Why is tracking email attachments in sales is so important?

There are a lot of marketing automation tools out there. A friend in the EU @martechtribe had a nice Lumascape for marketing automation tools by country.

In sales there are probably fewer more than enough.

But let us breakdown why tracking an email attachment is so important and discuss 5 key things that benefit you from knowing what people are interested in.

First, we explore tracking what page people are on and how long they are on it. 

Why do you care?

Well, it tells you what interest they have with the file you sent them.  It gives insight on where your buyer spends their time.

The messaging and that piece of information on a particular page that is calling to them.  Is it the case study section of your proposal, is it the pricing page, is competitive table showing your differentiation?

For salespeople, consultants, or agents, this means you know exactly what topic to describe in your follow up email.

You know exactly what questions to prepare for the next phone call.

With email attachment tracking, you would know exactly how to engage the buyer in the next conversation and provide more value.

For marketers, this means information on what to spend money on. 

What is causing more engagement with your ideal customer profile.

How is the content produced by the marketing team helping the sales team. 

Are the presentations too long?

What does the buyer like the most?

What page drives the interest attention?

Now take all of that information and redirect the spend on producing what matters most.

That is real ROI.

Second, we explore the auto-notifications when a buyer is viewing your file, not just the open but actually on it.

This presents a real, in the moment of interest, opportunity to connect with your buyer. 

A call within the hour of looking at your document or within the day or even the next day is more likely to keep you top of mind with buyer than a follow up three weeks later or none at all because you had so much volume in sales you “missed” this one.

For agents, sellers, and consultants, this helps you focus your day on buyers that are interested in doing business with you.

It helps weed out the noise of following up for the sake of following up. It allows you to stop “chasing” buyers or deals and target creating the deals you want.

For marketers, you now have data on multiple things that are shared throughout the sales cycle. Data that informs you on the engagement throughout the customer journey.

Insights from email attachment tracking on the documents and topics that drive engagement. 

Third, we look at the downstream shares. 

The who?

The files that your buyer (your original recipient) is forwarding to other people in the organization.

This matters because you may stumble across someone new that you didn’t know before. It could be a decision maker or an influencer. Or worse, they shared it with your competitor, ouch, but it does happen.

You now have the visibility into the organization that you did not have. All because of the email attachment tracking services. 

Downstream email attachment tracking shares gives a person the insight as to the other players in the decision making process.

Fourth, we discuss the ROI for a bit.

ROI is simple. The value of a purchase must far outweigh the costs involved.

Okay, if you are realistic and practical you set a hurdle rate, you check to opportunity cost, the cost of capital and factor in some others numbers and viola, you make a decision. It is still not rocket science.

But let me bring this to life on the $15/month you may pay for a email attachment tracking for single service or SaaS solution like Slydeck.

Let’s will take the question, have you ever lost a deal?

The answer is YES, and if it isn’t, you are lying to yourself. 

Seriously, we have all lost a deal in our lifetime.  

I can give you 6 reasons we lose sales of the many (but that is another blog post). 

So what was that deal worth in your paycheck: $50 in commissions, maybe $150 in residuals, maybe $500 or maybe $3000.

But the money never made it to your paycheck.

Now as a good seller or agent, did you reflect on the loss?

You should have.

You may have determined it was lack of focus, or you didn’t specifically address their need, in other words the prospects felt like your solution wasn’t the right fit.

If you knew what your prospects where interested all along the way would you be more in tune and would you have potentially won the deal? Yes.

If you knew that your prospect was not engaging, could you validate that you were column fodder?

No, but with email attachment tracking and document tracking services you could have known early on and you would have spent your time elsewhere. An increase in efficiency (will get to this in a second)

Whether you win a few more deals or stop losing deals (winning more) the net effect is the same – more money in your pocket.

But back to the ROI.

Is $15/month/user worth one more deal added to your paycheck?

If your margin on one more deal is not worth $15 than you may want to look at selling something different. Just saying. 

Lastly, an increase in efficiency combined with an increase in you close rate. 

You cannot deny that an increase in your efficiency of organizing you week, your day, your calls, your follow ups would not improve by having more insight.

If you do not believe it then try our email attachment tracking service for free until you win that one extra deal.

High performing agents and reps are great at building relationships but are also greatly efficient with their time.

Let Slydeck help you be that high performing individual at the top of their game. Efficiency will drive more business and more time. 

Don’t settle for anything less and after all, is $15 a month worth it?

I believe the answer is YES.

Commit to adding more value to your sales conversations by signing up at slydeck.io for our free email attachment tracking version to start.

