7 Tools to Turbocharge Email & Work Efficiency in 2020

How many times have you found yourself under a pile of emails that take hours to sort through? How often do you struggle to quickly find an important message or forget to follow up after an event? How many newsletters do you receive every day that clog your inbox even more?

Email often springs up in productivity articles as an issue that devours your time. And often, this really seems to be the truth. The thing is that email itself is not an issue — it’s a tool that changed the game in communication and created tons of possibilities to quickly send and receive info — but the lack of right email efficiency tools and understanding on how to manage your time are.

So, what tools can you use to boost your email efficiency and effectiveness right away and regain control over your time? Here’s a roundup of our top picks to help you:

• Improve email efficiency (for companies and professionals)
• Keep track of conversations that require follow-ups
• Deal with all the junk mail
• Share big files in your emails
• Get organized with next-level to-do lists
• Keep your team’s mailbox and workflow tidy
• Meet up with your team regardless of your location

Let’s start!

1. Mailbird

Mailbird is the perfect email client for busy people that unifies all your email accounts, personal or business, into a single interface.

It’s not just another management tool that receives emails and allows you to create folders. It is a hub for features and integrations that lets you turn your email into a workstation for online communications, save time, and significantly decrease the number of unnecessary distractions.

What’s Great About Mailbird?

• Managing multiple email accounts easily. You can instantly switch between all your accounts inside the app’s interface or click to use a Unified account and view all your correspondence at once. There’s no need to load different tabs and apps to open your mailboxes when everything can be done in the same app.
• Convenient organization. Remember how Cinderella had to pick up lentils from ashes? That’s what sorting high-priority emails from the junk mail feels like. With Mailbird, you can use color-coded folders and sub-folders to organize your inbox and trash the junk easily. And even more, you can use filters and set rules to automatically sort your incoming mail — and improve your email efficiency and effectiveness significantly.
• Possibility to manage email really quickly. Mailbird has many features intended to save time and help eliminate the “whoopsies.” For example, you can quickly preview messages and attachments, unsend mistaken emails, utilize keyboard shortcuts, and much more.
• Productivity app integrations. A big part of your life lives in emails, be it dinner plans or new contract negotiations, and these important tasks can pile up. Mailbird has great integrations with top productivity tools, such as Asana, Todoist, Wunderlist, and many others that will help you get more done without the excess stress and a desktop full of sticky notes.
• High compatibility. Mailbird works with any kind of email account, plus messengers: Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Twitter. This is not just a convenient feature. It helps you decrease the number of unnecessary distractions and raise productivity. You know what it looks like: you open Facebook or Twitter to check one or two messages, and then you find yourself having lost a full hour reading your news feed. With Mailbird, you don’t need to distract yourself by opening a social network. You can quickly check your incoming messages and get back to work.
• Ease of use. Installing the app is a breeze, as is adding your email account. The setup is intuitive — a clean and easy-to-navigate design. And you can customize the appearance and behavior of the program, from themes and fonts to shortcuts to speed up your work with email.

Any Cons?

• Windows-only. Currently, the app exists only for Windows, but you can expect a Mac version in the future.

Prices

• Free trial: Mailbird is a paid tool you can try out for free with all features available to decide whether it’s your cup of tea.
• Billing options: from $3 to $5 per month, depending on the features, or a one-time payment of $79.

Try it! Download the app and connect it to all your email and messaging accounts to improve your email management efficiency at work and create a healthier relationship with email.

Get Mailbird, the best app to manage multiple email accounts

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2. FollowUp.cc

FollowUp.cc is originally a Chrome extension for setting reminders to keep up with emails that require, well, follow-ups.

What’s Great About FollowUp.cc?

• Possibility to set reminders when you need to follow up, with just one click. You don’t need to keep these small tasks in mind, and you don’t need to put them into your to-do list or a third-party app. You can do it right inside your mailbox — and forget until the day comes.
• An option to set automatic follow-ups. Some of your emails can get lost in your addressee’s inbox, but sending a follow-up message will put your email at the top. In the FollowUp app, you can do this automatically by adding a kind reminder (e.g., “Hey! Just checking in to see if you got a chance to read my email.”) as a template and setting a time for the follow-up message to go out. It’s a great thing to improve email efficiency at work, especially if you often deal with meetings and events.
• Integration with Mailbird that allows using it with any email account. FollowUp.cc is Gmail-only if you use it as is, but if you integrate it with Mailbird it won’t matter which email account you have: it will work for all. And you’ll also be able to view your scheduled follow-ups in your calendar:

Any Cons?

