Every morning I stare out into a sea of emails. I know that if I’m not careful, those bits and bytes of text and images could end up overwhelming me.
It’s a familiar sight for any modern small business owner, I’d imagine. Email, after all, has become an indispensable tool for running and growing a business.
But it’s a double-edged sword, and email management has become one of those rare corporate buzzwords: trite but true, with real, tangible effects on your business.
After all, if you don’t manage your inbox wisely, you stand to waste many precious minutes that’ll be better spent focusing on the things that’ll actually help your business grow.
You end up treading water, at best; drowning, at worst.
If you use Gmail, you don’t have to look that far for help with email management. Google has built in a few useful albeit experimental tools that let you take better control of your inbox.
Here, for my money, are the best and most useful Gmail Labs options available now.
Multiple Inboxes
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the flood of emails that pour into your inbox everyday, especially when you’re just returning from a long vacation like the Christmas holidays.
Gmail’s powerful search function can help make sense of the mess, but it’s still just a temporary band aid. Not letting clutter build up in your inbox in the first place is more efficient.
Multiple Inboxes in Gmail can appear above, below, or to the right of your primary inbox.The multiple inboxes feature in Gmail Labs has been around for years, but it still remains one of the best options for taking back control of your inbox.
Enabling this feature lets Gmail automatically sort messages into a number of sub-inboxes according to sorting rules that you set yourself.
For example, you could have one inbox pane for all emails labeled as “To-Do”, another for those labeled as “Done”, and yet one more for those labeled as “For Reading”.
You can use Label search strings for Gmail’s multiple inboxes.If you apply any of the three mentioned labels to an email in your primary inbox, they would then be moved to the appropriate inbox pane when you refresh your browser.
If you’ve connected other email addresses to your Gmail account (like emails to your sales and support addresses, for example), you can also use multiple inboxes to keep everything “together yet separate”.
You can categorize emails according to which address they were sent.You can create individual labeled panes for all emails that are sent to support@company.com or sales@company.com, for example, so you can always stay on top of everything new and important without having to waste time rooting around in a cluttered inbox.
Note that you need to disable Gmail’s tabbed email categories (Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums) before you can enable multiple inboxes.
Preview Pane
Subject lines aren’t usually enough for me to figure out which email I should read first, so I often rely on message snippets for context.
Sometimes, however, even those aren’t enough. The ability to preview an email without having to actually open it is one of the things I like about Outlook.
Fortunately for us Gmail users, this feature can easily be replicated by enabling the preview pane option in Gmail Labs.
Preview Pane and Message List in Gmail.Once enabled, the preview pane lets you view an email’s contents without having to navigate out of your message list.
You not only read your emails faster, you also get a more informed idea of which emails are worth spending time on without losing track of where you are on the message list.
You can also set how Gmail treats previewed emails. By default, previewing an email for over three seconds will mark that email as read.
Note that you can have both preview pane and multiple inboxes enabled at the same time, but the preview pane will only be available for your main inbox.
Calendar Gadget
It’s not the flashiest of the Gmail Labs features, but the calendar gadget can be a lifesaver when you need to keep a close eye on what you have scheduled.
Enabling the calendar gadget in Gmail Labs adds a small calendar and agenda list under the left-hand sidebar menu in Gmail.
Calendar Gadget and Agenda List in Gmail.You can quickly add tasks and events to your calendar from this tiny gadget. Pretty handy when used with the preview pane, since you’re able to quickly see whether you have an open slot in your schedule for whatever new task you need to do.
And of course, anything you add to the calendar will immediately show up in your connected WORKetc calendar once you sync your calendars, and vice versa.
If a prospective client asks you to call their office to discuss a sales opportunity, for example, you can easily turn that email into a new contact and sales lead with the WORKetc Gmail gadget, create a new calendar event for your call, and sync your calendar so the event you just created shows up on the Gmail calendar gadget.
This way you always know what you have on your plate as soon as you open your Gmail inbox, letting you plan ahead accordingly.
Make Gmail Do More
All of the Gmail Labs features I mention above are very useful in taking control of the raging sea of emails that flood your inbox on a daily basis.
It’s not enough to just calm that sea and keep your head above water, however. To really make your Gmail account do more for you and your business, you’ll need WORKetc’s Gmail gadget.
The Gmail gadget lets you act quickly and turn any piece of communication that reaches your inbox into an actionable item in WORKetc, effectively letting you manage your entire business without ever leaving Gmail.
Using the Gmail gadget, you can:
- turn any email into a sales lead, task, project update, or support ticket;
- assign created items to the most appropriate person;
- create timesheets without leaving your inbox;
- attach new emails to any existing items in WORKetc.