We plan, we research, and we spend time and energy trying to organize ourselves to follow up with our clients and prospects.

We have done everything right to this point. We have educated our prospects on how we help them solve the problem.

We calculated the ROI with our prospects and are guiding them through the purchase process.

We have demonstrated our value over the competition, and we have open dialogue as we continue to build trust and a relationship.

We even inked the follow up meeting on the calendars.

We have all done it at one point or another, we asked “Have you had a chance to look over the documents I sent?” Not only is this exhausting but when it does not lead to a sale, it’s defeating. Why is it exhausting?

Because you put your energy towards something you believed in, a problem you helped solve.

An email attachment tracking tool sets the follow-up timer

If you’re not using email attachment tracking to follow up later in the sales cycle then you have put in a lot of time and effort on this deal that may not be interested enough to review your proposal.  If early on, then consider it an indicator.  This can be a signal of what’s to come.  Strong conversations, pitches, value prop, but you are falling short on engaging your client OR you just don’t know how engaged they may be. 

One way to be effective is to have some information from the first time you talk to a prospect/client and share a document with them. This document may be the presentation, or the tri-fold or a discussion doc that documents each and every discussion you have with prospects and is built collaboratively with them. The information you need to be effective or, the indicator, is simple.

You should be informed when your buyer receives the document or opens it.  At least you have some information that they have potentially looked at what you have sent.  Now take that a step further, what if you knew what pages they looked at and how much time they spent on a page? You have information now about the buyer that can help you have a strong follow conversation.

Let me give you a simplified example of not only being effective but efficient with your time.

Post meeting, Mary sends the presentation to the buyer, 3-days later, she gets an email notification that the buyer is currently looking at the file.

She then checks the data a bit deeper and finds out the buyer skimmed (3-5 seconds per page) through the presentation but focused about 40 seconds of time on page 5 and page 6 of the document. 

Being efficient, Mary plans to call the buyer in the afternoon, being effective she knows page 5 and 6 focused on 2 case studies around successful implementations. 

Mary calls the buyer later that afternoon to understand if the client would like to have a more in depth discussion with the implementation team so he can understand the companies unique approach to successful implementations.

This is a value based and value driven discussion.

Let’s dissect this scenario a bit. 

If Mary did not use insight to guide her actions, then she would have scheduled a follow up meeting at some later date, sent the presentation, put a reminder on the calendar to follow up, followed up to confirm the meeting, attended the next meeting and asked more qualifying questions for discussion. 

She would have had no focus on the conversation.  She may have had an agenda and maybe even an outcome or two that she wants before the end of the meeting, but she will have fish during the meeting to truly put some effective next steps.

With insight from an email attachment tracking tool like Slydeck

Mary could have solidified the next topic before the scheduled meeting.

She could have had other stakeholders invited to the meeting, her deep dive on the unique value of their implementation can put the buyers at ease that with Mary’s help they will feel comfortable that things will go smooth. 

Not only can she have focus on the follow ups but Mary can actually shorten her sales cycle, identify key stakeholders earlier and not to mention, identify the deals that she should focus on by way of being notified at the moment of the buyers interest (viewing the document).

Tracking sales materials helped Mary to focus on buyers interest

Now to circle back on the whether or not sales follows ups are effective, you have to ask yourself if you are armed with the right insight.

They can be effective AND efficient when you have insight but when you don’t, you may just be spinning your wheels and wasting time and money. 

The net result of having insight means you can be more efficient with your time which drives more deals in the pipeline which translates to more deals won which of course equals a bigger paycheck.

Get started with our free version of Slydeck email attachment tracking tools and start getting insights.

We have all been there before. How many times have you as a professional or business owner sent an email and then waited…and waited… and waited, then wondered what happened to the contact or if they viewed your attachment?

Email attachment tracking via email gives the person insight on interaction to help build and maintain a relationship within a crowded and competitive inbox environment. 

During the early years of email it was normal to send one out and have no idea what happened after that email was sent, or did it get lost in the inbox, or is it in their spam folder, or did they open any links or attachments?

The benefits of email attachment tracking 

Have you ever seen multiple emails from a correspondent even though you personally have not opened any of them? Not many people want to get multiple follow-up emails when they have not even opened the first email sent.

Think about it, if they have not opened the first email you sent, they are unlikely to open future follow up emails, and you can stop pursuing them at that point.

Tracking email open rates along with attachments viewed helps you as a business or sales person, by preventing a necessary follow-up emails and wasting time trying to gain the attention of the recipient for both sales rep or company owner.

