Lead generation has become the primary concern of establishments of all sizes. The market that is becoming increasingly saturated each day and where the competition gets really hard, attracting consumers interest to your business’s products or/and services is not as easy as it used to be. Branding strategy, consistency in communication with prospects and digital marketing strategies are some of the most powerful means of lead generation.

Today, companies are heavily relying on the Internet to convert prospect and push them to enter the sales funnel. Marketing strategists are using landing pages, blogs, forums, paid ads on social media. But no matter how many leads are generated by marketing, approximately 20% of those leads actually convert into customers.

Is there something more that can be done? The answer lays in forming a deeper relationship with the prospects. In order to achieve this, you will have to excel in your customer service.

Lead Generation via Comments on Blogs

You may already know that a blog is an important aspect of any website. Useful and up-to-date content attracts more visitors and in the end, it increases website traffic, time spent on page and the website’s rank in search results.

However, there is also one more thing you can use your blog for – invite readers to ask or recommend something in the comment section after each article. It might seem like an “out of your comfort zone” task for customer support agents to be active on a blog, but it really isn’t any different than chatting with a customer using live chat.

Highly informative articles written in a friendly and professional tone that encourage readers to participate do result in higher lead generation. The reader’s comments also provide ideas for the next article title.

After the support agent answers the thread in the comments section that topic can be used to write the next in-depth article that will generate more leads. Don’t forget to pay attention to SEO when you write these. By doing so, you will get even higher ranks in search inquiries.

Leveraging email marketing to generate leads

Email marketing has become a trend in generating leads. Almost every online business relies heavily on lead generation as one of its core marketing ethics. There are numerous tools in the market to generate leads for businesses. From Mailchimp to send out drip campaigns to Mailbird to manage emails, prospect addresses and much more, it can easily be said that email marketing has become a breeze with the help of such tools.

Now, businesses can capture leads by sending out newsletters and drips with the help of email automation tools. And, listing those precious prospect leads, managing all the emails and maintaining a smooth flow is being offered by email management apps such as Mailbird. In a nutshell, businesses don’t need to worry much as these tools take care of the technical side while they focus on leads.   

Lead Generation via Social Media Engagement

“Knowing every detail of your business will determine its success or failure. You must know every metric that makes your business successful and cut the metrics that aren’t delivering success.” – says Greg Hayment, founder of SEO.it.

Social media aspect is similar to the blog comments. When addressed properly, both of these work as the perfect synergy of lead generation and lead nurturing. While the influx of questions posted through a blog can be limited, on social media profiles that number is significantly bigger. This is why social media can be leveraged for lead nurturing.

There should be at least one person from the customer service department appointed to track the social media page(s). By responding in detail to each question posted there, you will send a powerful message to consumers. The foundation of a firmer bond with your consumers is laid by making them feel they are respected and that they can always tell whatever concerns them.

In order to get the full grasp of social media potentials, you will have to use tools to track social media metrics.

Passive Lead Generation via Knowledge Base

Using an external knowledge base to empower the customers is an incredible means of passive lead generation. When you have well-written knowledge base articles in terms of SEO, titles, concise and actionable content and clear categories, you dramatically increase the chances of your articles showing up in search results when someone looks for help online.

Your knowledge base will not only be at your customers’ disposal, helping them solve issues efficiently, but it will also attract valuable prospects to your website. If you want to further increase lead generation through the knowledge base, make sure to provide users with help centre information easily accessible on every page. So that users can call for further assistance if they need it.

Improving Lead Generation on Landing Page

The landing page is the part of your website with the most “lead-capturing potential”. This is why its design and optimization are of utmost importance. They are usually used for promotion of a single product or service. Therefore, its minimalistic design doesn’t surprise us. The elements found on a landing page should provide any information that might interest a visitor before clicking on a call to action.

If you want to cover all the ground and make sure that visitor doesn’t leave because he or she feels unclear about something, you should put a clearly visible “Need More Information?” or “Get in Touch” element on the page, where you will leave call center contact info.

In order to increase lead generation even further, you can opt for a live chat on the landing page. Forrester study claims that 44% of online consumers are of the opinion that having questions answered by a real person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the key features a website can offer. 

Conclusion

As you can see, customer service is a valuable ally to your other marketing strategies aiming to increase lead generation. You have seen how lead nurturing plays an important part in the transition of leads from the marketing funnel to a sale.