The gadget works with the preview pane Gmail Labs feature, so whenever you come across an important email, you can immediately view and turn it into an actionable item without losing track of your place on your message list.
We’re also working to make the Gmail gadget even better, so stay tuned for additional details about the new and improved Gmail gadget’s open beta in the coming weeks.
COMMENTS
We’ve optimised our Gmail with a whole bunch of automated rules – filters that automatically clean up the inbox from marketing messages that get taken out of inbox and put into folders for later viewing. I’m also pretty strict on anything new that comes in and quickly try to apply new filters to keep unimportant emails out of the inbox.
The Gmail calendar tip above is a really good one too 🙂 Thanks guys for a great post.
I knew about the side calendar (use it all the time), but I didn’t know about the preview pane. I’m giving that a try right now and I’ll see how it goes. Other pro-tip: You can also do a lot of filtering with gmail’s settings to auto-label things from certain emails or containing certain words, etc.
After reading the blog, I made three changes to my gmail that I never knew was possible! The side calendar is a must because I hate having to toggle back and forth between tabs to view what is on my schedule while I’m in the middle of an email. The chats being moved to the right side of my screen is more pleasing to my eye. But lastly, my favorite change is the preview pane. THIS WAS GAME CHANGER. I often revert to my mac mail app only because I find it easier to look at the emails. I always hated how I had to scroll to the bottom of the screen in my gmail to view the most recent email in the chain and often it was easily readable. I love that I can now see them right at the top of the screen and I can quickly read through the tread. Thank you for this great blog post! I’ll be sharing my finds with my team mates.
Huge help! I didn’t know about the labeling panes. I find that is a huge help going into the same inbox, just different email addresses.
The preview window helps with what needs to be read and what doesn’t.
Also, I do use the WORKetc email gadget at the bottom. It is nice using it for inputting new leads into the system.
Great tips!
Here’s another: When you write an email, the subject line should contain a succinct recap of the what the email is about.
Virtually all of our client emails start with their domain name. Email labels (and WORK[etc]!) are set up to be domain name-centric. Then a quick summary of what the email is about. For example:
SampleNameHere.com 20170115 Mtg/Joe & Keith – Marketing Ideas & To-Dos
I try to keep the body of the email succinct, yet personable. That way, when I cc: our support@OnYourMark.com email – used for WORK[etc] – our team immediately knows what site (and therefore, which client), the to-dos, deadlines, the client contact, and a bit more.
Where the “p.s.” might go, I’ll often include our job ticket priority as OYM 7 for example. (We’ve updated from the standard ‘low, medium, high’ WORK[etc] priorities to OYM 1, 2, 3….8, 9, 10 OnYourMark priorities.)
Just did a free (part of a 30-day free trial) LinkedIn Learning Center course (an excellent deal, with lots of tools for WORK[etc] SMB customers) on Time Management, followed by another on Using Google Calendar as a time management tool. The instructor encouraged overlaid calendars for planning purposes, and batching email and other routine tasks into time blocks for “Processing.” It’s a virtual (no pun intended) necessity if you don’t want to drown in your own email. Blocking email time is helping me to catch up, and to filter.
Still, that training did not mention the use of the calendar on the email page!
We’ve got a loooooong way to go. Haven’t transitioned to doing tickets right from my own gmail yet. But every tip helps. Thanks.
I’m a big fan of the Multiple Inboxes feature ever since I read Getting Things Done. I particularly like the “Waiting for” inbox to keep track of mails awaiting a reply.
At work we’re using Outlook, good thing WORKetc has an add-in there as well!
Another great blog post! The side calendar is major. I hate having to switch between my email and calendar view, and this little tip solves that annoyance.
I also really think the preview function helps go through email quickly and get you through a week’s worth of email in a timely manner.
Both are great tips that I will definitely share.
Thanks for the useful tips. I thought I was using all of them but missed the multiple inbox option. I will give that a try. I have the preview pane installed but am not seeing it and will investigate that more. The gmail gadget is my primary go to tool. It is intregal to how I work every day. When I receive an actionable email, I immediately use the gadget to turn it into an event or todo that feeds my WORKetc & Google calendars. I attach emails related to leads or projects as needed using the gadget.
I have been using the multiple inbox functionality for a while as it helps our Service Team be across the Service inbox (shared mailbox) as well as their own personal email. Like a few of the other responders below, I didn’t even know about the side calendar and have now implemented this on my own email account and can’t wait to show it to the rest of my staff. Shows that you can always improve the way you are doing something – you just require the knowledge and this blog has given me that knowledge – thankyou!