Today’s Wonder Tools post aims to reduce your email frustration. Following last week’s post about tools for snail mail, this week I’m offering a small, curated set of tools for making your inbox a less stressful spot.
Read on for:
4 useful email apps — Mixmax, Boomerang, Chuck & Reverb Record 🎨
5 useful Gmail add-ons 👩🏫
Bonus reads 🙋🏽
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MixMax = add useful features to Gmail
Mixmax is the most useful single Gmail add-on I’ve used. Before I switched to Superhuman to read and respond to my Gmail more quickly, I used Mixmax daily within my Gmail inbox. Mixmax has lots of free features. So you don’t need a paid plan unless you want to use it for things like professional sales tracking or to send a sequence of emails to a large group. Among the free features I like:
Schedule delivery of your messages and get read receipts so you know if your email was received
Get reminders about emails that haven't received a response
Send meeting scheduling polls within Gmail
Send interactive messages from Gmail with polls, embedded PDFs, buttons (for calls to action) and fancy link previews
Here’s a 2-minute video I made a while back about how useful Mixmax can be.
Boomerang = helpful follow-up reminders
Given that 300 billion email messages are sent each week, it’s not a surprise when an email gets ignored. To make sure your notes aren’t lost in the shuffle, Boomerang makes it easy to follow-up on any message that hasn’t gotten a reply. It offers a bunch of other useful tricks too, like:
Snooze Gmails you’re too busy for now
Get read receipts to confirm that your notes were delivered
Offer confirmable calendar times easily within email
AI writing assistant to make your emails more concise and readable
Boomerang now has versions for Gmail and Outlook, on iOS and Android.
Chuck = saves you time on email
⏰ Chuck saves you time. It sorts your email by sender or day, so you can manage batches of messages efficiently. A handy alternative to the usual haphazard inbox flow of email. Recommended by the insightful journalist P. Kim Bui.
Record Reverb = add voice to your email
🎙 Record Reverb adds your personality to your email. It lets you record a quick audio message and then put the link in your email. Listen to this quick example I recorded to hear 3 reasons I like this audio approach.
5 useful Gmail add-ons
Evernote for Gmail — Evernote has seen a massive facelift recently. Lots of you have told me you still use this classic filing app to organize your notes, or as a searchable archive of old documents. If you’re a fan of Evernote, this simple free add-on for Gmail makes it easy to file important info and ideas from your inbox directly into your Evernote library.
Zoom for Gmail — This lets you launch a video meeting right from Gmail, speeding up your workflow
Slack for Gmail — Send a message into Slack to discuss with team members
Trello for Gmail — I like this one because it lets you quickly create a card out of any email message on any of your Trello boards
Mail Merge for Gmail — When you want to send personalized emails to a list of people, this is a great free solution. Free for up to 1500 emails per day. Put names and any other personalized info you want to send out in a Google spreadsheet. Then create an email in Gmail with placeholders where you want the personalized info. Surprisingly easy.
If you want more, here’s a nice list of 22 useful Gmail add-ons, with a helpful step-by-step guide to installing them by Matteo Duo.