NameSilo

sales Sidekick Is About To Get So Much Better

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My favorite app to use when sending out domain sales emails is Sidekick by Hubspot. This app (formerly called Signals) is a simple email tracking service that lets you monitor when each email you send is opened, how many times it's been opened, and whether it's been opened on a mobile device or a desktop.

Since discovering this app (which is a simple Chrome extension that you can use directly with Gmail on Chrome), I've become a much better email salesman. I'm now pretty good at knowing whether a person is interested in a domain name purely based on the number of times they open an email.

One such example was a domain name I was brokering a couple of months ago. After sending an email to a company, it was opened 89 times within the next month, before emailing me with a $200,000 offer. Ordinarily, after not hearing from the lead for that length of time, I would have emailed to enquire whether they were still interested - potentially leading to them offering a lower amount. Sidekick allowed me to monitor the situation without playing my hand.

I didn't think that this simple extension could get any better until I found out about a new feature that's going to be released soon: scheduled emails. When I send out sales emails, I want them to be opened on a specific day, or a specific time (for example, Friday afternoon is the worst time to send emails, whereas Tuesday mornings have worked very well for me).

In the past this would mean logging on at certain times, which was occasionally difficult due to timezone differences. Or, it would mean finding another Gmail extension - all of which I've tried have been a little disappointing for me.

I'm hoping that with Sidekick's track record of creating simple yet effective solutions to professional email problems, they'll be producing a truly great new product - which is free to use, by the way.

If you know of any other email trackers, or schedulers which you'd recommend, feel free to post below. I'd be very surprised if any were as good as Sidekick, but I'm open to all solutions.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Privacy is certainly a concern, but as long as you use an extension by a large and reputable company, you should be safe. Avoid the smaller companies that offer similar extensions.

Streak is a reputable company, and I trust them: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/streak
 
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Tools like this are a great advantage for salesmen. I use Streak for Gmail, which is amazing!
Website: https://www.streak.com/

Streak features:
Manage customers or deals right inside Gmail.
Manage customers directly inside gmail
No more back and forth between your inbox and other tools
Useful for: sales (CRM), hiring, and support

Enhance Gmail's Interface
* group all emails from a customer or deal into a box
* keep track of status, notes and details of each customer
* shares boxes within your team and keep everyone in the loop
* see every email between a customer and your team, right in your inbox

Snippets
* speed up sending repetitive emails with custom templates
* easy shortcuts make writing emails a breeze

Send Later
* schedule those crucial emails for the times when they'll have the most impact
* simple management all from within Gmail

Email Tracking
* get notified when your emails get read
* see if, when and how many times your email was opened

I'll have to check out Sidekick, too. Thanks for sharing!
 
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I am using Streak for ages already and doing exactly these tactics as well.. if i notice someone opening or forwarding my mail to many others (colleagues and decision makers, can be seen in locations details opened from) or playing pingpong with my mail then i do play the game of patience and just wait for them to contact me back first before contacting again..
all this email tracking (and resulting insight) is truly helpful to negotiate successfully..
 
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To those wondering about privacy, I contacted Sidekick (Hubspot) to see exactly what they can access. Here's what they said:

""
Sidekick has access to the email address you’re sending from, the email addresses of recipients, the subject line, and the body of the email, so that we can accurately deliver the data you need in order for the app to be functional. Here's a good informational page that tells exactly how Sidekick uses data and in what capacity:

http://www.getsidekick.com/privacy

Here, also, are our Privacy FAQs:

http://sales.hubspot.com/knowledge/privacy/privacy-faqs

""

That being said, Hubspot is a big data company, trading on the NYSE with over $100m in revenue last year - they're one of the few companies I'd trust with this information.
 
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Can anyone guide me whether these extensions are safe?
When I tried adding streak into chrome, a pop up warned me that it can READ AND CHANGE the data from multiple sites including mail.google.com.
Worried about safety!
 
