How Can I...

• Monitor Email Respose Contextually
  • How Zoho CRM tracks your emails
• Use Email Status to Filter Records
• Gather Email Analytics
• Track Email Template Performance

Email, to this day, remains a primary mode of communication with the customer in any organization. When you send mails to several customers via a CRM, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a track of each individual's activity on your email. Did the customer open the mail yet? Did the customer click the links you had included? If an email has gone unopened, what could the reason possibly be?

The answers to such questions on the performance of your emails will help you determine whether your efforts are in the right direction and also enable you to plan further emailing efforts.

Email Insights in Zoho CRM makes this information available to you easily. As part of email insights, you will be able to

• Monitor email respose contextually
• Use email status to filter records
• Gather email analytics
• Track email template performace

Monitor Email Response Contextually

The details of a particular customer's engagement with your email is available cotextually. The status of individual emails can be seen under the Emails section of every Lead, Contact or Potential.

To view details of a customer's activity on your email

1. Go to the desired module.
2. Click the record for which you wish to view the email status.
3. In the Record's Details Page, scroll down to the Emails section.
   After an email is sent, the status bar displays any of these three conditions.
   • Delivered - The email has reached the recipient.
   • Bounced - The email has failed to reach the recipient.
   • Opened - The email has been seen, and opened.
     When you hover over the Opened status, the following details about the opens will be displayed in an information box.
     • Total number of times the mail has been opened.
     • The First Time the mail was opened.
     • The Last Time the mail was opened.
     • Information on the clicks made.
   

How Zoho CRM tracks your emails

Zoho CRM follows web beacon trafficking, which is the industry standard followed by email service providers for tracking emails. A small one pixel by pixel graphic is embedded at the bottom of the HTML emails you send from Zoho CRM. When a recipient opens the email and views the images in it, this tiny image is downloaded from our server. This download enables Zoho CRM to track the opens and clicks on your email.

This is a simple and widely used method to track emails. However, this comes with its set of limitations. Following are some points for you to note:

• Since this is an image, it can only be embedded in HTML emails. As a result, plain text mails cannot be tracked by Zoho CRM.
• An open is recorded only when the recipient has chosen to Display images in the email. Otherwise the email will not be tracked.
  For a more accurate tracking, please request your customers to include your email address in their address book or make sure they choose to display images on the email.

Use Email Status to Filter Records Using the Advanced Filters

Zoho CRM now lets you search for records based on associated sales priorities such as tasks, calls, events and emails besides the regular search parameters.

With Email Tracking enabled for your account, Email Status is among the priorities based on which you can conduct the search. For example, using advanced filters, you can search for “contacts that have opened mails in the past 3 days”. Or “contacts to which mails have been sent but not opened this week”.

Take a look at a few scenarios in which Email Status is used as one of the search criteria in the advanced filters.

1. Emails that have been sent to contacts in the last 2 days but not been opened.
   
2. Emails that have been sent to leads in the last 2 days and have bounced.
   

Using this in combination with other criteria will yield even more valuable insights. For example, consider the following example.

Filter potentials

• That are closing this month
• For which emails have been opened but not replied to.
  

If this search yields results, you may want to make a second follow up on such potentials. To further drill down the search, you can enter a potential amount as well. Say potential amount is greater than 50000 USD. This way, you can attend to these potentials first.

You can apply instant actions on the records filtered using the advanced filters such as Mass Update, Mass Email, Macros and so on.

This way, advanced filters open the doors for discovery of sorts when in comes to your CRM data! With Email Status among the search criteria, the search only gets better.

Gather Email Analytics

Email Analytics is a feature in Zoho CRM by which you learn about the performance of mails sent via Zoho CRM from the statistics provided in the Email Reports folder. Email Analytics is the summary of email status based on date, template, module and user.

While Email Analytics tells you about the performance of emails in terms of the recipient's direct engagement with the email content, Template Statistics tells you which particular email template in Zoho CRM garnered this sort of engagement from recipients.

• For example, to know how many emails have been sent and opened over a period of time, check Email Analytics.
• To know the individual performance of every template you send, check Template Statistics.

This way, you will be equipped with the knowledge of both the kind of content that strikes a chord with your customers as well as the right template to use in Zoho CRM. This combination will enable you to make the most out of your emailing efforts.

To check email analytics

1. Click the Reports module.
2. Select the Email Reports folder.
3. In the Email Reports folder, click Email Analytics.
   
4. In the Email Analytics page, you will be able to choose the parameters by which the email statistics are to be filtered. For example, Date Range,Group and Users and so on.
   
5. On applying the filter options, you will be able to view the complete email statistics filtered according to the conditions applied under two types of reports:
   • Summary Report: A summary of stats for the entire chosen period.
   • Detailed Report: A detailed break-up of the summary report. The numbers in the Detailed Report add up to the total number presented in the Summart Report.
     

The Email Stats are presented in the following categories under both the Summary Report and Detailed Report.

• Sent - Total emails that have been sent from Zoho CRM.
  In the case of email accounts configured via IMAP, the total sent mails includes the mails sent via the other email client. Example, Gmail. However Zoho CRM does not track emails sent using the email client.
• Bounced - Total emails that could not be delivered.
• Tracked - Emails that are being tracked by Zoho CRM to measure performance. Only if mails are tracked, Zoho CRM will be able to ascertain if they have been opened or clicked.
  Usually, all emails sent from Zoho CRM are tracked. Sometimes, when this is not the case, the number of emails under "Tracked" tells you how many out of the Total Sent mails are actually being tracked. Therefore, this number is less than or equal to the Total Sent emails.
• Bouced among tracked - Number of "tracked emails" that have bounced. Therefore this number is less than or equal to the Total Bounced emails.
• Opened - Emails that have been seen, and opened by the recipients.
• Clicked - Emails in which the recipients have clicked links.
• Received - Emails that have been received by sales reps from customers.
• Responded - Customers' emails to which sales reps have responded.

In addition to the Email Analytics report, the Email Reports folder also offers you the Top 10 Users report and the Top 10 Templates report.

• The Top 10 Users are determined based on the number of emails sent by users.
• The Top 10 Templates are determined based on the open rates of templates.

Track Email Template Performance

Template statistics enable you to judge the performance of each template, and also different versions of the same template.

While you can see the open/unopened rates of a template, you can also delve into further detail and see how far minor or major changes in the template have affected performance. After each change, a new “version” of the template is created and each version has its own statistics.

For example, say Zylker Inc has created a template named User Retention. Editing the subject of this template from “Zylker considers you important” to “You are important to us” might make a difference in the open rates. You can confirm that by checking the performance of both versions.

To track email template performance

1. In your Zoho CRM account, go to Setup.
2. Under Customization, click Mail Templates.
3. In the Mail Templates window, you can see the complete list of email templates in various folders, under the Email Templates tab.
4. In the list, there is a column named Opened Rate Stats.
   • - This icon shows the email open stats in graphs.
   • - This icon shows the template version history.
   

Alternatively, you can switch between the Tabular view and the Chart view in the Stats window, to see both template stats and version history.

The Chart View shows you the email open stats in three different formats:

• Percentage-wise
  
• Count-wise
  
• Version-wise
  

Hovering with the cursor over each bar would open a tooltip displaying more details.

You can adjust the date to check template statistics for a particular period of time. Also, you can search for a particular template in the Search tab of the stats window.

The Tabular view shows the performance of different versions of the same template, complete with information about the date on which the changes were made, and who made the changes as well as the comments entered by the user when the changes were made.

This way, you can determine what changes to a template will help, and what won't.