Since we are at the start of a customer-centric era, we can safely assume that in the future customer service will have an even more important role to play. Feel free to expand your knowledge by reading other relevant resources on how to make your customer service more effective in order to generate and nurture more leads.

About Robin: Robin is a Technical Support Executive with a combined experience of 6 years. He is well acquainted with various Knowledge Base tools and is currently associated with ProProfs. In his free time, Robin enjoys reading and traveling.

The post Customer Service: Your Lead Generating Secret Weapon appeared first on Mailbird.

Every day, we arrive at work in the morning ready to get down to business and be productive. Unfortunately, for many of us, the biggest threat to our daily productivity is also something we can’t live without in our profession: email.

The Two Schools of Thought for Email Management

There are conflicting schools of thought when it comes to email management. On the one hand, you have the dedicated people who prefer getting their email accounts down to “Inbox Zero“. These people feel like they are on top of things when they have no (unread) messages sitting in their email inbox. Reaching Inbox Zero helps them breathe a sigh of relief and get on with the rest of their work without feeling stressed or overwhelmed.

On the other hand, you have the people who see email management as an “I’ll get to it when I have the time” task. These people tend to reach Inbox Zero very rarely. They are still usually vigilant about staying on top of their emails and reading new messages as they flow into the inbox. However, after reading a new email, these individuals are also more likely to use the “Mark as unread” option, to be reminded to respond to that email later. This action makes it easier to keep rolling on the most pressing projects or responsibilities without being distracted by emails about other projects or responsibilities.

The New Solution: Mailbird’s Snooze Feature

These two email management strategies described both have their ardent believers. However, the truth is that neither option is perfect. The quest for Inbox Zero can lead to almost obsessive email management, which can make it more difficult for you to immerse yourself fully in a project. The “I’ll come back to it later” approach, meanwhile, means that you consistently run the risk of missing, ignoring, or forgetting about important messages.

Luckily, one of our latest features is designed to create something of a happy medium between these two strategies. The feature is called “Snooze“, and it’s almost exactly as it sounds.

Just as you use the Snooze function on your alarm to buy yourself a few extra minutes of sleep in the morning, you can use the Snooze function in Mailbird to defer the responsibility of having to answer an email.

How the Snooze Feature Works

So how does Snooze work to help with email management? To answer that question, let’s look at how this key Mailbird feature might appeal to both the email management schools of thought outlined above.

1. For reaching Inbox Zero

If you are the type of person who only feels productive when your inbox is down to zero, then you will love Snooze. It is unquestionably a comforting feeling when you can look at your inbox and see no new messages (or no messages at all, depending on how you use folders and archiving).

The problem with folders is that you have to decide where specific messages or email threads are going to go. This process can become granular—especially if you use your personal email account for work as well. You can create as many folders as you want to organize your emails. Once there are too many, you aren’t doing your organization or productivity any favors.

Snooze simplifies the folder process. In the simplest of terms, the Snooze function in Mailbird is, in fact, a separate folder for your emails. Snoozing an email or message will move them into the Snooze folder. When emails or threads are in the Snooze folder, they aren’t in your inbox, which makes the quest for Inbox Zero a whole lot more manageable and realistic.

2. For maximizing productivity

If you are the type of person that prefers to put off email management tasks until you have a good chunk of open time, Snooze can be beneficial to you as well. You might not care about reaching Inbox Zero, but you don’t want to forget to respond to messages that are or may be important. By not answering all your emails right away, you always run this risk.

Snooze makes it possible to manage your email inbox more productively. It makes it easy to defer responding to emails until later if you are in the middle of something else.

In addition to creating and using its own folder in your email account, the Snooze feature includes a notification system that makes it much harder to forget about deferred email messages. If you are in the middle of a project and receive an email that 1) doesn’t relate to the project at hand and 2) isn’t particularly urgent, you can tell Snooze to send these emails back to your inbox at a later point of time.

Your options for reminders include “Later today,” “Tomorrow,” “Tomorrow evening,” “This weekend,” “Next week,” and the somewhat tongue-in-cheek “Next week.” You can also pick a date and time for the reminder if none of the above options appeal.

Of course, you will probably want to respond to emails that relate specifically to the task at hand. However, anything irrelevant to your current project can wait until later. Snooze makes it easier to come back to those emails and take care of them when you aren’t trying to focus on something more pressing.

