Full of helpful email management tips and tricks, client success, new features, savings, and more. Clean up your inbox today!
But what exactly allows you to get so many precious hours back? Let’s take a look and the problem behind the time wasted, then move into how we avoid that trap.
Continue reading “How does SaneBox save you time in email?”
This week we passed a big milestone: 15 million minutes saved by our users.
An incredible amount of time is wasted in our inboxes over the course of a day. If you keep up with our blog you’ll know that an average employee spends 13 hours a week reading and responding to email, which is a whopping 28% of our work time. The question is how much of this time could be saved by implementing the right email tools and strategies?
The answer: A WHOLE LOT!
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 (here) 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.
This shows how decreasing the frequency of email related interruptions can save you a significant amount of time. The bottom line is the longer you’re able to concentrate the more productive you can be through out the day. Every one of us desires to increase our personal productivity and that of our employees, if we have them. That’s why the we built Sanebox to help save you time by cutting down on distractions.
SaneBox moves unimportant, non-urgent emails out of your inbox and into your SaneLater folder, where they can be processed in bulk at a later time. Based on a number of studies on this subject, we conservatively estimate that we save 30 seconds for every email we move out of the Inbox. Sanebox will also send you summaries of your unimportant emails including the sender and subject line at specified times, so you can quickly review and process these messages in one fell swoop.
7 Deadly Email Sins! Which ones are you guilty of?
Interview with our VP of Growth, Dmitri Leonov on KTLA!
For both sending and receiving, large attachments can be a pain. Find relief with our newest feature, Sane Attachments.
Sane Attachments integrates seamlessly with Dropbox to ensure your large attachments are sent and accessed quickly and easily. Attachments in your inbox are automatically uploaded to your Dropbox. No more worries about going over your quota, important files getting lost in the shuffle, or the numerous difficulties related to mobile access and attachments.
“It really has made a very nice change to my email life. Before, chaos. Now, calm.” – Alex Wilhelm, The Next Web
Already using Dropbox for attachments? Sane Attachments saves you a step. Rather than starting with creating a link through a Dropbox app or via the web, you treat your email like any other attachment, and it just works. This new feature makes large attachments as easy as small attachments… almost as easy as one with no attachments.
Whether you are sending or receiving large files, Sane Attachments is sure to bring a smile to your face. That is, until you’re so used to it you forget that large attachments are a problem for other people.
Are you tired of opening your email at home or at your job only to see a bunch of spam and no important email at all? Are you tired of spending more time deleting emails than getting your job done when you’re at work? How many times have you missed an email important to your business because there are so many spam emails in your inbox or an important email at home because you’ve got more spam? If you’re one of the millions of computer users who are sick of spam and unimportant emails, then be of good cheer.
There are several ways to tame your inbox and make sure that all that spam goes elsewhere, and you don’t have to worry about it. For corporations especially, spam and unimportant email is becoming a huge problem. In 2008, the founder of TechCrunch Michael Arrington cited email overload as a huge problem and basically challenged tech entrepreneurs to create a solution to it. He’s right. Millions of workers are losing productivity because they are spending more time deleting emails than they are actually working. According to a study done recently by a company called Radicati, corporate email users get 200 emails a day. That is a lot of wasted time dealing with things that are not even important. Also, according to another study by the Grossman Group, those in middle management spend 100 hours per year just dealing with non-important email. Needless to say, for those corporate email users, it’s very important to free up those hours dealing with unnecessary email.
A new web-based application called SaneBox is the solution to corporate email problems. Private users have already been able to use SaneBox for their home email, and now SaneBox has launched SaneBox for Business, meaning that corporate users and small business now have the same great features that the SaneBox for private users already have. Basically, SaneBox takes all spam and unimportant email and filters it into folders. For instance, if you get a spam email, SaneBox’s algorithms already filter it into the spam folder. If it’s some fund-raising appeal, same thing. That way, instead of slogging through hundreds of spam emails, charity appeals and what not, you’re reading the email you actually need to read. There are other great features on SaneBox like smart reminders, which basically remind you to answer an email you haven’t answered yet; snoozing email, which means you can postpone receiving an email and calendar synching.
SaneBox for Business works with all web-based email services such as Gmail and Yahoo. It also works with clients like Microsoft Outlook. Since SaneBox is cloud based, it’s easy for IT people to integrate it with their Exchange users and there’s no software to download or application to keep up. It’s also very easy to use. If you know how to use email and folders, then you know how to use SaneBox. There are many happy users that no longer have to deal with spam or unimportant email and now are able to focus only on the important email they get. With SaneBox, email is no longer an inconvenience. It’s something useful again.
The numbers are overwhelming, of the estimated 30 billion emails that are sent each day, almost fifty percent are unwanted, unsolicited spam email. In that massive number are billions of unwanted advertising pitches, adult oriented mail, and emails that perpetuate scams and identity theft.
Internet service providers and email hosts throw everything they have at the problem, but faced with attacks on all fronts, even the most hardy filters will let messages through. Now add to that the dozens of legitimate emails, each pressing for your attention. There’s the recital next week, the online bill statements, forwarded messages from work, your dad asking when he can have his tools back, and dozens of long lost friends pestering you with Farmville invites. It’s enough to drive anyone insane.
Enter Sanebox, the sanity solution for your inbox.
Sanebox is a feature packed email management solution that takes your emails, and gives you back the precious gift of time. Here is how it works.
