;)
Please note that Catapult Systems is now Quisitive.
Imagine sending an email to a client regarding the biggest sales deal of the year and having insight to when they opened it, if they replied to it, or if they viewed the attachment. With this insight, you would be able to stay informed and follow up knowing this type of intimate detail. This word “insights” is used a lot lately with online platforms, but Microsoft is seriously delivering with this feature for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise: Email Engagement. The feature, that does just this, was introduced a few years ago and now has been seamlessly integrated with the Sales Hub. The out-of-the-box feature is a Dynamics 365 differentiator which set it apart from competing CRM products.
Email Engagement is part of Dynamics 365 Sales Insights included (with no additional licensing) “standard” features along with the Assistant and Auto Capture. The difference between Sales Insights standard and premium are outlined on Microsoft.com:
To enable these features, an administrator must review the Sales Insights requirements and prerequisites, accept the terms of service, and turn on the Email Engagement feature. Sales Insights standard features come with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and are not available if you’re subscribed to Sales Professional. Some of the prerequisites for this tool are that email server and mailboxes are configured, OneDrive for Business must be available on the organization’s tenant, Bing Maps enabled, and document management enabled.
To use the features, emails will need to be sent from Dynamics 365. The Email Engagement section on the Email form will appear with three options when composing a new message:
- Recipient Activity will (not) be followed.
- Schedule email to be sent at a later time.
- Set a reminder to follow up on this email.
Each of these three Email Engagement features is comes with its own unique capabilities:
- Recipient Activity will be followed. A one pixel invisible GIF is added the email which will register the email as Read when the GIF is requested for download from the server by the recipient. Hyperlinks in the email are replaced with a unique redirect link to the original target for tracking when the recipient clicks it. And email attachments are uploaded to OneDrive for Business and shared by Dynamics 365 as a linked file in the Email message. Once the file is requested for download, Dynamics 365 registers the file as opened.
- Schedule email to be sent at a later time. Users can delay delivery for more appropriate business hours or time zone of the recipient. A pop up appears when you select “Send Later” to set the timeframe.
- Set a reminder to follow up on this email. The Assistant can be set to remind the user to follow up if the message was not opened in a predetermined number of days. A pop up appears to further define the reminder options.
Several features throughout the Sales Hub are integrated with Sales Insights. Within the timeline, the status is displayed on the record displaying if or when the email was opened by the recipient.
The Assistant pane or dashboard component also keeps the user informed of the status and reminders.
From Dynamics 365 Sales Hub and within the sent email record, the Email Engagement section shows the insights and details.
The Email Engagement features enable Dynamics 365 users to effortlessly gain a competitive advantage over competition by providing a little more Sales Insight into the recipient’s behavior and status of the email message.
