Be a Better Emailer | SaneBoxBlog

Hack #81. For both sending and receiving, large attachments can...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:54:00 -0400

Hack #81. For both sending and receiving, large attachments can be a pain. Dropbox links ensure large attachments are sent and accessed quickly and easily.

Read 99 more awesome email hacks:http://bit.ly/100hacks

SaneBox + Mailbox = BestOfBothWorldsBox

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:38:28 -0400

Since Mailbox app launched we’ve heard from a lot of folks how well SaneBox works with Mailbox. We also got a few customers who are a bit confused about how to make us work well together.

We hate confusion, so here are the 3 steps to make sure SaneBox works flawlessly with Mailbox.

1. Rename @SaneLater to [Mailbox]-SaneLater. You can do it right in Gmail (click on the label and choose Edit).

2. That’s it.

3. No really, that’s it.

Make sure to remove the @ from the name, because Mailbox sometimes bugs out with non-standard characters. If you’re using other Sanebox folders, you can also add [Mailbox] before the name of the label to make Mailbox pick it up. Now moving emails between your Sane folders and Inbox in Mailbox will have the same effect as moving them in Gmail or any other email client.

This week we are all Bostonians

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:59:44 -0400

As many of you know, our headquarters is located about 2 blocks from the finish line of the Boston Marathon which was the site of two explosions on Monday. These explosions destroyed the lives of its victims and harmed everyone who had come to assume that this peaceful sporting event enjoyed by millions across the world was a symbol of non-violent, non-nationalist global friendship.

I believe that the entire city has already spoken: Boston will not be terrorized. And I think in this, this week, we are all Bostonians. It doesn’t matter what city or country you are from, for at least this week, we are one people, one world, one community. And that community will not be terrorized.

To support the healing of Boston, my home town, SaneBox will donate 10% of our revenues for the entire month of April to One Fund.

Sincerely,
Stuart

Meet the lovely Tanya Smith, an online business coach, digital...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:48:24 -0400

Meet the lovely Tanya Smith, an online business coach, digital branding strategist, and mother of two. Here’s what you need to know about her on a professional level… she’s a business coach with 20 years of combined experience in corporate, leadership and entrepreneurship training, marketing, and sales.

Tanya has been using SaneBox for a while now and has some great things to say about us. When you’re as busy as she is spending hours of your day in your inbox isn’t possible. Tanya uses SaneBox and its many features to stay on top of her email, which means staying out of her inbox and focusing on more important things… like her career, her clients and her family!

The Smart Reply

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:44:30 -0400

Squash the possibility of miscommunication and unnecessary back & forth emails with the Smart Reply.

99 more fab facts found here: http://bit.ly/100hacks

Un-send emails! Best Gmail feature ever!

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:47:00 -0400

Wish you didn’t send that email to your ex? Or have you ever accidentally sent an unfinished email?

Well the Un-send hack is for you!

Read 99 more groovy email tricks: http://bit.ly/100hacks

Chrome Web Store

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:54:34 -0400

Chrome Web Store:

We are very excited to announce that SaneBox is officially in the Chrome Web Store under the Productivity section.

Please submit a review when you have a moment.

The Smart Reply

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:12:58 -0400

Using this hack will make you a more efficient emailer and reduce potential miscommunications.

99 more bits of brilliance found here:http://bit.ly/100hacks

SaneBox Works In Any Language!

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:35:50 -0400

Did you know thatSaneBox not only works with every email client, provider and device - it works anywhere in the world. Meaning whatever country you’re in, whatever language you speak, SaneBox is there for you.

We have customers pretty much all over the world: Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, Japan, China, Australia, Russia and South Africa, etc etc etc.

So whether you speak Chinese, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Burmese, Shimaore, Swati, Germanic or even Latin - fear not, your email overload problem is about to be obliterated by SaneBox.

You might be wondering how a team of gringos (well not really, we actually speak Russian, French, Hebrew and Spanish) came up with software that works in any language. Simple - our algorithms don’t rely on understanding content. We simply look at the data: the relationship trees in your email. And since data and math are universal languages, SaneBox actually works for Martians too!

Have you ever accidentally sent an email before it was ready to go?

