When you think of email apps, you probably think of platforms that let you send, receive, read, and reply to text-based email messages.
Well, this is only the very minimum that an email app can do. Many email platforms have a range of other built-in, even hidden features that you can take advantage of to get more done.
Keep in mind that not all these features are available in all email apps. So, if you spot one you’d like to take advantage of, make sure to make a note of where you can find it.
Impressive Email Features You Probably Don’t Associate with Most Email Apps
Built-in voice messages
Yep, that’s right. Your email app can feature integrated voice messages — when an email isn’t efficient enough.
For example, Spike email (one of the most feature-rich email platforms we’ve tried lately) allows you to record and share voice messages right within your email threads, and you can even send them via group chats and collaborative online notes, too.
Not only does a voice message save time when sending a reply or an update, it feels much more personal and allows you to say what you really mean. However, you want to. In short, it’s a more expressive way to communicate, and you can do it all from your main email app.
Learn more about Spike’s voice messaging feature here: https://www.spikenow.com/features/voice-message/.
Undo send
Have you ever sent an email off, only to realize it contained a mistake? Or, even worse, that you sent it to the wrong person? If so, we bet you probably wished you could unsend that email.
Well, with some email clients, you actually can undo a sent message, although it may not always be obvious how.
For instance, in Gmail, as soon as you send a message, a notification pops up on your screen telling you that the message has been successfully sent. The notification also contains an “Undo” button. So, if you’re fast enough, you can just click this button to unsend the email.
Different ways to view your inbox
The default inbox view isn’t always the only way to see your messages. Many email apps allow you to customize the view and even make it look like something else altogether.
Spike, which we mentioned earlier as a prime example of an email client with tons of extra features, actually lets you view your email threads as chat-style conversations.
This revolutionary new way of viewing your emails is called conversational email, and it’s putting natural human expression back into inboxes everywhere by making emailing as smooth as texting back and forth.
Some email apps even let you change their views to look more like others.
For example, say you’re a longtime Outlook user, but you use Gmail for work. You can actually switch to Gmail’s “Reader” view to make your inbox look and behave more like the Outlook inbox you’re used to.
Permanent signature
Typing your signature out at the end of every email you send may not feel like it takes that much time, but take a minute to think about how much time you’ve spent doing it over thousands of emails. That’s a lot of time you could save in the long run, right?
Many email platforms allow you to set up a permanent signature that gets automatically included at the end of every email you send, which is ideal for professional correspondence.
You can include your typical sign-off, such as “Thanks,” followed by your name, as well as other key information you often include, like links to your website or LinkedIn profiles. You can even include graphics, such as a logo.
You can usually find the permanent signature setup somewhere in your email settings. If you can’t find it, just do a quick Google search to pull up instructions for setting an automatic signature up.
Tasks and to-do lists
An email app with integrated tasks and to-do lists lets you quickly turn the contents of an email into actionable tasks, which you can then in turn, assign to yourself or other team members.
In effect, this turns your email client into an all-in-one workspace that you can use as a sort of lite project management platform, thus cutting down on your need for other project management or to-do list apps.
You won’t find this handy feature in many email apps, but you can find it in Spike email.
Snooze
Sometimes you just can’t be bothered to deal with an email right now, and just looking at it gets in the way of other, more important tasks.
That’s where an email snooze button, like Gmail’s, comes in handy. When you click on a message in your Gmail inbox, look in the far right-hand corner for a little clock symbol. Clicking on this allows you to snooze the message and remove it from your inbox until a time you select.
Another way to avoid dealing with low-priority emails (and keep them from cluttering up your inbox) until later is to use an email app like Spike that has a priority inbox filtering feature.
