Have you ever tried to make a sale via email alone? The initial emails might be simple enough, but when it’s time to send all those carefully crafted sales materials, email just doesn’t work. Your proposal could consist of video, Word documents, case studies, images, and other supporting information. All of these end up as attachments to the email, which causes several problems:
- no way to know what the prospect opened
- terrible user experience
- limited branding opportunities
Chicago-based Bill Burnett had all these problems in mind when he and his team created PointDrive. Version 1.0 just launched at the Demo Fall 2013 event, and they are already signing up users.
The website is easy enough to use. On the top of your presentation page, you can include all your company branding materials and contact information. Then, you can drag and drop the materials you have already created–YouTube or Vimeo videos, images from Dropbox, Word documents or Excel spreadsheets. Basically, if you would send it as an attachment, you can include it in your PointDrive presentation. Videos even play in the presentation, so your target will not have to navigate away from your personalized page.
PointDrive could prove to be a great solution for startup founders. We all know investors are bombarded with information and emails from startups. PointDrive will give you the ability to send personalized, branded content to investors, which helps you stand out from the crowd. It will also cut down on all the time you spend attaching (or forgetting to attach) documents to emails.
After setting up your presentation, you can send an email to your prospect that includes a simple link the page. The PointDrive team is especially excited about their analytics features. After sending the presentation link, you will be able to see who downloaded a file or watched a video. You will be able to see which materials are hitting their target and which are uninteresting to your audience.
Across the board, we are relying on cloud productivity tools more and more. But most of those tools focus on customer relationships or project management. PointDrive strives to offer a better experience than email attachments for both the salesperson and the prospect. A branded presentation is more memorable than being 1 of 100 emails full of attachments.
Customers can sign up for free through the end of the year, and in 2014 PointDrive will roll out the Pro version of the product.
It’s reduculously easy to sign up and use. Very nifty product.