When we rolled out our APIs for Zoho CRM, we were looking for some interesting integrations between Zoho CRM and external applications. Well, we are excited to talk about a new integration between Zoho CRM and an Online Email Marketing application from Contactology.
Contactology is an online email marketing application that lets you send and track emails, newsletters etc. Today, they are announcing a new import driver for Zoho CRM. This means, you'll now be able to automatically export leads and contacts from Zoho CRM to Contactology's email marketing app with just a few clicks - without having to manually export and import between applications. Once the info is in their system, you can send out emails/newsletters from their application.
Contactology built this import driver to meet their own needs. They use Zoho CRM internally and wanted an automated way to import contacts from Zoho CRM to their application. This driver is now available for everyone. To see how this import driver works, take a look at the video here.
We'd like to thank the Contactology team for integrating Zoho CRM. Here is a list of our other API Partners.
When Zoho CRM was
included as part of our single sign-on system earlier this year, we
mentioned that it'll boost the pace of integration with other Zoho
Apps. Less than six months into it, we now have many
integrations with other Zoho Apps.
Sign-in - Google & Yahoo
Once Zoho CRM was part of our single sign-on system, it automatically
got the capability to accept users with existing Google & Yahoo
accounts. 
Zoho CRM & Mail integration
This has been one of the most requested features for CRM. Last month we
integrated Zoho CRM & Mail. It is not just Mail integration in CRM,
but also the other way around. This means, if you are a Zoho Mail user,
you can directly add contacts to CRM and even create tasks in CRM
directly from Mail or if you live in CRM, you can view your entire Zoho
Mail within the CRM system.
But then, the real deal is the ability to view contact specific emails when you view a contact.
Zoho CRM & Meeting integration
This is a simple, yet powerful integration between two business apps.
When I view a contact in CRM, a 'Meet Now' button contextually appears for that contact. Choosing 'Meet Now' starts a meeting
instantly sending an invite automatically to that user.
Zoho CRM & Invoice integration
If Zoho CRM holds your customer information and you'd like to create an
invoice or an estimate in Zoho Invoice, it is easy to import all your CRM contacts into Zoho Invoice.
Zoho CRM & Zoho Sheet Integration
Editing data on a spreadsheet is much easier than editing data in
form based application. Zoho Sheet integration into Zoho CRM makes editing your data easy no
matter which module in CRM you are in. You'll notice a 'Zoho Sheet
View' above your data. Choosing this option opens the content in Zoho
Sheet. You can make the changes and hit the save button to save the
changes back to your CRM system.
There are couple of other integrations that are not related to our SSO,
but these are welcome integrations to users using other applications.
1) Outlook plug-in to sync your contacts with Zoho CRM and
2) Office plug-in to create mail-merge docs with data from Zoho CRM
The CRM team is moving aggressively on improving the app and
integrating it with other Zoho Applications. If you have any specific
integrations you'd like to see in Zoho CRM, please drop us a line.
Zoho, the upstart provider of online Web applications, seems to be continually integrating and upgrading its products in the cloud, says China Martens, an analyst with The 451 Group. Martens jokes that it's as if all of the Zoho developers sit in separate rooms for several months, each one pounding away at his respective application (Zoho Mail, for example, or Zoho CRM), only to have the walls come tumbling down just as the developers are ready to join their applications.
Unveiled at the start of July, the 2.0 release of Zoho Projects, the collaboration and productivity platform, reflects multiple integration efforts, as well as the following improvements:
- Twitter-like status bars enable project members to be more social within the application.
- Project-member activities are presented in a project stream, which is a visual representation of project activities.
- The integration of Zoho Chat and the enablement of group chat, through which project members can add tasks, assign them out, and even attach documents to them. Members can also move beyond Chat to create a discussion forum.
- An expansion of the user interface to allow project members to bring in external information, write notes on documents, and assign documents to a particular task.
- The ability to create a wiki for centralizing information, eliminating the need to import an outside Zoho Doc.
- The addition of a timesheet, integrated with Zoho Invoice, to log and track time spent on specific tasks, and to easily create, send, and track invoices.
