HOW TO MAKE EMAIL YOUR NEW

Favorite Sales Tool

Chris da Cunha
VP of Email Solutions
InsideSales.com

Travisse Hansen
Product Manager
InsideSales.com

Introduction
Are you ready to see email in a
whole new way?
Most salespeople view their sales email
the same way they view their personal
email. They see it as just another commu-
nication channel. It’s just a way to get their
communications from Point A to Point B.
But sales email is so much more than that.
If you use it properly, email can become
one of your most powerful sales tools.
Three types of sales communications
happen in every deal: email, voice and
web meetings. Our research indicates that
the typical deal takes about 30 emails, six
calls and one to two web meetings. So
it’s obvious that email is the leading sales
communication tool in terms of volume.
InsideSales.com conducted a study in
which we asked business professionals
which communication methods they use
on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, 96%
InsideSales.com
Page 2
singled out email, putting it ahead of their his customers, so he knows what to focus
office phones (80%) and mobile phones on in his sales conversations.
(61%) and way ahead of social channels like
LinkedIn (14%) and Twitter (4%). We also You’ll also come away with a clear
found that busy decision-makers — your understanding of how you can use this
buyers — are more likely to respond to breakthrough technology to act on buying
email than any other method. They also signals, accelerate your sales cycle, and
said they actually prefer using email over close more deals.
any other channel.
We discovered that email offers huge
value to sales teams, but most of them
aren’t maximizing it. So we set out to
create an optimized sales email solution.
InsideSales.com has applied the same
data-driven approach it brings to sales
calls to sales emails.
In this ebook, you will learn how email
tracking software with predictive analytics
solves some of the most common prob-
lems facing sales teams. For example, a
sales rep for EVault says email tracking
allows him to see exactly what’s relevant to
Share this eBook:
 Page 3

Table of Contents

Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������2 Published by InsideSales.com

About the Authors���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������4 34 East 1700 South
Provo, Utah 84606
Sales Problems Solved�������������������������������������������������������������������������������5 877-798-9633
The Power of Vision�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������6
Copyright © 2014 All Rights Reserved
How Vision Helps Sales Managers�����������������������������������������������������������7
Tracking and Alerts��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������8
Close Deals Faster�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������11
Automated Data Entry������������������������������������������������������������������������������12
Vision Vs. Competitors������������������������������������������������������������������������������13
Quotes From Vision Customers�������������������������������������������������������������15
Frequently Asked Questions�������������������������������������������������������������������16
Summary & Credits�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������18

InsideSales.com Share this eBook:


About the Authors
Chris da Cunha
VP of Email Solutions
­—
InsideSales.com
Chris da Cunha, VP of Email Solutions at
InsideSales.com, is an expert in the emerging
field of sales acceleration technology, which
uses big data, predictive analytics and science
to accelerate the sales process and increase
sales. Chris was the CEO of iHance prior to
its acquisition by InsideSales.com. At iHance,
Chris pioneered the growth and adoption
of the patented Vision™ email tracking solu-
tion and the Absolute Automation™ email
integration solution, which twice won the
Salesforce AppExchange Productivity App of
the Year Award. Chris received a B.S. in electri-
cal engineering from M.I.T and an M.B.A from
Stanford University.
InsideSales.com
Page 4
Travisse
Hansen
Product Manager
—
InsideSales.com
Travisse Hansen currently leads product strat-
egy for InsideSales.com’s Vision product and
eats, breathes and sleeps sales email. He pre-
viously managed all internal products and
process optimization at InsideSales.com. He
received his B.S. from Brigham Young Uni-
versity’s Marriott School of Management and
strongly believes that technology can improve
people’s lives.
Share this eBook:

