When starting new with a CRM, you might feel frustrated that you have important historical conversations in your external email client and you want them to be in your online CRM software.

How do I get historical email from my outside email inbox to my CRM contact or lead?

Good news: it’s easy with the Forward Email to Contact and Forward Email to Lead workflows.

  • Your contact or lead should already be created.
  • If you haven’t created one yet, do it quickly with the Quick Create Record shortcuts

Step One: In the CRM, get the contact or lead’s FWD Email Address and copy it

  1. Go to the record page for your contact or lead
  2. Click on the arrow button in the name bar of your contact or lead
  3. In the dropdown that appears, click on the button called: Forward Email to this Contact (or Lead) Record
  4. In the popup, click the button called Generate FWD email alias
  5. If there’s already an email address here, just copy it. No need to generate a new address
  6. Copy the FWD email address

Step Two: In your email client, forward the existing email to this email address

  1. Find the email message you want to forward
  2. Click the Forward button
  3. Paste your Contact FWD Email Address
  4. Click Send. That’s it!

Where do I see these Emails when they are forwarded?

Just come back to your contact or lead in the CRM. Click on the messages tab and you’ll see the forwarded email.

 

Does my contact or lead receive this email again when I forward it?

No. The forwarded email goes directly to the CRM

Can I reply to my contact on this message thread?

No. You should just create a new message thread if you want to continue correspondence with your contact or lead.

 

Author Bio:

by Paul Rijnders

Paul Rijnders is the Product Strategy Manager for Benchmark Email, where his focus includes product development, research, technical writing, feature development, testing and launching of SaaS products and iOS apps that interact with our software via API. He is the human junction between the executive and marketing teams that request the product, the IT team that builds the back end, the design team that creates the front end, the content team that gives the product a voice and the eager sales and support teams who will eventually take delivery of the product. Paul is a product of the CSUF advertising program, He now rounds out his schedule teaching college level courses to multi-media undergrads on two California campuses.