Zoho also made some significant enhancements to its Zoho CRM product recently. With the Zoho CRM Mail Add-on, officially announced on July 21, Zoho CRM now integrates with email -- and not just Zoho Mail. The selection of any email account for integration will add an "email" tab to the Zoho CRM application. Users running off a non-Zoho email client can configure Zoho Mail to be the interface for sending and receiving. According to the company, the most significant element of the integration between Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail is that the contact information involved in each email is automatically added to the Zoho CRM system, where a user can see all of the correspondence with a particular contact. Users can respond to email from within the CRM system, or even add tasks to a given contact.
Today we're very excited to announce a one-of-a-kind integration
between our award-winning Zoho CRM service and Zoho Mail (and other e-mail platforms too).
The problem
our customers were facing was clear: they manage their customer
relationships with Zoho CRM, yet most of their customer communications
happen via e-mail. Our goal was to not only bring both of these
together, but to do so in an elegant and easy-to-setup and easy-to-use
way. We've been working hard on this, and we're very proud of the
result.
Full-fledged e-mail within Zoho CRM
One
of the first things that people will notice is the new "Emails" tab in
Zoho CRM. This gives you instant, un-restricted access to all of your
mails within Zoho Mail. Customers can now easily switch between their
mail and their CRM from within the same window/tab in their browser.
And of course - there's no need to sign-in again, Zoho's single sign-on
takes care of that in the backend.
E-mail Composing/Reading within the CRM Contacts Tab
Of
course you don't need to go to your e-mail client, or the Zoho CRM
Email tab to interact with customers and contacts via e-mail. Within
the Contacts tab, we have enable both mail read and compose, so all
your e-mail communications are truly just one click away.
BCC: No one
One
of the things we really like about the Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail
integration is that it requires users to do nothing. Really. Some
inferior crm + mail solutions require users to CC:/BCC: some special
e-mail address. Not us. Everything is taken care of on the background.
E-mails will be logged within the respective contacts regardless if
they were sent from the CRM Contacts Tab, the CRM Emails tab, directly
on Zoho Mail, or even while using another mail client to send e-mail
with Zoho Mail.
E-mails that respect hierarchy
Another
cool thing about the integration with Zoho Mail is that the same
permissions structure that applies to Accounts/Contacts will apply to
e-mails to/from those contacts. So for example, when Steve Salesman,
maintains an e-mail communication with Charles Customer, Steve's manager
will be able to refer to those e-mail communications.
Create CRM contacts and to-dos directly in Zoho Mail
Some
customer interactions begin through e-mail. At any point, you can
create a CRM contact directly from your Zoho Mail interface. You just
need to choose 'Add to CRM' from the 'More Options' drop-down in Z Mail.
Not only that - but after creating the contact you can also immediately
add a task (for example, to follow-up with the contact or send a
document). And of course, to keep the data clean, Zoho Mail will advice
you if that particular contact already exists.
Connect to other e-mail systems
And
of course, the last thing we'd want is to force customer to use Zoho
Mail to take advantage of this great new functionality. So no, you
don't need to host your e-mail with Zoho if you don't want. If you are
happily e-mailing your customers from your Gmail account, you can
continue to do that. you just need to enable POP in your e-mail
service/server so Zoho Mail can connect to those e-mails. We know some
people will prefer a method other than POP, and we're working on that
as well.
And here's a short video that Victor on our team prepared:
---
An open invitation to Zwitch
Today we're also announcing the Zwitch to Zoho program. It's our way to make life easier for those customers wanting to migrate out of Salesforce.com's and into Zoho's affordable-yet-fully-featured CRM service. Among other things, it includes:
Inc.com
did an article featuring '10 Free (or cheap) tools for start-ups' with
direct feedback from the field. Zoho CRM is the first one on the list -
Slideshow here.
It looks like Chadd Bennett of RetroRazor is using Zoho CRM and he found this useful. Here is what the article says...Every
start-up founder uses free or inexpensive online resources to get his
or her company launched. Chadd Bennett of RetroRazor, a Seattle-based
company that sells old-fashioned safety razors, provided us with a list
of the tools he found to be the most helpful. First up, he recommends a
CRM application. “Until recently, we used a Google spreadsheet to keep
track of the retailers buying our razors," Bennett says. "But we just
started using a program called Zoho CRM. I chose it because up to three
people on each account can use it for free. Plus, it’s established
enough that I don’t think it’s going to disappear. We only use it for
our retail clients, not for individual customers, because we have
hundreds of them and it would take too long to enter their information
into the database.”