3. Other Benefits of the Snooze Feature

No matter how you like to manage and respond to emails, the Snooze feature has something for you.

Are you always chasing Inbox Zero? Snooze makes it easy to reach without having to devote an hour or more every morning to respond to emails. You can handle your email management throughout the day without feeling stressed out about the number of unread or unanswered messages sitting in your inbox.

You prefer to focus on one thing at a time? Snooze makes it easy to put off answering emails until later without feeling guilty about it.

There are also other benefits to using Mailbird’s Snooze feature. For instance, say you sent an email yesterday and are anxiously awaiting a response. You don’t want to forget about the email, but you also know that it is too early to send out a follow-up message. Snooze it and have it come back at the right time. 

Using Snooze, you can get the message out of your inbox. You can also set the time frame up for the messages to return to your inbox, just in time to send that follow-up email.  This option is fantastic for invoices, inquiries, or time-sensitive messages.

In a similar vein, you can use Snooze to remind yourself about specific communications or events. If you work in sales, for example, you might use Snooze to remind yourself to reach out to different accounts on a regular basis to see if they need anything from you. You can also create webinar reminders so that Snooze puts an email at the top of your inbox to remind you about your anniversary, your mom’s birthday, or other important events that you don’t want to forget. The flexibility of Snooze makes it a terrific tool for delivering reminders about virtually anything.

Conclusion

No matter how you use Snooze, the feature will always put emails back in your inbox—right at the top of your inbox—based on how you have scheduled your reminders. When your messages reappear, you can either snooze them again or answer them. The result is a smarter and more flexible email management system—one that relies less on your memory and gives you more options for handling your inbox.

Whether you get a rush of satisfaction from reaching Inbox Zero or like to prioritize all your day-to-day tasks—email included—into a schedule built around absolute productivity, Snooze is a tool for you. Try it out with Mailbird.

The post Snooze Your Way To Inbox Zero appeared first on Mailbird.

Windows offers a wide variety of awesome apps that can really increase both productivity and your sanity, especially when it comes to emails. Of course, there are hundreds of  “Best Windows Apps”, that claim to achieve just this goal.

We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the cream of the crop. Stop banging your head against the keyboard in frustration, and install one of these Windows apps that work best for you!

Mailbird

We can’t create a list of the best Windows apps without including ourselves!;-) Mailbird stands out amongst other email clients in a number of ways. Productivity is a huge issue for a lot of companies, and email can feel like fuel on an already raging fire. Features such as attachment search, profile picture search, and a quick action bar drastically reduce the amount of time you spend finding old documents or emails.

Unified Inbox is the favorite feature and main reason for many email ninjas to use Mailbird. All of your accounts will populate in one unified inbox. This feature is an absolute must for people that are managing multiple email accounts. 

From there, customizing the look of the platform is up to you. You can manipulate the background image, message sound, theme color, welcome messages, choose a vertical or horizontal layout, and even activate a dark mode!

In order to be fully happy with an app, you need to be able to integrate a variety of other applications. Luckily, Mailbird has no shortage of popular app integrations. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter, Google Cal and Google Drive, as well as communication apps such as WhatsApp and WeChat are all available integrations for your convenience. This is only a small list–there are many more to explore!

**News Update** within the next few weeks we will be launching our new Contacts Manager with Contacts Sync. Not only will you able to sync your contacts from any account, they will be unified! We have combined the best features and attributes from all Contacts Managers out there and unified them in Mailbird. You will be able to drag&drop your contacts where needed. The edits and details will be applied and synced to ALL your accounts.

Thunderbird

Mozilla’s very own email client is not only still around, it’s alive and well. It’s been popular for years because it’s a very functional application. An appealing aspect that many users adore, surrounds the fact that it runs so smoothly. In the off chance it’s not functioning well, there are plenty of tips and tricks to fix just about any bug on your own. 

Thunderbird offers a few other stand-out features. It’s one of the only programs that allows you to extend the size of the window, much in the way you would with a web browser–making it ideal for those who enjoy a wide-screen monitor. An extremely powerful spam filter keeps out unnecessary junk mail. If you require an RSS feed, you may integrate that, as well. More than likely, if you’ve thought of an extension, it probably exists in Thunderbird. 

Unfortunately, Thunderbird is not being developed and updated anymore. Therefore, the UI is perceived as rather cluttered and not very intuitive by many users.

