Email Center Pro does a great job of helping your team get to “Inbox Zero,” especially since conversations are auto-archived after you’ve dealt with them (by default, but this setting can be changed). Most of our users are big fans of this strategy, as conversations only hang around in the inbox when they need attention, and otherwise they’re tucked away safely in the archive. When a customer responds, the whole thread comes right back into the inbox, ready for your next move. The reality for many organizations is that the conversation isn’t always so back and forth – for example you’ve sent a quote but haven’t heard back… you want to give people a bit of time to make their decision, but you also want to make sure not to lose track of these leads.
Thankfully, with Email Center Pro’s saved searches feature, you’ll never lose track of another promising lead again. I put together an example search (pictured) that will help your team keep tabs on these contacts. When responding to a message to which you want to ensure some follow-up, add a simple tag such as “follow up.” Then you can set up a saved search with the following 2 rules:
Tag is “follow up” (or any other tag/tags you wish to use for this purpose).
Action Date is older than 1 week (or your preferred follow-up window) – you could also specify Message Date as the criterion. The distinction is that internal activity such as adding a note, etc. will update the Action Date, whereas the Message Date is determined by the most recent message.
That’s it! Email Center Pro will track these threads for you and present you with a list of applicable conversations when the time comes to contact the lead again. You can even set up alerts or an RSS feed based on this saved search and have the results delivered directly to your email or feed reader when there’s a conversation that needs some follow up.
Sound familiar? You come into the office, power up the computer, turn off the voice mail, and when the PC finally boots up, start checking multiple email inboxes to see what’s come in overnight. Wouldn’t it be nice to receive a listing of email from all addresses into one place? If you’re an Email Center Pro customer, you can. Check out this video and see how simple it is to receive email alerts:
We’ve just released a remastered Director’s Cut of Email Center Pro with new features to help your ensemble cast manage email. Email Center Pro: Special Edition is available right now in a browser near you.
A Star is born
Throw the spotlight on important conversations by clicking the star. That little conversation from Kansas will be thrust into the Starred folder, where you can relive its triumphs again and again on DVD and Blu-Ray. Celebrity is fickle, of course; when its 15 minutes are up, click the star again to send it back home to the Sunflower state.
We’ll have our people call your people
You’re a famous movie star; you don’t need to sit in front of Email Center Pro all day waiting for the mail to come in. RSS is your agent, pounding the pavement for you while you sit on the beach in Boca. When new mail comes in, your RSS reader can notify you that it’s time to make an appearance. You can even subscribe to a Saved Search, which should satisfy even the most capricious taste.
Of course, if you’re more Boise than Boca this week, you can stay in the loop using the new RSS Feed widget and get updates from any RSS-enabled blog or web service right on your dashboard.
Lights, Camera, ACTION
The paparazzi never blinks and neither does the Recent Actions dashboard widget. Newly improved with powerful filters, you can use it to find out who keeps assigning you all the spam, or deleting all of your mail from casting directors.
Enjoy the new features in Email Center Pro- we did it for the little people.
How often do you find yourself typing a response to a customer or affiliate and thinking, “Boy, how many times will I have to explain this?”
Email Center Pro lets you save a response as an email Template, so you can re-use it the next time the same question comes up. It’s more convenient, and because templates are accessible to all users, it helps you make sure everyone is answering the same question in pretty much the same way.
Click the Template tab, then New template to create a template from scratch
OR, after typing a reply, click the down arrow next to Send and choose Send and Save as Template to create a template based on your reply
Account owners can now adjust the spam tolerance for the entire account to automatically send more or fewer messages straight to the Spam folder of the relevant mailbox.
Find the login links at the top of the screen (Logged in as…)
Click the Account link
From the Account Settings dialog, click the Account (Billing) tab
Under Spam Score, use the arrows to adjust your spam tolerance up or down. A higher number lets more mail into the Inbox; a lower number delivers more mail straight to the Spam folder.
Palo Alto Software CEO Sabrina Parsons has a remarkable capacity for life. She runs this company. She’s a wife (to COO Noah Parsons). And she’s raising two young lads.
But all of that pales in comparison to what’s done over the last few weeks.
Since we began the “Solidarity Experiment” in support of Email Center Pro a few weeks ago, Sabrina has been pressing life’s gas pedal without the benefit of sugar. That’s right, none. Zero. Zilch.
Because of Email Center Pro she’s been eating crackers and all natural jam for dessert. On Halloween, she watched the candy come and go. And, even more earth shaking, she’s been roaming the halls of Palo Alto without the suckers you see laid out to the right (Organic Chili Lime Lambada Lollipops) putting a giddy up in her gait.
I know, you’re thinking to yourself “they’re just suckers.” But that would be a devastatingly short-sighted. I kid you not, Sabrina showed up to my initial job interview with one of those sugar sweets sedating her.
But she has been faithful to the cause of Email Center Pro. We’re in pursuit of 4,000 users — and it’s going very well. Of course, “very well” is all in the eye of the beholder — depending on whether or not you’ve got sugar permissions.
On Thursday, your Email Center Pro account got a whole lot more useful.
The Dashboard can now be customized with a variety of fun and useful analytic widgets. Go ahead, click on any widget (that’s a technical term) like “My Mail” and drag it to a new location on the Dashboard.
You’ll see an option to “Add More Widgets” at the top left of the Dashboard, giving you access to a bunch of additional analytics to help manage your email process. Widgets available vary by account level.
Here are a couple examples of what you’ll find in the new feature pack for Email Center Pro:
Mailbox Breakdown
Make sure no one user is being overloaded with email assignments. This pie chart shows the breakdown of unassigned and assigned messages (by user) for a given mailbox. You can customize this by mailbox, or choose “Any Mailbox” to see assignments across all Inboxes.
Mailbox Response Time See a running average of your email response time. Customize this histogram and detailed table by user, mailbox, and date range. This is an essential management tool.
We’ll be releasing more feature packs over the next several weeks, so stay tuned!
Email Center Pro was in Portland for the Oregon Association of Broadcasters Conference in early October.
It was a spirited conference with a couple of dynamic speakers who painted a bright future for the broadcasting industry. We can only hope that such positive energy was good for Email Center Pro as well.
The reason we journeyed to the Rose City for the conference was because we’ve built such a strong relationship and use case with radio station KLCC in Eugene, OR. The team at KLCC has done nothing but prove the effectiveness of Email Center Pro as a service, which led us to believe that other broadcasting outlets might benefit from the service as well.
Our booth at the OAB conference received plenty of traffic — despite the less than glamorous display. Check it out below.
From the Dashboard view, the Recent Actions area on the right side of the screen shows you the latest log-ins, notes, replies, and assignments. Click the links in this area to jump to the relevant conversations and immediately get up to speed.
For more detailed information on this and the many other features in Email Center Pro, check out the help file.
