Schedule Emails and Personalize your Responses Efficiently

Google always innovates and changes.  They have just added three new features to help you efficiently respond to email.  You will want to check them out!

Schedule email:

Next to the Send button while composing an email, you will notice a small arrow.  Click the arrow, and you will have the option to schedule the time the email is sent.

From the G Suites Update Blog

Why would you want to schedule your emails?   

Have you ever emailed a parent, student, or colleague and they answered your email immediately?  You respond, they respond back, and before you know it half of the time you scheduled to do more important tasks is gone. 

Email efficiency experts suggest you answer emails two or three times per day at a set time.  (For example, I respond to email first thing in the morning, after lunch, and right before I go home.)  They also suggest scheduling email responses to send during a time when you are scheduled to look at your email again or after you have left work.  If the email sent after work hours, responders likely wouldn't expect an immediate reply, and you won't fall into the trap of investing your time in an email exchange when you have other priorities.

The Schedule feature works well when you want to be sure you send an email but timing is a factor.  Or, maybe you don't want people to realize you are answering emails at 3:00 in the morning!

 Smart Compose Personalizes Responses:

Do you have Smart Compose turned on?  You do if you see light grey words suggested in your email as you are typing.  You can click the Tab key, and those words will magically appear in your email.

Personalized Responses use AI (Artificial Intelligence or machine learning) to suggest language in Smart Compose that more closely matches your writing style.  Personalized responses are automatically turned on in your Gmail account.  Personalized Responses are one more Gmail enhancement to make replying to emails more efficient for you.

If this creeps you out a little, you can turn them off by clicking on the Cog located on the top right of your Gmail account, choosing Settings, and changing Personalized Responses to Off. 

Otherwise, expect your Smart Compose responses to start sounding a lot more like you!

Smart Compose suggests a Subject Line:

If you write the body of your email message, Smart Compose will now suggest a subject line!

From the G Suites Update Blog

Hopefully, these productivity tools help you respond to email more efficiently and effectively!