Where do sales emails go when they get no replies? Did prospects send your emails to spam? Was it even opened? Which inbox did it land on? Should you send a follow-up?
These questions can be answered by using sales email tracking tools. The proper tools give marketers insight into prospect behavior and help prevent sales emails from going to spam.
But using tools alone can only get you so far. You need to pair the right tools with the right strategy. We’re here to help with just that. By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to learn:
- The importance of tracking sales emails
- Best tools for monitoring sales emails
- Key metrics to keep track of
- How to convert tracking data into more sales
Why Should We Track Sales Emails?
Sales email tracking tools shut down any chance for speculation. Sales isn’t a guessing game—it’s data-driven. Keeping track of relevant metrics provides us with the following benefits:
Better Sales Follow-ups
There’s no denying the importance of the first sales email. It sets the precedent for the entire sales cadence. However, statistics show prospects are more likely to respond to follow-ups.
Your sales follow-up email should be based on prospect behavior (or lack thereof). A sales tracking tool can see if an email has been opened, sent to spam, or bounced into the ether.
We’ll talk more about these metrics later. What’s more important is a tracking tool’s ability to display an overview of relevant lead information.
Insights from your email tracking, automation, and lead overview help create better, more personalized, and relevant follow-ups. This ultimately streamlines sales pipelines.
Streamlines Sales Pipelines
Open and link click rates aren’t the only metrics we can track. SDRs can also track what stage prospects are in the sales funnel. Some tracking tools, like Instantly, even have a built-in CRM.
With Instantly’s Dealflow CRM, you eliminate the need for third-party apps to track leads. Streamlining your sales pipeline has never been easier.
Clicking on a specific lead shows more information about them. SDRs can then add notes, estimate prospect value, and gain insight into the overall campaign.
You can also track cold sales emails, create advanced email sequences or sales cadences with prospects in your pipeline, and get more context for each lead.
Added Context To Lead Data
Data without context is just a set of numbers and figures. Tracking emails provides SDRs with contextualized lead data that can be used to target prospects with the highest buying intent.
For example, email tracking lets you know if a prospect has opened your email multiple times in a day. This could be a signal for a follow-up with a high response probability.
If you included a link to a case study, you can also track if prospects opened that link. Your next follow-up can then be catered toward similar content.
Remember, tracking data isn’t enough. Understanding how to use that data is more valuable. We need to leverage sales email tracking tools to help us make the most of this data.
Best Tools for Tracking Sales Emails
As a rule of thumb, you want to use a tool that can track key email marketing metrics, contextualize prospect data, and help you automate email sequences. Here are the tools we recommend that fit the description:
Instantly.ai
Instantly was created by cold emailers for cold emailers. There are no features built in just for fluff. Every tool kit Instantly provides is essential for every cold email campaign.
Users can track key sales email metrics like unique opens, click rates, reply rates, and the opportunity value of each prospect in your outreach campaign.
You don’t even need to pay for an additional CRM, thanks to Dealflow. Instantly also has a “Lead Management” feature to simplify your sales process.
With it, you can seamlessly move leads to campaigns and see their status from a consolidated view.
Tracking sales emails becomes simplified as you can easily segment leads, move them to new campaigns, and filter out leads based on their status.
Hubspot
Hubspot has always been a solid choice for tracking sales emails. It has amazing free features, an intuitive user interface, and flexible payment options if you want to scale.
You can create custom lists, add filters to ensure leads fit your ICPs, and have leads automatically transferred to campaigns based on set criteria, like if they responded to an email.
The SalesHub Email Tracking tool also provides a complete overview of a lead, a timeline of when and how they interacted with your emails, and notifications when there’s activity.
Although Hubspot has a more robust CRM, it falls short regarding cold email marketing features. You must also purchase an extra add-on to warmup your sending domains.
Instantly offers unlimited email warmups for each of your sending accounts. Hubspot only offers a 60-day warm-up period.
MailTrack.ai
MailTrack is a simple extension for Gmail and Outlook that can help you track sales emails whether you’re on a desktop or mobile. All you need to do is install MailTrack for free and connect it to your Gmail or Outlook accounts.
When you send an email via Gmail or Outlook, go to the sent mail tab to start tracking your emails. Hovering the cursor over MailTrack’s checkmarks will let you know if your email to a certain prospect has been seen or opened and how many times they’ve done so.
Although it doesn’t have the most robust email tracking features, MailTrack is still a free tool that can get the job done if you’re just looking into email marketing. We recommend pairing this with a free CRM to help combine email and lead tracking.
Streak
Like MailTrack, Streak can transform your Gmail accounts into a sales email tracking tool. The only difference is that Streak has its own CRM and can turn your Gmail into a personalizable email sequencing software.
Tracking with Streak is also relatively simple. Users can see the last time an email was viewed and how many times a prospect viewed it. This could already be an indicator of interest. But it might also be your prospect’s service provider automatically viewing your email.
Just look out for any oddities. For example, if a prospect viewed your email 15 times in a matter of minutes. There might be something going on in the background.
Unfortunately, Streak can’t show you if emails are sent to spam folders automatically. To ensure emails don’t go to spam, try using email spintax generators to create variations of your email.
