Your newsletter should know your pipeline

Newsletters now live where your customers live

The Bell now sends newsletters and marketing emails. You write them, send them and follow up on them in the same place you run your pipeline, with no second tool and no list to export.

Most small B2B teams send their newsletter from a separate tool. The contacts get exported from the CRM, imported into the newsletter tool, and drift apart within a week. Someone unsubscribes in one place and keeps getting emails from the other. And when a prospect clicks the link to your new offer, the person who owns the deal never hears about it.

That last part is the real cost. A newsletter tool knows who opened. It has no idea who is about to buy.

Choose recipients by where they are in your pipeline

Because the newsletter lives inside your CRM, you choose recipients by what you already know about them. Send to everyone who subscribed, or narrow it down:

• Leads in a specific AIDA stage, for example everyone in Desire who is weighing an offer
• Customers only, for a product update that makes no sense to prospects
• A tag, an industry, a company size, or the people one seller owns

The recipient count updates as you filter, so you see exactly how many people you are about to reach before you press send. A case study for prospects in Desire and a renewal reminder for existing customers are two different emails, and now they are two different sends.

Every open and click lands on the person

This is where a newsletter inside a CRM earns its keep. Each send shows up on every recipient's timeline, next to their calls, emails and deals. You see who opened it, who clicked, and who unsubscribed.

So when the prospect you have been chasing for three weeks clicks the pricing link on a Tuesday morning, you know on Tuesday morning. You open their record, see the deal, and call while the interest is still warm.

Replies work the same way. Someone answers your newsletter, the reply lands on their timeline, and the conversation carries on from there.

One deliberate detail: a newsletter does not count as personal contact. It will not reset a person's "last activity" or hide them from your follow-up suggestions. A mass email is not a conversation, and the Bell treats it accordingly.

Marketing emails that run on their own

A newsletter goes out once, to a list, at a time you pick. Some emails work better on a schedule of their own: a webinar invite, then a reminder five days later, then the recording a week after that.

Those are marketing emails, and they now live in the Bell's sequences. Each person moves through the sequence on their own timeline, starting when you enroll them or when they fill in one of your forms. Someone who signs up today gets the invite today. Someone who signs up next Thursday gets it next Thursday.

Marketing emails use the same editor, logo and styling as your newsletters. They come from your company, not from a salesperson's mailbox, and your personal outreach keeps going out from your own inbox exactly as before.

Built to land in the inbox

Sending bulk email well takes more than a send button. Here is what is under the hood.

• Your own domain. Emails go out from your company's address, for example news@yourcompany.com, verified with a few DNS records. The Bell walks you through it in plain language, whoever hosts your domain.
• A visual editor. Build with headings, text, images, buttons, a full-width banner and two-column layouts. Preview on desktop and mobile, then send yourself a test.
• Your brand, set once. Upload your logo and pick your font and colors in Settings. Every newsletter and marketing email uses them automatically, and you can adjust a single email when you need to.
• Consent built in. Only people who opted in receive newsletters and marketing emails. Every email carries your company details and an unsubscribe link, and Gmail's and Outlook's own unsubscribe buttons work too.
• One unsubscribe, everywhere. A person who unsubscribes from a newsletter stops getting marketing emails as well. Addresses that bounce or report spam are removed automatically.
• Results per send. Delivered, opened, clicked, bounced and unsubscribed, for every newsletter and marketing email.

Included in your plan

Newsletters and marketing emails are included in every Bell plan. Every workspace can send up to 5,000 newsletter and marketing emails a month at no extra cost. Your 1:1 emails and personal outreach do not count toward that.

A counter in the Newsletters tab shows how much you have used. If an enrollment or a scheduled newsletter would take you over the limit, the Bell tells you before you confirm. Trial workspaces can send up to 250 a month.

Getting started

You can send your first newsletter in an afternoon. Most of that time is waiting for DNS.

1. Open Email templates and go to the Newsletters tab.
2. Add your domain and copy the records the Bell shows you to wherever your domain is managed. Press Verify once they are live.
3. Set your sender name and reply-to address.
4. In Settings, add your company details, logo, font and colors.
5. Build your newsletter, send yourself a test, pick your recipients and send.

For a step-by-step walkthrough, see our guide to sending a newsletter from your CRM.

Already using the Bell? It is in your workspace now. New here? Send your first newsletter from the same place you run your deals.