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:46:06 -0400

Next time wait until the email is finalized before adding the recipient’s address. This and 99 more earth shattering email hacks found here: http://bit.ly/100hacks

Do you have images in your email signature?

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:23:35 -0400

For more helpful email tricks and tips read our eBook: http://bit.ly/11kHfqt

100 Email Hacks: Become an Inbox Zero Superhero!

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:16:00 -0400

Whether you’re a working professional, a student, stay at home parent, a retiree or anyone else with access to the Internet chances are you’re an avid emailer.

Email truly is a beautiful thing. It’s the first, and still the largest social network - it has the ability to connect people around the world. Unfortunately this beauty is tainted by some not-so-beautiful facts. Email has become an enormous productivity killer and time waster, it leads to stress, and for many people it has become a chore. So who’s to blame? It may be hard to swallow, but the culprit is actually you and I. Society’s poor email habits have led to the negative issues surrounding email.

Fear not! We wrote a book to help fix it!

The “100 Email Hacks” eBook was developed to help people get out of their inbox and on with their life. It contains incredible time saving strategies, best practices and awesome tools and apps to make you an email master. The eBook will show you the best ways to protect your privacy and secure your email account, the secrets of Gmail, email etiquette, and power hacks for the power users. Each section, equally as important as the next, will arm you with the tools you need to spend less time in your inbox, creating more time for the things you’d rather be doing.

Click the button below to read the “100 Email Hacks” eBook for FREE and become an Inbox Zero Superhero!

How SaneBox works: SaneBox is compatible with any email client...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:11:44 -0400

How SaneBox works:

SaneBox is compatible with any email client or service including Apple Mail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Outlook and many more. It also works on mobile devices, laptops, desktops and of course smart phones! Basically anywhere you check email, SaneBox works!

SaneBox isn’t an email provider, it just makes your email better!

Be a Better Emailer | SaneBoxBlog: The SaneBox eBook | Gmail Hacks

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:54:43 -0500

Be a Better Emailer | SaneBoxBlog: The SaneBox eBook | Gmail Hacks:

sanebox:

After the creation of the World Wide Web 1991 email’s popularity quickly started to boom and it hasn’t looked back once. Today email is one of the most commonly used forms of communication. Professionals of all kinds, students, stay at home parents, retirees and everyone else with access to the…

The SaneBox eBook | Gmail Hacks

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:51:00 -0500

After the creation of the World Wide Web in 1991 email’s popularity quickly started to boom and it hasn’t looked back once. Today email is one of the most commonly used forms of communication. Professionals of all kinds, students, stay at home parents, retirees and everyone else with access to the Internet uses it.

Email truly is a beautiful thing - it’s free (in most cases) and has the ability to connect people around the world. Unfortunately this beauty is tainted by some not-so-beautiful facts. Email has become an enormous productivity killer and time waster, it leads to stress, and for many people it has become a chore. So who’s to blame? It may be hard to swallow, but the culprit is actually you and I. Society’s poor email habits have led to the negative issues surrounding email.

The “100 Email Hacks” eBook was developed to help people get out of their inbox and on with their life. It contains incredible time saving strategies, best practices and tools to make you an email master. Each section, equally as important as the next will arm you with the tools you need to spend less time in your inbox, thereby creating more time for the things you’d rather be doing. Click below to read the first chapter of the book called Gmail Hacks. If you’re using Gmail, you’ll find lots of hidden features that will turn you into a pro!

sanebox: The Woes of Unsubscribing Unsubscribing is a pain. It...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:38:00 -0500

sanebox:

The Woes of Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing is a pain. It takes several clicks, and doesn’t always work. Unfortunately with the amount of spam everyone gets on a daily basis it’s become a necessary part of our lives.

What’s worse, some not-so-nice senders will realize you’re a real person and that you actually check your email - and they will put you on more spammy mailing lists. It happens way more often than you think!

Scary Spam Statistics:

Spam accounts for 14.5 billion emails a day world wide

This is 45% of all emails (Many research companies believe this number is in fact higher)

90% of spam is in English, 96% a year ago, so I guess this means spam is getting more “international.”

