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It’s hard to get your sales outreach noticed in a busy inbox. But, a sales engagement tool can give you the best chance of succeeding by helping you send personalized, multi-channel campaigns that your prospects will want to reply to.
In this guide, I’ll show you some of the best sales engagement platforms and tools on the market. Each one has different strengths and weaknesses, and we’ve broken them down to help you choose the right one for your team.
Let’s dive in.
What are Sales Engagement Platforms?
Sales engagement platforms enable you to get in touch with prospects and have more conversations. They’re designed to help you with multi-channel outreach by giving you the tools to send outreach messages on multiple channels at the same time.
For example, your sales engagement tool might allow you to create a campaign that includes cold emails, then, automatically sends a LinkedIn message to a prospect if they don’t respond.
The goal of these tools is to give you the best chance of receiving a reply by ensuring your message gets seen by your prospect.
Best Sales Engagement Platform to Scale Your Outreach
1. QuickMail: Book 4x More Meetings Than With Other Sales Engagement Tools
Sales engagement platform with powerful cold outreach tools to help you start more conversations and book more sales meetings.
QuickMail is a sales engagement tool designed to help you start conversations with prospects using personalized outreach.
Personalized Cold Email Outreach and Follow-Ups
Once you connect your Gmail, Outlook, or custom inbox to QuickMail, you can start using it to send personalized cold emails to your ideal prospects and automatically follow-up with anyone who doesn't reply.
To get the highest reply rate possible, you can use attributes in QuickMail to personalize every cold email that you send.
Attributes add personalized snippets of information you know about a prospect, taken from your prospect list, and include them in your outreach emails when you send them in batches.
For example, your prospect list will have a column titled “First Name”.
In your email templates, you can include the attribute {{prospect.first_name}} and when your emails are sent, the attribute will use the information from your “First Name” column. It’s a simple and powerful way to personalize your cold emails.
If your prospects don’t reply to your first email, don’t worry – QuickMail will automatically follow up with them.
To set up your follow-ups, all you need to do is add a new step to your campaigns.
First, choose the delay between your follow-ups (for example, three to four days), and then, add your next email step.
You can experiment with a new value proposition, call-to-action, or even a new subject line.
You can add as many follow-ups as you need to get a response.
Made for Teams Sending Email At Scale
If you run an agency or manage a sales team, you’ll be able to add all of your cold email inboxes to QuickMail.
Once your team’s inboxes are ready, you can use Inbox Rotation. This will rotate your sending volume between your inboxes and ensure that no individual account ever exceeds sending limits, thus reducing your chance of your outreach emails landing in the spam folder.
You won’t need to ever deal with the nightmare of copy-pasting campaigns, signing in and out of different accounts, or risk an inbox going over your target send volume.
If you run an agency and manage cold email campaigns for multiple clients, QuickMail makes your reporting easy.
All of your campaign results are displayed in one place and you can find any metric you need to know in seconds.
Add Multi-Channel Outreach Steps
If your prospect doesn’t reply to your cold email, you can use QuickMail to send multi-channel outreach.
Firstly, you can add a Call step to your campaigns. Your team will be prompted to call your prospect and can make calls and log the details straight from your QuickMail campaign.
The direct integration with Aircall means any notes you make on your prospect record in QuickMail will be synced in your Aircall account, and vice versa.
You can also send SMS messages to your prospects as part of a campaign, and even add tasks with to-do items for your team, such as:
Connect with your prospect on LinkedIn
Reach out to another decision-maker at the company
Ask a team member for extra details you can use in your cold email
Once you start running true multi-channel campaigns as part of your sales strategy, you’ll get more replies, and close more deals with your ideal customers.
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 (70 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.8 out of 5 (25 reviews)
What our customers are saying on G2 and Capterra:
“We're running email outreach via 50+ inboxes (30+ customers), and QuickMail works exceptionally well, with no hiccups or issues. We love the smooth email warmup integration and all the other integration capabilities.”
“By send volume - we book 4X more meetings in QuickMail than our previous platform. The visibility on deliverability scores for each inbox is SO helpful. The way lists are organized, it's so much simpler to run campaigns at scale and be nimble when you need to make pivots. I've looked at and tested a lot of platforms and nothing holds a candle to QuickMail.”
"What they provide is hands down the best experience I have had as a customer. Being in sales I have high expectations because I deliver a great customer experience."
Key Features:
Send cold emails at scale and personalize every template using attributes
Automatically follow-up if a prospect doesn’t reply to boost reply rate
Add multichannel campaign steps and call prospects straight from QuickMail with Aircall
Add your whole team of sales reps and use Inbox Rotation to send emails from multiple inboxes
10 Alternative Sales Engagement Platforms
2. Outreach
All-in-one sales engagement platform with sales prospecting, outreach, and account-based marketing features
Outreach is a sales engagement tool that’s packed with useful features. Firstly, you can use it to source and verify contact details for your prospects. It shows you different decision-makers at a company, so you can plan your outreach and identify the best point of contact.
