"Snooze" your emails with FollowUpThen (whether you are using Gmail or not!)

In an earlier blog post, I talked about using the "snooze" feature in Gmail to set a date for your email to be re-sent to your inbox.  But what if you are not using Gmail?  

One option is to use FollowUpThen. 

What is it?

Although not a tool for use with learners, this is one of my favorite "productivity" tools--I use it almost every day. (it's the only way I can ever get to "inbox zero.")

FollowUpThen is a tool to help you manage your email inbox.  It lets you resend an email to your inbox at a later date (for example when you need to be reminded of something, or when you are ready to take action on the email). To accomplish this,  you use SOMETIME@FollowUpThen.com as an email address in your distribution.

Example

Let's say I sent an email to Susan and Enrique asking when they were available to meet.  Ordinarily, I may be tempted to CC or BCC myself on the email and leave it in my inbox to remind me that Susan and Enrique should be getting back to me about this.  This is not a good reminder system because 

1. it clutters my inbox
2. with all the email in my inbox--and with this email potentially scrolling off the bottom of the screen and not being visible--it may not be a good reminder for me. 

Instead of BCC-ing myself on the email, I can BCC SOMETIME@FollowUpThen.com.  Let's say I wanted to be reminded on Friday that Susan and Enrique should have gotten back to me. I would include in the distribution of the email,

TO: Susan, Enrique

BCC: Friday@FollowUpThen.com.  

The email will go to Susan, it will go to Enrique, and on Friday it will show up in my inbox.

How to Use it

When you go to the FollowUpThen website you'll see you can sign up for an account. The free version allows for 50 followups in a month.

FollowUpThen allows you to use natural language in place of the SOMETIME in the email address.  You can say, "Friday," "EveryWednesday," "200pm," "April15," "tomorrow," "2days," and a whole host of other descriptions. There is more information on how to set the SOMETIME on the followupthen.com webpage. 

With FollowUpThen you can also control who sees the follow up.  If you put the SOMETIME@FollowUpThen.com email address in the:

BCC: only you will see the follow up

CC: all of the original recipients of the email will see the follow up

Because FollowUpThen is just an email address vs a separate email tool, you can use it with any email program.

A Big Caution

The way FollowUpThen works is that it stores your email, encrypted, on the FollowUpThen servers until it is time to re-send the email. After the email is sent, it is deleted from the FollowUpThen servers.  

However, the fact that the email is stored on third-party servers may be against your company's data management/privacy policies. 

Because of this, many of you will not be able to use FollowUpThen at work. Check with your company to see if it is OK to use FollowUpThen before you use it at work. Here is FollowUpThen's privacy policy. 

(although it should still be handy with your non-work email).

Resources:

• How to use Followupthen from the Followupthen website
  
  
• I talked about FollowUpThen on episode #39 of the Higher Learning Now podcast.