Outlook plug-in best practices

Some things I have learned:

1) Be very aware of the content that you include for them to send out. Generally, I made emails available after the event had passed or once something was published. IE--I only made webinar emails available after the recording was available, not for the invite. The reason why I ended up doing this was because there became an issue with reps accidentally sending the invite after the webinar was over if I didn't remember to take it down in time. If you're a a smaller marketing team, this may be a good approach to avoid any issues/hiccups.

2) With #1 being said, #2 make sure the emails are clearly labeled. Also a monthly audit of which emails are available in insights in also helpful and helps to ensure accuracy.

3) To answer your question about those being tracked: we tended to track only lead generation focused emails. Although rep intro emails and event emails are helpful for reps, in the long run it didn't seem as though they were worth our time tracking since they were more of a 'nice-to-know' vs. a 'need-to-know'. I would also think that most customer service emails wouldn't need to be tracked either, although I've never enabled a customer service team to use the outlook plugin.

Hope that helps!

I definitely agree with Kristen's 3rd point above. When I train our new reps, I tell them to think about whether it's valuable to know if an email was opened or clicked. Things like prospecting emails, sending proposals, and emails to unresponsive clients definitely make sense. Back-and-forths with clients about program planning, billing, scheduling meetings, etc. are not nearly as valuable.

I think Drew makes a great point, but if you're manning the ship alone with a large team, it can be difficult. A lot of it is dependent upon the size of your business (how many reps you have) and how "trigger happy" they are about sending. If you have a larger team, it can get crazy trying to track everything--and you can lose sight of the big picture. If they're/you're sending a lot of emails, we found in the big picture the lead gen ones were more valuable. However, if you're part of a smaller team, then it would make sense to look at the other emails. A lot of this is dependent upon the size of your business and how you operate/sync up with your reps/how many emails you're giving. Also keep in mind that conversion rates (IE if the emails translated into business) vs. open rates (not as valuable/partially meaningless for business purposes) is the ultimate goal in the long run/big picture.