Announcing Ad-Hoc Group Email: Save Time and Maximize Your Outreach

Ad-hoc group email functionality

Inperium Sell is designed to help you be more productive every day by automating repetitive tasks and simplifying workflows. Among many other things, it provides a convenient Message Center that consolidates and syncs all your written communications from your various accounts in a single place and also enables you to easily create email templates and use text snippets so you can draft and send perfect emails in no time.

Now, you can send the same email to a certain subset of your contacts, based on up-to-date details recorded in the fields in their contact records. For example, you could easily send an email to all customers based in a certain country, or all prospects who purchased a certain product or service in the past week. Plus, you can use an email template you’ve already created and personalize the email for each recipient. Let’s see how it works.

What is an ad-hoc group email?

Everyone is familiar with sending a group email — an email with multiple recipients. For example, suppose you’re a sales rep and you need to send the same follow-up email to everyone who attended a recent webinar.

One way to do that is to draft the email, manually insert each of the recipients into the “To” field (or the Bcc field, if you want to keep the recipient list private), and then click “Send.” That works pretty well if you’re emailing just a few individuals whose email addresses you know or can readily pick from your contact list. But this approach quickly becomes unwieldly as the number of recipients increases.

The traditional option for emailing a larger group is to create a named group that lists a certain set of recipients; you simply specify that group in the To field of your email. However, you’re likely to have groups only for situations in which you email exactly the same group a lot, so you probably won’t have a named list for just the individuals who attended a webinar. Plus, even when you have a group created, the contact list gets out of date almost immediately. For instance, the membership of your team or department changes every time someone is hired or leaves, and the list of your prospects is constantly in flux as they transition into paying customers.

But what if you could easily generate a list of all your contacts who meet certain criteria at the current moment and send a separate email to all of them in a single click? Now you can. With Inperium Sell’s ad-hoc group email feature, you can simply search for the contacts you need right in Inperium Sell and then click “Bulk Action”. All the selected contacts will immediately be specified as recipients of your email (each of them will get an email addressed solely to one person). Then all you need to do next is draft your message (the ready-to-use templates and text snippets are at your disposal) and click “Send”. You can even save your search for future use; in one click, you’ll be able to dynamically find all the contacts who meet your criteria at that time, without the hassle of manually trying to keep a static email group up to date. The only hard part will be figuring out what to do with all the time you save!

Keep in mind that Inperium Sell’s ad-hoc group email functionality is designed to optimize communications with your CRM contacts and send truly personalized emails; it is not meant to be a substitute for a marketing email service, which typically provides marketing email blasts and tracks the results. Another significant difference is that Inperium Sell’s ad-hoc group mail uses your own email address in the From field, instead of specific generic addresses (such as “support@” or “sales@”) typically used by marketing tools that send blasts and newsletters — which dramatically increases the email open rate and reduces the risk of your email getting tagged as spam.

When would I use an ad-hoc group email?

It’s easy: Use this new email feature any time you need to reach out to a specific group of your contacts — customers, prospects, business partners, and so on — with the same message. Examples include:

• A follow-up email to all current prospects — or just the ones assigned to you;
• A big announcement or update for a specific group of your customers;
• A limited-time offer for all customers who are currently using a certain product or service;
• A business proposal for selected partners;
• A note of thanks to a particular group of prospects or partners.

How do I send an ad-hoc group email?

Step 1: Prepare an email template.

Before you send a group email, it’s often smart to create an email template for the specific situation at hand. That way, you will be able to repeat your mass mailing in the future and will not lose your perfectly crafted message.

Templates are ready-to-use emails you can send to your contacts, either individually or in bulk. To make them more personal, you can add variables such as ‘first name’ or ‘last name’ — Inperium Sell will replace each variable with the appropriate data for each recipient when sending the email. In addition, you can insert reusable text snippets, which help you avoid typos and speed message creation.

To add a new email template:

1. Click the “Product Settings”

   

   icon on the left side navigation pane from anywhere in the product, and then select the “Templates” option. You will find yourself on the Templates screen.

   

2. Click the “Create” button to open the templates creation frame. Give your template a descriptive name and specify the subject, the text, and the formatting you want. Use variables and text snippets for personalization and efficiency. Click “Submit” to save your email template. Then it will become available for use with the bulk email feature.

Step 2. Create and send a bulk email.

1. Click the “Contacts” icon

   

   to open the Contacts page.

2. To find the contacts who will be the recipients of your email, click the “Add Filter”

   

   button and specify a property you want to filter contacts by. For example, you might want only contacts who are assigned to you or only contacts with a given job title. You can specify as many filters as you need.

   

3. (Optional) If you think that you might want to send a bulk email to the same group of contacts in the future, save your search by clicking the “Save view”

   

   button in the top right corner of the screen, and then click the “Save as new” button.

   

   Then name your custom filter, specify whether it is for your use only or should be shared with other users in your Inperium Sell CRM, and click the “Submit” button:

   

   You can use your custom filter again later simply by clicking it at the top of the page:

   

4. Select all or any of the contacts that were found based on your filtering criteria. After you’ve selected at least one contact, you will notice a pop-up window at the bottom right corner of the screen that offers a Bulk Action button. (You can grab this window by its upper edge and drag it to any convenient place on the screen.)

   

5. Click the “Bulk Action” button and then choose the “Email” option.

   

6. The Bulk Email window will be displayed. All the contacts you selected will be included as recipients of your message. Specify the sender by choosing it from the list of available CRM users. Then either craft a new email message or select one of the email templates you prepared earlier.

   

7. Preview your bulk email before it is sent out by clicking the “Preview Emails”

   

   button.

8. To send your bulk email, click the “Send X Emails Separately”

   

   button.

   After your bulk email has been sent, you can see each of the messages in the Message Center

   

Any replies to your message will also appear as new emails that you can check in your inbox in the Message Center.

Final Thoughts: Inperium’s Ad-Hoc Emailing Capability

If you regularly need to send group emails, Inperium Sell will save you a great deal of time and trouble. With its custom email templates, text snippets, flexible filters, and now an ad-hoc group email capability, you can easily select a group of recipients who currently meet certain criteria, personalize your message, and send an email to the entire group, all in just a few clicks. What’s more, you can save your custom filters and email templates to make the job even faster in the future.