Salesforce for Outlook, Outlook Integration, Lightning Sync, Einstein Activity Capture... Nowadays, there are a lot of different possibilities to synchronize contacts between Outlook and Salesforce. Who can still manage to maintain an overview of them? We have taken a closer look at this topic and hope to be able to answer a few unanswered questions.
According to McKinsey & Company, sales employees spend about 28% of their working week on average processing e-mails and almost 20% searching for information. Salesforce quickly identified the need to make this easier for salespeople and introduced Salesforce for Outlook; so, the company paved the way for synchronizing contacts, events, and tasks between the Outlook desktop version and its own CRM system. Besides, the Outlook integrated sidebar made it possible to add emails to Salesforce contacts, leads and opportunities. With just a few manual clicks, Salesforce records were always up to date and contained the latest information.
Salesforce for Outlook & Outlook Integration
However, in December 2020, Salesforce for Outlook was officially discontinued and replaced by Outlook Integration. Furthermore, Lightning Sync, another product, will be discontinued at the end of 2021 and will no longer be available to new Salesforce customers. While Salesforce for Outlook was an application to be installed locally, Outlook Integration is a cloud-based add-on for Outlook. As a result, you will always have the latest features of the integration, whether you are using Outlook on your desktop or mobile. The integration allows sales people to view, edit, and add information to Salesforce records directly from their emails.
Einstein Activity Capture
To enable long-term synchronization of contacts between Outlook and Salesforce, Salesforce now recommends using Einstein Activity Capture. This productivity-enhancing tool allows you to synchronize contact data between Salesforce and Outlook and keep it up to date. Incoming and outgoing emails and events are automatically added to related Salesforce records (accounts, contacts, contracts, leads, opportunities, and quotes) with no manual click.
This also automatically matches contact data from emails with your Salesforce records. Einstein Activity Capture checks if contacts with matching email addresses already exist in Salesforce or Outlook, and in this case, the contact data is automatically matched together. If no match is found, the program checks whether there is a match between the first and last names. If so, these contacts are matched and synchronized. If there is no match, a new contact is created. Additionally, Einstein Activity Capture checks if a contact's company name matches an account in Salesforce. If so, the contact is assigned to a Salesforce account. In case you are using Sales Cloud, your package already includes 100 licenses for your company. All additional licenses must be purchased separately.
In summary, the integration avoids jumping back and forth between Salesforce and Outlook, and contact data can be easily synchronized between both platforms. However, only email addresses, first and last names, and company names are matched and synchronized here. But what happens to all the other valuable information that is also in a contact's signature? And what if this data is updated?
snapADDY DataQuality as the perfect complement
From now on, with snapADDY DataQuality, no information or change will be lost because all contact data in the e-mail signature is matched (not only names and e-mail addresses). Incoming e-mails are automatically matched with existing data records. For example, let's say you are in contact with a prospect who is then suddenly promoted from Sales Manager and to Sales Director – a decision-making position. This modification is immediately recognized and displayed by snapADDY DataQuality. You then have the option to automatically apply the change position and can immediately contact him/her for congratulating on the new position. This possibility may lead to new sales opportunities.
Your contact data is always up to date with snapADDY DataQuality – without manually checking email signatures! Of course, you can also take advantage of automated signature extraction if the contact data is not yet assigned to an existing data record. With just one click, you can create a new record without having to type it in manually! Try snapADDY DataQuality now for free!
Capturing contact data and updating data in real time has never been so easy!