Salesforce.com offers users impressive features and functionality to easily manage and streamline their sales processes; all with the convenience and price/performance advantages of cloud technology. What they have never offered has been effective email syncing and logging tools. Salesforce email integration is a particularly sore issue for many users trying to learn how to use a CRM system and get the most out of it. With email continuing to be the most important way that sales reps communicate with their customers, a successful business needs all its email communications logged into Salesforce correctly to be effective.
As more businesses shift to Salesforce for their customer relationship management needs, logging emails will become more essential. We have identified and tested three Salesforce apps that could be used to perform email syncing.
Match My Email
This app is making itself known to the Salesforce email integration community due to its automated email syncing and user productivity gains. It had huge subscriber growth (>800%) in 2012 and expectations are the same in 2013.
Pros
Final Grade: A
Cirrus Insight
Considered the best software plug-in for integrating Salesforce with Gmail, Cirrus Insight is the leader in the Google segment for manual email integration tools. Cirrus recently introduced manual Calendar sync. Cirrus pulls Salesforce data into Gmail and presents the end-user with email syncing and logging options. But with time, manual matching gets tedious and gets to be a waste of time if you have oodles of daily emails to administer. And if someone misses an email or is out of the office, you can't depend on having all the communication in Salesforce.
Pros
Cons
Link Point Connect
LinkPoint is much like Cirrus, but instead of Gmail it only works with versions of Outlook. Again, the issue of manual matching raises it head. If you have to administer a lot of emails, you are looking at a time consuming process.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion
We like Match My Email. Over time, it will save you time and effort and give you the peace of mind that all the email data in Salesforce is accurate and complete. Cirrus and LinkPoint do a good job for their respective client bases in the Gmail and Outlook segments, but their tools fall short and out-of-use in the long run because of their disadvantages – tedious manual matching and an incomplete email data in Salesforce. We consider Match My Email is the best option for Salesforce email integration because the app to do all the work seamlessly and continuously – 24/7/365.
As more businesses shift to Salesforce for their customer relationship management needs, logging emails will become more essential. We have identified and tested three Salesforce apps that could be used to perform email syncing.
Match My Email
This app is making itself known to the Salesforce email integration community due to its automated email syncing and user productivity gains. It had huge subscriber growth (>800%) in 2012 and expectations are the same in 2013.
Pros
- Automated email syncing happening in background
- Platform independent, works with any IMAP-compatible email system
- 100% cloud technology; no software to install and maintain
- Creates 100% complete and accurate email data in Salesforce for use in reports, dashboards, evaluations and performance monitoring;
- Create new Leads and Contacts from email data
- 30-45 minute setup
Final Grade: A
Cirrus Insight
Considered the best software plug-in for integrating Salesforce with Gmail, Cirrus Insight is the leader in the Google segment for manual email integration tools. Cirrus recently introduced manual Calendar sync. Cirrus pulls Salesforce data into Gmail and presents the end-user with email syncing and logging options. But with time, manual matching gets tedious and gets to be a waste of time if you have oodles of daily emails to administer. And if someone misses an email or is out of the office, you can't depend on having all the communication in Salesforce.
Pros
- Plugin easy to install and go live, 5-10 minutes
- Brings Salesforce data into Gmail and presents syncing options for action
- Offers manual Calendar sync as well
- Create Leads and Contacts from email data
Cons
- All emails need to be manually matched
- Email data in Salesforce.com is not 100% complete
- Only works with Gmail
Final Grade: B
Link Point Connect
LinkPoint is much like Cirrus, but instead of Gmail it only works with versions of Outlook. Again, the issue of manual matching raises it head. If you have to administer a lot of emails, you are looking at a time consuming process.
Pros
- Easy to install, 5-10 minutes
- Manual syncing of Tasks and Appointments
- Brings Salesforce.com data into Outlook and presents syncing options for action
- Create Leads and Contacts form email data
Cons
- All emails need to be manually matched
- Email data in Salesforce.com is not 100% complete
- Only works with versions of Outlook
Final Grade: B
Conclusion
We like Match My Email. Over time, it will save you time and effort and give you the peace of mind that all the email data in Salesforce is accurate and complete. Cirrus and LinkPoint do a good job for their respective client bases in the Gmail and Outlook segments, but their tools fall short and out-of-use in the long run because of their disadvantages – tedious manual matching and an incomplete email data in Salesforce. We consider Match My Email is the best option for Salesforce email integration because the app to do all the work seamlessly and continuously – 24/7/365.
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