Once you've built your prospect list, you can use Outreach to reach out to them.
A built-in email campaign creator lets you use email templates from a template database in your own campaigns, and you can automatically follow up if someone doesn't reply.
Your outreach efforts are tracked in a built-in CRM, which means you don’t need to connect multiple tools together.
Because there is a wide range of features in the Outreach platform, it will take time to onboard your team. However, it’s still a powerful sales engagement platform if you do need all of the features it includes.
Pricing: Schedule a demo with their team for pricing
Pros:
Source your prospect list inside the platform
Automate your outreach and use proven email templates that other sales teams are getting results with
Send sales leads directly into the Outreach CRM to keep track of your sales pipeline
Cons:
Some customers on G2 mention that it’s hard to see previous emails that you’ve sent to a prospect, which can cause issues
Users on Capterra say that the UI isn’t intuitive and it takes time to get up to speed
3. Yesware
Multi-channel sales engagement tool to send personalized outreach campaigns and track results
Yesware is sales engagement software designed to help you with your email outreach. It also has multi-channel options, like QuickMail, that give your team the tools to connect with prospects via other channels during your campaign.
You can write out your email templates, with each one being personalized, and send them in bulk to multiple recipients. If you don't receive a reply, Yesware can automatically send follow-up emails until you get one. When a prospect replies to your email they'll be removed from a campaign so they won't be contacted again without you knowing.
There’s also a useful calendar-booking feature – you can attach calendar invites to your cold emails directly from Yesware, which means you don’t need to rely on 3rd party appointment scheduling tools.
Pricing: Starts at $15/month for one seat
Pros:
Send multi-touch and personalized sales outreach campaigns
Track when your emails get opened by prospects
Integration with Salesforce to send all campaign data to your CRM
Cons:
The focus is on email tracking and it lacks some multi-channel sales engagement features that other platforms include
Users on G2 highlight that the email tracking doesn’t make it clear if or who your emails are being opened by on a granular level
Some customers on Capterra say that the scheduling for Outlook isn’t as robust as it could be
4. GMass
Send engaging and personalized cold emails to your prospect list directly from your Gmail inbox
GMass is a sales engagement tool for Gmail. It’s a lightweight but powerful tool that lets you send large-scale outreach campaigns directly from your Gmail inbox.
You’ll need to create your prospect list in Google Sheets, including all of the information you need on your prospects – email addresses, names, company names, and more. Then, you’ll use GMass, inside your Gmail account, to automatically send cold emails to everyone in your prospect list.
As you would expect, you can automatically follow up with prospects, and you can even create list segments from people who don’t reply and send new campaigns to them in the future.
Pricing: $19.95 per month
Pros:
Send sales email campaigns from your Gmail inbox
A/B test your email copy (on Premium plan and above) to find the cold email copy with the best success rate
Detailed reporting to help you understand your results and optimize campaigns
Cons:
It’s made for Gmail and doesn’t work for Microsoft Outlook users
Some Capterra users mention that it takes time to set up Gmass in your inbox
The analytics for sales cadences could be improved according to customers on Capterra
5. HubSpot Sales Hub
Sales engagement platform that can help you stay in touch with customers and manage your whole sales pipeline
HubSpot Sales Hub has a wide range of features to help you improve your sales workflows.
It includes tools to help you with outreach, performance tracking, sales conversation intelligence, and marketing automation. For example, you can import your sales leads, then use HubSpot to send emails to them, and track engagement with those emails in the built-in CRM.
The HubSpot Sales Hub includes task management features (like those of Airtable or Asana), so you and your team always know exactly what stage of the process a lead is in, and what tasks need to be done next to keep them moving forward in the pipeline.
You can start using it for free, but it does require you to commit to using the HubSpot ecosystem which can get expensive as your company grows and requirements change.
Pricing: Free, paid plans start at $45 per month
Pros:
Send email campaigns, including follow-ups, to sales leads directly from the HubSpot CRM
Track email open rates, click-through rates, and engagement with attachments
Save your best-performing email templates to re-use in future campaigns
Cons:
Requires you to shift all of your sales activity onto the HubSpot platform
Customers on Capterra dislike that you get charged for extra onboarding support if you have questions
Users on Capterra highlight that adding sales prospects to email campaigns is time-consuming and complicated
6. Close
Powerful all-in-one sales CRM with tools to keep your sales leads engaged and move them through your pipeline
Close is a CRM that’s packed with tools to help you keep your sales leads engaged with your business.
