Segment your email subscriber list

Online applications can help you streamline your sales process and manage client information, says Kirtarath Dhillon, social-media and public relations coordinator with Advisor Websites in Vancouver. The right apps can leave you more time to focus on building relationships with your clients.

Dhillon suggests trying these online tools in 2016:

1. Charlie (https://charlieapp.com/)
The Charlie app is designed to send you a quick briefing of a prospect or client before your scheduled meeting.

Using your contact’s email account, Charlie scours the Internet to provide a list of recent information about your contact, such as company announcements, references in the media and social-media content.

This application helps to speed up your sales process by doing the research for you, Dhillon says, enabling you to quickly build rapport with the person you’re meeting.

“If you want to make some sort of connection with prospects beyond ‘professional speak’,” Dhillon says, “you can learn what school they attended or blog posts they’ve written in the past couple of days.”

2. Rapportive (https://rapportive.com/)
Rapportive is a plug-in created for Gmail, which lets you stay informed on important details regarding your email contacts.

The plug-in works by syncing your prospect’s email address to his or her LinkedIn account, Dhillon says. A column appears on the right side of your email inbox, showing your prospect’s LinkedIn profile photo, location, job title and shared connections.

If you don’t use Gmail, a similar application called Vibe (https://vibeapp.co/) is compatible with Chrome, iPhone, Mac and Outlook.

3. Boomerang (http://www.boomerangapp.com/)
Boomerang’s mission is to guarantee you never overlook a critical email again. If you’re experiencing a busy Friday and an important email arrives in your inbox, you can “boomerang” that email so it reappears in your inbox Monday morning, Dhillon says.

Boomerang is particularly helpful in ensuring you respond to prospect queries or answer client concerns in a timely manner.

“This tool ensures that you don’t appear unprofessional,” Dhillon says, “and allows you to be really efficient in managing your leads.”

The program lets you assign email reminders that will pop up after a set time. For example, if you don’t respond to a client after 48 hours, you’ll receive a notification to do so.

Boomerang increases email productivity by allowing you to schedule emails in advance. For example, you can queue work emails written on the weekend to be sent later in the week.

This is the first part in a three-part series on online tools.

Next: Tools to build your online presence.

Follow @LeahGolob on Twitter.