce and Gmail by automating the process. And because it's a cloud service, it syncs email from Google to Salesforce no matter what browser, client or device and enterprise is using, the Laguna Hills, Calif., CRM app developer reports.
Email Marketing Obstacles
The integration responds to two email marketing challenges, usefulness and ease of use.
“Many users find Salesforce overwhelming and inefficient, negatively impacting on adoption rates and, consequently, the usefulness of the platform with native solutions doing little to remedy the problem,” Jason Hubbard, vice president of marketing at Cirrus Insight, told CMSWire.
Like any other application or platform that aims to provide better marketing or customer insights, Salesforce is only as useful as the data that’s in it. Typically, Salesforce email options include:
- Bcc-to-Salesforce: While this kind of integration already exists between Gmail and Salesforce, it only works on outbound emails, and only relates emails to contacts
- Salesforce for Outlook: This is not cloud-based generally and is difficult to setup
- “Flip-flop”: Jumping between Salesforce and inbox, which is time-consuming and produces low quality data.
The Cirrus Insights Solution
Cirrus Insight solves this with email sync, which automatically feeds emails into Salesforce. According to Hubbard, email sync and calendar sync ensure that every conversation and every appointment with prospects and customers is saved into Salesforce for analysis and customer insights.
“We've long been advocates for people to be smart with their email logging and only log the ones that are important. However, we've had a ton of customers tell us they want to log all of their emails. So we decided to automate email logging, but do it smarter,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard said Cirrus Insight addressed spam by ensuring that the sync only happens across leads and contacts.
“We let our users set smart filters on their logging and automatically log emails to the most recently created or edited case, opportunity, or whatever record they work with. Auto logging also allows us to work with any user since everything is server side, not just Gmail and Outlook users,” xxx added.
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More to the point, enterprises can also use it to sync historical data into Salesforce and bring existing deployments up to date with all past customer interactions. It also enables those connected to the platform send and receive email on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry.
The Place Of Email Marketing
Last year, Litmus decided to look into the effectiveness of email marketing and whether it has a viable future. Chad White, research director at Cambridge, Mass.-based Litmus told CMSWire at the time that the findings were solid: email marketing has never been stronger.
Research conducted by the company found that even a standard marketing email shot will result in one forward for every 370 opens with more successful emails providing one forward for 21 opens.
CMSWire’s Pierre DeBois pointed out that email is valuable because a list of subscribers forms a captive audience. These are people who have actively expressed a willingness for engagement. They've opted-in to your marketing efforts
With this in mind Cirrus Insight is to continue developing its email products:
“Regarding social, in the B2B space email still reigns. In our space everyone is moving towards democratizing marketing automation and bringing it to the individual salesperson. We released email campaigns a couple of months back which allows our users to send templates to curated lists of up to 500 people,” Hubbard added.
Meanwhile, Cirrus Insight email sync is live for Google customers and coming soon for Office 365 and Exchange server. Cirrus Insight calendar sync is available now for Google, Office 365, and Exchange customers.