Inky

Simplicity is key, especially when it comes to email clients. Inky does a great job at creating a straightforward, easy user experience. It offers a variety of features you are used to in a unified inbox app. After you download it, you connect your accounts from platforms such as Gmail, Outlook (Hotmail), Google Apps, and Yahoo. The process is streamlined significantly, by the fact the majority of the account information auto-fills just, similar to the installation steps in Mailbird.

Just like in Mailbird, you can add as many accounts to Inky as you’d like. If you are not into using the unified inbox option, checking each account individually is easy. Features such as “social”, “daily deals”, and “subscriptions” can provide a Smart View for categorizing the various types of emails that enter your inbox. You hold the power to completely customize your user interface.

As emails come in, Inky will rank them with a color-coded system. Dark blue is the most relevant, while light blue is the least relevant. Of course, it can mismark emails, so you have the ability to teach it which ones are the most relevant to you. Keeping your interface exactly as you please is a big facet of Inky’s success.

Microsoft Outlook

The big behemoth that most people know: Microsoft Office Outlook. It’s an all-in-one productivity booster, organizational tool, calendar, and email client. A basic version comes with a whopping seven gigs, and doesn’t limit the size of your attachments. Say goodbye to zip files!

One of Outlook’s best features is its many integrations, including Exchange support for smartphones and tablets. This allows you to use the app both on your computer, and on-the-go. Since the email client is owned by Microsoft, you can chat directly from your inbox via Skype.

Outlook, just like Mailbird, is dedicated to making your entire life much easier, including social media. It allows you to link up accounts such as Google Plus, Twitter, and LinkedIn, providing you with a feed without leaving the program! Since you’re accessing so much information in one place, Outlook is interested in keeping your account safe, and boasts a 97% spam blocking rate. 

All the above-mentioned features, still don’t necessarily justify the price for most of the users. Similar to Thunderbird, Outlook’s UI feels rather cluttered and outdated for many users.

Em Client

This email client has a lot of the same feel as Outlook–without the price tag. It behaves in a typical multi-account manner, but differs in that it’s very customizable, and offers a variety of color schemes and styles. At its basic level, you have the ability to link two accounts. With the “Pro” upgrade, you can add as many other accounts as you please!

If you choose to participate in its paid exchange services, you’ll receive a few additional bonuses, including phone support, and unlimited accounts. This service syncs all emails between your PC, laptop, and any mobile devices.

Popular IMing platforms such as jabber, Yahoo, and Skype fit in very neatly with the built-in chat feature. It also includes many of the awesome productivity features Outlook offers, such as tasks, calendar, contacts, and junk mail filtering. Plus, it boasts additional features, like a bar that opens all previous communications between yourself and your current email contact.

Zimbra

Much like Em Client, Zimbra has a lot of the same functionality as Outlook. Some of the similarities include a calendar, contact manager, and email client. It integrates Gmail, Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange, and both IMAP and POP syncing. Social media is a prominent feature, as well, and will show various feeds like Twitter.

Similar to Mailbird’s Unified Inbox, you can view your multiple accounts in a single inbox, or as individual inboxes. Any email you receive is single or threaded. It gives you the ability to color code, filter and tag like other email clients, but it has a more user-friendly feel to it. Moreover, it integrates well with your mobile devices, and reflects mobile changes to your contacts on the desktop version.

Bonus: Hiri

While not specifically for multiple email accounts, it’s a productivity booster worth noting. Email can be a phenomenal tool, but we often abuse it as users. Hiri was created on this premise and is in search of a way to “fix” this behavior. The vast majority of messages that arrive in your work inbox are thoughtless and seemingly without purpose. With this in mind, you can rate each message, which sets your email analytics. At the end of each week you’ll receive a score based on this feedback. There is an Outlook extension available if you’d like to integrate it with another app. It really sheds light on your email behaviors and can be a base for breaking bad electronic communication habits.

Ultimately, deciding on the ‘Best Windows App’ for yourself really comes down to personal preference. Since there is a slew of programs to choose from, an easy way to tackle the big decision is to write up a list of the most important features to you personally. Eliminate any programs that don’t have these essentials, and narrow your search from there. Email doesn’t have to be the bane of your existence–up your productivity and electronic happiness today!

Email doesn’t have to be the bane of your existence–up your productivity and electronic happiness today!

Any app you would like to add to the list above? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post Best Windows Apps To Manage Multiple Email Accounts appeared first on Mailbird.

