The useful question about a customer is rarely in the invoices. It’s “what did we agree on the phone back in March”, “who did we actually meet”, “did anyone follow that up”.
All of that lives here, on the same customer record as the documents, so the history and the money aren’t two systems again. The mailing side sits next to it for the same reason: the people you send to are the people you sell to.
What you can do
- Log a call, meeting, email, SMS, WhatsApp or LinkedIn message against a company or a person.
- Record how it went, not just that it happened: direction, outcome, duration, notes.
- Attach a note to anything at all - an invoice, a product, a project, a person.
- Keep mailing lists with the contacts on them and their subscription status.
- Send a campaign from your own design, immediately or at a time you choose.
- Add a footer with your address, which is what keeps a mailing lawful in most countries.
- Have unsubscribes handled for you, with a link on every message.
How it works in practice
Log it where it belongs (the customer → CRM). Each kind of contact has its own entry. A call records whether it was in or out and how it ended, a meeting records how long it took and what came of it, the messaging channels record what was said. It takes a few seconds after the call, and it’s the difference between a customer relationship and a pile of invoices.
Use notes for everything else. A note attaches to any record in the system, not just to customers, so a conversation about one particular invoice can live on that invoice.
Build the list (CRM → Mailing lists). A contact on a list carries a name, email, phone, country, city and language as well as their subscription status, so a list isn’t just a column of addresses. Someone can be on several lists, and each keeps its own record of whether they’re subscribed.
Write the campaign (CRM → Mailing messages). Give it a subject, a pre-header, a sender name and address, and a body built from one of your email designs. Send it now or schedule it for a time and time zone. Drafts stay drafts until you send them.
Put a real footer on it (CRM → Mailing footers). Your company name, address and contact details, with an unsubscribe link. Most countries require a physical address and a way out on commercial mail, and one default footer set up once covers it.
Unsubscribes look after themselves. Every message carries the link, and anyone who uses it is recorded against that list. They stay on your customer record, because unsubscribing from a newsletter isn’t the same as ceasing to be a customer, and treating them as the same thing loses you a customer to save a mailing.
Good to know
- This is a record of contact, not a marketing analytics suite. You can see what you sent and to whom, and unsubscribes are handled. Reporting on who opened or clicked a campaign isn’t something to plan a channel around here.
- Mail goes out from an address the system owns unless you configure your own. Sending as your own domain needs your DNS records pointed appropriately. Read email and your mailbox before your first campaign rather than after your deliverability tells you about it.
- A signup who isn’t already a customer becomes a lead, if you’ve got the pipeline switched on. That’s usually what you want, and knowing it stops the record looking like a stray.
- Activity is logged against the company or the person, not against a deal. For the deal itself, the stage history on the opportunity is the record. See leads and the sales pipeline.
- Nothing here dials, texts or posts to LinkedIn for you. These are entries recording what a person did, which is exactly why they take a few seconds and why they’re accurate.