• Limited compatibility. If you use FollowUp.cc as is, you can use it only for Gmail and only in Chrome. But it’s easy to overcome the issue if you use Mailbird. Then, the app will manage your follow-ups inside all your accounts.

Prices

• Free trial period. The app is paid, but you can try it free for 14 days.
• Billing options: from $18 to $40 per month, depending on the features.

Hint: Use Maildbird’s in-built Snooze feature to organize your inbox by snoozing email that can wait until you’re done with high-priority ones, or until it’s time to follow up on that email. You can also use the feature as a sort of calendar, snoozing emailed events until the big date.

Try FollowUp.cc for free

3. Unroll.me

Unroll.me is one of the greatest and simplest tools to boost your email efficiency. The app was created to sniff out all those subscription emails that clutter your inbox and distract you from the higher-priority correspondence. It will produce an alphabetic list of addresses for you to decide which ones to keep, say goodbye to, or add to a Rollup. It’s just one function, but Unroll.me can give your inbox lots of fresh air.

What’s Great About Unroll.me?

• An easy solution for the email overload issue. You don’t need to search for those tiny unsubscribe links in footers, and you don’t need to waste your time answering the “Why do you want to leave us?” questions. You can free up your inbox in seconds.
• It’s simple to use. There are just three buttons for keeping a subscription, deleting, and adding to a Rollup. And that’s all you need.
• Rollup feature. It allows grouping your favorite subscriptions into a bundle to better manage them and also save time.

Any Cons?

• Unroll.me is integrated in Mailbird due to a high demand. However, the owner of the service, Rakuten Technologies, uses customers’ purchase information from commercial emails to measure market trends. This is what makes Unroll.me free. That’s why some people prefer to use Mailbird’s native filters instead of this app.

Hint: A native spam filter is coming soon to Mailbird! Until then, if you prefer not to use Unroll.me due to security concerns, you can set up filters in Mailbird to, for example, send emails you deem as spam into a low-priority or spam folder.

Prices

• It’s free. The company doesn’t charge you for using the app.

Try Unroll.me for free

4. Dropbox

Dropbox is a popular cloud-based platform for storing and sharing files of any size. Why do we put it into a list of game-changing email efficiency tools? If integrated with Mailbird, it can help you save time and effort. For example, you can instantly send one file or a whole folder via email and open access for editing to collaborate on it:

Or manage — and even edit — the files right in the Mailbird app:

What’s Great About Dropbox?

• Possibility to easily search, send, and share files within correspondence. You don’t need to waste your time switching between apps, searching for files, and sharing access. If you often send files to other people, you’ll appreciate the possibility to do all the actions in just one to two clicks right inside your mailbox.
• Unlimited upload size. As long as you have available space, you can upload to Dropbox and share files of any size — and you’ll never see that “your file is too large for an attachment” message that often appears within business correspondence.
• File recovery & version history. Dropbox monitors the changes made to files so you can restore a file to its original form or see who made the changes.

Any Cons?

• Limited free space. There’s just 2Gb of free storage.
• Sometimes it works slowly. Dropbox Business can lack speed at times, especially if dealing with large files.

Prices

• Personal use: 2Gb of storage is free
• Dropbox Business:
• 30-day trial period
• Billing options: from $12.50 to $25 per month for 3+ users, depending on the storage capacity and additional features
• Custom price for an Enterprise version

5. Todoist

If you like to-do lists and getting things done, Todoist is a great productivity app that helps prioritize and manage tasks. And yes, it helps you organize your time and tasks even better when integrated with Mailbird. Now you can schedule and filter your tasks right inside your email app and quickly add tasks when you get them in your correspondence.

What’s Great About Todoist?

• It makes your daily to-do list very easy to manage. You simply add tasks, set a project and priority, and check when they’re done. With its simple interface and all the necessary features present, it has become one of the world’s most popular productivity apps.
• A thoughtful set of features. We all need to create, change, move, and prioritize tasks, assign them to different projects, set reminders, and possibly several more things for better usability. A lack of features may be as disappointing as feature overload. Todoist maintains a great balance, staying minimalistic yet convenient.
• Karma meter. Todoist gives productivity reports so you can see your progress visually and watch your inspiration add up.

Hint: Premium Todoist users can send emails from Mailbird to auto-create tasks. The subject will become the task title and the contents of the email will be a commentary. Plus, all attachments under 25Mb will also appear.