Sales Problems Solved
Who is Interested?
Identify Engaged Prospects With
Actionable Insights
Sales reps are usually completely in the
dark when they send a sales email. Are
prospects opening your emails? Are
they downloading your pricing sheets?
Are they forwarding them to other
decision-makers?
InsideSales.com
+ +
When to Contact?
Most salespeople simply don’t have
access to enough information on the
emails they send. As a result, you
don’t know who to focus on or when
to reach out.
With all this uncertainty, sales reps just
pick up the phone and start calling blindly,
like bats without sonar.
Page 5
What Content?
Sales managers are equally in the dark.
They often have to sit down with each
rep and try to figure out where each deal
stands. When did we send the last email or
make the last phone call? Many sales man-
agers struggle to understand the status of
the pipeline, and they have no idea who
their reps are emailing or how effective
those emails are.
Share this eBook:

The Power of Vision
Vision email tracking by InsideSales.com
solves these challenges for sales teams
with patented, enterprise-grade technol-
ogy. It answers three key questions.
InsideSales.com
1. Is your prospect engaged?
Vision tracks every sales email and pro-
vides a detailed report on opens, file
downloads, forwards and website visits. If
you send an email to multiple recipients,
which is often the case when you must
win over multiple decision-makers at the
same company, Vision can tell you which of
these recipients is the most engaged and
who is the least engaged.
2. Who should you focus on?
The ability to track email engagement and
web visits is critical if you want to know
who to focus on and who to call next.
Depending on where you are in the sales
cycle with each prospect, we can share
best practices for using Vision Alerts to
accelerate your sales cycle and close
more deals. For example, if you get a
Vision Alert from a new prospect you have
never spoken to, use the InsideSales.com
Page 6
PowerDialer™ to close the loop when you
are top of mind. If you have a prospect who
has disengaged and is no longer generating
Vision Alerts, follow up via email or phone
to re-engage them. Finally, if you have a
prospect who is fully engaged, give them
some breathing room until they complete
their online due diligence. Then follow up
with a phone call to close the deal.
3. When should you reach out?
Often, a sales rep will send an email and
not know if it resonates. Our customers
have told us that Vision solves this prob-
lem. When prospects interact with emails,
Vision sends real-time alerts. So sales reps
can call their prospects at just the right
moment. Our research shows a strong cor-
relation between timely follow up and deals
that close. There is an equally strong cor-
relation between timely follow up and the
financial success of individual sales reps.
Share this eBook:
 Page 7

How Vision
Helps Sales Managers
Campaign
Group / Rep / Account Emails Opens Clicks Files Raw Score
Emails
Vision logs every sent email to  Accounting 400 0 298 6 137 1830
the Vision database and every
 Admin 880 0 862 14 42 1440
sent/received email to Salesforce.
 BD-Managers 367 0 367 107 42 1857
Vision also scores every pros-
pect interaction. Comprehensive  BD-Reps 5142 0 3427 316 306 11362
reports show a sales manager  BI 510 0 448 5 28 840
which reps are working hard, who  Creative 107 0 53 9 15 347
they are emailing, the content  CS - CAMs 5254 0 4814 147 326 9984
of their emails and the level of    Aaron Wheeler 508 0 444 22 24 968
engagement.
   Arthur Buckner 92 0 84 6 2 172

A sales manager can log into the    Benjamin Paulsen 1 0 0 0 0 1

Vision database or Salesforce,    Brandon Mason 362 0 300 9 10 552

look at any account, and instantly    Brent Farrel 212 0 257 1 21 432
know the status of that account.    Burke Saraiva 262 0 212 12 12 502
This makes pipeline review meet-     ADP 163 0 153 3 5 243
ings more efficient and effective.
    CSC Global 3 0 1 0 0 3
    Paychex 17 0 5 0 0 17
     jjohnson@paychex.com 2 0 2 0 0 2
     RE: NSS / ISDC open items & resolution 2014-08-01 10:10:59 1 0 0 1
     RE: NSS / ISDC open items & resolution 2014-08-01 08:38:35 1 0 0 1

Report for managers

InsideSales.com Share this eBook:

