Boost Your Productivity With Automatic Gmail Responses

Because no one wants to spend their day in gmail.

Photo by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash

The (gmail) struggle is real.

Are you tired of spending countless hours writing similar replies, feeling overwhelmed by email management, and losing productivity due to constant email interruptions?

If so, you're not alone. My inbox is my least favorite place to be. (And a mess of unread messages is very distracting for my ADHD.)

It's time to take back control of your inbox.

Creating automatic replies and/or canned responses can make your life a million times easier. And as a bonus, it allows someone else to easily manage your inbox so you only have to handle the most important emails.

The best part? You can streamline your emails without sacrificing quality or personalization. If you usually have a sassy tone, you can add that to your responses. If you’re all business, you can use that tone too.

Here are four ways you can use automatic responses in your inbox today:

1. Acknowledgement of Receipt

   Set up a quick email that you have received the message and will be in touch soon. You can set this up to automatically reply to any email that hits your inbox. This usually cuts down on follow up messages from the sender.

2. Out Of Office Messages

   If you’re out of office, set up a message to let people know when you’ll be back, and who they can contact with an emergency while you’re gone. This helps let people know not to bother you while you’re out!

3. Meeting Confirmation / Follow Ups

   Your scheduling software can handle this one! Set up an automatic message that goes out when people book with you, then you can schedule reminders to go out in advance. Consider adding an option to reschedule if needed. Then they can take care of that on their own without needing to loop you in.

4. FAQ Responses

   Consider the questions you get the most in your inbox, and create template responses for them. While these responses won’t send automatically, you can just click a couple buttons to reply instead of typing the same responses over and over again!

   PRO TIP: Go to your gmail settings. Click “Advanced” at the top. Then toggled the Templates section to “Enable”. Open a new email and type a FAQ response. Once you’re done, click the three dots at the bottom of the draft. Hover over “Templates” > “Save Draft as Template” > “Save As New Template”. Name it and save it!