Any Cons?

• Some people find the app too simplistic.

Prices

• Free for up to 80 projects and up to five team members
• Billing options: from $3 to $5 per month, depending on the number of projects and team members

Hint: Mailbird has another task manager integration — Moo.do — that also has a drag-and-drop feature. You can use it to add your emails into the Moo.do Outliner (tasks) or Calendar (schedule).

6. Asana

Asana is another popular productivity tool for managing work and projects within a team. If integrated with Mailbird, it can turn your mailbox into a productivity workstation where you not only handle correspondence but also sort out your tasks and change statuses in just a few clicks. It’s a very nice shortcut to improve email efficiency for companies.

What’s Great About Asana?

• It’s one of the best task management tools out there. Asana lets you visualize your workflow and track tasks in a very convenient way using a list, calendar, or Kanban board view.
• Project timeline visualization. You can track deadlines and also see the progress your team has made on a project.
• Possibility to automate the workflow. You can set rules for recurring actions, such as adding certain followers to first-priority tasks or reopening a task after completion.
• Track each team member’s workload: Asana also visualizes how many tasks each employee has on their hands so you can maintain a healthy work balance within the team.
• Accessible in Mailbird through sidebar. Each extra click steals your time when you switch between apps, wait for pages to load, and then switch again. Now you can instantly check and manage all your team’s tasks in the same interface where you check your inbox.

Hint: You can send emails as tasks from Mailbird by forwarding them to Asana’s unique email address. You can use the same feature to create Team or Project conversations.

Any Cons?

• Only a few of the most popular features are available in the free version, such as board view and app integrations.

Prices

• Free with limited functionality for new teams (up to 15 members)
• Billing options: from $10.99 to $30.49 per month depending on features and advanced integrations
• Custom price for the Enterprise version

7. Whereby!

Sometimes emails and chats aren’t enough for a team to finish tasks. Whereby is a video conferencing tool for collaboration with remote workers. If integrated with Mailbird, it allows you to make video calls from the same interface where you check your inbox, without opening any additional apps or installing plugins — like for the weekly meetings at Mailbird:

What’s Great About Whereby?

• No installation needed. Whereby is web-based so you don’t need to install anything onto your computer. Even more, you can turn on the integration inside Mailbird and connect to calls (or initiate them) instantly in the app.
• Unique URL for your conference room. Each room is assigned a name so it’s easy to join in by typing that name after whereby.com.
• Screen sharing. Anyone in a meeting room can share their screens to show documents and pictures, resolve issues, and make sure everyone is on the same page.
• Recording of the meeting. For an additional fee or in the Business package you have the feature to record and download the meeting for future reference or people who couldn’t join.
• Accessible in Mailbird through sidebar. You can meet with your team and discuss all the project-related questions right inside the Mailbird app.

Any Cons?

• Limited functionality in the free version.

Prices

• Free for one user and one meeting room
• $9.99/month for one user and three rooms
• $59.99/month for the Business version for multiple team members, admins, and 10+ rooms

Hint: Mailbird also integrates with Veeting Rooms — another video conferencing tool that offers more security and confidentiality.

Let’s Turn Your Email into Your Productivity Powerstation!

So, here’s the deal. If you piece all the email efficiency tools mentioned above together, you get the best way to maximize your email efficiency and effectiveness:

• FollowUp.cc for your conversations that require extra attention — make sure none of your emails are forgotten. Get reminders for you and anyone in a particular conversation.
• Unroll.me for all the junk mail — pull up all your subscriptions and get a list where you can unsubscribe from all the junk in one go. No need to waste time searching your inbox for that tiny unsub button.
• Dropbox for all your files to instantly edit and share them in your emails, even the big ones — store all your files in a cloud so you can send them by email or edit right in the hub.
• Todoist to turn your work and personal chores into next-level to-do lists — sort out your tasks and make sure you and your team get things done on time.
• Asana to manage your projects — sort out a bigger team’s workload and mailboxes with multiple projects, and make sure your company is on top of its productivity and that none of your team members burn out.
• Meet up in Whereby! regardless of your team’s location — have meetings with your colleagues face-to-face in the video format.
• And stack them all in Mailbird, turning your email into a powerful workstation where you will sort out all your email accounts and messengers, stay on top of your organization skills, work, and life projects, and video chat with colleagues.

From quick and easy online communications of different formats to task and file management, here’s almost everything you need in your everyday life at work, and all these things may be easily managed inside a single interface.

No time wasted. No distractions.

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