Are you tired of managing multiple accounts across different email platforms? 

The average person has at least two email inboxes: one for personal use and one for work. It isn’t terribly difficult to manage a pair of email addresses, but what if you have more? What if you have a personal account and multiple work accounts for different jobs? What if you have a current personal account and multiple other personal accounts from your past? Such as college email addresses or email addresses you made in your teenage years?

Handling Multiple Email Accounts

At some point, you will probably find that disabling your older and less-used email accounts makes the most sense. In some cases, you might not even have a choice in the matter. Your college may disable accounts of former students. Former employers will probably shut down your old accounts, too. In other words, there’s something to be said for consolidating your email as much as you can. As long as you give friends, family, colleagues, and other contacts your most current email address, consolidation shouldn’t put you at risk for missing many important emails.

However, if you do have three or four current email accounts, it can be a real blow to your productivity to have to check and manage all of them on a continuous basis. This statement is especially true if your emails are scattered across multiple email platforms. You have one Hotmail address, a Gmail address or two, and an old Yahoo account that you still use for some family communication. You want to keep monitoring and stay on top of all four addresses. But you don’t want to have to hop from one email client to the next, or look at four different inboxes every time you go into the mail app on your computer. What do you do?

The Perks of Mailbird’s Unified Inbox Plus Feature

If you have been looking for a better to way to manage multiple email accounts, then Mailbird’s Unified Inbox Plus feature is the answer to your prayers. Similar to other email clients, Mailbird lets you load in multiple accounts from different providers so that you can manage them from one central hub and Inbox. 

Of course, you don’t have to use Unified Inbox Plus all the time. The feature does not deploy automatically, which means you can still sort and look at your individual email Inboxes separately.

In some cases, these individual views are ideal. If you are at work and trying to focus on a single core project, you will protect your productivity by only checking your work email account. You can keep an eye on your work account to see if any emails about the project at hand come through. Meanwhile, you can keep your other email accounts separate and put off checking them until after you finish your current project.

In other situations, it might be ideal to be able to pull all your accounts together into one central inbox. For instance, say you are someone who likes to check, read, and manage your emails in the morning over breakfast. You don’t care much about which emails were delivered to which email inboxes; you just want to make sure you see all the emails you received overnight. Pulling all your email messages into the Unified Inbox Plus makes it easier to sift through them quickly. You can delete the junk, reply to the urgent messages, and flag emails that you need to deal with when you get to work.

The emails in Mailbird’s Unified Inbox Plus are arranged in the order in which they were received. This organization method is best for quick email management. You can just go through the messages in reverse chronological order, taking action with each email depending on how you want to handle it.

You burn through all your recently received emails at once, instead of having to hop back and forth between different inboxes. As a result, you are less likely to miss or ignore an important email, simply because you are managing all your emails in the same place and at the same time.

How Unified Inbox Plus Works

Once you decide to use the Unified Inbox Plus feature in Mailbird, all you need to do is click on the hexagon-shaped icon that appears in the left menu. (The icon will only be visible if you have added more than one email account to Mailbird.)

When you click on the hexagon icon, Mailbird will open your Unified Inbox Plus. You can access and manage your personal and work email at the same time.

Do you prefer viewing your accounts separately? No problem at all, you can do that at any time. Unified Inbox Plus is “just” another Inbox in Mailbird, unifying ALL of your folders. This also includes the system folders such as draft, trash etc. That’s why we named Unified Inbox Plus because it unifies more than “just” your Inbox.

The Unified Inbox Plus icon is placed above your regular account icons. You can click on any of your inboxes to view them individually, if and when you decide that managing them individually will be easier or more productive.

Alternatively, you can customize the settings in Mailbird to only pull certain email accounts into your Unified Inbox Plus. For instance, if you have a personal account that you use only for managing finances, you might prefer to sort through those emails separately from all your other personal and work emails.

In such a situation, all you have to do is go to Mailbird Options -> select “Accounts” -> click on the account you want to remove from the Unified Inbox. An “Edit Account” box will pop up, and you can uncheck the box next to “Include in unified account” to prevent that account from contributing anything to the unified Inbox.

Conclusion

Stop losing hours of your day switching back and forth between email accounts and trying to get them all to Inbox Zero. With Mailbird’s Unified Inbox, you can keep your separate email addresses but manage all the emails you receive in one central location. The feature makes it easier to read, answer, delete, save, or archive any messages you receive—so that you don’t miss important work emails or forget to respond to personal messages.