The US is by far the largest generator of spam email at 15%

India comes in second at around 7%

Advertising related spam accounts for 36% of all spam emails

Adult related subject matters come in at second at 31%

Only 2.5% of spam emails fall under the scam & fraud category

The Radicati Research Group in Palo Alto found that spam costs businesses $20.5 billion annually

Nucleus Research estimates approximately $1934 is lost per employee because of spam

You may be asking yourself what’s one to do? Well, there are several options. The first is to simply be very careful about handing out your email address, which means limiting the news letters and promotions you signup for, and the services and membership sites you join. Limiting your email’s exposure is the first step in reducing the amount of spam you receive.

There are also several services that enable a quick and safe way for people to unsubscribe and prevent undesired emails from entering their inbox. SaneBox is one of those services, their BlackHole feature allows users to stop unwanted emails from bothering them (it won’t unsubscribe you, but all future emails will go straight to trash). Whether you utilize existing services or tools to manage spam or simply change your email habits, it’s important to do something. Processing spam is a huge time suck and kills productivity, do something before you’re neck deep in it!

References:

http://www.spamlaws.com/, https://www.trustwave.com

sanebox: Email isn’t going anywhere With over 3 billion email...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:37:00 -0500

sanebox:

Email isn’t going anywhere

With over 3 billion email accounts word wide and just under 300 billion messages sent each day, email is one of the most popular and widely used forms of communication today.

Although email is a fast, easy, and inexpensive form of communication , it is tainted with incredible inefficiencies. The reason for this is largely due to lack of knowledge surrounding email etiquette. People have become lazy with how they interact and engage with email, which results in massive amounts of wasted time.

Every industry is hurt by poor email habits and etiquette. Whether you’re a real estate agent, lawyer, doctor, entrepreneur, teacher or any other professional your productivity has been crippled by how you and your colleagues interact and process email.

Constant interruptions kill productivity

Our ability as humans to concentrate is severely impacted by constant interruptions. Focusing on any task, no matter the complexity is difficult while constantly being interrupted by emails. A case study conducted by the Danwood Group found it takes 1.5 minutes on average to read and recover from an email. The Danwood Group case study provides a very insightful example of this dilemma and it is as follows:

Lets say an employee is alerted every 5 minutes when they receive new mail, which means there’s potential for 96 interruptions in a regular 8-hour workday. If it takes 1.5 minutes to read and recover from an email this leaves 3.5 minutes until the employee is interrupted again. Now lets say this same employee changes the alert to go off every 45 minutes instead of 5, this means interruptions decrease to 11 per day. If 9 emails accumulated over 45 minutes it will take 6 minutes on average to read and recover from the interruption, which leaves 39 minutes until the next interruption.

Fixing The Problem

Each and every industry experiences email overload to a certain degree and it’s imperative that companies and individuals implement systems and good habits surrounding email to combat it as much as possible. Services like SaneBox are especially attractive to professionals in fields that require large amounts of communication such as Real Estate. There are lots of great email services out there, but the most important thing to remember when processing email is to set specific times to check email and to not allow yourself to get distracted by unimportant emails. SaneBox, for instance, helps real estate agents and other professionals prioritize their emails automatically by sending non-urgent, unimportant emails to a sub folder where they can process these emails in bulk much more efficiently and effectively at their leisure.

Email has become such a problem recently, because people have acquired bad habits in the way they process and deal with email in general. Like we all know, bad habits are hard to break, but if you are conscious of your interactions with email these bad habits will become more and more obvious and solutions will present themselves. Becoming an effective emailer will save you substantial amounts of time, so read up on new strategies and helpful pointers as often as possible and implement what you learn, figure out what works and cut what doesn’t.

sanebox: Email is a huge time waster for teams A massive amount...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:32:00 -0500

sanebox:

Email is a huge time waster for teams

A massive amount of time is wasted on email during the course of a day. The average employee spends 13 hours a week reading and responding to email, which is close to 30% of their work time. With 60% of messages in an average inbox being considered not urgent or pressing it’s apparent a huge amount of time is being squandered.

The question is how much of this time could be saved by implementing the right email tools and strategies?

The answer: A WHOLE LOT!