 Page 8

Tracking and Alerts

by InsideSales.com VIEW | TURN OFF ALERTS | DISOWN

When you craft an email, you can include
as many attachments and links as you
want. Vision converts email attachments EMAIL OPENED 09/10/2014
Amy Fieldng - afielding@insidesales.com
into trackable links. We typically encourage 4:15 PM

sales reps to write short, pithy emails that

will inspire prospects to act. The goal is to From : Travisse Hansen

get a prospect to take the next step and Sent : Wed - 09/10/2014 - 10:46 AM
Subject : RE: Sales Proposal
click a link or open an email attachment.

Vision sends sales reps a variety of alerts:

Email opens: See the date and time when

your prospect opens your email. by InsideSales.com VIEW | TURN OFF ALERTS | DISOWN

Session start: Tells you when your pros-

FILE DOWNLOAD 09/18/2014
pect clicks on a link. Amy Fieldng - afielding@insidesales.com 2:17 PM

File download: Notifies you when a pros-

File : Contract_offer.pdf
pect downloads an attachment, such as a From : Travisse Hansen
pricing sheet or contract. Sent : Wed - 09/17/2014 - 10:46 AM
Subject : RE: Sales Proposal

Yesterday’s activity alerts: A summary

of the alerts from the previous day.

InsideSales.com Share this eBook:


Tracking and Alerts
Most sales reps You can see who clicked on a link or down-
become power users
loaded an attachment and what time it was
downloaded. You can log into the Vision
within 15 minutes of
database and check out the contact record
for a specific prospect. It shows you every
using Vision because
email you’ve sent, every email that has
been opened, all the file downloads and
it’s so intuitive
clicked links.
and useful.
Email forwards: Vision even tells you
when your prospect forwards your email to
somebody else, so long as Vision has previ-
ously identified the person. That’s incredibly
valuable information for a sales rep. If a
prospect is forwarding your data sheets to
other decision-makers, that signals a high
level of interest. Another practical example
is when a prospect forwards your price
quote to a competitor. If Vision has tagged
the competitor’s IP address, we will notify
your reps so they know to disengage or
sharpen their pencils and potentially match
your competitor’s price.
InsideSales.com
Page 9
Embed Vision Into Salesforce CRM
Companies that use Salesforce can inte-
grate Vision directly into their Salesforce
account. You will have access to the
Accounts tab, Contacts tab, Campaigns tab
and the Reports tab.
For example, if you click on the Accounts
tab, you can view interaction history for
specific accounts. Vision also uses an algo-
rithm that scores contacts and accounts
based on their level of interaction so you
can instantly see which accounts are the
most engaged.
Use as a Standalone Solution
Vision does not require salesforce.com or
any CRM to work. As a standalone solution
Vision works directly with your email client,
whether it’s Gmail, Outlook or your iPhone.
Share this eBook:
 Page 10

Tracking and Alerts

by InsideSales.com

All of these links are clickable, so you can

get more detail. Last 7 Days of Activity Regular Emails | Campaign Emails

Here’s what the Reports tab reveals: 4k

A sales manager can click on any of these 3k

links and scroll down into sales. You can

scroll down to the account level. You Count 2k

can even see who a rep is emailing. The

dashboard allows you to understand all 1k

of a rep’s email interactions in a single

glance. Equally important, you can see all 0k
Fri, 9/12 Sat, 9/13 Sun, 9/14 Mon, 9/15 Tue, 9/16 Wed, 9/17 Thu, 9/18
of the shared relationships between your
company and another company. You will Emails Email Opens Sessions File Downloads
instantly know ALL of your colleagues who
have relationships with a specific contact
or account. This is invaluable for large Reports tab
organizations

InsideSales.com Share this eBook:


