Email for History

I recently posted about using Gmail as an email history resource, and it works really well with a field in each contact/prospect record with the URL to the search.  However, some would immediately recoil, thinking about having to get that URL into every record in their CRM databases.

Well, it’s really easy, especially if you’re just getting started and about to import your records for the first time.  Once you have a .csv comma delimited export from your current system:

• Open the file as a spreadsheet
• Create a column and copy down all of the URL that’s common to every search, in Google it looks like this:  https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/
• After the last / is where the name of the contact is when you do a search as in:  https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/firstname+lastname
• You should have two columns for names of contacts, one for first name and one for last name.  If not, do a “text-to-column” data split to get them from the whole name.
• So, what you do is to create a column with a “+” replicated all the way down for every row.  Then you do a Concatenate command like this:  =concatenate(URL cell, FirstName cell, +Cell, LastName cell).  In other words, you’re telling this new cell and column to merge the data from four other columns, the URL common part, then first name, then the “+”, then last name.  You’ll end up with the complete URL for every record’s name in a column which you can then import right in with all of the rest of them.

You don’t even need to worry about whether you’ve ever traded emails with them, as the Gmail search will just turn up “nothing found” if that’s the case.  I got hundreds in all at once for one client.

Tech Tips for WebEx WebOffice

databases extend the funtionality in many ways.  It’s natural that users compare the system to what they’ve used before, are another vendor they’re considering.  Since many of the other vendors are custom software, there are things they can do that aren’t able to be accomplished with WebOffice…or at least not quite the same way.  Here’s a great example and the way we solved the challenge:

A user really only missed one thing about the way his previous Top Producer software tied his emails to the prospect/contact/client automatically.  Though you can email right from the contact’s record in your WebOffice, it doesn’t actually tie a copy of the email to that record.  So, we found a truly elegant solution, particularly because it uses the generous free storage and great search capability of Gmail.

If you don’t have a Gmail account, you can set one up for free, and get almost 7 Gigabytes of free email storage.  The power of Google search is also part of the package, for searching within your emails.  So, we combined these two features and came up with this procedure:

1. Use the new Gmail address as your return address in WebOffice, or forward a copy of all mail from your regular email address to the Gmail address.
2. When you email out from WebEx, always elect to “send yourself a copy.”
3. This copy will then end up in your Gmail account.
4. Do a search on a contact’s name or email address in Gmail and all emails between you, incoming or outgoing, will show up in reverse time order.
5. Look up in the URL address bar in your browser, and you’ll see that this search has its own URL, as in https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/firstname+lastname.
6. Copy  out that URL and place it into a new field in your Contacts Database.  This will be a “web address” type field, and you paste the URL into that field for the specific client.
7. From then on, anytime you’re in a client’s record in the CRM database, just click on that link to see every email the two of you have ever exchanged opened up in Gmail.

**NOTE:  The beauty of this solution is that you don’t even need to send the email from WebOffice.  Even if you send it from your Gmail account, or from your regular email with a Cc to Gmail, all of the emails will end up in this one place for instant recall later.

One of the things I do best is to find ways to get things done technologically at the lowest cost or free.  I believe that the power of the WebEx WebOffice with custom databases is huge, but you sometimes would like to do something more than looks possible.  Send me an email, as there’s probably a fast and easy way to get it done.

You’ll start to see a number of links on the bottom of posts on this blog that are shown as Zemanta Related Articles.  This is a free service provided by a plugin in WordPress.  Once I’ve begun to type a post, Zemanta analyzes the content and suggests relevant links.

All I have to do is choose those links that I think are appropriate and might be of value to my readers, and they are placed at the bottom of the post by Zemanta.  There are also images available, with an easy one-click image placement in the post.

A new feature just introduced by Zemanta is an addon for Firefox that will allow the same abilities in Gmail and Yahoo Mail.  I just installed it, and it seems to work perfectly in allowing me to insert a relevant image and links into my outgoing emails.  Check out the additional links below provided by Zemanta.

After the related links sections, I’ve placed a short video in Premium Content to show how Zemanta looks in WordPress and Gmail.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Zemanta: Real-Time Semantic Discovery & Blogging Tool (andrewapeterson.com)
• Zemanta: Making Blogging Easier (webbugnet.wordpress.com)
• Content Made Easy With Zemanta by Dianne (frugalwahmstalkradio.com)
• ScribeFire Adds Zemanta Integration (techguyandstuff.wordpress.com)
• Zemanta Helps Write Rich Emails in Gmail and Yahoo Mail [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)

[important]There’s more on this topic, plus a video, in the Premium Content below the Related Artciles.[/important]

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Let’s use an example email address of    YourName@gmail.com.   Now, if you want to do something special with certain emails, you can add an extension to the first part of the address with a “+.”  Now it might look like this:  YourName+special@gmail.com.  The word “special” can be anything, even a person’s last name or other unique word you want to use.  Gmail will deliver the email because the first part before the “+” is a valid address.

