Businesses recognize Salesforce as a comprehensive CRM that centralizes customer interactions across key functions like sales, customer service, and marketing. And without a system like Salesforce, organizations often grapple with disjointed systems that drain time and resources.
Although Salesforce strives to be the ‘single source of truth’ for all customer interactions, critical information can still slip through the cracks. For instance, sales reps spend up to a third of their day sending dozens of emails, meaning most of what you know — and don’t know — about your customers remains hidden within individuals’ email inboxes. However, by integrating email with Salesforce, you can capture and leverage every interaction to inform business strategies, ensuring no crucial customer detail is overlooked.
Before we discuss Salesforce integrations, let’s briefly cover email integration. Email integration is the process of connecting an email service to other software applications, such as CRMs. It allows companies to streamline communication between users, prospects, and customers to improve efficiency and productivity.
Salesforce email integrations enable organizations to connect users’ email platforms within Salesforce, streamlining communication across various services such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. And without these integrations, manually syncing email interactions with customer data within Salesforce can be a cumbersome process that consumes valuable resources and time.
See an example of this in action with the Nylas-Salesforce package:
Salesforce email integrations bring capabilities that benefit both businesses and your developers. These integrations provide developers a streamlined framework for incorporating email functionality into the CRM system. With an easy-to-use integration tool, development teams can concentrate on building mission-critical features that enhance user adoption and engagement rather than managing backend integration complexities.
Capabilities of a Salesforce email integration include:
These are just a few capabilities you can expect from integrating email within Salesforce. Some solutions also offer advanced analytics to track engagement metrics, automatic categorization of emails based on content and sender, and the ability to trigger workflows directly from email actions. Additionally, the best integrations provide real-time synchronization features, ensuring that every piece of correspondence is immediately available across all platforms, enhancing the agility and responsiveness of your teams.
By leveraging the capabilities provided by Salesforce email integration, your organization can achieve significant operational improvements and strategic advantages:
We know that integrating an email solution into Salesforce can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization’s communication and data management practices. But how do you do it?
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to integrate an email system with Salesforce:
The first step is to select an email integration solution that aligns with your business needs (see our recommendations below). Several options are available in the market, each offering different features such as real-time synchronization, advanced analytics, and automatic email categorization. Evaluate these solutions based on their compatibility with your current systems, ease of use, and specific features that meet your business requirements.
Once you have chosen the right email integration solution, the next step is to engage a Salesforce developer. Integrating email with Salesforce typically requires technical expertise to ensure the integration is set up correctly and functions optimally. A Salesforce developer will handle the technical aspects, such as setting up API connections, configuring email templates, and customizing the CRM to accommodate the new email functionalities.
With the assistance of your Salesforce developer, set up the email integration within your Salesforce environment. This process involves configuring the email service to sync with Salesforce, setting up email templates, and defining rules for logging and managing emails within the CRM. Make sure to test all configurations to ensure they function as expected.
After setting up the integration, you must train your team to use the new system effectively. Provide training sessions to demonstrate how to access and manage emails within Salesforce and utilize new features and best practices for maintaining data integrity and security.
Finally, continuously monitor the email integration’s performance and gather user feedback. Use this feedback to make adjustments and optimize the integration. Regular monitoring helps identify issues early and allows you to fine-tune the system to better meet your organization’s needs.
Selecting the right Salesforce email integration for your organization involves understanding the types of integrations available — from within the Salesforce ecosystem or external sources — and aligning them with your business needs. Let’s explore the distinctions between ready-made integrations and custom-developed solutions and outline critical considerations for choosing.
When integrating Salesforce with Outlook and Gmail, it’s essential to choose a solution that ensures seamless communication and boosts productivity. Look for an integration that offers real-time synchronization, intuitive user interfaces, and robust security features to protect sensitive data. Key considerations include ease of use, compatibility with both email platforms, and advanced features like calendar synchronization, email categorization, and workflow triggers. These aspects will streamline communication, reduce manual data entry, and enhance the overall efficiency of your CRM system.
Additionally, prioritize solutions that provide customization options and robust reporting capabilities. These allow you to tailor the integration to your specific business processes and gain valuable insights from your email interactions. By carefully evaluating these factors, you can select the right Salesforce email integration for Outlook and Gmail that aligns with your organization’s needs and enhances your customer relationship management efforts.
Ready-made solutions: These are pre-configured integrations that allow for quick implementation with minimal setup required. They can be found on Salesforce’s AppExchange or offered by third-party providers. These solutions typically feature user-friendly interfaces and standard functionalities designed to meet expected business requirements for email integration. They are ideal for businesses and developers looking for quick deployment and straightforward functionality without the need for extensive customization.