Yesware
Yesware is another extension for Gmail and Outlook that helps you run and track sales emails at scale. It can track entire email campaigns and simple email metrics like open and link rates.
The tool shows users insight into prospects that show high interest so SDRs know exactly who to focus on and give alerts as well.
What’s impressive about Yesware is the addition of step-by-step and custom sales cadence tracking. Not only can you track emails, but you can also schedule calls, send LinkedIn messages, or create custom touchpoints for your sales cadences.
Although Yesware doesn’t have the most comprehensive tools for email marketing, it does start at $15/month and includes unlimited open, email link, and attachment tracking. But the downside is you can only do 20 campaign recipients monthly.
Key Sales Email Metrics You Need to Track
There’s a lot of debate amongst marketers on what email metrics need to be tracked. Some even say metrics like open rates are dated and borderline unnecessary.
Whether that’s true or not depends on the importance you place on the specific metrics you track. But, all marketers should take note of the following metrics:
Email Deliverability
Deliverability is arguably the most important metric since it shows the percentage of your emails that actually end up in a prospect’s primary inbox.
This metric improves the more you can prove to email providers that your sending accounts are trustworthy. That’s why we need email deliverability solutions like Instantly that provide unlimited warmups.
Reply Rates
Sometimes the best we can ask for when running cold email campaigns is a reply. Even if prospects object to your initial email, there’s still a chance to turn that “no” into a “yes.”
However, lower reply rates might show underlying issues with your overall email content. Ensure it’s concise and conversational, and avoid sounding too much like a salesperson.
Link Click Rates
Are open rates necessary to track? That’s debatable. Link click rates, on the other hand, can tell you how effective your CTAs are.
Let’s say you want a prospect to click on a case study. Link clicks can track how many times a prospect clicks on that link. Naturally, the more clicks, the more interested they are.
Conversions
The goal of every sales email is to turn conversations into conversions. It’s what ultimately makes us revenue.
Tracking conversions can show us how successful a cold email campaign can be, what the winning strategies are, and what needs fine-tuning.
Converting Tracking Data Into More Sales
Tracking data is useless if you don’t contextualize it and put it into action. Now that we know what tools we can use to track sales emails and the metrics we need to monitor. Let’s take a look at how to utilize them to create more conversions.
Analyze Email Open and Click-Through-Rates
Click-through rates (CTR) show you the ratio of your open rate and link click rates.
Let’s say your email deliverability is high, and you’ve set up the proper email authentication setting for your domains. That means open rates can be more accurate.
We can then view open rates as an indicator of our subject line success. Remember, the subject lines are what prospects see first.
But if you want something more unique, you can try setting up BIMI for your sending domains. BIMI is a protocol that shows that each of your emails is authentic and trustworthy.
Plus, you get the added benefit of adding a custom logo to your sending domains which can help you stand out inside your prospects’ inboxes.
Optimize Email Subject Lines
You can easily track which subject lines work best by looking into your open rates. The better and more engaging the subject line, the more likely it is to get viewed.
If you don’t know how to start optimizing, we’ve curated a list of 15 best sales email subject lines that get responses. We’re not recommending you just copy-and-paste them, though.
Always personalize and add your own flare to them. You can also create variations of your subject lines using Instantly’s spintax feature.
With spintax, users can create multiple variations of winning subject lines. Doing so prevents you from being seen as spam and keeps things fresh for each prospect.
Personalize Email Content
With subject lines down pat, the next thing to focus on is the email content itself. Here’s where the reply rates come in. It can be a direct indicator of engaging content or lack thereof.
Ensure that your email content is personalized, relevant, and has an engaging CTA. Doing so manually takes up countless hours in a week.
Luckily, Instantly AI assistant tools can automate personalization for you using {{merge tags}} and other variables. That way, when a lead shows interest, all that’s left to do is to segment and personalize even further.
Segment Email List
Segmenting emails becomes easier when you can anticipate which prospects are more likely to respond based on email tracking data.
When prospects show interest, you can easily segment them into a new campaign with Instantly’s Lead Management tools. Then, move them further down your sales pipeline using Dealflow.
A/B Testing Campaigns
With data by your side, testing campaigns can be done simultaneously in real-time with data being shown on Instantly’s analytics dashboard.
You can immediately see how effective your subject lines, email copy, or CTAs are. Once you’ve gotten a grasp on what needs improving, you can start automating data-based follow-ups.
Automating Follow-ups Based on Tracking Data
Instantly can send personalized email follow-ups based on how leads interact with your emails. Of course, how you manage your leads across campaigns matters as well.
Luckily Instantly covers all the bases when it comes to email marketing and managing leads across all your email marketing campaigns.
Key Takeaways
Sales email tracking will only be effective if you know how to contextualize data. For that, we must use the proper tools. Here’s what we recommend:
- Use Instantly for tracking key metrics, cold emails, and simplified lead management and email sequencing.
- Try out Hubspot if you want to create custom pipelines and enriched sales data to supplement follow-ups.
- MailTrack is a free extension that can help you view open and click rates.
- Streak is an economical option if you want to personalize and track simple email metrics.
- Yesware allows users to create custom sales cadence touchpoints.
If you want the complete package for all your sales email marketing needs, Instantly has you covered! Try it out for free today.