We just released a new feature here at /www.thecustomerfactor.com  that will allow you to send estimates to your prospects and customers via email (note: you can send invoices to your customers via email too, but that’s  discussed in another post). It’s a pretty self explanatory feature, but below I’ll show you some screenshots and provide some more insight into the feature.

As you know you can create estimates for either your prospects or your customers. So now when you create an estimate for either of these groups, you’ll see an “Email/Print” button in their “Estimate Information” areas on their respective profile screens. Here it is:

When you click this, you’re taken to the usual “Estimate” screen. But instead of just the “Print” and “Save as pdf” buttons which used to be the only options, you’ll now notice a new “Email” button. If you click on that button, the box that opens up depends on whether the prospect or customer you want to send the estimate to has an email address. If not, then this is the box that’ll display:

Simply insert their email address and then another window comes up giving you the opportunity to insert some wording into the body of the email and to insert an email subject line. Here is what the window looks like:

At the bottom within this window is a “send email” button, so all you need to do is click that and the email will be sent! A small “Email Sent!” box will appear letting you know it’s been sent.

An important tip: In the screenshot above you may have noticed an “Email Settings” link in the opening paragraph. The first time you’re sending an estimate to a prospect or customer you may want to click on this link and visit the email format area where you can then create a main template that can be used for all emails. Here’s what the Email format window looks like:

See how we’ve made it so that you can personalize each and every email you send? Similar to how you send personalized letters from within The Customer Factor, you can personalize your emails using “Tokens”. For an example of how this works and to see some good text you might want to use in your own emails, there is a “sample” link available to click on in the above window.

And that’s it! Once you’ve set up your main email template, you can use it for all of the estimates you send to your customers and prospects via email. Of course you’ll still be given an opportunity to add some text to an email prior to sending it if you want to or if you need to change something you can do that, but by creating an original email template to use again and again and again, it’ll save you a bunch of time.

If you want to test this feature yourself to see how the email will look when it arrives in your prospect’s or customer’s email inbox, go through the steps above. If the prospect or customer you’re using to test doesn’t have an email address, insert your own. Then create a general email format and save it. Back in the “send email” window, the body and the subject of email will be automatically filled in. Then click the “send email” button. You’ll receive the email with the estimate attached lickety split!

Have a profitable day!

Best Regards,

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P.S. Don’t forget that you can also email invoices directly to your customers. The main functionality is the same between sending estimates to prospects and customers as talked above and sending invoices to customers, but I would still recommend that you get some more insight by checking out our emailing invoices blog post.