If you work in sales, you’ve probably heard the phrase “email tracking” over the last few years. It’s become incredibly popular, and many sales professionals are now using it. But what is it? Let’s take a quick look at sales email tracking.
What Is Email Tracking?
If you’re sending out a lot of emails, it can be frustrating to have no idea whether the recipients have seen and read them.
You wait patiently for them to reply, then wonder if it’s too soon to follow up. Or should you even follow up at all?
The wait can be excruciating – and that’s where email tracking tools comes in.
Email tracking easily addresses this problem. It’s the process of using software to track when a recipient receives an email, whether they opened the email, what device they opened it on, and in some cases, whether any links you included were clicked.
Think of it a bit like Read Receipts in Gmail, but the recipient doesn’t have to manually click anything to enable it – the email tracking software automatically tracks it for you.
Email tracking not only improves productivity but also helps you build and maintain lasting connections with your contacts.
Email tracking is one of our customers’ favorite features. We want people to see the value in email tracking, so we’ve decided to add 5 email tracking credits to every free account.
What Are the Benefits of Email Tracking for Sales Professionals?
Sales professionals will find a myriad of benefits from implementing sales tracking software. Here are just a few:
1. It helps you determine where a prospect is in the sales process.
Are they interested? If they opened an email several times, that could be a good sign that you have a warm lead, and you can adjust your follow ups accordingly.
2. It streamlines your sales process.
You won’t be wasting time on sales prospects that aren’t warm. Suppose they didn’t open your first email or two follow ups. In that case, you can probably assume that they aren’t interested and move on to other prospects.
3. It powers more targeted strategies.
When you know how often your emails are opened and links are clicked, you can adjust your strategy on the fly.
What Is the Best Sales Email Tracking App for Gmail?
Right Inbox offers a variety of email tracking features that will allow you to get the most out of the tool. With Right Inbox you can:
- Track emails opens, how many times your emails have been opened, and when.
- Track link clicks so you know that the recipient read not only your email, but also if they clicked any links you provided.
- Send follow up emails to recipients that have engaged with your previous communications.
The Small Business Benefits of Sales Email Tracking
There are numerous benefits to small businesses that track their sales emails. Let’s go through some of them right now:
1. Keep in Touch with Prospects
Your relationship with your prospect doesn’t end after they open their first email. In fact, once you receive a notification that your recipient opened the email (using an app like Right Inbox) then you should follow up.
Ideally, you would follow up within a few minutes. You can use a marketing, nurturing, or sales email. This way, you are still fresh in their mind and your message will have a bigger impact.
2. Know the Reasons Why
A lot of business owners merely look at their open rates. While this is a good metric, it is not the be all and end all of emailing.
In addition to making sure they open emails, you need to also understand which email is performing and the reason behind it. By tracking sales emails, you can understand the data behind your decisions, not just the high level numbers.
3. Contextual Communication
A lot of businesses use these metrics to decide when they should follow up with a prospect. Maybe they checked out your “About Us” page.
In that case, for instance, you could call them up to talk about your company and its products. And from there you can take the conversation further.
How Does Sales Email Tracking Help Small Business Owners Grow?
So tracking your sales emails can be fun. After all, you get to play around with some fancy features. But at the end of the day, how does all of this help with small business growth? Here’s how:
1. It Saves You Time
When you see that someone opened an email, you now have time to plan the next move. It gives you a “heads up” that lets you plan accordingly without rushing your response.
In addition, you don’t have to spend time following up with them to see if they got your message or not. The proof is in the pudding — a.k.a. — the app you used to track the openings.
2. Helps You Plan the Future
It’s no secret that tracking sales emails helps you get your KPIs in check currently. However, you can also use email tracking to make plans going forward.
When you have marketing and sales meetings, you can use previous metrics to plan out your campaigns for the next quarter and year.
That way, you aren’t simply guessing in the dark. You have a cohesive strategy to get you where you want to go.
3. Alignment Between Departments
One of the biggest challenges for companies today is aligning their sales and marketing departments. While one team might be crafting the perfect email, the other is on the phone that very day hearing something unique from the customer.
If neither department coordinates, you could end up producing marketing content that simply doesn’t align with customer journeys. By using tracking, you can make sure that everyone is on the same page for a seamless consumer journey.
How to Use Email Sequences to Put Email On Autopilot
When you use the email sequences feature alongside email tracking within Right Inbox, you can automate certain tasks and further boost your productivity.
Email sequences allows you to:
1. Schedule follow-up emails to prospects that don’t reply: Let Right Inbox take care of the follow ups so you don’t have to remember to manually send them. Simply schedule follow-up emails in Gmail to be sent out if a prospect engages with your first email, and concentrate on crafting the best copy for when they do get back to you.
2. Automatically halt a sequence when you do receive a reply: When the prospect does reply Right Inbox will flag this and make sure none of the other follow-ups in a sequence gets sent. That leaves you free to step in and do what you do best.
If you want to make your processes even more streamlined and efficient, you can use the Right Inbox templates feature to save your best-performing emails to use with other prospects.
Email tracking, sequences, and templates take a lot of tedious work of sales off your hands, allowing you to focus on connecting with prospects and closing more deals.
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David Campbell is the editor of the Right Inbox blog. He is passionate about email productivity and getting more done in less time.