Close Deals Faster
Sales Reps Close Deals Faster With
Real-Time Email Insights
Tyler Madrigal has used Vision in three
different capacities at EVault. He has lev-
eraged Vision as an inside sales rep, an
inside sales manager and a field sales rep.
EVault, a Seagate company, is an industry
leader in network-based data backup and
disaster recovery solutions.
Before using Vision for email tracking,
EVault’s sales reps couldn’t gauge pros-
pects’ interest based on nonverbal cues.
They often forgot to follow up on old
opportunities, and they usually had no
idea when a past prospect had developed
renewed interest in their solutions.
InsideSales.com
“As an inside sales rep, the biggest disad-
vantage that you have is that you lose all
nonverbal communication with your pros-
pects,” Madrigal said. “I needed a way to
see who was accessing the data sheets
I sent out.”
After implementing Vision, EVault’s sales
teams could see which data sheets pros-
pects were downloading and who they
were sharing this information with.
“Vision allows me to see what’s relevant to
my customers,” Madrigal said. “I know what
to focus on in my sales conversations.”
Vision also helps identify when a stalled
opportunity have become re-engaged.
Madrigal was working a deal when discus-
sions stalled over funding, he marked the
opportunity as closed-lost and moved on.
Six months later, he received a bunch of
Vision alerts telling him the prospect was
visiting his company’s website, opening
emails and downloading data sheets.
Page 11
“I called him immediately and we ended up
closing that deal, which was a $300,000
contract,” Madrigal said.
As a sales manager, Madrigal noticed
that many of his less-experienced reps
struggled with their forecasting accuracy.
Thanks to Vision, he could quickly scan
through his team’s interaction history
with prospects.
“It shortens forecast meetings with my
reps,” he said, “and it gives me more con-
trol of forecast accuracy. The integration
with Salesforce allows me to see the entire
customer conversation.”
The best thing about Vision is how easy
it is for sales reps to use and embrace. It
doesn’t require any special training. You
just keep sending your emails as you
always have, and now you have access to
the insights you’ve always wanted.
Share this eBook:

Automated Data Entry
Vision works with all email clients. It
automatically updates its database, so you
always have real-time data you can use to
accelerate sales.
Sync Your Emails With Salesforce
Spend More Time Selling Thanks to
Automated Data Entry
In addition to Vision, we offer an email sync
product called Absolute Automation. You
can download this app directly from the
Salesforce AppExchange. Absolute Auto-
mation saves sales reps time because they
no longer have to enter data manually into
Salesforce.
Sync email from all servers and cli-
ents. It doesn’t matter where you send or
receive your email. Absolute Automation
logs all of your emails automatically and in
real time. It’s fully automated. It includes
inbound and outbound email sync.
InsideSales.com
Page 12
It syncs to contacts and leads. If you send
an email to a contact, an account that
already exists, we can auto-create the con-
tact and log the email to the account.
We built our own custom object for Sales-
force users. So you get a custom email tab.
We log the email once. If you send an email
to multiple recipients, it is logged into
Salesforce automatically and efficiently.
Absolute Automation is the No. 1 rated Absolute Automation
email productivity app on the AppEx- Email Logger & Contact Creator for Salesforce
®
change. It also won the Best Productivity
App of the Year Award on AppExchange in
2008 and 2010.
Get it Now
Share this eBook:
 Page 13

Vision Vs. Competitors

Consumer-Grade Email
Features Vision™ by InsideSales.com
How Vision’s Features Stack Up Against Tracking Tools
Other Email Tracking Solutions
Email Tracking

