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Sales professionals spend 60% of their working time on tasks other than selling, and the average seller uses eight separate tools to close a deal (Gartner Sales Survey, 2024).
For a fundraiser, two of those tools carry most of the weight: the platform where you research an allocator, and the inbox where you contact them.
Dakota Marketplace now connects directly to your Outlook account. You find the contact, write the email, and send it from the record you were already looking at.
In this article, we'll cover how the integration works, what it changes for your fundraising workflow, and what it can and cannot access in your mailbox.
How The Marketplace and Outlook Email Integration Works
Connect your own Microsoft 365 account from inside the Dakota Marketplace composer. That is the entire setup, and it takes a few clicks.
From then on, email goes out from your own mailbox. The message is sent from your real address, not a Dakota relay or a shared sending service. It appears in your Outlook Sent Items automatically, and replies come back to your own inbox in the normal thread.
The earlier version of Dakota's email functionality required your technology team to configure it before anyone could send a message. This one does not. No ticket, no administrator project, no waiting in a queue.
Why It Matters for Fundraisers
The value is in the steps you stop taking.
Research and outreach happen in one sitting. Filter for the allocators you want, read the profile and the investment history, then write the email with that context still in front of you rather than reconstructed in a separate window.
Addresses come from data your team maintains. Recipient suggestions in the To, Cc, and Bcc fields pull from Dakota Marketplace contact records, not from whatever is stale in your address book.
Your record stays intact without effort. Every message lands in Sent Items automatically, so there is no separate logging step to remember once the day is over.
These are small savings individually, and they compound across a target list. Gartner found that 42% of sellers feel overwhelmed by the number of tools they use, and that overwhelmed sellers are 45% less likely to hit quota (Gartner Sales Survey, 2024). Removing a handoff between two tools people already use is a faster fix than consolidating a technology stack.
Curious what this looks like on your own target list? Talk to an expert here!
What The Marketplace and Outlook Integration Does Not Do
Dakota sends mail. It does not read it.
The integration has no access to your existing inbox, calendar, contacts, attachments, OneDrive, or SharePoint. Because messages travel through your own Microsoft 365 tenant, they stay subject to your firm's retention, eDiscovery, and DLP policies. Your administrator can switch the connection off for a single user or for everyone, at any time, without involving Dakota.
If your IT or compliance team wants the full detail, Dakota has a security and privacy FAQ covering permissions, storage, and revocation. Ask your account team for a copy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need IT to set this up? No. You connect your own Microsoft 365 account from inside the Dakota Marketplace composer in a few clicks. If your firm requires administrator approval for third-party applications, your Entra administrator approves it once and everyone else connects without prompts.
Do emails sent from Dakota appear in my Outlook Sent Items? Yes. Messages are sent through your own mailbox, so they go out from your real address and are written to your Sent Items automatically. Replies are delivered to your own inbox as normal.
Can Dakota read my existing emails, calendar, or contacts? No. The integration can send mail as you, and nothing else. It has no access to your existing mail, calendar, contacts, attachments, OneDrive, or SharePoint, and your administrator can revoke the connection at any time.
Connect Your Outlook and Dakota Marketplace
Email via Outlook is available now. Open any contact record in Dakota Marketplace, click into the composer, and connect your account when prompted. Your next piece of outreach goes out from your own address without a second window.
If you want a walkthrough for your team, or the security FAQ for your IT group, we're glad to set that up.
Talk to an expert here!
