Email Productivity Apps: The Secret to Getting 5 Extra Hours Each Week

Would you believe busy people still love email. Emails remain the most “preferred” channels of formal online communication.

However, email can take up a lot of unnecessary time, if you let it. Spam, messages from coworkers, re-reading emails, not following up, these are all factors working against you and sapping your precious time each day. But there is a way to get some of that time back using a few gmail hacks and the email productivity apps mentioned here. Let's explore some of them.

Research suggests that, on average, workers receive 74 emails in a workday while sending around 26. This shows just how badly your inbox gets cluttered each day.

So what are the best email productivity apps and extensions available to enhance email productivity?

Read on to delve into how email drains your valuable time, and also discover how email productivity apps can help you claim back hours each week while being more productive.

Gmelius

Website: https://gmelius.com

Gmelius is a Gmail extension I've been using daily since 2016, it's my top choice as an email productivity app and comes bundled with some powerful email features. Most notably you are able to create automations, schedule meetings visually, create quick-reply templates with dynamic variables like dates, CC email, reply address, first names, email body message and more. Plus it has some really powerful collaborative features for teams using shared in boxes .

Integration: Works seamlessly with Gmail or Google workspace as an extension that sits neatly on your sidebar as well as in the email composer toolbar.

Best Features

• Set Follow-up reminders - set in how many days you'd like to be reminded if there is no reply.
• Meeting Scheduler - No more back and forth with emails like "does this time work for you?"), wasting time, trying to find a suitable time. With it's calendar integration you can show people visually when you're available and allow them to pick their preferred slot. The meeting is then created automatically and sent to your calendar. Check it out here
• Email templates - quickly respond to emails using a dynamic template that will update things like the CC field, subject line, email message, etc all by adding a hashtag to the subject line when you're writing your reply.
• Tracks email communication - know when people have opened your email
• Lets you automate email operations - workflows and automation with conditions allows you to organise your email with ease.
• Offers a shared inbox - great for collaborative work or when using shared email accounts
• Available on web and mobile - seamlessly works alongside Gmail or Google workspace for web or mobile. They also have a new Gmelius mobile app for Android and iOS

Pricing: Starting at $9/month while the free trial is also available.

Right Inbox

Website: https://www.rightinbox.com

Discover the ultimate email productivity tool for professionals - Right Inbox for Gmail! With over 250,000+ satisfied users, this powerful extension seamlessly integrates with Gmail, enhancing your email experience. Track who opens and clicks your emails, set automatic follow-up reminders, and schedule emails to be sent later.

Create personalized email templates, add private notes for your eyes only, and never miss a follow-up with email sequences. Say goodbye to repetitive typing with one-click templates and enjoy the convenience of scheduling emails in different time zones.

Boost your email productivity and efficiency with Right Inbox for Gmail.

Best Features:

• "lightweight" extension for enhanced email productivity
• Sets follow up reminders with ease so
• Lets you create and save different types of email signatures
• Create automatic follow-ups
• Supported only on the web

It is useful for those working in the sales arena and other professionals who work with email is their go to communication tool.

Pricing: It offers free for up to 10 emails a month. Above that, it charges $7.95 per month for unlimited emails.

Front

Website: https://front.com/product

Front is the ultimate email productivity tool for professionals that seamlessly integrates with Gmail, offering features such as email tracking, follow-up reminders, email scheduling, personalised templates, and more.

It is designed to help professionals and teams deliver exceptional service at scale by centralizing all customer conversations and providing a collaborative workspace. Which makes it great for ecommerce customer service teams.

With Front, you can say goodbye to tab juggling and manual work, and instead, wow every customer with fast, accurate, and human responses.

Its powerful features like automatic message routing, clear ownership assignment, and tag-based organisation make it easy to streamline your customer communication and optimize workflows, ultimately boosting customer satisfaction.

Discover how Front can revolutionize your customer support and communication processes today.

Best Features

• Excellent collaboration features
• Boost productivity and collaboration for your team
• Smart email automation
• Sync with most Calendars
• Tracks conversation
• Provides detailed analytics and insights
• Available on web and mobile

Pricing: Starts at $19 per month.

Polymail

Website: https://polymail.io/product

Polymail, an excellent Gmail productivity tool, offers stunning features to enhance the productivity of Gmail and Outlook, besides supporting Salesforce CRM. It is one of the best email productivity apps for professionals, teams and sales users.

Download Polymail now and experience the ultimate email productivity tool for professionals! With Polymail, you can save 4 hours a week managing your email, power up your conversations with intelligent automation, and work more efficiently with features like email tracking, contact profiles, and follow-up reminders. Say goodbye to email clutter and hello to organized communication with tools for sharing conversations, inline comments, and @mentions.

Polymail is trusted by leading companies and has received rave reviews from over 10,000 users.

Best features

• It lets you share your calendar availability
• Offers calendar and CRM integration (Salesforce CRM)
• Effective team collaboration
• Contact Management
• Powerful email templates
• Supports enhanced automation and workflows
• Available as an app and on web

Pricing: The basic account costs $10.

