We’ve all fallen in the ‘100+ unread emails’ black hole before. It’s an overwhelming and sometimes haunting experience. [clickToTweet tweet=”Here are 10 marvelous tools that will help ensure your email inbox doesn’t swallow you whole.” quote=”Here are 10 marvelous tools that will help ensure the email galaxy doesn’t swallow you whole.” theme=”style3″]Here are 10 marvelous tools that will help ensure the email galaxy doesn’t swallow you whole.
When it comes to handling email insanity, SaneBox knows best. Using smart algorithms that automatically filter out unimportant email from your inbox based on your past behavior, the tool helps keep your priorities in check.
Key advantage: SaneBox divides your inbox into smart priority-based folders such as SaneLater, which includes emails that can wait, SaneBlackHole, which contains emails you no longer want to receive, and SaneNoReplies, which includes emails you sent that haven’t received a reply yet. This allows you to dedicate your time and attention only to the emails the matter.
Newsletters are the root of all evil. Every time we subscribe to one, we end up to 20, only to find that we just read one. UnrollMe helps you avoid this mess of regret. The tool allows you to clean up your inbox by instantly unsubscribing from all newsletters you don’t want.
Key advantage: Unroll Me allows you to see a list of all your subscription emails so you can unsubscribe from all the ones you don’t want at once. Also, it combines all of the subscriptions you do want in one email called The Rollup that appears in your inbox once a day at the time you choose.
Although IFTT is more of a general productivity tool that works with a variety of services, it’s one of the best tools out there to make email management an extremely productive process. Using what they call Applets, IFTT connects the different platforms you use in an automated way to avoid you having to do manual tasks.
Whether it’s automatically updating your phone’s wallpaper from your favorite Instagram account or getting a text when a specific person emails you, IFTT can do anything and everything.
Key advantage: IFTT can automatically save email attachments from Gmail to Google Drive, tell Google Assistant to trigger an emergency email blast, schedule reminders for your starred emails, and do just about everything else you can automate in your inbox.
Developed by Gmail, the email management tool was built on everything Gmail learned about how their users interact with the service. Inbox is an excellent way to organize your emails using a task-oriented approach. The tool groups emails into neat Bundles that help you navigate them easily according to category or task. It also provides you with a Snooze option so you can silence the emails that don’t matter the most right now until you have time for them.
Key advantage: Inbox helps make your emails easy to navigate through Bundles, Highlights that preview important updates without you having to open the message, and Reminders that incorporate your to-do list into your inbox.
Voted the number one app for Gmail on Product Hunt, Sortd is one of the best tools to organize your inbox. It transforms the mess that is your inbox into neatly organized lists that put together your email conversations, tasks, and priorities all in one place. It also does this directly from Gmail without you being directed to another app. As they’ve put it, Sortd is “a smart skin that lives inside Gmail.” It’s also available on mobile which is super handy.
Key advantage: Sortd prevents important emails from getting lost in the undocumented black hole we talked about because it organizes them into priority-based lists and merges them with the tasks on your to-do list.
If you struggle with scheduling your emails in Gmail, Boomerang is the tool for you. It allows you to schedule emails to be automatically delivered at any time, even when you don’t have an internet connection.
Key advantage: Boomerang makes automatically scheduling emails and setting up reminders quite easy. It also allows you to schedule certain emails to magically return to the top of your inbox at a later time when you need them.
If you tend to forget to follow up on specific emails, FollowUpThen is what you need in your life right now. It’s a brilliantly simple tool that allows you to schedule reminders to follow up on emails after a specific period. You can use it to remind other people to follow up on emails as well.
Key advantage: FollowUpThen lets you schedule reminders by merely emailing “followupthen.com.” So you don’t have to install or download anything to use it, and you can use it on any device. For example, when you type “4days@followupthen” in the bcc field and send the email, you get a reminder precisely four days later without your original recipient being notified.
If you have trouble managing more than one Gmail account, Checker Plus is a tool you should try out. The Chrome extension is the fastest way to manage multiple Gmail accounts without having to open them all individually.
Key advantage: Checker Plus allows you to get desktop notifications without opening Gmail in a browser. It also gives you the option to read or listen to an email without opening Gmail. So it can read an email out loud to you while you’re working on something else.
If you work in sales or any other industry where you can benefit from knowing useful information about the people you email, HubSpot Sales is an excellent email tracking tool. The Chrome extension allows you to know who opens your emails, when, how many times and from where. It also provides you with contact information about whom you’re emailing that pops up when you open an email thread; this includes past contact history, social media content and mutual connections.
Key advantage: HubSpot Sales tracks your emails through Gmail and lets you get live notifications the second someone opens your email or opens an attachment so you can follow up with them in a relevant and timely manner.
If you struggle with an overly spammed inbox, MailDrop could be your savior. The tool allows you to create a disposable email address to use when you don’t want to give out your real email address.
Key advantage: MailDrop saves your inbox from drowning in a variety of spam emails. You can use it when you want to sign up for a website but worried that it might share your email address with advertisers. You can also use it when you have to provide an email address to a mobile app that you don’t want to get messages from or when you have to give your email address to a company that doesn’t have the world’s best security.
Has your email chaos got in you in trouble before? Share your experiences with us in the comments below.
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