Zoho Sign's tight integrations help PR by the Book streamline its business paperwork

  • PR by the Book logo
  • Melissa Teutsch
    MEET Melissa Teutsch
  • OCCUPATIONDirector of Operations
  • INDUSTRYAdvertising & Marketing
  • Size1-20 employees

Meet Melissa Teutsch

Melissa serves as the Director of Operations at PR by the Book. She has more than two decades of experience in public relations, marketing, customer service, and sales. She specialized in book publicity and author public relations from 2003, working with companies like University of Louisiana Lafayette Press, Barnes and Noble College, and Simon & Schuster, where she picked up on versatile skills that have helped her hone her career in public relations and business operations for publishing houses.

What does PR by the Book do?

PR by the Book is a book and author publicity agency situated in Texas, USA. Run by Marika and Doug Flatt, the company offers much beyond traditional public relations for books and authors by crafting unique strategies, or as they call it - "the road to influence", as per client needs. They have been a successful agency for more than twenty years and have worked with nearly 2500+ authors to make their dream projects the talk of the literary town.


How does PR by the Book do it?

PR by the Book designs customized plans for books and authors based on genre, author popularity, and target audience. To execute this, they offer a three-pronged publicity strategy to authors: traditional public relations (targeted media pitching to traditional and digital media, a book tour, release of compelling hooks and snippets, and more); digital relevancy (building an online brand identity, influencer outreach, content creation, and the like); and platform development (profiling target audience, social platform branding, building a content calendar, and more). Put together, PR by the Book aspires to create a brand identity for authors so their books and ideas transcend pages and become a way of influence for the readers.

The Challenge

PR by the Book faced difficulties manually handling paperwork and signatures early on into their business. This delayed document turnarounds and was not user friendly for many customers.

"In the company's early years, before I joined the company, they used to do paperwork manually. They had contracts scanned and stored on Google Drive, and they would send them out by email. Clients would physically print these documents, sign, scan, and email them back. But with a lot of our customers, this was a hit or miss. Some of them wouldn't have access to scanners or be tech-savvy enough to complete the process without assistance. Moreover, since it was all done physically, contract signing never got done quickly." — Melissa Teutsch, Director of Operations, PR by the Book

Having to securely store all the signed paperwork was another headache for the company. The company was working remotely and having the contract paperwork stored at the owner's home was only a temporary solution. It was at this point that the company knew they had to move to a digital paperwork and signature management platform. They first tried Docusign. Unfortunately, Docusign's narrow scope for storage and integrations created additional challenges for PR by the Book.

"We moved to Docusign, which helped us to be up to date on the technology of collecting electronic signatures and helped us receive signed contracts faster. But it still was very much siloed from the CRM we used; they couldn't be integrated. So we were still having to manually perform a lot of work like downloading contracts, moving clients to another stage in our CRM, and saving contracts to Google Drive. It was hardly robust all. We also couldn't create end-to-end workflows, so I had to manually send client set-up emails after a contract was signed. It was all very isolated. It felt like not much had changed, except for a faster signing process, despite the shift to a digital signature solution." — Melissa Teutsch, Director of Operations, PR by the Book

The Solution

PR by the Book evaluated Zoho Sign when consolidating their technology stack. With Zoho Sign's seamless integrations, unlimited storage, and end-to-end signature workflow management, PR by the Book could automate their entire contract process with ease.

Speaking more about Zoho Sign's integration with Zoho CRM, Teutsch continued, "I love that I can create a proposal and attach the contract all within Zoho CRM using mail merge and then send it through Zoho Sign without even having to go into my Zoho Sign account."

"With the help of Michelle and 3Leaf CRM, we've set it up such that I can send it without even having to open a new tab from my CRM. Also, we have set up emails to be triggered after the signing flow, after which another trigger moves the client to a different stage in the CRM. We just love how efficient it has made our work. Even the signed documents are available right next to client records on CRM, so our campaign managers can simply go in and access them. I don't have to go manually hunt for a contract in our Google Drive like earlier; it's right there where we want it to be."

Moreover, Teutsch personally loves the ease of using the platform.

"I love how easy Zoho Sign was to set up and use. It was intuitive enough that I could just log in, set reminders, edit workflows, and customize the experience. With Zoho Sign's real-time tracking, I now can gauge client responses. I can see if they open the signature request and not sign it, follow up on the same, be notified the minute they sign, and so on. I love the level of granular tracking that Zoho Sign provides." — Melissa Teutsch, Director of Operations, PR by the Book

Benefits and ROI

The shift from Docusign to Zoho Sign benefited PR by the Book hugely in terms of efficiency, automation, and customization.

"Our paperwork has been streamlined ever since we began using Zoho Sign. Part of the appeal of Zoho is being able to streamline everything into one system and not having to pay for multiple platforms and features. We could do everything right in Zoho Sign and have it all connected to customer account records in Zoho CRM, and even automate emails. We did not have that before with Docusign and we didn't have it integrated with our Google Drive. With Zoho Sign, I hardly have to touch anything once the contract is sent. We love that we get all this for a much more affordable price than the segmented experience we had with Docusign for a higher cost. We also customized Zoho Sign templates to have our company colors and having used Docusign, Adobe Sign, and Zoho Sign over the years, I think it's actually easier to do that branding customization in Zoho Sign than the competitors." — Melissa Teutsch, Director of Operations, PR by the Book

Looking Forward

PR by the Book is delighted with their Zoho Sign experience and looks to integrate it with the other Zoho products they already use as part of the Zoho One bundle.

If you're interested in seeing what Zoho Sign can do or are unsure about the platform, try our Enterprise-version for free for 14 days to experience firsthand why companies like PR by the Book use Zoho Sign.

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