What is Email Two way sync?
Users can connect their personal Gmail or Outlook email accounts and sync outgoing & incoming emails between the CRM and their personal Gmail or Outlook accounts. Users can use their email accounts to send, receive & track emails.The sync will be established between both platforms in different circumstances.
Outlook:
When an email thread is initiated from the CRM (first outbound message). All the subsequent emails in the thread will sync between both platforms. This feature is a user-level setting and does not impact other users in the sub-account.
Gmail:
There are two cases of how the sync can be established.
1. You can email a contact from the CRM to initiate the sync between both platforms.
2. Gmail Sync also works if a contact already saved in the CRM sends an email to the User (who has Gmail Two Way sync integrated) on their Gmail Email address. The email would sync into the conversations tab. The contact also needs to be assigned to the user beforehand.
Please note
If the user is added to multiple sub accounts, and has integrated the same Gmail account for Gmail Two way sync in all those accounts, the email from the contact will go to the conversations tab of all those sub accounts, but we will only retain the instance of that contact in that sub account to which the user replies to. Sync will be broken for all other instances.The additional filter of user being assigned to the existing contact also makes sure that the conversation will not go to sub accounts that the contact does not belong to.
Steps to connect email Sync (Gmail)
1. To start, click on "My Profile".
2. Select your email provider and click "connect"
3. Select the account you want to connect.
4. Continue with the connection.
5. Select all permissions to sync your email.
6. You're email is synced! You can now send and receive emails into your "Conversations" tab.
Google Rate Limits
How does the Gmail 2-way sync work between the CRM and your email account?
There are two cases of how the sync can be established.
1. You can email a contact from the CRM to initiate the sync between both platforms.
2. Gmail Sync also works if a contact already saved in the CRM sends an email to the User (who has Gmail Two Way sync integrated) on their Gmail Email address. The email would sync into the conversations tab. The contact also needs to be assigned to the user beforehand.
Please note
If the user is added to multiple sub accounts, and has integrated the same Gmail account for Gmail Two way sync in all those accounts, the email from the contact will go to the conversations tab of all those sub accounts, but we will only retain the instance of that contact in that sub account to which the user replies to. Sync will be broken for all other instances.The additional filter of user being assigned to the existing contact also makes sure that the conversation will not go to sub accounts that the contact does not belong to.
The sent email will show up in the sent inbox of the integrated Gmail account:
Please Note:
Gmail supports only ~500 emails per day and emails beyond that will be unsuccessful.
All subsequent messages in the email thread will be in sync. Outbound emails from your email will reflect in the CRM and vice versa.
Please Note:
The supported attachment size limit for Gmail Two way sync is 25 MB.
Outlook Two-Way Sync:
If you want to use Outlook Two Way sync, Select Outlook under Email (2-way sync) as your email provider & click on Connect.
Complete the authorization by entering your Outlook email ID credentials.
Approve for permissions requested for LeadConnector:
On the profile page, scroll down to the section Email (2-way sync) to view your email in the connection status.
How does the Outlook 2-way sync work between the CRM and your email account?
You would need to send an email to a contact from the CRM to initiate the sync between both platforms.
Please note
The first outbound email needs to be initiated from the CRM to establish the sync
All subsequent messages in the email thread (initiated from the CRM) will be in sync. Outbound emails from your email will reflect in the CRM and vice versa. reflect
An email thread initiated from your email will not sync with the CRM. Only email threads that were formed from the CRM will be in sync. created
If an outbound email was sent (while the sync was in active state) and later the sync was disconnected from the CRM, the subsequent messages in the thread will stop syncing. This will also stop syncing new outbound emails sent from the CRM.
Please note
Attachments of up to 3 MB size work across this sync, any attachments larger than this size will cause the message to not sync over. Supported file types: JPG,JPEG,PNG,MP4,MPEG,ZIP,RAR,PDF,DOC,DOCX,TXT
Other functionalities for both Outlook and Gmail Two-Way Sync
Update Email:
This helps users change their connected email ID to another without disconnecting the previous connection.