Hiver

Website: https://hiverhq.com/google-workspace-helpdesk

Hiver is a Gmail-based helpdesk software that helps customer service and ecommerce teams deliver fast and meaningful customer support. It allows teams to assign, track, and collaborate on customer emails, as well as run advanced analytics and automations, all from within the Gmail interface.

Best Features

• A powerful helpdesk solution that's integrated with Gmail, so you can manage all your customer conversations in one place.
• Tools to help you streamline your customer support workflow, such as email routing, collaboration features, and automation rules.
• Advanced analytics and reporting to help you track your team's performance and identify areas for improvement.
• Offers AI-bot for workflow automation
• Excellent team collaboration features
• Tracks conversation and provides robust analytics
• Multichannel support
• Integrates well with productivity software
• Web and mobile

Pricing: It charges $19 to $69 per user.

Boomerang for Outlook

Website: https://www.boomerangoutlook.com/

Boomerang is a productivity tool for Gmail and Outlook that helps you save time and stay organized. With Boomerang, you can schedule emails to send later, get reminders if emails don’t receive a response, and add a calendar assistant.

If you're looking for a way to be more productive with your email, Boomerang is a great option to consider. It's easy to use and offers a variety of features that can help you save time and get more done.

Best Features

• Cheap, simple, lightweight and easy to use
• Set reminders if no response is received
• Send messages quickly
• Great app for organizing emails
• “Inbox pause” feature that lets you send and receive emails at your convenience
• A multi-purpose app that offers all useful aspects of email management
• Web and mobile

It is helpful for corporate communication, professionals, and those needing to manage emails extensively.

Pricing: Free trial available. The personal plan charges $4.99 per month (billed annually).

How do emails drain away your precious time?

Emails are a necessity but the use up precious time and energy. It's easy to squander time while reading, replying, and organising all your emails.

Consider this scenario: You send an email to one individual, and in turn, you receive a response.

Drafting a message and reading the response takes, say, 3 minutes on average. This is to one person.

If you send and receive emails from 15 persons in a day:

Total time spent = 15 x 3 = 45 minutes (at least). If you send 20 emails to 15 people, 15x20x3 = 900 minutes!

If some emails take longer to write or need longer replies, they use up more of your time and energy. Also, because you get so many emails from these people, your inbox looks messy.

Among the many emails you receive daily, there could be spam, promotions, and more, which need to be dealt with separately. All this causes a lot of draining of your time and effort.

Also, think about being open when you send emails. Adding CC to emails can make work less efficient, and using BCC can be inefficient by including people who don't actually reply or give feedback to the sender.

These are some of the primary ways email drains the precious time, effort, and, therefore, the productivity of employees.

→ Read Also: Unusual Gmail Tricks & Email Productivity Tips

What are email productivity apps? What are their features and benefits?

At its most basic, email productivity apps are feature-rich apps that offer a hassle-free and fulfilling experience by automating tasks, helping you de-clutter your inbox, and seamlessly integrating with other communication and collaboration tools.

There are several email productivity apps that help simplify work and streamline email communication.

Benefits and Features

While different email productivity apps offer diverse features and associated benefits, some of the common features include:

• Common inbox that lets you see multiple accounts at one location
• Great for organizing emails
• Option to sort your emails and delete unwanted emails
• Web and mobile enablement
• Team collaboration options
• Reminders and follow-ups
• Conversation tracking
• Analytics
• Auto-archiving of specific or older messages

How do these email productivity apps help online professionals and e-commerce owners?

Email management is an important aspect of any business, and e-commerce is no exception. Quite often, online professionals and e-commerce owners spend much of their otherwise productive time sending, receiving, and responding to emails.

Email productivity apps help you in multiple ways.

#1. First, you can choose to respond at your convenience using the tools listed above.

#2. Second, you have the option to manage your teams effectively and let them collaborate, as this feature is available in most email productivity apps. Your team members can communicate from their own place, saving time and effort.

#3. Third, the auto-archival feature lets your older or important messages be managed separately while ensuring that you don’t lose any important new ones.

#4. Fourth, as an eCommerce store owner, you might be using certain other apps like accounting, etc. Most of these email productivity apps gel well with other software that you are already using, allowing for seamless integration. Therefore, you don’t need to do away with those applications.

#5. Fifth, sifting through hundreds of customer emails daily can be daunting. These apps relieve you by letting you sort and delete conveniently. Finally, most tools support AI bot automation for workflows and robust analytics that let you track and monitor customer behavior.

Wrapping up

As your business grows, you will need to communicate and collaborate faster and in a more efficient manner. Email productivity apps let you focus on your tasks while they handle all your email management processes. No more missed opportunities or emails slipping through the cracks.

In particular, for e-commerce businesses with growing competition, keeping track of customer correspondence becomes vitally important.

Try one of these apps and potentially save yourself at least 5 extra hours each week!