The Challenge of Sending Email Natively from NetSuite CRM

Email is the lifeblood of business communication, and your CRM needs to keep up. While NetSuite CRM provides native email functionality, many users run into frustrating challenges with deliverability and tracking. This guide will walk you through how to send emails from NetSuite, highlight common pitfalls, and introduce a smarter way to handle your communication.

How to Use Native NetSuite Email

NetSuite CRM’s native email feature allows users to send emails directly from within a record, such as a contact, customer, or opportunity. This provides a basic log of communication on the record. Here are the most common methods:

• From a Specific Record (Customer, Vendor, etc.):
  • Open the record.
  • Locate the Communication subtab.
  • Click the Email button to start a new message.
• From a List (Mass Email):
  • Navigate to the relevant list (e.g., Lists > Relationships > Customers).
  • Click the Compose Email icon next to the recipient’s email address.
• For Transactions (Invoices, Quotes):
  • From a transaction record, find the Communications subtab and select Email.
  • For bulk sending, use the Mass Update tool to email groups of records.

Common Problems with Native NetSuite Email

While straightforward, native email in NetSuite presents some significant drawbacks:

• Poor Deliverability: Emails sent this way often arrive from a generic, system-generated email address (e.g., [email protected]). Modern spam filters are highly suspicious of these addresses, which can cause your crucial sales or service emails to land in a spam folder or be blocked entirely.
• No Centralized Sent Items: The email doesn’t appear in the sender’s personal Outlook or Gmail sent folder. This creates a fragmented communication history. If a rep wants to reference a sent email, they have to navigate back to the specific NetSuite record, which is inefficient and time-consuming.
• Fragmented Email Threads: When a recipient replies, the response often doesn’t automatically get attached to the correct NetSuite record. This leaves a critical gap in the communication thread, creating information silos and forcing users to manually attach each message.

The Smarter Solution: ExtendSync’s “Send from Outlook”

CloudExtend has solved these challenges with a proprietary feature called Send from Outlook, available in our ExtendSync application. This feature lets you leverage the best of both worlds: NetSuite’s data and templates, and Outlook’s superior deliverability and tracking.

How Send from Outlook Works:

• Compose in NetSuite: From any NetSuite record, you click to send an email just as you normally would. You can still access NetSuite’s templates and attachments, saving you time and ensuring brand consistency.
• Send via Outlook: When you click “Send,” the email is not routed through NetSuite’s generic mail server. Instead, ExtendSync sends the message directly from your personal Outlook account.
• Delivered and Tracked Correctly: Because the email originates from your professional email address, it bypasses spam filters and is more likely to land in the recipient’s primary inbox. The email also automatically appears in your personal Outlook “Sent Items” folder, giving you a complete and centralized record of all your communications.

ExtendSync users with Autopilot can take this a step further. With Autopilot enabled, when a recipient replies to a Send from Outlook email, the entire thread is automatically synced back to the original NetSuite record, so every message is attached without any manual intervention. This creates a complete and accurate communication history for all teams.

Key Benefits of a Connected Email Workflow

The Send from Outlook feature directly addresses the biggest pain points of native email functionality, delivering three core benefits:

1. Improved Deliverability: Your messages arrive from a trusted email address, drastically reducing the chance of them ending up in spam folders.
2. Enhanced Efficiency: Sales reps can work faster by eliminating the need to toggle between their email client and NetSuite. They can also find sent emails quickly in their Outlook sent folder.
3. Complete Message Tracking: The entire email thread—both sent and received messages—is automatically synced to the correct NetSuite record, providing a true single source of truth and a comprehensive view for the entire organization.

The ability to compose in NetSuite but send from Outlook is a game-changing feature that is only available through ExtendSync. It’s the key to ensuring your communications are not just sent, but also delivered, tracked, and accessible to everyone who needs them.

Try it for yourself FREE for up to 14 days with no obligation.