Reporting and analytics: Vision is the Reporting and analytics • •

only enterprise-class email tracking solu- Email open and link tracking • •
tion. We have a few competitors that have Website visit tracking • •
come out with products that are easy to
install and appear to do it all. But when Attachment download tracking • •
you take a closer look, you’ll see that Zero-touch tracking •
their functionality is deficient and their Multi-recipient tracking •
reporting is incomplete. People use mul-
tiple email clients on laptops and mobile Forward tracking •
devices today. Most of our competitors Track from all major mail servers and clients •
only support one email client, so they’re No end point management •
only tracking and reporting on a fraction of
your interactions. Vision offers 100 percent
Enhanced delivery via optional dedicated IPs •
coverage by tracking every email, whether Patent protection •
it comes from an iPhone, Outlook or Gmail. Email Sync to Salesforce.com*
Sync from all major mail servers and clients •
Email opens, links and website visits:
Most solutions provide these features. Fully automated •
Vision uses first-party cookies. We have Inbound and outbound email sync •
persistent tracking, so we track all interac- Sync to contacts, Accounts and Leads • •
tions for the entire lifetime of a prospect.
If a prospect returns to your website Custom email tab and object •
*For Salesforce.com users only; Salesforce.com not included.

InsideSales.com Share this eBook:


Vision Vs. Competitors
independent of clicking through an email,
Vision will notify you in real time that the
prospect is on your website by name.
Attachment downloads: Some com-
petitors allow you to copy and paste an
attachment, or upload an attachment, and
they spit out a link. This requires manual
work. Vision simply enables sales reps
to send an email with an attachment or
multiple attachments. It automatically con-
verts attachments to trackable links on
the fly. You can also send the email to mul-
tiple recipients and know which recipient
clicked on your attachments. We call this
zero-touch tracking.
Dedicated IPs: Email delivery is a core
competency of InsideSales.com. As such,
we provision a dedicated IP address to
each customer so that the customer
controls its own email reputation. If one
customer sends out a lot of spam, it
won’t affect the IP or email delivery of any
other customer.
InsideSales.com
Page 14
Multi-recipient tracking: Include up to user experience is no different than it was
10 individuals on a single email, and Vision prior to using Vision. We knew from the
will tell you exactly who is interacting with outset that the only way to achieve 100%
the email and when. This feature differenti- adoption and utilization is to let sales
ates Vision from many of our competitors. reps continue to send email like they do
today. Simply write your email, include any
Forward tracking: If your prospect for- links and attachments that you normally
wards your email to a colleague or anyone include, and click the Send button.
outside the company, Vision will tell you
who forwarded the email and who it has Patent protection: We own the patents
been forwarded to by name if the second on this innovative technology, and the pat-
recipient has been previously identified in ents have been validated in court. They are
the Vision database. rock solid, which gives our clients peace of
mind in using our products.
Server-level setups: We can do server-
level setups that can be set up once at
the server and will work with all email cli-
ents and mobile devices with no further
setup required. This is the most effec-
tive way to set up Vision. For companies
that cannot do a server install, we offer a
Windows Outlook plugin that takes less
than three minutes to download and set
up on the sales rep’s desktop. Whether
you choose the server or client setup, the
Share this eBook:
 Page 15

Quotes From
Vision Customers

Of all the sales tools they use “Sales is like playing poker and
“Vision is the equivalent of
internally, Vision is the most Vision tells you what cards your
fishing with dynamite.”
valuable to their sales reps. prospect is holding.”
— EVault rep
— OpSource — Informatica territory account manager

Sends about 20 emails at 8 a.m. and lets
Vision alerts guide his calling efforts.
OpSource is a great example of a company
that started using Vision in sales and
later transitioned to using the product in
customer support.
Informatica’s entire inside sales team and
most of its field sales reps use Vision. As
inside sales reps graduate to field reps,
they take Vision with them. Informatica
told us that this powerful email tracking
solution enabled their sales reps to transi-
tion from blind cold calling to targeted and
intelligent warm calling.

