Seeking Advice on Building an Integrated Email Management System with Airtable, Make.com, and IM

[tnw]

Hello Airtable Community,

I'm reaching out for guidance on setting up a more streamlined email management system within Airtable, in conjunction with Make.com, for my cold email agency. We've developed a unique setup that leverages individual IMAP connections for each client's email account, hosted on a private VPS server to handle volume. Our current process uses Make.com to capture all incoming emails, turning them into records within a master Airtable base. This base acts as a CRM, meticulously tracking interactions for each client.

Our goal is to refine this system further by enabling direct email replies from within Airtable. Here's a breakdown of our needs and current setup:

1. Integration Specifics: We use Postbox for email management with an IMAP connection for each client. Each client has a dedicated email account on our private VPS. We've successfully automated the capture of incoming emails to Airtable via Make.com. Now, we're looking to enhance this setup to allow for email replies directly from Airtable.

2. CRM Functionality: Our Airtable base is configured as a CRM for each client, allowing us to track various interactions and details. The ability to reply to emails within Airtable would streamline our processes significantly, enabling us to maintain context and efficiency.

3. Email Campaigns: The outbound campaigns are managed through a separate email sending software. Replies to these campaigns are captured in the inbox and subsequently logged in Airtable. Our primary challenge lies in managing these replies efficiently—ideally, directly replying from Airtable and updating the record status to reflect the interaction seamlessly within our CRM workflow.

Main Challenge: The core issue we're facing is integrating a method to reply to emails from within Airtable. Each reply would be unique, so automation for responses isn't viable. We're looking for a way to directly interact with the emails captured as records in Airtable, including a convenient method to update the record status once a reply is sent, thereby integrating it smoothly into our CRM tracking.

Questions for the Community:

1. Has anyone successfully implemented a similar email management system within Airtable, particularly one that allows for direct replies to emails?
2. Are there any recommended approaches or tools that integrate well with Airtable and Make.com for this purpose?
3. Tips on setting up a seamless workflow to update CRM records post-reply within Airtable—any best practices?

We appreciate any insights, advice, or experiences you can share. Our aim is to make our system as efficient and integrated as possible, and we believe the collective wisdom of this community could be incredibly valuable in achieving that.

Thank you in advance for your time and help!

[tnw]

So as mentioned in the original post we run a cold email agency so we deal with lots and lots of volume so this solution would need to be able to handle lots of volume, each reply is custom. 

[ScottWorld]

For bulk email sending, some popular options are:

MailGun, MessageBird, BigMailer, MailerLite, MailerSend, PostMark, BeeFree, and Mandrill (now known as MailChimp Transactional Emails).

As mentioned above, I would not recommend SendGrid.

All of these email services can be very easily automated with Make and integrated with Airtable. 

Always feel free to reach out if your company has a budget to work with an expert in this realm!

Airtable Consulting — ScottWorld

[tnw]

Hi Scott, 

sorry i didn't make this clear at all my mistake. we send all the initial outbound emails from our vps server that we have, we just want to use airtable as a response system, we have looked having front as a software as its similar to a master inbox we could then use airtable as more of just a crm and tag leads allowing them to arrive in the crm within airtable. lots of options just not enough knowledge in what's possible...

[ScottWorld]

Ah, very cool! I'm sure that we can setup all of these things for you in Airtable, but yes, Front is another great app that several of my clients are using! Ironically, this would probably be overkill, but Front can ALSO be integrated with Airtable — by using Make's Front integrations. Lol!

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Ah, I would be cautious about adding the text of the previous emails like that

You know how your email client hides previous messages in the thread, and when you show that stuff it's properly formatted and indented so that everything looks neat?  The clients themselves are pretty finicky and you may end up with a situation where your reply email just looks kind of fake because none of that stuff's happening and it just looks like one long email with all your previous messages in a single message. (Not sure if that's a concern for you but for my use case the emails looking spammy / fake was a dealbreaker)

I managed to get it to work on Gmail and Apple Mail (sorta), but gave up soon after because I was like "Ah, I'm going to have to do this for EVERY CLIENT" and just sighed and realized it's not feasible.  I would do some really basic tests before putting too much time into it if it's a concern

I'm still hoping I was doing something terribly wrong and am missing something that could make the whole thing simpler; fingers crossed!