When it comes to email, weapon-savvy ninjas know that there are a ton of web tools available to help you get your email management system to operate in exactly the way you want it to. Whether you’re a lover of Gmail, or true to your Outlook account, we’re sharing some of our favorite email tools to help better your inbox experience.
Google Mail Checker
This simple extension for Google Chrome allows you to see the number of unread emails sitting in your Gmail inbox at a quick glance, by keeping an icon and counter in your tool bar. It saves you from checking and rechecking your inbox throughout the day, so that you only need to log in to Gmail when you know you have something there waiting for you.
Email Hunter
This is another really useful extension that can be added to Google Chrome – this time allowing you to retrieve email addresses from a website without having to hunt around for them. The extension offers 150 free searches for each user every month. To search for an email address, simply go onto a website and click the ‘Email Hunter’ button in your browser, and the extension should show you every email address found on the site. The extension also adds an ‘Email Hunter’ button on LinkedIn profiles, for a quick email address search.
Mail Mentor
If you need some general pointers on making your email communications more efficient, you might find MailMentor helpful. After you copy in an email, the site is able to provide you with lots of useful information, including approximately how long it takes to read, and the required reading level of the recipient. It can also point you towards general improvements that you could make, such as shortening paragraphs or simplifying your language. Of course, we don’t expect you to go to this much effort for each email that you send, but trialing it with one or two could provide you with some useful information to improve your email style.
mxHero Toolbox
This one extension enables Gmail users to track emails (including ‘read receipts’ and whether or not links/files have been opened by the recipient). ‘Send Later’ allows you to schedule email deliveries, while ‘Remind Me’ lets you set an email to reappear in your inbox after a certain amount of time. There’s even a ‘Self Destruct’ feature that can be used when sending sensitive information. This is a great catch-all app for Gmail users who want to expand their email functions with a single web extension.
Think we have missed anything? We’d love to hear what you use to optimize your own inboxes! Talk to us on Twitter, @thinkproductive
By Steph Rathbone
Mail Checker is superb! I’d also add Deskun (deskun.com), with email reminders it’s a lifesaver.
How safe is “Unroll.me”??? I was quite keen to try this as a tool, but then realised I need to provide full access to my email account to this “free” service.
How do I know that the security of my email messages is not at risk through this service?
Will appreciate to learn from your insight & experience!
Hi Tom! Thanks for your comment and question. Since writing this post, unroll.me hasn’t received the best feedback, especially around security and we’ve now updated this post, removing unroll.me from the recommended tools. If you’re a macOS user, our Productivity Ninjas recommend MailButler.