What is SalesInbox?

SalesInbox is an intelligent tool for email, which seamlessly integrates with Zoho CRM to combine email and CRM information in one place. SalesInbox is designed for salespeople in that, it helps them prioritize their emails instantly and be better informed about the customer before replying to their email.

How SalesInbox is different from traditional email clients

SalesInbox differs from traditional email clients, by offering the sales context to your emails. It displays relevent CRM information for every email from your customers, thereby enabling you to make more informed decisions as a sales person.

Email Prioritization

When you receive a large volume of emails every day, the biggest challenge is to know which email is more important than the rest, for your business. SalesInbox removes this problem by automatically categorizing your emails based on sales priorities.

SalesInbox helps you prioritize emails by segregating them into the following four columns:

• Potentials: Potentials are new deals or opportunities that arise from leads/contacts. Email from those contacts with open potentials associated to them, will be grouped under this section. A tiny green information strip showing the amount of every potential will appear beside each email.
• Contacts & Leads: Contacts are the people in an organization with whom your company has business communications in pursuit of business opportunities. Leads are the unqualified contacts or sales opportunities in your business. They are the raw details gathered about individuals or representatives of organizations collected from trade shows, seminars, advertisements and other marketing campaigns. Email from any of these two customer categories will be populated under this section.
• Colleagues: Email from persons with the same domain name as yours, will automatically be grouped under this category. For example, for the account patricia@zylker.com, email sent from addresses from the domain "zylker.com" will fall under Colleagues.
• Not in CRM: Mail received from email addresses which are not listed in Zoho CRM or do not have the same domain name as the host account, will be gathered in this section.

Apart from these four streams, you have default CRM-based folders called "Customers" and "Closing this month".

• Customers: This folder displayes emails from contacts with at least one "Closed Won" potential and no open potentials.
• Closing this month: Emails from contacts with whom potentials are closing in the same month that the email is received.

You can edit the criteria for these filters any time.

Filter emails based on CRM data

Besides traditional filters which are based on email parameters, SalesInbox allows you to filter emails based on CRM data. For example, you wish to create a filter for emails from customers whose associated deals are worth more than 30000 USD. This is not possible with a regular mail client. It is possible only when a CRM is integrated with the mail client.

Enter SalesInbox. You can configure filters based on email criteria as well as CRM criteria.

Also, you can import filters into SalesInbox. The file formats accepted are XML and DAT.

Contextual sales data for every email

For every email you receive, a right-hand side panel displays contextual CRM information. For all listed (leads/contacts) email addresses, the details panel presents the following sections:

• Info: This contains contact information of the sender. You can also view a list of all potentials associated with that address, and also create a new one if required. Activities can also be seen or created anew, and notes can be taken.
• Conversations: This contains a history of all previous conversations with that particular lead/contact. You can choose to view emails sent only by you, or from all users in your CRM account.
• Timeline: The Timeline is a chronological list of email exchanged with that particular lead/contact. For unlisted email addresses that are grouped under Not in CRM, the details panel will have the options to either add them as a lead or contact, if required.
  

Using SalesInbox

The first step to using SalesInbox is to configure your email account in Zoho CRM via IMAP. Once you have done so, you will see a tab called SalesInbox in your CRM account. Click the tab to view emails in the sales context.

If you have already configured your email account via IMAP in Zoho CRM, go to the SalesInbox tab and click Try Now to start receiving your emails.

Use CRM Email templates

You can either create an email from scratch in SalesInbox or add an existing email template from Zoho CRM.

Perform CRM Activities from Email window

When you are working with emails that are top priority, you must be able to perform sales activities from the same Email window. SalesInbox enables you to easily view as well as add CRM data from the Email window so that you need no switch back to the CRM application.

When you click on an email from a lead/contact, you have the CRM details on the right-hand side panel. You can perform the CRM activities from the same panel, such as adding a new potential, task, call, event or a note to the respective lead/contact.

Set Automated Reminders

With a steady flow of emails from and to your inbox, it is often easy to forget to reply to an email. It is also easy to fail to notice if you have not received a response from a customer for your email.

In order to help you ensure that you are sending and receiving replies to emails promptly, SalesInbox lets you configure email reminders.

You can set email reminders/notifications for two purposes:

• To reply to a customer promptly (Set reminders for incoming emails)
• To send yourself an alert if you have not received a reply from a customer on time (Set reminders for outgoing emails)

To set a reminder for an incoming email

1. When you recieve an email and you think you cannot reply to it immediately, set a reminder for that email manually so that you do not forget to reply to it.
   
2. Alternatively, if you wish to automate reminders for mails from specific customers, you can do so by configuring an email filter for the same.
   
   

To set a reminder for an outgoing email

After you send a mail, click Add Reminder and set the desired timeline. For example, send a reminder if there is no reponse for a specified time frame.

Add contacts Not in CRM as leads/contacts

Emails from people who are not listed in CRM whatsoever appear under the "Not in CRM" column. From this column you can easily add them as a lead/contact or a colleague as the case may be.

Emails sent then on from the selected email ID will be displayed in the new category.

Automate label assignment

Let's say you wish to assign the label Enterprise Customers for all emails from contacts whose have requested more than 500 user licenses. You can easily do this by configuring an email filter with the desired criteria and specifying label assignment as the action for this filter.

Automate followup tasks

You can automate assignment of followup tasks on receiving emails. Simply create an email filter with the desired criteria and choose task assignment as the action and specify the task.

SalesInbox shortcuts

There are several shortcuts to achieving an action in SalesInbox. They are all listed below.

1. Select emails in bulk: When you hover over the email categories in the CRM view, you will notice the Select icon. When clicked, this icon enables you to mass select emails, and either delete them or mark as unread.
   
2. Mark mail as read/unread or delete mail: A shortcut to mark individual emails as read/unread is to hover over the particular email and choose the Mail icon. To delete the mail, click the Trash.
   
3. Find unread emails quickly: To access unread mail quickly, simply click on top of the category you wish to view the email from. From the drop-down, click Unread to view only the unread emails in that particular category.
   
4. Move emails quickly to a new category - To convert an Not in CRM as a lead or a contact or a colleague, drag that email from Not in CRM and drop it in the Contacts & Leads or Colleagues column. A pop-up will appear, from which you can take the necessary actions.
   

SalesInbox for Mobile

When salespeople are on the move, so should their email.

While you can configure your email account in your mobile device today, you do not have the CRM context for your emails. SalesInbox offers the sales context for your emails, even when you are on the move.

On configuring SalesInbox in the email application of your mobile device, you will be able to view contextual CRM information of the sender along with their email content on the device. The CRM info includes details of potentials and activities associated to the lead/contact.

SalesInbox is available currently for both iOS as well as Android. To learn more about configuring and using SalesInbox for mobile devices, read this Installation Guide.