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Can anyone guide me whether these extensions are safe?
When I tried adding streak into chrome, a pop up warned me that it can READ AND CHANGE the data from multiple sites including mail.google.com.
Worried about safety!

Ha, I just posted a similar question. I didnt download the extension so I havent seen that message yet. I've never downloaded any extensions / apps for Chrome (or Firefox). I guess I'd have concerns that an extension / app (read: developer) could read and change my data...
 
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i'm using sidekick too. It's really very helpful to track.
 
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I agree...but the question is: Is the risk worth it?

I suppose that everything in life is a risk. How much and how adverse we are to it is even another question.
 
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Love this app and thanks @jamesiles for sharing your story.

I emailed a company 3 days back wanting to sell my domain, got no response so far but I can now see they opened it 4 times on 3 different days. This app definitely helps keep your hopes high and gives you a good negotiation advantage.
 
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Thanks for sharing these guys. I'll check them out.
 
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In terms of scheduling, this seems far superior to any of the alternatives I've used thus far. In the past I've taken advantage of Boomerang for Gmail solely for email queuing purposes.
 
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I use iTrackMail on my iPad (iOS) and it works perfect.
 
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Got a serious, but sounds silly, question: I am interested in this gmail integrated app.It looks really nice! Should I have any concerns about privacy? What I mean is, cant the developer see the data that is being transfered back and forth and stored? (presuming the data is stored on one of their servers). With all of the hackings going on these days, concerns about privacy abound.
 
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Ha, I just posted a similar question. I didnt download the extension so I havent seen that message yet. I've never downloaded any extensions / apps for Chrome (or Firefox). I guess I'd have concerns that an extension / app (read: developer) could read and change my data...

I dont think its possible for developers to do that if that was the case then all of the Gmails would have been hacked to death. They would only be able to access some information about the userdata, may be location, how much time online , IP address etc... Protecting the core data is the primary objective of any company, and no company would allow the user base open to the world knowingly.
 
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I dont think its possible for developers to do that if that was the case then all of the Gmails would have been hacked to death. They would only be able to access some information about the userdata, may be location, how much time online , IP address etc... Protecting the core data is the primary objective of any company, and no company would allow the user base open to the world knowingly.
I agree...but the question is: Is the risk worth it?
 
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Yes its, All these are productivity hacks that helps us to gain something from it, If we read the previous posts we can see how good they help with the sale of names.
 
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I dont think its possible for developers to do that if that was the case then all of the Gmails would have been hacked to death. They would only be able to access some information about the userdata, may be location, how much time online , IP address etc... Protecting the core data is the primary objective of any company, and no company would allow the user base open to the world knowingly.

I dont mean that my gmail account would be hacked. To be hacked would mean someone who doesnt belong there, get into it without my permission. When I download an extension, apparently, I am giving them permission to read and change my data. What data? It doesnt say. So I have to assume its any type of data. Data in my gmail account, my contact list - that is worth a fortune to a sales person. Data on the hard drive too maybe. These are questions that come to mind immediately.
 
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What data? It doesnt say. So I have to assume its any type of data. Data in my gmail account, my contact list - that is worth a fortune to a sales person. Data on the hard drive too maybe. These are questions that come to mind immediately.

This is the main reason people choosen reputed company like Sidekick (Part of Hubspot).they won't kill themselves by hacking their clients but they could read like gmail does.
 
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I have been using contactmonkey for the last year or so, but Interested in giving this a try.
 
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Agreed, i just found this lurking the web(lol) and ya, its actually quite interesting. How long have people known ive just looked and said haha no, but without reply.. o.o;; // hahaha #goodshiet my man
 
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Great tip.

I believe I read on a thread here something similar, called Google Streak. It's pretty awesome. I never knew about it before but...dang.

Being able to see when someone opens your email, how many times they opened it, etc. Invaluable information if you are using email as a form of outbound marketing.

-Omar
 
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