Sanebox interfaces with nearly every current email service, like your Gmail or Yahoo, and nearly every email client, including Outlook, Lotus, and their ilk. Then, based on simple yet deceivingly smart filters, Sanebox runs algorithms that separate your emails into important, or Sanenow, and unimportant, or SaneLater.
While it may seem a clever name for an email filter, it’s so much more. Does an email filter send a daily summary of each of your folders, or does an email filter actually unsubscribe you and never let you see the unwanted messages again? Sanebox does, once you hit unsubscribe, it becomes the ex that moves out of state, except you are guaranteed to never see the emails again. It also lets you defer an email until you are ready, and when you are, it puts the email back in your inbox. Let’s see an ordinary email filter do that.
What about your social network? You won’t miss a beat or a tweet when you use the Sanebox social network integration features. Link your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others all to your Sanebox, and watch your time spent checking each network drop to nil.
Concerned about security? Don’t be. Sanebox uses the same multiple layered security and encryption features that the banks use. The algorithms that are used to filter the emails only examine header information and the outside of the email, the contents are secure.
So how much would you pay for email freedom? How about for 2 hours of extra productivity per day? How many Starbucks do you have in a month? If you answered more than one coffee, then you should already be signing up. Sanebox is priced at $4.95 per month, $55 per year, or $100 for a 2 year subscription to email emancipation. With even 1 hour a month freed by Sanebox’s insane features, your investment will pay for itself.
Still not convinced your time is worth the money? Give Sanebox 14 days to change your mind. With no credit card commitment, and a 14 day free trial, you can try before you buy and see the magic yourself. And as easy as it is to sign up, it’s as easy to cancel if you don’t like it, but what are the chances of that?
Keep up with us & join our community:
Web: www.sanebox.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/sanebox
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sanebox
By Dmitri Leonov – @dmitri
There’s a psychological barrier to paying online, and it needs to stop.
We pay for things in real life every day. We don’t hesitate to drop a fifty for a tank of gas, or $4 for a cup of coffee. But when it comes to paying for $5 for an online service that actually delivers significant value – it’s a no-no. I’ve been guilty of this for years myself, and now that I’m sitting on the other side of Paypal, I see the light, and have started to pay for web services that I value.
Why is this happening? Why is there a perception that everything online should be free?
Is it Google’s fault? Yes. Google is offering a ton of services for free because it has become an incubator – it’s incubating and releasing a ton of best-in-class products, knowing that Adwords will pay for everything. As a result, no service that Google offers will ever be able to charge money (except in France: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2012/02/02/france-to-google-youll-pay-for-making-that-free). Other internet giants are guilty of this as well.
Is it the fault of VCs? Yes. For venture-backed companies the key to success is a large user base. Monetization of that user base is a secondary priority. And if all else fails, you can get acquired for $1 billion.
The VC model is based on 1 home run. They don’t care if 99 of their portfolio companies fail, but as long as 1 gets sold for $1 billion, they are happy. A decent double-digit-millions exit is not exciting to them. So when faced with a fork in the road: a) build a sustainable business with a real business model, or b) give the product away for free to grow as fast as possible, thus treating your free users as a marketing cost – the incentive is to go for option b. Go big or go home. Or don’t raise money.
Is it your fault? Yes. Stop being cheap. Just because something is “virtual”, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Ask yourself: “Is this more valuable than a vanilla latte?”
Freemium is bad for business
In the last couple of years I’ve heard a ton of startups (myself included) answer the “How do you make money” question with “Freemium, duh!” There are many shiny examples of widely successful freemium companies that killed it. But they are exceptions, and unfortunately, they set a bad example.
As a business, you can’t pray that enough of free users will convert to paying customers. The decision to go premium should be based not on philosophy, but on math. You have to model everything out. Say without freemium you get 100 leads and convert 10% to paying customers. You think by going freemium you could grow your number of leads by a factor of X. But of the original 10% paying users converts, 9% would now choose the free option, and only 1% would pay. In this case you have to be damn sure that X>10 in order for this to not destroy your business. This is why it’s hard to make money with freemium: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/next-tech-remember-the-money.html
Freemium is bad for the users
I’m a happy user of my friend’s service. The service is free, although I would happily pay for it. Earlier this week I found out that my friend is killing the product because there’s no viable business model. I was pissed. Here’s a product that’s valuable to me, but I can’t use it. If only these guys just charged their users, there would be no problem. (I realize I may be an exception, and there’s no actual market for this service, but that’s not the point).
The only real way for founders/investors to get ROI on free services is to sell the business. When a free(mium) service gets acquired for it’s technology, user base or talent, the users get an excited email from the CEO saying something like “We’re proud to become a part of the <insert large company name here> family! Rest assured that our service will continue as is.” This is the last time they hear from the CEO, who no longer gives a shit about the users. So you get the same outcome as with my friend’s service which shut down.
Death to Freemium
This perception that stuff online should be free makes it harder and harder for new businesses to charge money for value. If a freemium paywall happened in the real world as frequently as it does online, stuff would break pretty quickly:
“You can get 10 gallons of gas for free, but if you want more, you have to pay”
“Get a Big Mac and fries for free, but if you want a soda, you have to pay”
All these problems go away when we realize that it’s ok to pay for stuff we like. We need to apply the normal real-world economics to online pricing. Then companies can build products and charge a price commensurate with value.
PS: As I’m writing this, I’ve heard the same stupid ad on Spotify 5 times (seriously every 2 songs). Time to drink the kool-aid and pay for a premium subscription.
By Dmitri Leonov
(All opinions in this post are mine, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of SaneBox on this issue)
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