You can also consider products from specialized third-party sales platforms as ready-made solutions (e.g., Salesloft, Outreach, etc.). While these tools offer robust features for sales engagement and can integrate with Salesforce, they come with higher costs and generally lack customization options. Additionally, they often don’t capture comprehensive customer context, limiting their utility to the specific teams that use them rather than providing a unified view across the entire organization.
Custom-developed integrations: For businesses with specific needs that go beyond what ready-made solutions offer, developing a custom solution using Salesforce’s APIs may be beneficial. This approach allows developers to tailor the integration to fit specific business processes or advanced data management needs. It requires more technical resources and development time but may fit your existing Salesforce ecosystem well.
When choosing a Salesforce email integration, consider how each option aligns with your business needs and the potential to boost productivity and efficiency in managing customer relationships. Whether you opt for solutions within the Salesforce ecosystem or explore third-party options, the ideal choice should match your operational needs and strategic objectives.
As you evaluate our top picks for Salesforce email integration software, here are some considerations to keep in mind:
Nylas Email for Salesforce is a powerful third-party integration designed to capture all customer-facing email interactions directly within Salesforce. This unmanaged package allows Salesforce administrators to deploy a unified view of email conversations between your company and your customers across accounts and contacts without requiring any behavior changes from end-users. It’s perfect for revenue teams looking to align on the best next steps and manage customer engagements more effectively.
Provides a complete, real-time view of email interactions within Salesforce, enhances transparency, supports custom reporting, and reduces the need for manual email tracking. This integration is ideal for businesses that rely heavily on email for customer engagement and want to enhance their go-to-market strategies and operational transparency within Salesforce.
Requires initial setup and orientation to fully leverage its capabilities, particularly for organizations new to Salesforce unmanaged packages.
Nylas Email for Salesforce offers competitive pricing with significant value:
EAC is a feature within Salesforce that is designed to automate the logging of emails and events directly into Salesforce. By synchronizing data across connected calendars and email systems such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail, EAC helps keep Salesforce records up to date without manual data entry, streamlining customer interaction views for sales and marketing teams.
EAC is included in Salesforce’s pricing tiers and is free for up to 100 users.
Salesforce Inbox is an integrated email management solution that allows sales representatives to interact with Salesforce data directly within Outlook, Gmail, or the Salesforce Inbox mobile app. As part of Salesforce’s Einstein product suite, this add-on enhances email communication by automating tasks, scheduling meetings, and tracking conversations from one interface.
Match My Email is a third-party solution that automatically synchronizes emails and calendars with Salesforce. It integrates directly into Salesforce, storing all synchronized email and calendar data within Salesforce records. This approach differs from solutions like Einstein Activity Capture, as it allows for the use of Salesforce’s native reporting tools on email data.
Salesforce also provides several native email functionalities included with the Salesforce Classic or Lightning Experience at no additional cost. These features are particularly beneficial for organizations that need basic email capabilities integrated with their CRM system.
How it works: While Salesforce’s out-of-the-box email features offer basic functionalities at no additional cost, they come with limitations that may not suit all business needs, especially for those requiring more robust email management tools. Organizations needing advanced features like email threading, extensive template customization, or integration with multiple email clients might find these solutions lacking.
Key features:
Pros: These features are free and included with the Salesforce platform, making them accessible without extra investment. They fulfill basic use cases for sending emails and syncing email data directly within Salesforce, which can be sufficient for many businesses’ needs.
Salesforce integration limitations:
Pricing: These email features are free with any Salesforce Classic or Lightning Experience subscription.
Many Salesforce email integrations, including Salesforce’s own, often sync limited data to separate servers. This can lead to a disjointed experience, complicate sales processes, and limit essential reporting capabilities.
Nylas Email for Salesforce stands out by directly embedding a unified view of all customer email interactions within Salesforce. This seamless integration simplifies workflows and enriches the relevant Salesforce data available to sales teams. With Nylas, every email, including those from non-Salesforce users, is accessible in a threaded, easy-to-navigate interface right inside Salesforce.
By choosing Nylas, your team gets the full context they need for effective customer engagements, all within their usual CRM environment. Schedule a demo today to streamline your email management and enhance your customer insights in Salesforce — making every interaction more productive and insightful.
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Erin is a content marketing professional at Nylas, where she creates digital assets that connect the organization to individuals. Before Nylas, she spent eight years working in public relations specializing in corporate communications strategy, B2B/B2C writing and editing, executive thought leadership, and other storytelling. In her free time, she enjoys volleyball, karaoke, and baking.
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