The email irrelevancy issue

According to our internal data, an average inbox contains only ~40% important, relevant emails. This means 60% of the emails in the average inbox are not important and can be processed in bulk. The problem is the vast majority of employees are treating all of their emails with the same level of importance. A recent web-based survey found that 34% of emails are simply back-and-forth replies and 32% of emails should be communicated in person or by phone instead, which suggests there are major inefficiencies in office settings.

Limiting internal email

LCWA Research Group suggests that limiting or even eliminating internal email to employees, which has been suggested isn’t an effective solution to email overload

The 2012 Work-Related Email Perception Study, Enough Already! Stop Bad Email found that middle managers who were spending around 2.5 weeks (100 hrs) per year on unimportant emails didn’t want their email access limited or taken away. They did however want policies put in place that would reduce the volume of emails sent to their inbox.

Email, the necessary evil

61% of executives and 55% of middle managers admitted that email policies on etiquette would be beneficial in their organization.

84% of executives, 83% of middle managers and 77% of employees agreed email is a necessary tool in their organization, while only 8% of executives, 15% of middle managers and 11% of employees explained limiting email during business hours would be effective.

Email services like SaneBox help prioritize emails for teams automatically so employees can concentrate on important emails and then move on to more important tasks. Whether your business has thousands of employees or just several, changing their email strategies and habits, through training or other means is an investment every employer should make.

The World is Divided There are literally billions of people...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 00:23:00 -0500

The World is Divided

There are literally billions of people using email today, but every one of those individuals can be categorized into one of two groups, filer or non-filer.

Non-filers are those people who keep every message they’ve ever received in their inbox. It’s hard to believe these people exists, the thought of it almost gives me a nervous breakdown, but trust us, they’re out there.

Filers are the people who file messages out of their inbox into folders. The complexity of these filing systems range from several folders to dozens.

Over the past two decades there have been heated debates on which method is more effective. Filers have been accused of wasting too much time organizing their inbox, while non-filers have been called unorganized and sloppy.

Both strategies have their drawbacks, which is why you should try to find a happy medium between the two. Leaving every message in your inbox is a good idea in theory, because they’re all right infront of you, but the problem is they aren’t prioritize and if you have more than a dozen or so messages they can easily get lost in the shuffle. On the other side, having folders is helpful for organizing your mail into buckets to ensure easy accessibility, but any message that requires action should remain in your inbox until that action has been taken.

Bottom line: It’s advantageous to have several general folders meant for filing once actions has been taken or for storing reference-type emails. Don’t go overboard with folders though, because an overly complex filing system quickly loses it’s effectiveness. A good rule of thumb is once an email is opened execute an action before moving on to the next email or task. does it need to be stored for reference? do you need to respond? Take action on each message before moving on.

The Other Side:

Although we’ve outlined some effective email processing tactics, the other side of emailing must be addressed as well, which is sending email. All too often people send emails that require a response, but none is given. This could be for a variety of reasons of course, perhaps the recipient simply forgot, they’re busy or they just don’t want to hear from you. Either way you should implement a system that helps you keep track of your sent mail. The email service SaneBox offers such a system with their SaneRemindMe feature that enables senders to Cc or Bcc a specific time or date they need a response by, if it doesn’t happen by the specified time their email is sent back to them. Boomerang for Gmail also offers a similar system that helps users set reminders for themselves.

If signing up for such a service isn’t your cup of tea consider creating a Google spreadsheet or Excel doc that helps keep track of the important emails you’ve sent out. Find a system that works best for you and stick to it, forgetting about a message because you never got a response shouldn’t be a problem in your email life!

Gmail Lockdown

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:09:38 -0500

Has you ever seen this screen?

I saw it a few months ago for about 24 hours. It sucked. Imagine not having access to your email for 24 hours, with nobody to reach out to and no info given. Although Google makes it seem like it’s your fault, it’ really isn’t. Chances are the server your Gmail account happens to be on is just having a bad day - there’s absolutely nothing you did to cause this, and there’s even less you can do to fix it.

But here’s how you can protect yourself from this unfortunate situation: just forward your regular Gmail to another Gmail address. It’s most likely to be on a different machine, and chances of both of your accounts getting locked down are very small.