Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Contact management is where a CRM either remains effective or becomes overwhelming. folk CRM and Brevo are prime examples.
Social selling exists at the intersection of your CRM and your network. If your tool can't keep pace with LinkedIn activities, comments, and warm introductions, you not only lose visibility — you risk losing deals to teams that maintain closer relationships.
folk and Clarify both position themselves as modern, relationship-centric CRMs. Clarify emphasizes converting unstructured interactions into organized records, while folk offers teams a flexible, social-selling-oriented environment to manage contacts, signals, and the sales pipeline all in one location.
In this comparison, we'll explore how each CRM facilitates genuine social selling workflows, enabling you to determine which one aligns best with your team's approach to building and nurturing relationships.
Why is a social selling CRM essential in 2026?
Most B2B deals don't initiate with a cold email or a demo request; they begin with a LinkedIn comment, a repost, a direct message, or a subtle profile visit. If your CRM fails to capture these signals and associate them with real people and pipelines, your team operates in the dark while your competitors cultivate relationships openly.
A social selling CRM provides a central hub for transforming those interactions into structured, actionable insights: who engaged, their origins, interests, and how close they are to making a purchase. By reframing LinkedIn from a mere 'nice-to-have awareness' tool, it evolves into a measurable, repeatable function within your revenue strategy.
With a social selling CRM, your team can:
✔️ Identify buying signals from likes, comments, and profile views, converting them into follow-ups
✔️ Track which prospects are familiar with you through content versus outbound efforts and adjust messaging accordingly
✔️ Map connections across accounts, champions, and influencers — not just maintain a list of contacts
✔️ Report on deals influenced by social interactions rather than attributing all credit to last-click channels
What is folk CRM?
folk CRM is a contemporary, streamlined CRM designed for teams that interact through email, LinkedIn, and spreadsheets, all within a single shared workspace. It seamlessly connects to Gmail and Outlook for automatic logging of emails and meetings, while its Chrome extension offers a full CRM sidebar right in the inbox for swift updates. Users can easily send personalized sequences, monitor engagement, and link every interaction to contacts, companies, and deals.
What is Brevo?
Brevo, previously known as Sendinblue, is a platform focused on email, SMS, and marketing automation, enhanced with CRM capabilities. It appeals to businesses that emphasize campaigns and contact engagement rather than intricate sales processes. While its CRM features adequately address basic requirements, they fall short of the sophistication found in dedicated sales CRMs.
Feature comparison of folk CRM and Brevo
Profile Enrichment & Lead Insights
folk CRM offers a seamless one-click setup for both Gmail and Outlook. Simply authenticate, and every incoming or outgoing email will be automatically linked to the appropriate contact or deal record. The integrated scheduler logs events directly into your Google or Microsoft calendars and syncs them back to folk’s task list, providing a cohesive timeline of emails and meetings. You can easily send personalized bulk sequences, monitor opens and clicks, and utilize folk’s CRM inbox to respond without the hassle of switching tabs. This native experience reduces context-switching and ensures your team stays aligned on every conversation. For email integration, folk CRM is among the best available!
On the other hand, Brevo lacks support for profile enrichment from social media, with its contact data primarily gathered through forms or email interactions.
Social Listening & Real-Time Alerts
folk CRM employs a direct OAuth connection for Gmail and Outlook, ensuring seamless synchronization. Emails are automatically logged to the appropriate contact or deal as soon as they are sent or received, eliminating any manual effort. Meetings scheduled through folk’s native scheduler are instantly updated in both your calendar and the CRM timeline. Behind the scenes, folk utilizes push-notification webhooks from Google and Microsoft to minimize latency, ensuring that every interaction is recorded within seconds.
In contrast, Brevo lacks social listening and alert features, focusing solely on email, SMS, and transactional marketing tools.
Social Selling: Which channels?
folk CRM’s email sequences feature acts as a robust mail-merge and campaign tool, allowing you to create multi-step sequences with personalized templates and scheduled rules. You can easily enroll contact lists directly from folk’s interface. Plus, opens and replies sync back instantly to each contact’s timeline, while detailed performance reports help you optimize subject lines and content for maximum engagement—all without needing any add-ons!
In contrast, Brevo specializes in email and SMS, lacking social selling capabilities or integration within its product suite.
In‑Context Messaging with Templates & Sequences
folk CRM’s email sequences feature functions as a robust mail-merge and campaign tool, allowing you to create multi-step sequences with personalized templates and scheduling rules. You can easily enroll contact lists directly from folk’s interface. Opens and replies sync back to each contact’s timeline in real-time. Additionally, detailed performance reports enable you to refine subject lines and content for optimal engagement, all without needing any add-ons!
In contrast, Brevo lacks support for templated messaging or browser-based sequences, limiting campaigns to email and SMS formats.
Activity & Engagement Tracking
Folk CRM automatically incorporates open and click-tracking pixels into all outgoing emails, providing real-time metrics on contact timelines and campaign dashboards. You can choose to disable tracking across the workspace to enhance deliverability, but when activated, you benefit from consolidated reports, link-level click-through rates, and detailed engagement histories for each contact—all without the need for external add-ons.
Engagement tracking encompasses email opens, clicks, and SMS delivery rates; however, social activity is not included in the contact history.
Conclusion
In conclusion, both folk and Brevo offer valuable CRM functionalities tailored to different team needs. Brevo excels in marketing automation, specifically for email and SMS campaigns, making it suitable for businesses focused on engagement. However, for teams prioritizing email integration, automation, and social selling, folk stands out as the optimal choice. With its seamless connections to email platforms and real-time engagement tracking, folk provides a comprehensive environment for nurturing relationships and efficiently managing the sales pipeline.
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