Now, all you have to do is to create labels or filters to do whatever you want automatically with emails sent to this special address.  Here are some ideas about how you might use this feature:

• Use a transaction number or ID after the +, giving this address to participants in a transaction.  You can then automatically capture all transaction related email in one place.
• Use this feature to create a request email from your website or elsewhere that responds with a Gmail canned response.  You can deliver special reports this way.
• I use it for research, creating labels that match the words after the +.  Thus, any site I find that would be a good tech topic, I send with a “+tech.”  It gets filed away automatically to my tech research label.
• Use for ordering things, or for sites where you might want to be rid of them later, as you can do auto-delete when you no longer want email from them.

I’m sure that you can think of lots more to do with this feature, as it’s quite handy.

Canned response allows you to do automated delivery of special reports that a user requests from your website.  The report is an attachment, preferably in PDF format, and you can set up the email for totally automated processing using extended email addressing and filtering.

Virtually any email content that you might want to deliver automatically to a requesting site visitor can be handled with filtering and canned responses.  You’ll find this Google Labs feature quite useful once you learn to use it.

[important]There’s more on this topic, plus an instructional video, in the Premium Content below the Related Artciles.[/important]

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Using filters, you can accomplish a lot, including:

• Automatic labeling for archiving and later location
• Marking emails as already having been read
• Skip the Inbox altogether, label and file it
• Automatically forward the email to someone else, or even your cell phone
• Send gmail “canned responses” automatically to the sender
• Treat unwanted emails as Spam, or simply delete them

There’s more, and you can do a combination of several actions on an email.  I use dozens of rules.  As a real estate broker, when I get a new transaction under contract, until it closes, I create rules to label it with the transaction name if:

• from one of the clients
• to one of the clients
• contains the address anywhere in the email
• contains the title company file number
• contains the name of the client(s) or the other broker’s clients

As you can see, I can be assured with the filtering, that all of the emails associated with the transaction will end up where they need to be so that I can locate them later.  There are many uses for these filters. [important]There’s more on this topic, plus a video, in the Premium Content below the Related Artciles.[/important]

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I use filters for so many things that I have almost a hundred of them.  The thing about email is that there is a lot of it that we would like to keep, especially if we research on the web, or we subscribe to newsletters, etc.  However, we need to be able to handle it more easily, using less of our time, but getting a better filing system online.

In the video below, I show you where the settings are for filters, as well as an example or two for how to build a filter quite easily for an email you’ve received.  Unlike folders, you can have a whole lot of labels in Gmail without getting lost as to which you used for a certain email.  That’s because you would apply every label you can think would apply to an email when you receive it.  With filters, you can only choose one, so make it the best one, or build more than one filter for that type of email.

And, then the frustration of finding that email again arrived.  Did I file it in the branch office folder, or under insurance?  That was three months ago, so who knows.  Sometimes I spend 15 minutes trying to locate an email, even with the search options.

Gmail does it differently.  There you have “labels.”  You can label a document, and that label looks and acts a bit like a folder, as you can look up a label and see all of the emails filed there.  The good part is that you can label an email with several different labels as well.  So, if an email has something to do with your Northside Branch Office, but it’s also pertaining to the insurance policy, you can label it with “northside,” “insurance,” and even “business expenses” if you want.  Then you’ll rarely be unable to locate it later.

[important]In the premium content below, I show you how to use labels, as well as how I use them for temporary transaction catch-alls and for research archiving.[/important]{+++}

As I said in the free content, I use labels extensively in Gmail.  When I set up a new real estate transaction, I label all incoming and outgoing emails for that transaction, so that I can pull them up with one click in reverse chronological order.  I’ll be doing a post on Gmail and Filters to show you how to automate the process as well.  Here’s a Labels tutorial video:

However, with the generous 6+ megabytes of free storage provided by Gmail, as well as easy tools for archiving and locating emails later, you really should be giving it a try.  And, you can still have it check several of your branded accounts, even knowing which to use as your return address when you reply.  There’s a lot more, including “canned responses” for those frequent email answers you send out all the time.