How can an AI marketing agent use Nutshell for marketing?
An AI marketing agent can use Nutshell as the place where its research turns into records your sales team works from, and as a source of truth about which marketing actually produces customers. Nutshell is a CRM for small and midsize businesses. It keeps people and the companies they work for, leads that move through pipelines toward a won or lost outcome, and the notes, activities, and tasks attached to each one.
That gives an agent two directions to work in. It can write into Nutshell: new prospects, the reason each one fits, a lead in the right pipeline, and the next step for whoever follows up. It can also read from Nutshell, because every won lead, lost lead, and lead source tells an agent what's working.
Kite is one example of an agent that does both through your connected Nutshell account.
Marketing jobs Kite can do with Nutshell
The jobs below follow a prospect from the day Kite finds them to the day the lead closes, and then back into what your marketing learns from the result. Kite adds the records, opens the lead, lines up the follow-up, reads the outcome, and turns your contacts into campaign audiences.
Add qualified prospects as people and companies
Kite turns a prospect list into Nutshell records your team can work right away, with each person attached to their company. Say you ask for 40 operations directors at regional logistics companies with 50 to 300 employees. Kite finds the companies through its built-in research sources, finds the right person at each one, confirms they still hold the role, and scores every prospect from one to five against your ideal customer profile.
Kite checks your Nutshell people and companies by name and email before it writes, so a person your rep added last month gets updated rather than added again. Then it creates the company and the person and fills in what a salesperson needs:
- name, job title, and company
- work email address when the research source returns one
- LinkedIn profile and company website
- the industry and territory your team already uses
- an owner from your list of Nutshell users
- a tag for the batch, such as the event or campaign name
Kite also adds a note to each person. The note gives the fit score, says why the person is worth contacting, names the recent event worth mentioning, such as a new distribution center or a funding round, and cites the source for each fact. If you'd rather keep the fit score in a field you can sort by, Kite can create a custom field on companies or leads and fill it in.
Open leads in the right pipeline
Kite opens a lead in Nutshell when a prospect becomes a real sales opportunity, because a lead in Nutshell stands for a sale your team is working. Before it creates one, Kite reads your pipelines, their stages, and your existing leads, so a prospect who already has an open lead gets that lead updated instead of a second one.
Each new lead gets a description, the person and company it belongs to, a value when there's one to record, and the pipeline it belongs in. Suppose you run one pipeline for new business and another for renewals. Kite puts a demo request from a new company in the new-business pipeline and an upsell conversation with an existing customer in the renewals pipeline.
Kite also records where each lead came from in Nutshell's lead source. If the source doesn't exist yet, such as "October webinar" or "Comparison page," Kite creates it. That one field is what lets your reports later show which campaign produced which revenue.
Schedule follow-ups and log what marketing did
Kite schedules activities in Nutshell so the next step shows up for the right person. It reads your activity types first, then schedules a call, meeting, or email for a date you choose, such as a same-day call for every inbound demo request.
Kite logs its own work in Nutshell as well. When it sends a campaign email to someone who's in your CRM, it records that as a completed activity or a note on the person, so a rep who opens the record sees what marketing already said. When the prospect replies that they're busy until after their budget review in March, Kite schedules a new follow-up for March and adds a note saying why.
Learn from won and lost leads
Kite reads your closed leads in Nutshell to understand why deals are won and lost. Each closed lead has an outcome, such as Won or Lost, and Nutshell lets your team attach the competitors involved in each one. Kite reads those outcomes, the competitors, the products on each lead, and the notes your team wrote along the way.
That history changes what Kite does next. If one competitor keeps showing up on lost leads, Kite can write a comparison page against them, answer the objection on your pricing page, or add the point to your next email campaign. If won leads cluster around one product, Kite leans your messaging toward it. It saves each pattern to your team's knowledge base so later work starts from it.
Kite can also close the loop on the records themselves. When a rep tells Kite that Acme signed, Kite marks the lead won. When a lost deal comes back to life, Kite reopens the lead.
Find which sources and campaigns bring in revenue
Kite uses Nutshell's lead reports to measure your marketing by revenue, not just by lead count. The reports cover new leads, won and lost leads, forecasts, and attribution, and Kite can break them down by the lead sources it and your team recorded. It can also read the quotes and invoices attached to leads to see what each won deal was worth.