It’s just another way in which Mailbird is reinventing productivity in the world of email.;-)

How do you manage your multiple email accounts? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post Multiple Accounts: How to Best Combine Personal and Work Email appeared first on Mailbird.

It may sound a bit like a secret code word, but Inbox Zero is far more than a cool name. Inbox zero has a pretty straightforward definition. It’s the act of maintaining an inbox without a single email in it. Some consider it to be the “holy grail” of email management because of its ideology and it seemingly causes ease of mind. Each email has been filed away or taken care of, through a variety of management methods.

Inbox zero is touted as the ultimate way to declutter your electronic communications. When there isn’t a single email in your inbox, a huge weight feels like it has been lifted from your shoulders. There isn’t any anxiety about responding to an email. No more letting so many “I’ll-get-to-them-later” messages build, you never actually get to them later.

The theory is that by keeping your inbox at zero, you’re constantly at tabula rasa or a “blank slate”. You can immediately deal with any email that arrives in your inbox, which reduces the overall amount of time you spend on electronic communications. You can then focus your energies on the important tasks at hand. It is supposed to be a way to increase productivity and efficiency.

While this is a great strategy, it really isn’t a practical way to control your inbox. At some point, constantly maintaining inbox zero becomes more of a hassle than a helper. It becomes a near obsession to ensure a single email doesn’t sit in your inbox. Quite frankly, it’s downright idealistic.

In the end, it is not a constructive use of your time to maintain inbox zero 100% of the time. There are, however, quite a few methods to help drastically reduce the number of emails currently in your inbox. Implement these email management tips, to lower the stress of your emails and increase daily productivity.

Schedule Time for Emails

As silly as it sounds, actually penning in time to go through your inbox reduces the amount of time you spend on emails throughout the day. Depending on the number of emails you receive per-day, give yourself an appropriate window of time to respond, label, or delete any emails first thing in the morning.

Repeat this action around the lunch hour, and at the end of your work day. These time slots are allocated towards your email, so you can maintain your sanity in between times. Stick to them, and don’t let other things impinge on that time.

By setting aside a specific time to clear your inbox, you won’t be distracted by the ever-growing number of emails throughout the day. Instead, your clear inbox at the beginning of the day provides a blank slate. The repeated action throughout the day is a great way to maintain that same feeling of clarity. Your mind will feel as clear as your inbox because you don’t have scads of emails looming over your head.

Don’t Let Emails Build Over Time

Answer each email right away. You’ve already taken the time to open and read the email, so why not finish the job? It takes more time to come back to that email and answer it at a later time because you must re-read the email, and then craft an appropriate response. Rather, change your habits to respond to “easy” emails as soon as they enter your inbox.

Since you’ve already taken care of your inbox at specific times throughout the day, each new email that comes in can be dealt with in the easiest way for you, at any given time. Permitting emails to build up is a bad habit. This often leads you to neglect your inbox, leading to the crazy backlog you more than likely have right now. Answering emails as they come in, rather than setting them aside paves the path towards a far more manageable inbox.

Of course, there are lengthy emails that require more than the specified time you set aside. Label them for a later response, and set aside additional time to answer that email. It’s important to focus on the types of emails you receive, so you can choose the best way to deal with them as they enter your inbox.

We at Mailbird know the hussle of getting to all of your emails no matter what length. That’s why we have implemented a lot of features to make it easier to deal with your email load. Features like quick compose, quick reply, keyboard shortcuts, clean inline reply to mention only a few of them.

Labels and Folders Are Key

Organization! Say it again! Organization! Maintaining labels and folders is essential to your success in managing your inbox. Don’t treat your inbox as a cyberspace blackhole.  Once you feel the pull of a few emails being left in your inbox, it’s easy to leave everything there. For all the emails you don’t know what to “do” with, but need to keep, set up a filing system. These can range from a CC from a coworker to a company party save-the-date.

If you’re heading up a big project, create a folder with the name of it. Send any emails regarding that project to your newly created folder. Repeat this action with other easily identifiable threads of emails. From there, label and organize emails in a method that makes the most sense to you. You’re ultimately looking to create folders for important emails, and removing any unnecessary clutter. However you choose to label your emails, make sure you place them in an appropriate folder, once you’ve taken any required actions.

