One of the foundations of Showpad is the ability to share content with customers and prospects. When you share your content, you can track how they engage with it via the information in the Share tab. This lets you follow up on all their interactions at any time. Showpad provides a variety of sharing possibilities.
You can share content from within our apps, email plugins, and via a generated link you can use in your preferred messaging applications and other platforms.
When opening the Share screen on our Windows desktop app and the Web app, the activities of your prospects and customers look different depending on the method you used to share your assets. Let's dig in and discover the differences.
See how it works
Key features
- Sharing via our mobile apps, Windows Desktop app, and Web app will give you all detailed sharing insights per recipients
- Sharing with multiple recipients via the email plugins will give you information about the device platform and browser that was used to open the Share
- Sharing with one recipient via the email plugins will give you all detailed sharing insights
- Sharing via a generated link gives information about the device platform and browser that was used to open the Share
- If you use the Showpad Content Recommendations in Salesforce, you can share via a link, and it shows information about the device platform and browser
- If available and not blocked by the recipient, you see where the Share was opened
- We show you from which platform and device you shared the content
- In cases where the email client blocks images, the email open icon will be highlighted green only after a visit has occurred because the tracking pixel in the email will not register
Note: Apple released iOS 15 in September 2021 preventing sales reps from receiving detailed info whether a mail has been opened or not. This changes how an item is marked as viewed in Showpad. When sending a link to a prospect, and the prospect opens the Share using the Mail app on iOS, the item will only be marked as viewed after the asset is opened.
Note: Due to requirements with our email delivery platform, Shares to recipients who have accented characters in their email address (é, è, ë, ê, ñ, à, etc) will not be deliverable.
This table shows you where and how you can share content using our different platforms. Not all sharing methods are possible on all platforms. See what you can do on your device:
| Platform | iOS | Android | Windows Desktop | Web app | |||||
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| While viewing an asset |  |
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| From the Share screen | |
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| By using Collections | |
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| By generating a link | |
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Note: A recipient must click an asset in an email to trigger an email open. If they only open the email but do not visit any of the shares, an email open will not be indicated in the sharing insights.
See this step by step
Share using our mobile apps, the Windows Desktop app, and the Web app
When the Showpad app is installed on your iOS, Android, Windows device, or by using our Web app, you can share content
- While viewing an asset
- From the Share screen
- As a Collection, which is a custom presentation containing some assets and pages
- By generating a link that you can easily copy and paste in other messaging apps
Sharing from within these apps generates an email that makes tracking a Share easy. In the background, we send separate emails to your contacts. This allows us to give you the most detailed information about your Share. We show you who opened the email, who reshared the content and with whom.
This is how it looks in the Share tab:
In this example, you can see:
- From where the content was shared (Showpad's Android app)
- A general overview on the visits, downloads, and reshares of the assets, with:
- If at least one of the shared assets was opened (1 email opened)
- The total number of times an asset is viewed by someone who clicks on a share link (3 visits)
- The number of assets that have been visited by viewers from the shared content viewer (3 of 3 items viewed)
- How many times it was downloaded (3 downloads)
- How many times it was reshared from the shared content viewer (0 reshares). Note that forwarding the email does not count as reshare.
- A detailed overview on the activity per shared assets, with:
- The total number of times the asset was viewed from the shared content viewer (3 views) and the total amount of time spent on it (14 seconds)
- If an asset has more than one page, you'll see the number of views and time spent per page when clicking on the asset (activity for page 1: 1 view, 5 seconds, activity for page 4: 3 views, 9 seconds)
If you shared an item with multiple pages, such as a PDF or an HTML5 file, you can click the arrow to the right to expand for details on what was viewed and for how long. 
Share using a generated link
Sharing via a generated link is unable to collect detailed sharing information, as it's impossible to track who opened the link. We need an email address in order to know who sent and received the email and in static links, this is not available. In this case, we show you that someone opened the content via a certain platform on a specific browser.
Note: You can generate dynamic links for Outreach and Marketo using Showpad's Chrome extension. This allows you to auto-populate sender and receiver addresses. As a result, we can track more details using this method.
If a Share is reshared from within the Shared Content Viewer, we can track that reshare with all detailed sharing activities.
This is how the Share looks in the Share tab. 
In this example, you can see
- A field that shows the direct link to the content
- That the generated link was opened on a Mac with the Chrome browser at a specific location (BE)
- That one specific file was viewed for 23 seconds
Note: The location of the recipient highly depends on the data we receive. It can trace all the way back to the recipient's internet provider location if detailed information is not available. There are cases when the location is incorrect due to variances in IP lookup services.
Share using our email plugins
You can use our Gmail plugin and Outlook add-in to create a share when you compose an email. Adding assets to your message is easily done by selecting or searching for content. All interactions are being tracked, but because multiple recipients access the same link, we can't pinpoint the interactions to a specific recipient. We will, however, show you the type of device and location if available.
If you email only one contact, we do give all the detailed information on the Share screen, as only one recipient received the Share. If your recipient reshares the Share from within the Shared Content Viewer, we can track that reshare with all detailed sharing activities.
This is how the Share is displayed in the Share tab.
In this example, you see:
- That the assets were shared via Showpad for Gmail
- Test Buyer received the share
- The specific assets that were shared
Share using the Showpad Insights app in Salesforce
If you use Showpad Content Recommendations in Salesforce, you can share content via email or a generated link, and it show information about the OS and browser version.
In this example, you can see
- That the share was generated in our CRM app
- The recipient's email address
- The content was viewed 1 time for 2 seconds
- That the content was not reshared or downloaded
- If you generate the link without sharing with a Contact or Lead, the Share will be handled like a regular link
Share using the Showpad for Chrome browser extension
If you use the Showpad for Chrome browser extension to share content, you can see which social media, dynamic link, or generic link option was used to send the share.
In the example above, you can see
- That the link was shared from WhatsApp using the Chrome extension.
- That one asset from the share was viewed for 5 seconds by an Android user
- The recipient did not reshare or download any of the content
In the example above, you can see
- That the link was shared from the Chrome Extension using a Generic Sharing Link.
- It was shared with multiple people, and their email addresses are shown because the user logged the share to their CRM and input the recipient contacts
- Someone (one of the two recipients listed) viewed the content
Note: For more information regarding our privacy policy, please have a look at our Giving consent to privacy policy article.
Showpad offers a dynamic resource for sharing between parties where customers can view and discuss content sent by people who can then see detail on what was viewed and for how long.
To get started, follow our Guide to using Shared Spaces here.