Say your webinars produced 60 leads last quarter and your comparison pages produced 15. If the comparison-page leads closed at three times the rate and twice the deal size, Kite tells you so and proposes more comparison pages before another webinar. It can run that check every month and send you the results each time.
Turn your Nutshell contacts into campaign audiences
Kite builds email audiences from the people already in Nutshell. It can search your people and companies, pull everyone with a given tag, or use one of the saved filters your team already built in Nutshell, such as "Open leads in the Midwest" or "Customers on the annual plan."
Kite then writes each email from what it knows about the person and their company. It sends the campaign from your team's Kite address or a connected email product once you approve it. Afterward, it logs what was sent on each person's record, so your reps see the campaign when they open Nutshell.
What Kite reads and changes in Nutshell
Kite reads your records, history, reports, and account setup, and it writes people, companies, leads, notes, activities, and the fields and sources its work needs. The lists below separate the two.
Information Kite can read
- People and companiesKite searches and filters them, reads their details and custom fields, and uses them to avoid duplicates and build campaign audiences.
- LeadsKite reads each lead's description, value, pipeline, stages, outcome, competitors, products, and custom fields, so it knows where each opportunity stands and why it closed the way it did.
- Notes, activities, and tasksKite reads the notes and activities on a record, along with the tasks your team assigned, for context before outreach and for patterns across deals.
- ReportsKite reads Nutshell's lead reports, including new leads, wins and losses, forecasts, and attribution, and the quotes and invoices attached to leads.
- Recent changesKite reads Nutshell's activity feed to see what changed in your account and when.
- Account setupKite reads your pipelines and stages, lead sources, tags, outcomes, competitors, products and product categories, industries, territories, markets, company types, activity types, saved filters, forms, and users, so its records match how your team already works.
Information Kite can create or change
- People and companiesKite creates them, updates their details, and removes a duplicate or restores a deleted record when you ask.
- LeadsKite creates leads, sets their pipeline, updates their description, value, and other fields, marks them won or lost, and reopens a closed lead.
- Notes and activitiesKite adds notes to people, companies, and leads, logs completed activities, and schedules calls, meetings, and emails.
- TasksKite updates an existing task's title, description, or due date.
- Fields, tags, and sourcesKite creates custom fields for companies and leads, new tags, and new lead sources.
How Kite connects to Nutshell
Add an API key for your Nutshell account. Kite uses the access granted to that key. Nutshell isn't one of Kite's built-in tools, so you'll need your own Nutshell account for this work. When a job first needs Nutshell, Kite asks you to connect it, in the Kite web app or in Slack.
The research behind each prospect comes from Kite's built-in sources, such as Apollo, so you don't need a separate data provider. You can start with the result you want: "Find 30 companies like our best customers, add them to Nutshell for Marcus, and schedule a call with each one next week." Kite already knows your positioning, customers, and competitors from its research on your business. It reads your Nutshell setup, proposes the list, the owner, the tag, and whether to open leads, and starts writing records once you confirm.
How-to guides using Nutshell
- How to add a qualified prospect list to Nutshell Kite checks each prospect still holds their role, scores their fit, looks for them in Nutshell, and adds them as people under their companies with a note on why each one fits. It opens leads only for prospects who are real opportunities.
Where Nutshell fits in Kite's marketing work
Nutshell is where a finished lead list goes to work. Kite finds and qualifies the companies and people, then writes them into Nutshell as linked people and companies with the research in a note and an owner who knows they're coming.
Nutshell supplies the audience and keeps the record. Kite pulls the right people from a tag or saved filter, writes and sends the campaign, and logs what went out on each person so sales can see it.
When someone fills out a form on a site Kite hosts or emails your team's Kite address, Kite researches them and compares them with your ideal customer profile. A good fit goes into Nutshell as a person and a lead in your new-business pipeline, with the source recorded, Kite's findings in a note, and a same-day call scheduled for whoever handles inbound.
Common questions
How is Kite different from Nutshell's own marketing tools?
Nutshell includes its own tools for email marketing and web forms, and they work on the people already in your account. Kite works from outside the CRM. It researches your market, decides which companies are worth pursuing, and brings them into Nutshell with the reason and the next step attached. It also takes what Nutshell knows about won and lost leads back out and turns it into website pages, comparison pages, and campaigns.
Can Kite keep my Nutshell records up to date?
Yes. Ask Kite to recheck everyone with a given tag every month, and it confirms each person still holds their role, updates the job title or company when something changed, and adds a note saying what changed and where it found it. It reports what it updated after each run.