InsideSales.com Share this eBook:


Frequently
Asked Questions
Q: Does this product have to be tied
to a CRM or can it be tied directly
to Outlook?
Vision was built to work directly with your
corporate email server (e.g., Google Apps,
Exchange or Office 365) or email client (e.g.,
Windows Outlook) and does not need to
be tied to any CRM.
Q: What is the installation process
for Vision?
We provision a dedicated IP address to
each customer. This enables our custom-
ers to control their own email sending
reputation and it also enables us to offer
the most advanced patented features
on the market, such as multi-recipi-
ent tracking.
So our customers need to have some-
one in IT set up a couple of DNS entries
to take ownership of the IP address, plus
one line of javascript on your website to
InsideSales.com
persistently track website visitors. Finally,
we need to relay your email to our Vision
tracking servers. This routing can either be
set up at the server level or the client level.
Our installation can be completed in less
than 30 minutes and Vision works thereaf-
ter with zero support necessary.
Q: Does Vision rate or score leads?
Yes. Vision uses a mathematical algorithm
to score each lead or prospect based on
the level of interaction with your emails,
content and websites. This score enables
your reps to focus on prospects who are
most engaged.
Q: Does Vision work with Salesforce?
Yes, Vision can be fully integrated with
Salesforce so you can have full access to
Vision directly from within Salesforce. All
of the Vision tracking alerts are logged to
Salesforce, and Salesforce accounts are
synched with Vision accounts. Vision also
Page 16
includes the award-winning Absolute
Automation email integration solution,
which logs all inbound and outbound
email to Salesforce.
Q: Who in an organization uses Vision?
Typically, 100% of inside sales and field
sales reps will use Vision. In addition, we
have customers that have rolled out Vision
to their customer support teams, accounts
receivable teams, HR teams and legal
teams. Anyone in your organization who is
sending high-value emails and would ben-
efit from knowing who is interacting with
those emails is a candidate for Vision. Not
surprisingly, the CEOs of most of our cus-
tomers use Vision.
Q: What is the price for
InsideSales.com email solutions?
Our current pricing for Absolute Automa-
tion email integration on a standalone
basis for Salesforce customers is $10
Share this eBook:
 Page 17

Frequently
Asked Questions

per user per month. We sell Vision email

tracking to everybody, whether you’re a
Salesforce customer or not. Vision is $49
per user per month. If you use Sales-
force, we include the Absolute Automation
features with your Vision license at no Communications Hiring & Motivation Predictive Analytics Data Visualization
additional cost.

Q: What upgrades do you

have planned? Sales Acceleration Technology
We will integrate Vision with our Click-to- Improve sales through science with InsideSales.com.
Call and PowerDialer solutions so that
our customers can use these products
together seamlessly. There is a natural fit • Contact the right prospects, in the right way, • Motivate your sales team by making the
between these products because email at the right time. sales process visual, competitive, and fun.
engagement is one of the best predictors • Work smarter by predicting which leads you • Bring your sales data to the forefront by
of interest and ought to be one of the key are most likely to contact, qualify, making it visual, meaningful,
drivers of PowerDialer Seek lists. We will and close. and actionable.
also add some smart features using our
Neuralytics™ predictive analytics engine.
This technology will enable your sales reps
to send the right message at the right time
for optimal results. Demo Now

InsideSales.com Share this eBook:

 Page 18

Summary & Credits

Now that you know how you can use email to identify your most CONTENT
engaged prospects and close deals faster, it’s time to start implement-
Chris da Cunha |
ing what you’ve learned.
InsideSales.com

Vision shows your reps exactly what’s relevant to your customers so Travisse Hansen |
they know what to focus on in their sales conversations. It will also InsideSales.com
notify them when an old prospect they’ve given up on re-engages
with your emails and content. These prospects are some of your best WRITER/COPY EDITOR
because they are more likely to buy. Our research shows that they will
Leo Dirr |
usually buy from the sales rep who contacts them first.
DESIGNER
Vision by InsideSales.com accelerates the sales cycle and drives rev-
Scott Humphries |
enue growth with real-time, actionable sales insights.

For a more in-depth discussion of the best practices shared in this

ebook, watch the webinar featuring Chris da Cunha and Travisse
Hansen, available here.

InsideSales.com Share this eBook: