I am not not a spy, but sometimes I feel like one. Especially since I started using a really neat tool in my gmail a few months ago.
It’s called Sidekick and its main function is telling you more about how people interact with the emails you send. A little desktop alert pops up when they open them, telling you how often and when they click on a link inside your email. It’s kind of like lite email marketing software for your regular emails.
When I installed it, I thought it was just schticky way to get information about other people that I don’t really need. The reality is that it’s not critical to me to have this info about the vast majority of my emails. Yet I’ve since found that Signals has been very useful to me in a few business situations and I now would not want to be without it.
For example, I knew that an old client was obviously actively considering an offer I made to them a while ago, as they suddenly reopened the last email I sent to them (6 weeks ago) several times in one day. This alerted me that this was a good time to get back in touch with them.
Now that I am about to launch a big PR campaign for a client, I expect that Signals will let me know which of the emails that I’m sending to influencers and VIPs are actually being opened, read, and considered.
The basic service is forever free, though they give you a free 1-month trial of their full service when you sign up with my link. After that, you go back to the basic service, which is probably all you need.
Wishing you a great day,
Naomi
PS. Using software to track email interactions is definitely not spying, but it does feel a little bit that way to know more about what other people are doing than they realize you know. But now the whole world knows that I use Sidekick, so I guess my career in espionage is over!
Yoel Ben-Avraham says
As dedicated fans of Hubspot we looked at Signals. Unfortunately unless you buy into the entire Hubspot platform, there is a better, richer featured alternative for those of us that use Gmail (in all it’s variations – Google Apps, Gmail etc.) and that is YesWare. Well worth trying if you are interested in knowing when an outgoing message has been opened, how often etc. We even have YesWare Team and can see which agent succeeds in motivating his recipients in reading their messages. Templates I mentioned? So if you looked at Signals and despaired, no need – visit YesWare.com
Naomi says
Thanks for the tip!
Malkie Scholnick says
I second yesware…it is simply fabulous and only $5 per month
Naomi says
thanks for the recommendation, Malkie.
Nice to see you here!
Rochie says
Great share. Just want to point out that HubSpot recently upgraded the tool and it’s now called Sidekick.