Likewise, using email attachment tracking or proposal tracking services you may notice that recipient is clicking on the links sent or viewing a proposal attached to the email, you know they are currently reviewing this and this task is potentially at the forefront of their mind.

This makes it more relevant and timely to reach out to them at that point, once they are thinking about your proposal or link has been clicked it helps you with insight into email interactions for contacts, customers, prospects, or any other networking goals.

The goal of email attachment tracking is to provide insight

If you sent a follow up email and can determine the recipient is engaged with your content this can lead to a follow up email to correspond with their activity and inquire for more questions.

Creating proposals or sales presentations can be time-consuming and writing emails frustrating when trying to convey your message with what to say that conveys your message. Spending hours to fill in all that white space with your message you want to make sure it is delivered and appreciated.

Technology is constantly changing but using email tracking to improve the customer experience helps sales representatives or business owners to follow-up in a responsible manner. 

Sales email attachment tracking is the future

Technology is constantly changing but using email tracking to improve the customer experience helps sales representatives or business owners to follow-up in a responsible manner. Many companies set standards for how a sales rep or team interacts with email on when and how to reach out to recipient after they have reviewed the attachment or link.  Using email attachment tracking helps to monitor those goals.

Proper use of tracking tools in your company’s privacy policy or guidelines are important, part of that process maybe restraint on how often you send a potential client an email or what is attached for review. Reports on email attachment tracking help to disclose when people engage or how often you should follow up with another email inquiry.

You are ready to start email attachment tracking, so let’s discuss where to start.

There are many different email tracking tools on the market today and with slydeck you will get notifications live when someone opens or clicks your email attachment link. You’ll also get real-time notifications when they share those attachments and how many times they open your link.

Start by composing your email along with your information about who you are emailing. Make sure you notate valuable information such as company information, open deals, timeline of communication, and use a CRM (customer relationship management) that you find useful for operating your company or sales team. Here are a few we recommend that our free or low cost. Zoho, Flowlu, Hubspot Free CRM

Let’s do this

Once you have curated your content, go ahead and open your slide deck software, then upload or drag and drop your attachment which will automatically create a shareable link to your document.

If you are still unsure about your email and how it will read, send a preview email to another account and review the interaction to ensure it represents the best image of your company and proposal.

Make sure you have CRM software to keep track of the contacts and proposals sent in a timely manner.

You can also upload your own company logo within the software to create the professional image upon delivery.

Share your link directly to an email list or copy the URL to attach within an email and send!

From there it is up to you to follow up on insights provided with our software and time the process of follow up on emails or phone calls to communicate effectively, navigate their inbox, and ultimately build and maintain meaningful relationships.

Slydeck created this email attachment tracking software to empower both sides of recipients in the email attachment process and help businesses grow.

Why do I need to track my proposals anyways?

Drafting a great proposal these days can be a breeze with certain types of software or online services. 

From students to business account managers, proposals can help you get exposure, close business deals, and gain new clients depending on how many are read and reply.

Typically, you have worked hard on your ideas and spent exhaustive hours trying to get a professional quality proposal or pitch deck put together. 

You worked hard on designing the custom terms or pricing towards getting the client questions answered and magnifying elements that you believe they really need to focus on.

This proposal looks amazing, so send it right?

Of course as you’re going to go over it and review every detail. You say to yourself “They are going to love this!” You have spent time meticulously on certain sections or points and included images to act as a visual aid.

You may even have a team to collaborate with, get their ideas, thoughts, edits, and input by sharing your proposal to design and ready to go by simply sharing the final draft.

You’ve sent the proposal attached in your business email excited and ready to wait for them to reply then… one week goes by, two weeks, three weeks etc. You want to do your diligence and follow up but unsure about timing and what the portion the potential client really was interested in?

It’s possible this lead eventually replies and thanks you for your time, but they are not interested in your product or service.

Did they even review the proposal?

We know the first thing you are going to ask yourself is “Did they even review the proposal?” and if so “What did they possibly spend time reviewing?” You are left without feedback and uncertain if they even considered your company or service.

Now multiply this effort by (5X), (10X), (20X), and beyond for proposals or documents being drafted and sent all while trying to keep up with who’s engaging and who is ignoring your attachment.

All while trying to engage in taking care of daily business and it’s enough to give any normal person a headache!

Therefore, we decided to offer our basics services to the public. Our version of free proposal tracking is to help even the smallest business owners understand if their potential sales target or lead is doing anything with their documents. 

Free proposal tracking software at the very least should help you understand if your attachment has been opened and reviewed at all.

