Integrating Gmail with your CRM is a game-changer when it comes to managing customer relationships. This integration offers a streamlined approach to handling emails, contacts, tasks, and customer data, making your CRM more powerful and efficient.
A robust CRM system helps businesses maintain and nurture valuable client relationships, track interactions, and streamline sales and marketing efforts. But the key to truly unlocking its potential is integrating your CRM with your inbox. Here, we explore the advantages of such an integration and highlight some popular CRM platforms that seamlessly work with Gmail.
The benefits of Gmail integration with CRM
Effortless contact management
When you integrate Gmail with your CRM, contact management becomes a breeze. New contacts created in Gmail can automatically sync with your CRM, ensuring that your customer database is always up to date.
Less manual data entry means not only do you save valuable time but you reduce the risk of making any mistakes when carrying data over from one system to another.
Enhanced email tracking
Integrating your CRM and Gmail lets you track email interactions directly within your CRM. You can store emails and see your entire conversation history. This helps you tailor your communication accordingly.
Improved workflow
Most Gmail integrations allow you to add and assign follow-up tasks directly to your CRM from your inbox, improving your efficiency and productivity. You no longer need to leave your inbox to assign or schedule tasks, meaning work you have to do no longer falls through the cracks.
Streamlined communication
Gmail integrations enable you to send emails directly from your CRM platform. You can access email templates and maintain a unified communication history within your CRM. This ensures that your team is always on the same page.
Data enrichment
Integrating Gmail with your CRM can enrich customer profiles with valuable information. Email conversations, attachments and social profiles are automatically associated with the relevant customer records, offering a comprehensive view of each client's history.
Improved Collaboration
Collaborative efforts become more efficient when Gmail and CRM work in harmony. Sales, marketing, and support teams can easily access customer data and correspondence, leading to better-informed decisions and coordinated strategies.
Top CRM Platforms with Gmail Integrations or Add-Ons
1. Capsule
Capsule offers a smart and user-friendly platform that seamlessly integrates with Gmail via a mailbox integration and the Gmail Add-On.
The Gmail integrations with Capsule are quick to set up and easy to use. Recent user reviews praise Capsule for its simplicity and how easy it is to set up new contacts and store communications.
“Exactly what I needed for my small business! I wanted to give better customer service by tracking conversations more easily and setting myself tasks that need to be done as well as sharing these tasks with staff. Super easy to use and I feel like we haven't unlocked its full potential yet!”
If you’re a Gmail user and are looking to get started with a CRM then Capsule may be right for you. The integration between Capsule and Gmail makes it really easy to link the two systems together. So you can start adding contacts and storing conversations directly from your inbox straight away.
Once you’re up and running with the Gmail Add-On you’ll be able to set yourself tasks that are linked to contacts too. You can also add a sales opportunity and all the potential deal details to Capsule straight from your inbox. This works in a similar way for Projects too, you can add a new project to Capsule from the Gmail Add-on that’s linked to a contact.
The Add-On is also available on the Gmail Android app, so if you’re always on the go you’ll still be able to access the Add-On wherever you are.
Most suitable for: Gmail users who want to get up and running with an easy-to-use CRM quickly and those looking for a flexible CRM.
Google Workspace Marketplace rating: 4.3/5 (Based on 86 ratings)
Ranked in 2023 Capterra Shortlist for CRM Software as an Emerging Favorite with an overall score of 82.
2. Salesforce
Image via Salesforce
Salesforce has a robust Gmail integration that is available as a Chrome Extension. It offers much of the same functionality that the Capsule Add-On does. It does offer some more advanced features as well such as viewing tasks and updating their status, accessing and using email templates, email tracking and the ability to schedule an email to send at a later point. Recent reviews about the integration are positive and despite some users facing connection issues they seem happy.
“I have had a good experience with it. It does need to reconnect a fair amount, but that does not bother me. I find it very usable and very helpful!”
The Gmail integration does seem a bit more complicated to set up than some of the others on this list and you’ll need all of these features set up in Salesforce first to make the most of them.
The feature set of the Salesforce integration is impressive. However, the complex setup of both Salesforce and the integration could overwhelm smaller businesses. For those businesses, their primary goals may be to capture contact information and manage activities. In this case, the complexity of Salesforce might be unnecessary.
Most suitable for: Businesses with deep pockets that have the time and money to spend on configuring Salesforce and want the complexity of it.
Chrome Web Store rating: 4.4/5 (Based on 1343 ratings)
Ranked in 2023 Capterra Shortlist for CRM Software as a Top Performer with an overall score of 98.
3. HubSpot CRM
Image via HubSpot
HubSpot has a Gmail integration that is available as a Chrome Extension. It offers some of the same functionality that the Capsule Add-On does but it’s unclear whether you can add contacts, tasks, and sales opportunities from the add-on. It appears to be much more focussed on logging emails, tracking opens and clicks, and scheduling meetings.
Recent reviews indicate that some of the features customers used to love are slowly being removed or becoming more difficult to use.
“Slowly but surely all the aspects that I loved about this are being taken away or made more complicated. Used to be you logged in and sent the same email to 3 people in 3 different states and you knew who opened and when. Now I get less information and have to go through more hoops.”
The feature set is good if you’re mainly interested in tracking emails and analyzing the performance of those emails. But it’s lacking though if you want to action emails by setting up tasks and other activities in your CRM.
Most suitable for: Professionals that mostly work with emails and want to analyze the performance of emails.
Chrome Web Store rating: 4.5/5 (Based on 8287 ratings)
Ranked in 2023 Capterra Shortlist for CRM Software as an Emerging Favorite with an overall score of 81.
4. Zoho CRM
Image via Zoho
Zoho offers an Add-On for Gmail but the functionality is a bit light. You can create new leads and contacts from Gmail and see complete lead/contact detail when you open a mail but there’s not much more to it. The latest reviews are mixed between some that are favorable and some mentioning that the app isn’t storing their leads correctly or has lost some functionality that used to exist.
“What happened to this plug-in? I used to be able to associate emails directly with Deals, but now only have the Contact info to edit.”
Most suitable for: Experienced CRM professionals who know what they want. Zoho CRM is part of the Zoho family, their CRM is quite robust covering sales, marketing, support and inventory management but this makes it a little harder to implement and manage.
Chrome Web Store rating: 4.2/5 (Based on 96 ratings)
Ranked in 2023 Capterra Shortlist for CRM Software as a Top Performer with an overall score of 85.
5. Pipedrive
Image via Pipedrive
With Pipedrive’s Gmail integration you can see information about your contacts alongside your inbox, see any related deals or activities and add new contacts, deals and activities. All in all the functionality is extremely similar to that of Capsule. While the add-on has some great features, several recent reviews, from multiple people have described the add-on as “useless”.
“Completely useless. Can't do anything with it, no customization, no look up. All you can do is add the specific email sender.”
Most suitable for: As Pipedrive is a sales-focussed CRM this is most suited to sales-focussed businesses who have already played around with Pipedrive and the features on offer.
Chrome Web Store rating: 2.2/5 (Based on 96 ratings)
Ranked in 2023 Capterra Shortlist for CRM Software as a Top Performer with an overall score of 85.
When looking for a CRM that integrates with Gmail, you really need to think about choosing the right CRM for your business. This is the first step towards making sure that the integration does exactly what you need it to. Bringing the two systems together can revolutionize your approach to CRM. It brings efficiency to contact management, email tracking, and communication, ultimately leading to improved customer interactions and business growth. Want to try a CRM with a Gmail Add-On? Try Capsule free for 14 days to see how it works for you.