In Mailbird it is very simple to create folders and add lables to your emails. Once you label your emails, they will also be in the corresponding folder, that you have created. You can customise and choose the color of each label to make it even more organised. Do you need help setting up folders and labels? Check out our Knowledge Base article that answers all of your questions.

Set up Labels and Folders in Mailbird

Unsubscribe

How many newsletters, sales, or random emails do you receive from blogs and sites you’ve signed up for a subscription? More than likely, a lot. It’s easy to just delete them and move on, but they’ll continue bombarding your inbox over time. Maybe a clothing boutique only sends something once-a-week, but when was the last time you actually read their newsletter? The chances are high the answer is never, and you only signed up for a coupon offer or other deal.

Determine which email subscriptions you actually read, and mass unsubscribe from the rest. This process can be done slowly over time, as the emails arise, or all at once. Either way, the random clutter in your inbox will be significantly reduced by performing this simple task.

In order to help mitigate any future communications from a blog or website you’ve signed up for, unsubscribe from their list immediately after receiving your coupon code or other enticing deal. This will stop the flood from ever occurring in the first place.

Would it take too long to unsubscribe? We have implemented a great app for that in Mailbird – Unroll.me. This fantatsic app helps you unsubscribe from unwanted emails and also bundles other emails like newsletters, coupons, and other ad-mails into one “Rollup” email. Instead of receiving 10 individual emails you will only need to open one. It’s definitely worth a try. You can simply activate Unroll.me in your Mailbird App store.

Schedule Emails for Later

This may seem like cheating, but it can be a very effective use of your time. At the end of the day, use an email scheduler to hold off on emails until the morning–or in between your scheduled email time. You’ll finish the day feeling like you’ve maintained a clean inbox. Furthermore, you will not receive any notifications until you visit your mail application the next day or whenever you have scheduled them to come back to your inbox.

In Mailbird this very handy feature is calles Snooze. You can snooze any email in your inbox by simply right-clicking the email. Choose the date and time when you would like that email to return it to your inbox. We have highlighted more ways on how to effectively use Snooze in our latest blog post: “Snooze your way to Inbox Zero”.

Use snooze as a strategic tool to maximize the amount of time you focus on each task at hand–and not your email. If you have a tight deadline, snooze all unrelated emails for a set period of time, and put all of your energies into the project and the emails specifically related to it. Once complete, you can focus on any emails you didn’t previously have time to answer. This allows you to fully put your attention to a current task and makes you more productive overall.

All of these hints and tips are great ways to work towards the mythological inbox zero. It is clear, though, that constantly attempting to maintain inbox zero is a fruitless effort. Really and truly isn’t an effective email management method. The methods that help reach this fictional holy grail, however, are amazing ways to manage your email. The main takeaways are to focus on the methods that reduce the clutter and always remember to organize. Be happy with your inbox, and breathe a sigh of relief. 

How many times do you reach Inbox Zero, if ever? And how do you do it? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post Inbox Zero – A Myth or Effective Email Management Method? appeared first on Mailbird.

As working professionals, we spend a lot of our time attending meetings. Even our meetings sometimes have meetings to prepare for the meeting! Which adds up to 11 million meetings held each day in the US on average. Okay, that’s a lot of meetings.

And that’s just for work! It doesn’t account for all the other obligations requiring time on your schedule—from family events to various personal appointments to travel and more. Unless you can afford a personal assistant (I wish!), keeping track of it all requires a simple and user-friendly calendar tool.

Take Google Calendar, for example. Google Calendar is an excellent application for scheduling, especially when it integrates with your email client (like it does with Mailbird). Having everything in one place allows for simple scheduling and keeps everything organized. Plus, Google Calendar has tons of awesome features to ensure you never miss a beat.

So whether you are a veteran user or just starting out, we’ve got 9 tips and tricks to get the most out of Google Calendar.

9) Quick Add your Events

Need to add an event to your calendar? Try the “Quick Add” option, which you can find by clicking the down arrow next to the red “Create” button. Type your plans directly into the dialog box, and Google will interpret the information and add the event to your calendar. Just like your own personal assistant! 

If you are using Google Calendar in Mailbird, you will be able to create a new event without having to leave your inbox. Simply click on the “+” icon in that you can see in the top right corner of the calendar in your Mailbird sidebar.

