If you use Gmail as your primary business e-mail provider, you may be interested in a new plugin for Firefox or Chrome called Boomerang.
This neat little plugin allows you to control when you send and receive messages by, for example, scheduling your e-mail to be sent at predetermined times throughout the day. At the same time, it helps you unclutter your mailbox and reminds you if you don’t hear back from someone so you can follow up.
Why would you care to do this? Boomerang provides some subtle but stress-relieving advantages.
First, you can control expectations. So, if you’re working early in the morning or late at night, instead of sending an e-mail to your client at an odd hour, you can schedule the message to be sent during regular working hours.
With the prevalence of smartphones these days, we are much more reactive to e-mail than ever before. But clients or colleagues may not want to get e-mails from you at all hours of the day.
And if they receive e-mails from you at all times of the day, they’ll come to expect it and may be disappointed if you fail to respond immediately to their replies.
Second, Boomerang’s reminder feature transforms e-mail into a more task-based tool than simply a mode of communication. For example, you can set a followup reminder to yourself and then have Boomerang send it at a certain time, perhaps just before a meeting.
Also, if you’ve asked a client to sign documents by a certain date or time, you can schedule a friendly e-mail reminder using Boomerang just before the pickup time.
In terms of the advantages of using Boomerang, the basic plan is free and it’s a great support service for busy professionals who want to maintain the illusion of having normal business hours or who need to send a lot of followup reminders to clients and colleagues.
As far as disadvantages go, the service only works with Gmail on Firefox and Chrome browsers. You’ll also need to pay a monthly fee if you want to send more than 10 messages per month.
Monica Goyal is founder of My Legal Briefcase. She’s available on Twitter at twitter.com/monica_mlb.