We strive to make our proposal tracking software easy to navigate and allow you to drop the proposal or document directly into a link that can be shared.

Our free proposal tracking service even offers a branded viewer to help you get the full experience out of the service.

Your proposal or sales pitch deck is held in the cloud securely with consistent back-up for your documents.

Email tracking same as attachment tracking?

Sure, there are some robust companies out there such as Salesforce.com and Mastercontrol.com that envelops document tracking services for a wide range of products, but our goal is to help business owners track their proposals within a moderate budget. Your success is our success and you should grow with the demand of business.

We understand not everyone in business is the CEO of a fortune 500 company managing millions of dollars on proposal tracking service, yet millions of email attachments are sent every day with no tracking or engagement signals.

We believe anyone that spends hours on their design and content for proposals should have access to insight for the attachment to reduce the headache such as “should I even waste time with this lead?”

Yes, you should track all email attachments or proposals

Go ahead and give our free proposal tracking service a test run and experience the simplicity of knowing if your attachment is opened and your follow-up may find the insight and focus needed to close the deal.

Try our free starter version now.

TL;DR: This is crazy powerful software. I would have closed more deals if I had proposal tracking early in my career.

Sign up. Use it. Get paid. The end.

Here’s why I believe that, I made calls, I walked the halls, I have done the demo’s, I have sat in boardrooms, I have forecasted the number & chased every lead like it was real. Had I been smarter, and had there been a way to help me not just get through cadence, [on gut instinct and shaky promises] then I’d be on a fancy boat right now, floating off my own private island.

I joined Slydeck in 2019 because I’ve learned the value of my prospecting and pre-sales time: not all deals are equal, but everybody wants slides or a proposal…right?

What I didn’t know was who to call next, and what they wanted to talk about. The platform we built tells me precisely that, and I use it every day. It works.

Let’s play this out;

Today:

1. We get introduced; maybe you call me, maybe I cold-call you.
2.  I get lucky; perhaps we set up a meeting and I send you a pitch-deck in advance. If I’m good, we schedule “a demo,” but I don’t know who I’m talking to, or about what in particular; I spend 20 minutes making sure you can hear me & see my screen, and then I just read slides and pause occasionally for “questions” you haven’t got.
3. Sales person/Account Executive shuffles around uncomfortably on mute. They’re also on the phone, but have been here before. ‘kinda the same old scripted thing. We’ll debrief & I’ll hear all about it later, trust me…;)
4. I do my thing, remotely, to a room full of unknown and unreadable people, most of whom are typing & not listening. I don’t know this for sure but I can guess…we’ve all been there & done that, haven’t we?
5. I close with “good meeting” and we agree to “follow up” with some slides and I send you my deck or document, attached to a nice email.
6. You go quiet. I leave you a VM in a couple of days to “catch-up” and “make sure you have my contact details.” I probably fish for “a call, when you have time.”
7. Meanwhile, I tell my people it “went well” and I’m “following up.” It goes on their list for next week to check-in with me on, because now it’s on their forecast call as “stretch” for sure.
8. Nothing happens, but I tried. I’ll bluff that next week.
9. I take heat.
10. The end.

Let’s discuss a better approach.

Tomorrow:

1. #1 is as above, we chat & I send you some stuff.
2. I know you opened it, and I know you read through it.
3. I know you’re interested in how I position myself against my competitors, how my pricing works, or what my “offer” is because I know you spent time on those pages.
4. I know you passed my proposal on, and how whom, [and how they] engaged with it…that’s powerful.
5. I call you. We talk about [that] and advance those topics, specifically, with an audience that’s probably listening. I answer your questions, and I ask if [your recipient] might have questions on [their topics] that I should follow-up on directly?
6. NOW I ask if you’d like to pursue, with whom, and how?
7. You say “ no ,” and I can choose to walk away. You say “ Yes! ,” so I have an opportunity and it’s my ball, with insight…
8. I do my thing. We work it out, promptly, intelligently, and with focus.
9. Deal gets done.
10. I get paid.

Proposal tracking gives insight to follow.

You see how this works? Do you get more out of scenario #1 or scenario #2?

Do you want to filter your dead-end leads out long before the next call, you board a flight, or eat lunch 500 miles away (you’re paying for) and would rather have time at home with the family?

Do you want to just get through cadence & “forecast” that number again because you “have a meeting scheduled” about nothing in particular?

You want to close a deal, add a customer, and get paid, right?

I’ve done#1 and built #2.

It’s quick, inexpensive, easy and it just works.

Try our free version and focus on better leads to start.