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 the CRM makes this information available to you easily. As part of email insights, you will be able to

• Monitor email response contextually
  
• Use email status to filter records
  
• Gather email analytics
  
• Track email template performance
  

Enable Email Insights

Note

• In the Standard Edition, only contextual email response is available.
  
• Advanced filters will have limited options under Email Status for Standard Edition.
  

To enable email insights

1. In your Zoho CRM account, go to Setup > Channels > Email > Email Intelligence.
   
2. In the Email Insights page, turn the Email Insights feature ON.
   
   
   

Note

• Email Insights are enabled in a CRM account by default.
  
• The email insight results will be captured only for a period of 100 days. 
  

Monitor Email Response Contextually

The details of a particular customer's engagement with your email is available contextually. 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 four status messages.
   
   • 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 point your mouse to 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.
       
       
   • Clicked - Links in the email have been clicked.
     
     When you point your mouse to the Clicked status, the following details about the clicks will be displayed in an information box.
     
     • Total number of opens.
       
     • The first time and the last time the mail was opened.
       
     • Total number of clicks recorded in the mail.
       
     • The first time a click was recorded.
       
     • The last time a click was recorded.
       
       

Note

• Delivered technically refers to only the absence of a bounce. So when an email has most definitely not bounced, it is assumed to have been delivered to the recipient.
  

How the CRM tracks email activity

The CRM uses web beacon trafficking, the industry standard followed by email service providers for tracking emails. A small graphic (one-by-one pixel) is embedded at the bottom of the HTML emails sent from the CRM. When a recipient opens the email and chooses to Display images in it, this tiny image is downloaded from our server. This download enables the 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 the 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.
  

Sort records by email status

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

With Email Insights 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 it comes to your CRM data! With Email Status among the search criteria, the search only gets better.

View Email Reports

Once you have enabled Email Insights in your CRM account, you will have access to a default set of Email Reports. The Email Reports consists of the following reports:

• Email Analytics
  
• Email and Call Analytics Report
  
• Sent Email Status
  
• Top 10 Templates by Open Rate
  
• Top 10 Templates by Click Rate
  
• Top 10 Users
  

Email Analytics

The Email Analytics report in the CRM offers you statistics to tell you about the performance of mails sent via the CRM. Email Analytics is the summary of email status based on date, template, module and user.

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 Summary Report.
     

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

• Sent - Total emails that have been sent from the 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, the 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 the CRM to measure performance. Only if mails are tracked, the CRM will be able to ascertain if they have been opened or clicked.
  
  Usually, all emails sent from the 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.
  
• Bounced among tracked - Number of "tracked emails" that have bounced. Therefore this number is less than or equal to the Total Bounced emails. An addition exclamatory icon gives you additional details regarding the type of bounce - hard bounce or soft bounce.
  
  
• 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.
  

Note

• An email will not be tracked if Email Insights has been disabled in the CRM.
  
• Only emails sent from the CRM are tracked. So if you have configured an email account via IMAP, emails that you send from the email client will not be tracked. However they will be included in the Total Sent mails.
  

Email and Call Analytics

The Email and Call Analytics report helps you get a snapshot of the total calls and emails received and made by your sales reps at a chosen point of time. These statistics will help you measure the effectiveness of communication with customers.

To view email and call analytics

1. Click the Reports module.
   
2. Select the Email Reports folder.
   
3. In the Email Reports folder, click Email & Call Analytics Report.
   
4. In the Email and Call Analytics Report page, enter your criteria for filtering the reports.
   
   
   
   You can summarize this report based on the Date, Users or Date & User, group the report by Day, Week, Month or Year and specify a Date Range.
   
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 Summary Report.
     

The Email & Call Analytics are presented in the following columns under both the Summary Report and Detailed Report.

• Email Sent: Total emails sent on the chosen date/ by the chosen CRM user.
  
• Email Received: Total emails received on the chosen date/to the chosen CRM user.
  
• Email Replied: Total emails replied responded to the customer on the chosen date/by the chosen CRM user.
  
• Dialled Attended: Total calls made to customers and attended by them on the chosen date/by the chosen CRM user.
  
• Dialled Unattended: Total calls made to customers and unattended by them on the chosen date/by the chosen CRM user.
  
• Call Received: Total calls received (and attended) from customers on the chosen date/ by the chosen user.
  
• Call Missed: Total calls missed from customers on the chosen date/by the chosen user.
  
• Total Call Duration (in mins): Total call duration of incoming as well as outgoing calls.
  

Sent Email Status

The Sent Email Status report gives you a snapshot of details of emails sent from the CRM.

To access the Sent Email Status report

1. Click the Reports module.
   
2. Select the Email Reports folder.
   
3. In the Email Reports folder, click Sent Email Status report.
   
4. In the Sent Email Status page, you will see a report such as the following.
   
   
   
   You can get the report for a specific date range by using the report Filters.
   
   

You can Export the report, Edit it or send this report via Email to fellow CRM users.

Following are some of the other reports presented in the Email Reports folder:

• The Top 10 Users report, which is determined based on the number of emails sent by users.
  
• The Top 10 Templates by Click Rate are determined based on the click rates of templates.
  
• The Top 10 Templates by Open Rate are determined based on the open rates of templates.
  

Track Email Template Performance

Template performance enables 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 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. Click one of the following icons from the column named Stats.
   
   •  - This icon shows the email open stats in graphs.
     
   
   

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.

Note

• The template stats can also be accessed when you choose an email template to be sent in the following areas across the CRM:
  
  • Mass mail
    
  • Mail compose window
    
  • Send Email workflow action