New outbound emails from the CRM will start syncing with the newly added email address. Upcoming messages in the previously connected email ID (same thread) will stop syncing between the CRM & personal email.
Disconnect Email:
This helps users to disconnect their connection and stop the sync with the CRM. Post disconnect, emails or messages will not sync between both platforms.
BCC Address
You can include the BCC Address in the CC or B field when sending an email from Gmail/Outlook. Doing so will automatically add the contact and conversation to your CRM, streamlining communication and ensuring all relevant data is centralized. Going forward, any emails received from this contact at the Gmail/Outlook inbox level will automatically sync with CRM.
Does Two-way sync only work with individual emails or bulk emails and workflows?
How the sender domain mapping works for different types of emails:
Individual Email: On connecting a personal email account (Gmail), the Gmail email ID will be considered the sender domain for the emails the user sends for individual emails. Individual emails are sent directly from Gmail when 2-way sync is activated for the user. Be aware that Google sets a limit of 500 emails daily, which applies to this functionality.
Bulk Email: This will continue to be sent from the sub-account level email provider. 2-way sync won't affect this.
Workflow & Automation: In terms of automated emails, they are dispatched from sub-account level providers. This arrangement seamlessly integrates your automated CRM workflows and the email dispatch system.
Please Note:
With this setup, users can leverage the 2-way sync for their one-on-one emails while also successfully sending bulk emails. The Gmail-imposed limit of 500 emails per day applies only to individual emails, so users can send bulk emails via LeadConnector/SMTP without worrying about reaching this limit. This is a thoughtful design feature, allowing users to conduct mass email campaigns without being constrained by Gmail's daily email cap.
Email Warm Up
What is an email warm-up process?
You might already be familiar with the need for warming up a new IP, and domains are much the same. Still, it’s important to note that both reputations are important considering that IPs and domains build and maintain separate reputations that affect your sender reputation as a whole.
Mailbox providers like Gmail are placing greater importance on domain reputation since it is targeted toward specific senders. IP reputation, is also critical, particularly when an ISP is trying to identify spam. If you have a new dedicated IP, warming is about convincing an ISP that you aren’t a bad actor. If you operate on a shared IP your reputation becomes linked to any other company or domain using that IP.
A good warm-up period ensures that your IP and domain both build reputations with mailbox providers, which increases your chances of deliverability.
While the warm-up process can seem slow and tedious, it’s vital if you want to avoid the dreaded spam folder. Otherwise, you’ll start to experience other issues like throttling, greylisting, or outright blocking of your messages.
When we talk about the warm-up process, we talk about two major forms of warm-up: IP warm-up and domain warm-up. Depending on your current scenario and warmup needs, you will want to look at doing one or both.
Different types of warm-ups for your email program
You might hear a few different terms banded about regarding warm-up processes. It’s important to understand which warm-up you need for your email program.
Email warm-up
Quite often, the term email warm-up refers to preparing personal or professional email accounts like Gmail or Outlook (Live) to bulk send email. While it is possible to manually warm up an email account with legitimate data, there are a myriad of paid services out there that trick ISPs into seeing an email account as a trusted sender by using fake accounts. As well as unethical, this can get very expensive when real recipients signal these emails as spam to the ISP, cooling down an account’s reputation and starting the whole costly process again.
When it comes to domains sending large volumes of email, an "email warm-up" can include specific warm-ups to the domain and IP.
Domain warm-up
The method of warming up a domain is much the same as an IP-warm-up, however there are some key differences. While senders will likely change IPs many times in a lifetime, they are unlikely to change domains. Brand reputation is therefore linked to domain reputation. ISPs take advantage of this by checking a domain’s history of touchpoints across the internet, which sector they operate in, and how long a domain has been registered. The other key difference is the ability to create sub-domains (newsletter.company.com) to separate reputation for transactional and marketing email.