You can keep in touch with your leads with automated email sequences, phone calls, SMS, and even an automated Zoom meeting scheduler to help you connect over video with your prospects.
Whenever you reach out to a prospect, the actions you and your team take will be logged in the CRM and you’ll always know what past interactions have looked like. You can make updates to your sales engagement strategy based on these insights – for example, if you notice a prospect rarely replies to emails but always picks up the phone, you can focus on calling them to keep them engaged.
The platform includes analytics to help you track your lead volume, number of sent emails, number of calls made, and the potential revenue in your CRM.
Pricing: $29 per user per month
Pros:
Integrated sales dialer, email sequences, and SMS-sending tools
Analytics to track your key sales and CRM metrics
Integrates with a wide range of sales software, including QuickMail
Cons:
Not specifically designed for cold outreach, and it works best if you use it to manage your overall sales pipeline
Some users on Capterra mention that the pricing gets expensive as you grow
7. Salesloft
Sales engagement platform to help enterprise sales teams gather information and sell more effectively
Salesloft is a platform for revenue teams to engage sales leads through the entire selling process and customer journey. It’s primarily designed for Enterprise-level companies running cross-channel and account-based marketing campaigns.
The platform includes various outreach tools, including a cold email tool, a LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration, and a sales dialer.
Every interaction you make can be automatically logged in your CRM to ensure you always have access to key prospect data, and there is even an AI-based sales intelligence feature that will automatically listen to your sales calls and feedback on your performance.
One of the main downsides to SalesLoft is that it’s complex. It’s worth evaluating if you need all of the features it offers, as it’s best for large enterprise teams, and it will require you to shift most of your workflow onto the platform.
Pricing: Available on request
Pros:
Includes analytics to help you understand where every lead is in your sales cycle
Automatically schedule cold emails and remind your team to make important sales calls
Post-sale tools to identify when customers are at risk of churning so you can re-engage them
Cons:
Customers on G2 say that it’s hard to filter through your contacts and segment your lists
Other users on G2 mention that the analytics features aren’t as detailed as they could be and it’s hard to evaluate team success
8. Groove
Sales engagement platform made to improve your Salesforce workflow.
Groove is a sales engagement platform built for companies using Salesforce.
There is multi-channel outreach functionality included, and you can create automated sequences on email, LinkedIn, and cold calls.
When you find a sequence that works, you can turn the email copy you used into reusable templates, then send them to multiple leads at once. When prospects and leads engage with your sequences, Groove can take automatic follow-up actions, such as adding them to a new campaign or updating their records in Salesforce.
Another useful feature is that you can A/B test sequences to help you identify the best flows and sequences to engage with your target audience.
It tracks all of your email activity and automatically logs communication with your leads into Salesforce, so your team will always know the status of every lead in your pipeline.
Pricing: Available on request
Pros:
Automate the process of updating your CRM with information on sales leads
Send multi-channel campaigns across email, LinkedIn, SMS, and more
Adds Salesforce data to your Gmail or Outlook inbox to improve day-to-day sales productivity
Cons:
Users on G2 say that the search functionality is limited and it’s hard to find past sales conversations you want to re-visit
Other customers on G2 say that the sales dialer often has problems with disconnecting or loading
9. Drift
Conversational sales and marketing tools to help you connect with sales leads when they’re visiting your website.
Drift is a conversational intelligence platform that can help you improve how you engage with sales leads throughout their buying journey.
You use it to create unique experiences for your website visitors. For example, if you add prospects in your outreach campaigns to your Drift campaigns when those prospects (or someone from their company) decide to visit your website after receiving your cold email, they can be greeted with a custom messaging sequence to catch their attention.
It’s a powerful way to complement your campaigns and improve your overall conversion rates. The campaign builder is easy to use so you can quickly create new Drift campaigns to fit the type of customer you’re reaching out to.
You’ll also receive notifications whenever a lead is on your website. You can either jump into Drift and send them a message or, send them a follow-up email at the right time.
Drift works best as an addition to your existing sales enablement and cold email tools, as it’s not designed for outreach.
Pricing: Pricing available upon request
Pros:
Add your prospect list to Drift and offer personalized chatbot experiences when they visit your website
Capture new leads directly from the Drift chatbot
Get notified whenever a sales lead you’re targeting visits your website
Cons:
It’s not made to cold sales outreach to a cold list of prospects
Customers on G2 say that the chatbot system can be frustrating for potential customers visiting your website if it’s not set up correctly
Users on Capterra say the pricing makes it out of reach for small businesses
10. Salesforce
CRM with sales engagement technology for enterprise companies that want an all-in-one system to manage outreach and pipeline management
Salesforce CRM is known for being one of the most-used sales engagement platforms on the market. It’s best for large companies that have a large pipeline and a growing sales team
After adding your list of contacts, you’ll be able to track your relationship with each one in the platform’s CRM records, create sales cadences, and route prospects into the right sales cadence based on their status.
