Open Leads is a very powerful lead management application, but it has more to offer – including the ability to create very powerful mass email campaigns. Mass email can be used to create “drip” marketing campaigns, or newsletters.

Critical to any sales endeavor is the frequency of contact with your prospects, and balancing that with the quality of the content in order to keep the prospect engaged.

Open Leads has a really neat feature to help you achieve your contact goals, and that is the Mass Email feature. The key is to create a series of emails in your Message Library, then set up a Workflow to send these to a lead over a set period of time.

An example would be a “Newsletter” or “Helpful Hints” series of emails dealing with topics your prospects often ask your sales reps about, whether it be maintaining a product you sell, or suggestions for making the most of your products or services. Create short, well-crafted emails, each with a key point. Then create a Workflow that sends these out in 30- or 60-day intervals over a period of time. Then as you have a prospect that you want to keep engaged, apply this Workflow to that lead, and the emails will go out automatically…. In the immortal words of Ron Popeil (of Ronco fame), “Set it and forget it!”

It is easy as pie to create views, but how do you keep the sheer numbers from getting out of hand?

It is a lot easier to create a core list of views, and then edit them from time to time, as needed, rather than creating a lot of unique ones. A good example is searches in a date range. If you have a Year-to-Date filter on a View, for example, and you need to update it to include the current month. It is more efficient to edit the current View, rather than create additional new Views.

For monthly Views you create, you can choose a date range that is “in this month,” and the system will automatically update to the current month without you needing to edit anything.

Views are saved filtered searches in the Lead List in Open Leads. When you are on the Lead List tab, your leads are displayed by default as “Viewing All Leads.” Each user is able to sort and filter the data as needed, and then, once the data displays the way you want, you may elect to save this as a View.

There are several key points to make here when we discuss viewing your data. First, to sort alphabetically or in chronological order, you may click on the column header name (such as date added). This will result in the data being displayed in ascending order for that column. Clicking again will change it to descending order. You can then save that view as “Leads – Alphabetical Order” or some other descriptive phrase. To save it, look at the label of the View, just below the search box – click on “save” – in red to the right of the label.

You can also add or change the data displayed in the columns marked by the orange asterisk icon. Click on this icon and you may select from any of the available fields in your account. Again, once you have the data displayed, you may save it as one of your custom Views.

You may also filter your data to create a view. Click on “Show Filters” and you can add as many filters as you need to refine the list you are currently viewing. This is handy to create mail labels, prospect lists, mass email lists, etc. Save the ones you will use often so you can switch back and forth between views as needed.

There are all sorts of places to find out the best way to compose a marketing email, so we will not go into a lot of detail about what you should write or whether or not you should use HTML – I will go so far as to say don’t compose your message in all caps, though. Believe it or not some folks still do. Bad Internet etiquette…..

I would encourage you to use the Open Leads Token system, though. Adding Tokens to the body of your email allows you to personalize the message, even if it is used as an Autoresponder. Put yourself in your sales contact’s shoes… would you rather get an email addressed to you personally, or one addressed to “Dear Website Prospect?” It is the 21st century equivalent of the old cold call greeting, “May I please speak to the man or woman of the house?” – a real turn-off, right?

Inserting an email token is quite simple. From your email edit screen, you will see to the right a list of tokens that you can use. Open Leads creates a Token for each field in your account. You can copy and paste from the generated list, or just type the Tokens you wish to use into your message.

Sending out saved messages from Open Leads is as easy as saving a document in a word processor. The new Message Library feature allows you to create and save plain text or HTML email messages for use as Autoresponder emails or as templates to use for commonly used responses.

The first step is to create your message. Click on the Settings Tab, and then on Messages, and then on the “Add Message” link.

Compose your email using our email editor, or copy and paste your HTML from whichever editor you use. You can then modify the message as needed, adding, for example a First Name Token to personalize the email to the recipient as it is sent out.

One note – the editor will save the message as whatever the subject line is, or more accurately, whatever you name the message will be the subject line – so don’t name it “First Autoresponder.” Give it a descriptive, spam-filter friendly subject.