CRM follow-ups

How do you follow up with customers from HubSpot or Pipedrive?

To follow up with customers from HubSpot or Pipedrive, connect your CRM and your mailbox to Muzau. A Muzau agent follows up on the unanswered emails you hand it, by default at D+3, D+7 and D+14, in the same thread, and logs each follow-up on the record. It stops as soon as the deal moves to won or lost, the customer replies, or a colleague writes to them from a connected mailbox. At first, you approve each follow-up before it goes out.

Why follow-ups get lost between the CRM and the mailbox

HubSpot or Pipedrive knows a deal is waiting for a reply: it sits at its stage, with a reminder task at best. But the follow-up gets written elsewhere: open the mailbox, find the quote thread, write four lines, go back and log the follow-up on the record. For one small email, the task slips from day to day, and the deal goes cold without anyone deciding it should.

The reverse happens too: the customer said yes on the phone, the deal moved to won, and a follow-up scheduled elsewhere goes out anyway. Your team keeps the relationship and the decision; the agent writes the follow-ups, logs them on the record and stops when the stage says it is over.

How the agent goes about it

Input

Your emails to customers, from Gmail or Outlook, and HubSpot or Pipedrive connected

It does

Follows up with the customer who does not reply, in the same thread, and logs each follow-up on their record

It delivers

Follow-ups that stop at the reply, or when the deal is won or lost

Connecting HubSpot or Pipedrive next to your mailbox

HubSpot or Pipedrive is connected once for the business, from Muzau's Tools page. The follow-ups themselves go out from your mailbox: by connecting Gmail, Outlook or another mailbox, you get the "Email follow-ups" agent. It tracks the unanswered conversations from the last 60 days that you hand it, then your new sends: those where you copy it, or those in your Sent folder that match a rule you set (recipient, subject, attachment).

The follow-up goes out in the email thread and is logged on the CRM record

The customer is followed up in the same thread as your original email, from the business's mailbox, with the team member who wrote it in copy. By default, the agent follows up at D+3, D+7 and D+14, Monday to Friday at 9 a.m.; you can go up to six follow-ups, spaced 1 to 90 days apart. Each follow-up sent is logged on the customer's record in HubSpot or Pipedrive: whoever opens the record knows where the follow-up stands. Nothing more: no score, no forecast.

Won, lost or customer reply: the follow-up stops

The agent reads the deal stage in HubSpot or Pipedrive: as soon as it moves to won or lost, nothing more is sent. That is the step to take after a yes or a no given over the phone, which the agent cannot see. The follow-up also stops when the customer replies, even from another address in the same thread, or when someone on the team writes to them from the connected mailbox or from Muzau. It also stops when a Muzau agent books a meeting with them, or if they ask not to be contacted again. An out-of-office message does not count as a reply.

At first, you review each follow-up before it is sent

Each follow-up first waits for your approval in Management, under "To follow up?": you click "Send", or "Don't send" to postpone it, fix the text or stop the follow-up. After 10 follow-ups in a row sent without edits, Muzau offers to let them go out on their own; the decision is yours.

Six rules for following up from a CRM without losing anything

With or without an agent, a CRM is only useful for follow-ups if it tells the truth about each deal.

• Attach to the deal the email that is waiting for a reply, the quote or the proposal: whoever follows up sees what went out, to whom and when, without digging through a colleague's mailbox.
• One person following up per deal, the one who owns it: two colleagues following up with the same customer means two emails on the same day.
• Log each follow-up on the deal, with its date: a colleague who picks up the file while you are on leave knows where you stand.
• Change the stage as soon as the customer has replied, especially by phone: it is what your colleagues read before writing, and your tools before following up.
• Decide in advance after how many follow-ups without a reply a deal moves to lost, with the reason "no reply". A dead deal left open drowns out those that still deserve a follow-up; a lost deal can be reopened if the customer comes back.
• Once a week, sort open deals by last activity date: those that have been asleep for two weeks need a follow-up or should be closed.

For how to write the follow-up, see how to politely follow up on an unanswered email. For what to log on the record after a meeting, see updating your CRM after a meeting.

What it does not do

• It does not calculate anything in HubSpot or Pipedrive: it logs follow-ups on the customer's record and reads the deal stage, with no score or forecast.
• It sees neither a phone call nor an email sent from a mailbox that is not connected: in that case, move the deal to won or lost, or cancel the follow-up yourself.
• It does not pick up on its own the emails sent before your mailbox was connected: the past is handled by the review of the last 60 days, where you choose what to hand it.

Frequently asked questions

How do you log follow-ups in HubSpot or Pipedrive without typing them in?

Connect HubSpot or Pipedrive to Muzau: each follow-up sent by a Muzau agent is logged on the customer's record. Through the CRM's BCC address alone, only meeting recaps are copied, not follow-ups.

Do you still need to create follow-up tasks in HubSpot or Pipedrive?

Not for email follow-ups: a Muzau agent tracks the sends you hand it, by copying it or through a rule on your Sent folder, follows up at D+3, D+7 and D+14 by default and logs each follow-up on the customer's record. Keep tasks for what calls for a phone call or a meeting.

How do you stop a follow-up when the customer said yes over the phone?

Move the deal to won in HubSpot or Pipedrive: a Muzau agent reads the stage and stops following up, because it cannot see phone calls. You can also cancel the next follow-up in Muzau, or click "Don't send" if it is waiting for your approval.

Can you follow up with customers from Salesforce, Zoho CRM or another CRM?

Yes for Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Sellsy, Axonaut, Odoo, folk, Attio and monday CRM, which also connect to Muzau: each follow-up is logged on the customer's record, and the follow-up stops when the deal is won or lost. Another CRM that gives a BCC address only receives meeting recaps there. Follow-ups go out from your mailbox, in the thread of the original email.

How do you stop two colleagues following up with the same customer?

Give each deal a single owner in the CRM, the one who handles it. With Muzau, the follow-up stops as soon as a colleague writes to the customer from a connected mailbox, and the same person never gets more than one scheduled message per 24 hours, all agents combined.