Every interaction with your prospect is logged, so your team will always know who is in charge of each account.
Salesforce is a powerful sales engagement solution, but it's best suited for large, established enterprise-level companies.
Pricing: From $24 per user per month for the basic CRM tools
Pros:
All-in-one solution with every sales tool you need in one place
Run sales engagement campaigns including email, calling, and more
Clear reports and analytics make it easy to see what your sales reps are up to and how engaged different accounts are
Cons:
Users on G2 highlight that you’ll need to spend time to customize it, potentially even requiring custom development
Expensive solution and it can be hard to migrate off if you’ve customized it to your sales organization’s unique needs
11. ActiveCampaign
Customer engagement platform with tools to help sales teams nurture and convert leads into customers.
ActiveCampaign combines several tools into one. There’s an email marketing suite that you can use to send marketing emails to your list, a bulk transactional email toolkit, and a CRM including sales engagement tools.
You can use the sales engagement features to create pre-built workflows that your leads will be sent, ensuring they keep your company on their mind even if you're not actively talking to them. You can personalize the emails you send with attributes like a recipient’s name, company name, and any other data you have on them.
To help keep your team focused on priority leads, there’s a lead scoring system that will assign scores to people based on the actions they take: +5% for joining a webinar, -10% for ignoring a follow-up, or +50% for booking an introductory call with you. This can be customized to your unique sales needs.
It’s a powerful platform for engaging with leads already in your pipeline, however, it’s not made for cold email outreach – for that, you’ll need QuickMail.
Pricing: From $49 per month for sales automation features.
Pros:
Includes a range of email marketing and sales tools under one platform
Makes it easy to segment your subscriber list and personalize your communication with existing and potential customers
Integrates with most CRM platforms, and meeting booking tools like Calendly
Cons:
Some users on G2 say that larger companies might find the feature set limited compared to larger platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot Sales Hub
Customers on G2 mention that it’s complicated to create sales engagement automation
12. Dock
Digital sales room that gives sales teams one space to collaborate with buyers throughout a deal
Dock is a client-facing workspace that lets sales teams share sales content, mutual action plans, price quotes, order forms, and security profiles with buyers from one link.
Instead of sending sporadic follow-up emails with many links and attachments, sales reps can use a templated workspace to engage with buyers.
By standardizing the follow-up after a demo, the sales team can improve their close rates and shorten their sales cycle while improving the buyer experience, and gaining valuable engagement data on how buyers interact with the sales team over the course of the deal.
Pricing: Free for 5 workspaces. Monthly paid plans start at $49/user.
Pros:
Reps can create professional on-brand sales rooms in a few clicks.
Mutual action plans guide buyers through the sales process and keep them accountable to a timeline.
Pull dynamic fields from HubSpot or Salesforce to auto-personalize a deal room
Cons:
There’s an initial time investment required to set up your first workspace template
Currently, it only integrates with HubSpot and Salesforce CRMs
What Features Do You Need in a Sale Engagement Tool?
There’s no single list of features that you need in your sales engagement software. Depending on your company and use cases, it will vary. However, here are some features we recommend looking for:
Cold email outreach capabilities
Send LinkedIn sequences and messages
Integrates with a cold calling tool or sales dialer
Lets you bring your whole outreach team into the tool
Integrates with other sales tools in your current stack
Lets you send personalized messages to prospects
Includes analytics to help you track the success of your outreach efforts
Sales Engagement Platforms vs. CRMs: What’s The Difference?
There are some similarities between sales engagement platforms and CRMs.
Both are key parts of your sales team’s software stack. Both let you manage relationships with your leads.
However, there are some differences.
Most sales engagement tools will have features to help you with cold outreach. By contrast, CRMs typically aren’t made for this and are designed to help you manage the sales cycle once a conversation has already been started.
There are some platforms, like HubSpot, that integrate both sales engagement and CRM features into one tool, but these are the exception rather than the norm.
Getting Started with a Sales Engagement Tool
These sales engagement platforms are all good options. The best for you will depend on your exact needs. Most companies we’ve included in this guide will be happy to walk you through their platform on a sales call, or with a free trial – including our own: QuickMail.
QuickMail helps you combine cold email with LinkedIn and cold calling, and is made for outreach teams who need a tool designed for collaboration.
You can get started in minutes with a free trial, and it has all the tools you need to start reaching out to prospects with personalized messages and scaling your campaigns without deliverability being affected.
