Why forwarding email in Trello sucks
The ability to forward an email into Trello is nothing new, but it's also not very helpful. Let's take a look at this card as an example.
Here you can see there's an email thread which I've forwarded into Trello, but what am I gonna do with it now? Beyond being a reference place, I can't respond to it, I can't reply to it, and what if this person emails me again in this thread?
Nothing's going to be updated here. Well, fear no more because SendBoard for Trello changes absolutely everything when it comes to email.
Let's take a closer look and see how it's going to benefit you and your business. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
Who is SendBoard for and how does it work?
SendBoard for Trello is designed for teams who want to take incoming emails and turn them into actionable items right away. For example, maybe you are managing a support team, maybe you need to create tickets, or maybe you're managing a business like we see here, a pet grooming business, and we want to convert these emails directly into scheduled appointments.
When I open up this card, for example, at first glance, you may say nothing looks terribly different here, but when I scroll down to the activity area, you can see that there's an entire email thread, an entire email conversation, that is not only going on that I can reference it here, but the best thing is, I can reply to it as well.
When you have the SendBoard Power-Up enabled, you will have this button included on your incoming emails. If I click this button, it's gonna open up the SendBoard dialogue, and now not only do we see all of the emails that we saw before, but now I can write this reply directly from within Trello.
For example, in this case, maybe I just wanna send a reminder, "Please remember to show up 15 minutes in advance," or something along those lines. I'm gonna hit Send, that message is now sent using my standard email address, including my proper email signature, and I can see that I've sent it right here as well.
I can view it, other members of my team can view that that email has been sent as well, and if this individual replies to me, I'm gonna see that reply right here within Trello.
Email replies and how they work with SendBoard
Let's continue and take a look at how that looks and feels so that you can see the full benefits of the SendBoard extension. Here I am within the client's inbox and I've just received the email we sent a moment ago.
As you can see, there's nothing here that says Trello, it's coming from the email address that I've always known, the one that I've been using all along, it even includes the email signature. So the client has no idea where that message is coming from.
If I choose to reply to this and say, "Yes, confirmed," something along those lines, I'm gonna keep it nice and simple, and then I'm going to hit Send on this end. Let's go back to our Trello board and see what happens to those who have access to this board.
In just a few seconds, here you can see this exact same card now has a notification bell. Why? Because we've just received a reply to our message.
Now myself or someone else who may be watching this card can open up this card and see a "Confirmed." Perfect, they're ready for their appointment. If I need further detail, I can always click this button and access the full message.
If I want to see more details, including the full thread, all I need to do is expand or collapse this More option. As you can see, all of the features and functionalities that you've come to expect from your email client, including forwarding, replying, or even starting a new email, I can do right here within Trello, using the SendBoard Power-Up.
Viewing all messages and merging emails
Another great feature of SendBoard is being able to see all of the messages from a single user and the ability to merge different cards together. In this example, we can see that we've been having a conversation with someone about bringing their dog in for an appointment.
However, this exact same person has just emailed me, asking if they can reschedule. It actually has to do with this appointment down here, but now we have two different cards.
When I open up this card and if I want to see the full details, I can click on the SendBoard button, and now on the left-hand side, I can see right away that this is another conversation from the exact same person.
So it could be complicated for either myself or for my team to treat these as two different appointments when in reality, they're talking about the same thing. In order to merge cards together, all I need to do is open one of these cards and come over here and select the SendBoard button.
Here, I'm gonna select Merge Card. What it's going to do is look for the current card and say, if I want to keep this card or merge it with another. Because this is the shortcut here, I'm gonna choose to merge this card with another and select Next.
Immediately it's gonna give me this suggestion, because this is the only other Trello card that has a message from the same sender. I can either select this card, which I'm going to in this example, or I could search for any other card on this board.
Here, I'm going to select Next. Lastly, I can choose if I want to keep or not keep any of the comments, attachments, or archive the merged cards. This last option I think is very important.
We may still want to reference this original card somewhere down the line, but we just don't want to see it on the active board. It's also going to include a comment here, which I can edit if I like, just so I know the history of this.
In this case, I'm gonna proceed and select Merge. What's going to happen is that I am brought back to the original card, where the original message started, and here we can see that now I have that message so everything is kept nice and clean.
I have that history of that secondary card, but we no longer have the second card in this list. Myself and my team can provide the best service possible and not be confused by separate incoming messages.
Templated messages with SendBoard
Of course, when managing your email within your business, it's common to receive questions that can be answered by templated answers. The great thing about SendBoard is that you can create as many email responses or templates as necessary.
Let's say in this case that this customer is asking a very common question. I don't wanna waste my time or my team's time replying by writing out the same thing again and again.
So in this case, when I open up the email details, I'm gonna choose to reply to it, but what I'm gonna do is add a template. Here, I've got a couple of different templates that I've created already in advance.
In this case, they're asking about price, so I'm gonna insert this price response. The great thing is, is that we can use merge fields. So I can address that individual by name, I can even sign it by my own name and just have SendBoard do the work itself.
If I include this template, here you can see I've got the link to the pricing plans, I'm addressing to people by their name and in this case, it's my name as well, because I'm the one who is responding. I can add further details if I want, but I can save so much time by having ready-made templates right here from within SendBoard.
SendBoard settings and advanced features
Now that you know how SendBoard works, let's take a look at some of the additional settings that are available to us. On any Trello board, where you have SendBoard enabled, you'll have access to SendBoard here in the top right-hand corner.
The first place we wanna go to is the mailbox, just to show you how easy it is to set this up for yourself. When you start off with SendBoard, you will automatically get a SendBoard address.
In this case, the name here will be the name that you choose for your account, and then you can choose whatever you want in front of the at symbol. In this case, I've got it listed at hello@petcuts.sendboard.com. So you don't even have to create a new email address if you don't want to.
But if you do already have a custom email address, you can input that address here. So people can continue to email the standard address that you're used to.
On the Board tab, we have the choice to choose where we want incoming emails to appear, because perhaps you don't want them to appear on the very first list on your board. So we're given an easy dropdown to choose where we want those emails to arrive.
Lastly, on the Templates board, we have the choice to create an auto reply, which is especially helpful for help desks, or if you're receiving a large quantity of email and you wanna make sure that your clients or customers get an automatic reply.
We can also change the email signature so that it looks professional and matches the signature that you want to display to your clients. Last but not least, in the bottom section, we can edit and change our saved replies.
Just like we saw with our templates, we can create as many as we want so we can customize and be as efficient as we can when it comes to our email messaging.
Using SendBoard with Butler automation
An additional benefit of using SendBoard is that you can use it in combination with Trello Butler automations. That's right.
For example, you could send a templated email when a card is dragged into a particular list. This not only cuts down on so much time, but makes sure that those emails are being sent out when they move to the next stage.
Lastly, let's take a quick look at SendBoard pricing. Good news, you can use SendBoard absolutely for free. Your only limitations is to use it on a single board, but you have no limits when it comes to the total number of users.
Of course, if you need some more features and functionality, their essential plan starts at a very affordable $6 per user. So if you want to send and receive emails in Trello without any friction or perhaps you're using Trello for a help desk, a support team or a CRM, SendBoard is for you.
Be sure to click the link in the description below, to find out more details. Thank you so much for watching today's video.
I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple
