MailChimp – user's Blog!

March 20, 2017

8 CRM Integrations to Utilize More in 2017

Now that we’re well into the new year, it’s a good time to think about how you’re using your CRM. Are you making use of all the integrations that help streamline your workflow? Or, are you missing out on their full potential? Take a look at these valuable integration options so you can make the most of your software and watch your business grow.

Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 is the cloud version of the Office programs, available for a monthly fee. Documents can be stored on your local machine, or in the cloud, allowing you to work anytime, anywhere, on any device, including tablets and smartphones. Plans start at $10/month, ($8.25/month for annual commitments) and include: Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote. PC users can also get Access and Publisher. Integrations with your CRM allow you to include documents in projects and share with other members of your team.

Because not every business uses Office 365, most CRMs, including Insightly also provide integrations with GSuite; the GDrive Apps that you can access for free, like Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms.

OneDrive

Microsoft OneDrive is included as part of the Office 365 experience. It’s a file sharing platform that makes it easy to share large files with one or more people. With this integration, you can automatically store project files in the cloud, and have them shared with anyone who’s on the project. It’s worth noting Insightly also integrates with Box and Dropbox, two other widely cloud storage platforms. This way, no matter which one you choose to use in your business, you’ve got an integration that will make your life easier.

Zapier

If you’ve got a paid Zapier account – plans start at $20/month – then you can create a lot of your own integrations and build workflow automations to increase efficiency and save time. Because Zapier works with more than 500 apps, you can force any number of integrations that aren’t directly available through your CRM provider.

Send your Gravity Forms contacts to Insightly, or create new contacts from new Gmail emails. Create Trello cards from new tasks. Create new opportunities from your email subscribers. Using Zapier, you’ll never have to worry about manually importing or exporting contacts, opportunities, or tasks again. Your zaps can be up and running in seconds, and save you countless hours over the course of a year.

Quickbooks Online

Unless you’re a professional bookkeeper or accountant, you know what a hassle it can be to track business income and expenses. Once you integrate the two platforms, you can view records and copy information between the two systems. You can link your Quickbooks information to organizations, projects, opportunities, or contacts. It helps you keep track of which contacts are bringing in the most money, and which ones are costing you the most money.

Hubstaff

If you need to track time spent working on a project – either on a project by project basis, or for hourly tracking – Hubstaff makes it easy. You can automatically track time on each task, assign priorities to users in your CRM, and push those to user desktops. You can see screenshots of what members are working on, ensuring they’re staying on task, and get in-depth reports of time spent on tasks.

MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing software that grows with your business. It’s free for up to 2,000 subscribers. This integration allows you to export leads and contacts from your CRM to your MailChimp lists, and import your subscribers as contacts. You can view campaign statistics, and update member information with your CRM data during export.

Microsoft Flow

Microsoft Flow is another task automation option. At this time, there are just over 100 apps that can be connected to automate processes and tasks, including Basecamp, Dropbox, Chatter, OneDrive, MailChimp, and many more applications you use.

The more integrations you can use with your CRM, the more efficient your workflow can become. Yes, it will take some time to set everything up the way that makes the most sense for your organization, but once that initial setup is done, it will make operations a breeze.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

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September 28, 2016

Top 3 Ways to Use MailChimp With Insightly

When it comes to connecting with customers on a personal level, email is a critical tool for organizations of every size – and it can particularly make or break small businesses. Email marketing allows businesses to share timely messages with customers and support sales funnel growth. Solutions such as MailChimp, which offer list management, campaign creation and reporting features (among others) are designed to help such businesses turn their inboxes into sales powerhouses. However, as email produces greater ROI for companies, email marketing platforms are constantly evolving – and as a result, some longtime users aren’t using solutions like MailChimp to their fullest potential.

We asked our customers: what’s your favorite ROI hack for MailChimp and Insightly? Below are their top responses, and three ways you can start using the integrated solutions to increase your email marketing value today:

Cut repetition by sharing contacts between MailChimp and your CRM.

When you import your MailChimp subscriber lists to Insightly as new contacts, and export leads from your CRM to MailChimp, you immediately broaden the amount of people you’re reaching on an ongoing basis – and save yourself the hassle of repeating work between platforms. Even better, you can schedule regular imports from MailChimp, and never worry about letting a new lead go cold again.

Communicate with your qualified leads on an individual level.

Recently, Derrick Duplessy, founder of Scream Club and host of the Purpose Rockstar podcast, realized he needed a creative way to connect with his email subscribers. He sent one simple message – a “gratitude email” – thanking his extended contacts for their engagement and asking what they’d been up to lately. The results floored him – with more than 50 responses, five invitations to connect in person and five new sales on his results list (as well as eight babies born among his contacts), Duplessy realized he’d hit the reader engagement nail on the head.

Using MailChimp and Insightly together, you can segment your contact list to find the perfect readers with which to engage, send emails ranging from gratitude check-ins to any messages in Insightly’s vast library templates, then use your CRM to track responses and results. Not only can your actions lead to sales, they’ll promote loyal customer relationships on a long-term basis. (And, as in Duplessy’s case, you might wind up with more than 500 percent more happiness in your startup life.)

Analyze data to constantly improve your campaigns.

An email newsletter and outreach program can be the ultimate communication and sales tool for SMBs and B2B organizations alike. According to Bredin, SMBs increasingly prefer engaging with vendors through email newsletters. In one survey, 25 percent of organizations rated email newsletters as a top way to receive business management tips and advice; in another, SMBs rated email third out of 33 different information sources from which they learn about products and services for their business. By updating MailChimp user information with CRM data and leveraging the platform’s in-depth segmentation features, you can ensure that your email newsletters are reaching customers on the devices, schedules and channels they prefer.

Interested in more ways you can use MailChimp and Insightly? Check it out HERE.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

August 12, 2016

Delivering an Enhanced MailChimp “Chimp-Igration”

In a world filled with slick digital advertising campaigns, podcasts, glossy brochures, etc., there’s something comforting about a clean and friendly e-newsletter filled with bite-sized pieces of information that are easy to scan and take in. We agree, which is one of the many reasons we’re making the process of leveraging the power of MailChimp more sophisticated with our enhanced MailChimp integration (chimp-igration)

With these enhanced features you can now:

Send one to one emails to communicate with your qualified leads
View MailChimp campaign statistics for a contact’s or lead’s lists
Import MailChimp subscribers as leads or contacts from your campaign lists or list segments
Export contacts or leads from Insightly to your MailChimp lists
Update MailChimp member information with your CRM data

According to a newly released Bredin Report, SMBs consistently rate email newsletters highly as a way to engage with their vendors. 25% rate email newsletters highly or very highly as a way to get business management tips and advice, ranking newsletters fifth out of the 19 different content formats we surveyed.

Other Bredin research has found that SMBs rate email newsletters third out of 33 different information sources to learn about new products and services for their business. If you aren’t yet taking advantage of the Insightly/MailChimp integration, mabye it’s time to re-think your customer outreach strategy and introduce a newsletter.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.