CRM tools have become a must-have part of every marketing team’s technical stack. They give a 360-degree overview of all communication touchpoints, no matter inbound, outbound, transactional, or community-driven, assembled on a single dashboard. Moreover, a CRM tool allows you to automate your marketing workflows, which helps slash off your team’s routine tasks by a significant extent, allowing you to focus on your core job roles better.
As a marketer, you might want to use your CRM from within your email client like Gmail (it has a market share of 43%, and it reaches 1.8 billion global active users, so you might be one of them!) Most of the CRM tools are designed to integrate seamlessly with Gmail inbox, but when selecting one, you need to know their nitty-gritty to get the best bang for your buck. So, let me help select the best CRM for your business.
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Top 5 Gmail CRM Tools To Consider
While almost every CRM supports integration with Gmail, there is quite a bit of technicality involved. For instance, their integration capabilities can be classified into:
- Fully Integrated
- Partially Integrated
- Integration Via Plugin
- Sidebar
- Chrome Extension
Their ability to integrate with other tools like Zapier also adds to their pros and cons for different sets of requirements. To choose the best solution for your firm, I have handpicked the top five CRM tools that make the best pair with Gmail’s inbox.
#1 Zoho
Zoho’s suite is arguably one of the best-designed ones, and it falls under the category of partially integrated CRM suite, which uses an extension. It allows doing most of the tasks from within Gmail itself, such as creating new contacts, leads, view contact details, and managing your automation workflows. You need to visit Zoho only when you need to see the overview, making it one of the most user-friendly options on this list. It runs on the freemium model with the paid plans starting at $18/user. It also provides users with free email templates, bulk mailing, and salesperson-wise reporting.
#2 Streak
Streak can be a perfect choice if you are looking for advanced CRM capabilities packed in an entirely native, i.e., it supports full integration. It makes tracking your interactions effortless and has a lot of intuitive features such as custom workflows, organizing your contacts, snippet system, smart searches, filters, and a lot more. It also allows users to save their responsive HTML email templates and add their iconic snippets. Streak is absolutely free for personal use with upto 200 tracked messages and limited features with paid plans starting at $49/user. Generally, it is more appealing to smaller teams.
#3 NetHunt
NetHunt is yet another CRM that lives inside Gmail, and it comes with a few advanced features that might require a learning curve before you start making the most out of it. All its features are placed before and after the inbox screen. You can view and manage Kanban pipelines, color-coded folders based on record groups, probabilities and integrate them with LinkedIn to view profiles from within it. However, if you are an email marketer, you may find it easier to customize and add free HTML email templates instead of building them in NetHunt itself. It also allows 200 free tracked messages with two users and 2500 records. You can upgrade to paid plans starting at $24/user to get users on board along with better features.
#4 Agile CRM
Despite using a chrome extension, Agile CRM provides streamlined, bi-directional data synchronization. It provides you with a 360-degree overview of your lead’s interaction with you apart from the regular features like analytics, pipeline, and a vast collection of responsive HTML email templates. Agile also positions itself as the ideal choice for small businesses with one of the most affordable pricing plans starting as low as $8.99 user/month. Agile CRM provides you with one of the best personalization features as well.
#5 HubSpot
Last but not the least, HubSpot is one of the best market offerings powered by a Chrome extension. You can get an instant overview of the lead data, exhaustive pipeline management data, set trigger-based messages, and customizable HTML email templates, making it quite attractive. It also allows your teams to see the probability of conversion for individual leads. HubSpot also offers a large range of marketing features such as landing page development, traffic monitoring, and blog management, but the best part is that you don’t need to pay anything for most of the CRM features initially, but the prices later might not be attractive to a lot of businesses. HubSpot is the ideal choice for fast-growing teams that want to do more right from their Gmail inboxes.
Wrap Up
We just saw the basic overview of the top five CRMs that work exceptionally well with Gmail, but offerings like Copper, Nutshell, and many others are also available. These five options are pretty unique in terms of their features, utility, pricing, and learning curves, so they made it into the list. It would be best if you can canvas your basic needs, skill sets, and business goals before you start using one. As a marketer myself, I find that using a CRM that you fully understand is more important than using an all-powerful tool. I hope this article helps you with selecting the best Gmail CRM for your business.
Author Bio: Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free HTML email templates. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.