Domain and IP warm-up scenarios
In the list below we’ll outline some common scenarios for when you’d need to warm-up your domain or IP, and cover other factors, like DKIM, and how to verify that your warm-up worked.
Established domain, new IP
In one scenario, you already have an established mail stream and domain. However, you’re looking to increase your sending and require a second dedicated IP to share the load of that sending.
This is where IP warm-up comes in: a new dedicated IP will be “cold.” In other words, the IP hasn’t seen traffic and will not have a reputation attached to it. To build up this reputation, you need to warm up the IP. You can do this one of two ways: manually or automatically.
When you warm up manually, you set hourly/daily sending limits in your system and slowly ramp up as you go.
New domain, established IP
Another scenario could be that you are adding in a new domain to handle a new type of message you want to send out. Volume-wise, you are still well within recommended limits for your current amount of IPs, but want to build better domain reputations with more concise sending domains (reciepts@domain.com, example@sales.domain.com, etc.).
Here is where many senders would say, “Well, my IP is already warm and has a good reputation, so I can just start sending at volume day one.” While this is technically true, you could run the risk of your domain getting assigned a poor domain reputation due to its newness and endanger your overall deliverability.
New domain and new IP
Lastly, you might have a scenario where domain and IP are both new and need warming up. In this case, you will want to warm them up in tandem. Generally, this means that you forego the automated IP warm-up in favor of a manual warmup that benefits both the IP and the domain.
The manual warm-up process will look the same for IP and domain warm-ups in terms of the daily sending limits. Here’s a snippet of a warmup plan:
It’s especially important to note here that a plan with daily limits like this assumes daily sending. For example, if you send the limit for days 1-5, then do not send on days six and seven, you cannot pick back up with the limit for day eight. Don’t rush it — slow and steady wins the race!
The daily send numbers can also vary based on multiple factors such as list hygiene and engagement. Your sending needs to be monitored during the warm-up process so that changes can be made as necessary if you see a high rate of errors or your emails consistently go to the spam folder.
The DKIM factor and engaged recipients
Domain reputation is tied to the DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) authority domain. By default, domains created within Mailgun are created with their own DKIM authority. This means that subdomains do not inherit and share a reputation with their parent domain unless specified during domain creation.
With a new domain, whether it’s a subdomain or a root domain, you’ll most likely need to warm up the domain itself. This is done almost the same way as the manual IP warm-up. You start by limiting the volume going out of the domain every day and ramping this up slowly over time.
Warm-up tip: Engaged recipients
We recommend targeting your most engaged recipients during the warm-up process to ensure that you see good open and click rates. Sending to engaged recipients gives a huge boost to reputation because of initial positive reactions to your messages. For some mailbox providers like Gmail, it is especially important. Gmail uses engagement as one of its main metrics to determine mailbox placement. Every little bit helps, right?
Did the warm-up work?
Having gone through all the warm-up exercises and stretches, you’ll ask yourself this — was it successful? The answer can be confirmed in your event logs. You will want to keep an eye on failed events and their error messages, as well as your engagement numbers, for signs of success/failure.
Tools like Google Postmaster Tools help you monitor your IP and domain reputation specifically how Google sees it, so this might be a great solution for you if you’re only sending to Gmail.
As with anything in life, there are no guarantees that following a set warm-up plan will net you 100% delivery and great deliverability. With both physical warm-ups and IP/domain warm-ups, skipping that initial stretch could create some pain points that keep you on the bench.
Email warm-up FAQs
How long does it take to warm up my domain?
That depends entirely on the size of your list. If your contact list is 50K, you could finish warming up your domain in a week. If it’s a million, it could be weeks until you’re sending at full speed. If you can afford to warm up even slower than our sending limits, you’ll have even greater deliverability in the long run. Slow but steady wins the race.
Will cold emailing affect my domain reputation?
People generally don’t like receiving email if they didn’t ask for it. Sending unsolicited emails to people results in higher-than-average spam complaints and unopens. Very quickly, ISPs like Gmail will downgrade your IP reputation, hurting your deliverability. Cold emailing is an increasingly costly method of finding new customers. We always recommend building a contact list with assurances like double opt-in.
