Maximize Your Email & Customer Service Effectiveness with Yesware

If you market via email, you probably use a mass mailing service like AWeber or MailChimp – and may have an subscribe/opt-in box on your site. You probably make a considerable effort to add new contacts to that list with “pink spoon” offerings, free teleclasses and other bait to get visitors to leave their email address with you.

But what about all those other contacts you have—the people that may not have opted into your website’s mailing list, but with whom you already have some relationship: a colleague from a old project, a past client – maybe even a competitor? You don’t want to add them to a mailing list— anyone can easily tell a message is a bulk email, and you dont want to endanger the integrity of your list. You want to reach out in a measurable and efficient way, but you don’t want to appear as you are “marketing” to them.

Enter Yesware. Yesware is a Chrome plugin-powered service that adds message templates, optional tracking and CRM sync to Gmail or Google Apps. As you write messages, you can quickly insert custom templates that you create to speed your email composition – and you can choose to track the message opens and/or copy the message to your CRM service (Batchbook, Highrise, Salesforce, etc).

While Yesware is aimed at salespeople, the template feature alone is worth installing Yesware, whether you “sell” or not. If you find yourself repeatedly writing the same things, this will save tons of time. The templates can include easy-to-see variables (such as a first name) and can be customized and categorized for easy access via a handy toolbar right within the Gmail compose window.

Power tip: Combine Yesware, Boomerang for Gmail and Rapportive with a great CRM like BatchBook (I’m a big Batchbook user/fan)—and you will not only make your emailing life easier, but become a customer service & marketing ninja, all from within Gmail.

Awesomely – Yesware is a freemium service with upgraded plans starting at only $4.95/month. There’s even mobile apps and team options available.