In the fast-paced world of sales and CRM, every interaction counts. Whether it’s an email exchange, a meeting, or a phone call, each touchpoint provides valuable insights into your relationships with clients and prospects. Logging these activities in Salesforce, your CRM powerhouse, transforms simple data points into actionable intelligence.
The problem is that salespeople don’t want to be manually logging things like emails, calls, and meetings. They want to be out doing what they do best: selling! So how can organizations get the metrics they need into Salesforce, without their salespeople giving the admin headaches?
In this article, we’ll go through how you can achieve this seamless automation, and by the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of the power of automating Salesforce data entry to empower your sales team.
What Is Einstein Activity Capture?
EAC automates the logging of emails and calendar events, making them accessible in Salesforce without the need for manual entry. By syncing with Gmail or Outlook, it saves users time and allows them to view emails directly within Salesforce, streamlining their workflow.
How Does Einstein Activity Capture Work?
EAC connects to your email and calendar platform, capturing both inbound and outbound emails as well as calendar events such as meetings and appointments. This data is then automatically synced to the corresponding Salesforce records – including Contacts, Leads, Accounts, and Opportunities. The captured activities are displayed in the activity timeline of the relevant Salesforce record, offering a comprehensive view of interactions.
One important thing to note about EAC is where the emails and events are stored. They are not stored directly in Salesforce. Rather, they are stored on a separate AWS server, which Salesforce then has access to, allowing you to view the emails and events from within Salesforce. These are sometimes referred to as “ghost records”, due to the impermanence and inaccessibility of the emails stored outside of a Salesforce org.
Pros of EAC
- Increased productivity: By eliminating the manual data entry of emails (plus events and contacts), you can save significant amounts of time.
- Improved data accuracy: The risk of human error in data logging is reduced.
- Enhanced visibility: It provides a holistic view of customer interactions on the activity timeline.
Cons of EAC
- Data storage length: It’s important to note that captured data is not stored indefinitely. By default, EAC retains data for 6 months, depending on your license type. Some extensions can be bought as an add-on, for example, Salesforce Inbox $25/user/month.
- Data storage location: This data resides on AWS servers, not within Salesforce itself.
- Limited activity reporting: Admin cannot use native Salesforce reporting tools with email and event data captured by Einstein Activity Capture.
Why Automate Email Logging in Salesforce?
Automating the logging of emails in Salesforce is essential for increasing efficiency and maximizing the value of your customer interactions. Instead of manually tracking every email, automation ensures that all communications are consistently captured, reducing the chances of missing important information. This creates a centralized record of customer conversations without requiring additional effort from your team.
With Salesforce’s Einstein Activity Capture, teams can easily access a complete history of interactions, helping them provide personalized support and stay aligned. It eliminates the need for repetitive tasks, boosts productivity, and ensures that data is always up-to-date. Automated logging also allows for better tracking of key metrics like response times and email activity, giving organizations valuable insights to improve their communication strategies.
Overall, automating email logging saves time, ensures accuracy, and helps businesses make data-driven decisions to enhance customer service and drive sales.
Things to Keep in Mind
There are some important considerations to think about with automated email logging. These considerations range from assessing the level of transparency that your company would like to offer in Salesforce to understand the limitations of customization. All efforts should revolve around ensuring that automated activity capture aligns with your organization’s needs: the length of time you need to store email data, where you need to store it, and how you need to report on email activity.
In terms of the length of time, consider establishing a plan for managing and archiving the captured data. For example, in the financial services industry, data must be retained for seven years – EAC probably wouldn’t be a good fit here, with emails being deleted after six months.
What Is Match My Email?
Match My Email (MME) is a great alternative to Einstein Activity Capture. MME makes it easy to sync your emails and calendars with Salesforce automatically, integrating seamlessly with any email service (such as Office365 and GSuite). As an Einstein Activity Capture alternative, MME ensures:
- All your data is stored directly in Salesforce.
- Data is stored alongside your other records.
- Your data is permanently available for use.
- Unlocks email data in native Salesforce reporting and Flows
Key features include:
- Sync emails to custom Salesforce records, or sync to different record types and multiple email addresses simultaneously.
- Add historical email data to Salesforce and ensure there are no duplicates.
- Block unwanted emails from entering Salesforce by email address or keyword.
- Enable users to reply to emails from within Salesforce records.
- Create email activity reports to track your sales reps’ communication activity.
- Customize matching rules to log emails on custom objects
- Works better with Salesforce automation tools like Flow Builder due to Task records being created within Salesforce.
Summary
Einstein Activity Capture, with its automated logging and integration with other Einstein features, can work for transparent businesses seeking to boost productivity and gain insights from email data. However, its limitations in customization and storage might be a concern for some – and that’s where third-party alternatives like Match My Email come in.
Ultimately, the best solution for your organization will depend on factors such as the size of your sales team, your budget, and your desired level of customization. Careful consideration of these factors will ensure how you choose the email integration solution that best aligns with your business goals and maximizes the value of your Salesforce investment. Visit the Match My Email website to learn more.