Chadd has good points in
there. For Zoho CRM (also for all Zoho Apps), we start with a generous free version, which means you can start
using the CRM app for FREE. And as your business grows, you can expand
the usage and still not pay for the first three users - they are always
free. The logic is pretty simple with the free version - Start free,
you grow and we grow.
I am also very glad
that Chadd realized that we are established enough that we are not
going to disappear. Hopefully the recent name change of our parent company to Zoho Corporation will reinforce this.
Thanks a lot for recommending us Chadd and keep expanding your usage with Zoho.
In
one of my previous posts, I talked about integration between different Zoho Apps expanding on the following integrations.
Most CRM packages tend to be too heavyweight for the sole proprietor, however. They cost a bundle and contain features that most web workers don’t need. Zoho has a relatively simple CRM solution that’s free for up to three users. Although it takes some figuring out, it’s a good option to consider for web workers.
Everything you need to access appears in the tabs at the top of the screen and the links below them. You can customize most of the reports and dashboards as well as the settings for every tab.
The key reason businesses invest in CRM is for tracking and managing sales leads. The Leads tab lists all the active leads for easy reviewing and updating. After creating a new lead, you can return to that lead to update its page with information including attachments, products and activity tracking. You send emails straight from the application, with a record of the sent email added automatically to the lead’s page.
If you need to track many leads, Zoho CRM keeps all the information in one place for easier management. Once a lead converts to a sale, Zoho CRM removes it from the Leads tab and moves it though the pipeline, automatically creating the account details.
Compared to other CRM solutions, Zoho’s CRM package is affordable and easier to learn. Web workers will more than likely find most of what they need in Zoho CRM for a great price.Thanks to Meryl Evans & WebWorkerDaily!
CRM Buyer: How can your products help your customers' bottom lines in the near term?Vembu: We offer what I believe is the lowest cost per seat pricing in the industry -- and it is a full, rich product. This is not new pricing -- it has been a consistent philosophy, but it is resonating even more in this economy. First three users are free, and the fourth user is billed at (US)$12 per user per month.
CRM Buyer: What are some of the brightest spots for your company right now?
Vembu: We focus on small companies -- three-, five-seat customers. But we are now seeing larger customers emerging, such as 50 to 100. Also, there is a growing recognition of the maturity of our product.
Read the full interview here. And next is a post by Josh Colter @ Elias Interactive, who offers professional services on Magento, an open-source eCommerce solution, titled 'Implementing Zoho to Manage Client Relationships'. Excerpt from the post :CRM Buyer: What is it about your product that makes it better?Vembu: As we move to becoming a more fully integrated suite, customers get even more value for their money. Our project management integration, for instance, includes that functionality in the overall suite -- it is not something that has to be integrated from another vendor. That is a serious consideration with IT budgets under pressure now.
CRM Buyer: Besides the cost issue, how else do you compete with other names in this space?
Vembu: We are building up our other features, such as email and calendaring. Those are a good way to get in a prospect's door and then introduce them to other Zoho offerings.
So, if you are looking for a CRM solution, give Zoho CRM a try. It's free for the first 3 users. From the fourth user onwards, the Professional Edition costs $12 per month and the Enterprise Edition just $25 per month.This weekend we switched to a new CRM system here at Elias. I evaluated several different options including Salesforce.com and Highrise before ultimately selecing ZohoCRM. It seemed like every system I looked at either was too simple or too expensive.
Since we are small, every penny counts and every minute saved is valuable to us. Our objective was to create a form on our website where new potential clients can submit a request for more information. A CRM tool was desperately needed in order to collect the new contacts, file them in on-demand software, trigger an immediate email to let them know we will follow up soon, and send a notification email to me with the info that they filled out on the form. Turns out this was harder to find than I expected. Enter Zoho.
Other companies out there do this sort of thing, Zoho just does it for $25/month/user. So far I have customized the lead fields, mapped them to a form, and pasted the HTML to our “Request a Quote” landing page. Also, the software is set to automatically send me an email with the completed fields and create a follow up task due the next day. Next week I plan to set up the triggered email response to the interested client.
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