Zoho today announced the Zoho Mail Add-on for Zoho CRM. For small and medium businesses (SMBs) and others using Zoho CRM, the new module provides affordable, full-featured integration of Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail. A video tour of the Zoho Mail Add-on is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ2Ou-2bGkQ.

In related news, Zoho also announced the Zwitch program for Salesforce.com (please see “Zoho Invites Salesforce.com Users to Zwitch”).

“The Zoho Mail Add-on is another result of our mission to integrate Zoho’s business-ready products in a deep and meaningful way,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. “This add-on gives users the kind of contextual integration of information that we can provide as a result of the breadth and depth of our application set. Zoho delivers both collaborative productivity and business applications, so we can enable information to flow seamlessly throughout multiple applications to best serve our users needs.”

Zoho Unifies CRM and Email
With the Zoho Mail Add-on, Zoho bridges the divide historically separating email and CRM systems. In turn, SMBs and other users gain a single sign-on, CRM/email solution that offers unprecedented levels of integration and ease of use not available in any other CRM system.

The Zoho Mail Add-on gives Zoho CRM users access to contact information found in both Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail. For instance, Zoho CRM users searching for contact information within Zoho CRM will also see Zoho Mail email exchanges with that contact. The Zoho Mail information is presented in Conversation View, and users can expand any conversation to view the individual email.

Users can send and receive emails within Zoho CRM. They do not have to open a new browser window and switch to Zoho Mail. When viewing emails in Zoho CRM, users have the option to share those emails with other users who have access to the Zoho CRM account or to keep the emails private.

It is not just Zoho CRM integrating Zoho Mail. There is a new feature in the Zoho Mail application that lets users add contacts directly to the Zoho CRM application from the Zoho Mail interface. The ‘Add to CRM’ option is available under a ‘More Options’ drop down in Zoho message view. Apart from adding the contact, you can also add a task associated with the contact. This integration is smart enough to determine if a contact already exists in your CRM system, thereby avoiding duplicates.

To get started with the Zoho Mail Add-on, users simply log into Zoho CRM and click on “Setup,” and then click on “Zoho Mail Add-on” found under the General/Add-ons section. From there, users can configure, activate and deactivate their email access. Users with multiple Zoho Mail accounts can choose which mailbox to associate with the Zoho CRM account. After providing username and password information for Zoho Mail, the user can immediately search contacts and view related email exchanges.

Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL email users can also take advantage of the integration afforded by the Zoho Mail Add-on by using Zoho Mail as a client to those email services. In effect, Zoho Mail acts as an intermediary for these users, enabling them to continue using a third-party email service, but still review contact-related emails within Zoho CRM. Currently, the Zoho Mail Add-on supports POP access. Going forward, IMAP will also be supported.

Pricing and Availability
The Zoho CRM Mail Add-on is available immediately. Pricing is $3 per user per month.

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Recent News and Resources
Zoho news releases: http://www.zoho.com/in-the-news.html
Zoho product videos: http://www.zoho.com/product_videos.html
Zoho general videos: http://www.zoho.com/videos.html
Zoho blogs: http://blogs.zoho.com/

About Zoho
Zoho is a comprehensive suite of award-winning on-line business applications. Customers use Zoho to run their business processes, manage their information and be more productive while at the office or on the go, without having to worry about expensive or outdated hardware or software. To date, Zoho has launched 19 different applications — from CRM to Mail, Reports, and Wikis. Zoho has received numerous awards, including a 2009 Webware 100 Award, a 2008 PC World “25 Most Innovative Products Award” and a 2007 TechCrunch “Best Enterprise Start-up.”

Zoho is a division of ZOHO Corp., a privately-held and profitable company. With headquarters in Pleasanton, CA and offices in Austin, New Jersey, London, Tokyo and Beijing, ZOHO Corp. serves the technology needs of more than 40,000 customers worldwide. For more information about Zoho, please visit http://www.zoho.com/.

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