Can I manually warm up my email program?
Yes! Check out the image of our warm-up plan above which outlines some recommended limits of daily or hourly emails you should send in each stage of the process. You can fine-tune your output based on the feedback in your analytics dashboard. Try slowing down your warm-up if ISPs are sending too many emails to the spam folder.
Does every ISP treat reputation differently?
Not all mailbox providers are created equal, and the same is true for warm-up plans. In some cases, you might want to develop and follow a more targeted warm-up plan for messages going to a specific mailbox provider. Targeted warm-up plans ensure that you meet their criteria – as much as they are known – to build reputation and land in the inbox. This can mean lower hourly and daily quotas, slower ramping, or spreading your traffic out over more time.
Why am I still going to the spam folder if I’ve warmed up my domain and IP?
There are some important authentication methods like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM that need to be implemented if you want to reach the inbox. Also, remember that recipients have a huge influence on your deliverability when they hit the spam button in their inbox. So, make sure you have asked for consent and that your content offers enough value.
FAQs (Gmail only)
What happens to emails received from existing contacts?
All inbound emails from existing contacts will be reflected in your CRM and Gmail/Outlook inbox. This bidirectional synchronization ensures a complete record of all your communication on both platforms.
Will removing a synced account delete existing emails?
No, removing a synced account will not delete any existing emails. Your previously synced emails will remain intact, and the synchronization will only affect new emails sent or received after the account is removed.
Do new emails get synced after an account is removed?
New emails sent or received after removing the account will not be synced between the CRM and Gmail/Outlook. The synchronization between the two platforms will continue for existing emails, and new emails will not be included in the sync.
Will all my existing contacts in Gmail be synced with the CRM?
Yes, the Two-Way Sync identifies and syncs existing contacts from Gmail to the CRM. Incoming emails from these contacts are automatically populated under the respective contact, but past emails (before the integration is connected) cannot be synced over.
What happens when a new email is received from a contact?
New incoming emails from existing contacts will be reflected as new emails in the CRM and Gmail. If the email belongs to an existing conversation thread, it will be displayed as a new email within the same thread.
What happens to sent emails from the CRM or Gmail?
Outgoing emails sent from the CRM will be auto-logged in the Sent folder of the synced mail. Conversely, emails from the synced mail provider will automatically appear under the corresponding CRM contact's conversations.
How are cc/bcc recipients handled in the sync?
If a user is cc'ed or bcc'ed, or included in multiple recipients in Gmail, this information is reflected under the respective contact in the CRM, ensuring comprehensive visibility of all communications. No new contacts are created for the CC and BCC email address.
What if a contact emails someone else but includes the CRM user?
In this case, the email will be reflected under the CRM, associating it with the respective contact, maintaining the complete conversation history.
How is the conversation thread managed when multiple recipients are involved?
In case of multiple recipients (to) in an email, the first contact becomes the conversation tab in the CRM. All subsequent emails will appear in this thread.
What if the same contact exists in multiple locations for the same synced email address?
Email originating from the CRM will be reflected only in the respective location. Subsequent replies and communication should also be specific to that location. However, emails from a contact to the CRM user should be reflected in all locations.
What is Bcc Address, and how does it work?
You can include the BCC Address in the Cc or Bcc field when sending an email from Gmail/Outlook. This automatically adds the conversation and contact in the CRM, streamlining communication and data management.Going forward, any emails received from this contact at the Gmail/Outlook inbox level will automatically sync with CRM.
How is the secure connection handled if Gmail login credentials change?
In case of changed login credentials, the CRM will require you to reauthenticate and resync the email to maintain a secure connection.
What happens when an email is forwarded from Gmail?
Any forwarded email to an existing contact will be treated as a sent email and synced under that contact in the CRM.
What if there are duplicate emails with multiple contacts?
Duplicate emails sent to multiple contacts will be associated with the first created contact in the CRM.