8) Set Up Notifications

If you are the kind of person who needs a reminder in advance of scheduled events, you can set up notifications within Google Calendar or have the program send you an email reminder. You’ll find notification settings under “My Calendars” by clicking the down arrow next to the calendar you would like to edit. You can also do this on an individual basis with each event.

We would suggest activating email notifications to an email address that you added to your Mailbird email client. You will be able to receive those reminders and check your calendar simultaneously for more efficient time management.

7) Activate Your Daily Agenda

Arguably one of the coolest and most underutilized features in Google Calendar is the daily agenda. When you activate this setting, the program will send you an email with your schedule for the day at 5am. You’ll find this feature by clicking the gear icon on the top right of your calendar and clicking “Settings.” Click “Calendars” at the top of the page. Then click “Edit Notifications” next to the calendar you’d like to receive an agenda for. Check the box to receive your daily agenda via email and you are good to go!  

The notifications and Daily agenda using Google Calendar in Mailbird, can be set up using the web view of the App by clicking on the calendar icon in the left-hand menu.

6) Create Multiple Calendars

As we mentioned previously, oftentimes people have different events to manage for different aspects of their lives, from work to personal to groups and more. Fortunately, you can create separate calendars for each of these needs, which are then color coordinated in your overall schedule. Adding a new calendar is as simple as clicking the down arrow next to “My Calendars” and selecting “Create a New Calendar.”

Now you have your entire schedule neatly organized in one platform.

5) Share Your Calendar with Others

Knowing your own schedule is great, but what if you need to know your team’s schedule, too? Or maybe you are planning an event with friends and need to find a mutual time for all attendees? Sharing your Google Calendar gives other people access to your schedule. You can also add a friend’s calendar to yours by entering their email address in the “Other Calendars” section.

All you need to share your calendar with others is their email address. Simply click the down-arrow next to the calendar you would like to share and click “Share this Calendar.” Enter their email on the next page, and voila! Scheduling around multiple people’s calendars just got a lot easier.

4) Grant Offline Access

Do you travel a lot? Need to access your calendar when you are not connected to the internet? To do so, you’ll have to activate the Offline setting. You can use most (if not all) functions of Google Calendar while offline once you’ve done so. The Offline option is found by clicking the gear icon on the top right and selecting “Offline.” Once you connect to the internet again, the calendar will sync your information across devices.

3) Add Guests & Find Suggested Times

When you are creating an event for multiple people, and you don’t want to sift through all of their calendars to find free time, you can use Google Calendar’s “Guests” and “Find a Time” feature. In the first method, you can use email addressed to add guests to the event and see their calendars. Google will then suggest times for the meeting or event that you all have available, streamlining the scheduling process for you.

Another way to do this is through the “Find a Time” feature. When you click to create an event, there will be two tabs: Event Details and Find a Time. Select the Find a Time tab and enter guests emails on the right to see a compiled calendar that will help you find an open time.

2) Power Up Your Calendar with Information

Google is a powerhouse of information, some of which you might find useful against your schedule. For example, you can have your calendar display the weather forecast for each day so you are prepared for anything. Activating this feature can be done by going into “Settings” under the gear icon at the top right and scrolling down to “Show weather based on my location.”

Another neat feature is the World Clock, which can be found in “Labs” under the gear icon. It’s the last option on the list, which you can enable and save. The World Clock will then appear on the right side of your calendar. Now you’ll know what time it is for your colleagues, friends, or family around the world by adding their locations to the clock. This is also very useful to check before sending them an email. You want your email to get through before they go home or leave for the weekend? Check the recipients time in the calendar in your Mailbird sidebar and set a reminder to send out the email in time.

1) Set Up Google Calendar with Email

Of course, we saved the best for last! The ultimate hack for Google Calendar is the ability to sync it with your email client. This is super easy to do with Mailbird. The process is as follows:

Go to the apps section at the bottom left of Mailbird, find Google Calendar, and check the box.

Click the Google Calendar app at the bottom left of Mailbird. Follow the instructions on the login screen to sign into your current account, or sign in with a different account.

Now, when you click the Google Calendar app on the bottom left of Mailbird, you’ll see your entire schedule within the program.

You can also view your calendar while checking your emails. To do this, go to your Inbox, click the “<” icon at the top left of your Mailbird window, and select the calendar icon. Now you can see your email and calendar side by side as shown and mentioned above.

Conclusion

Google Calendar is super handy when it comes to scheduling meetings and organizing your calendars. Plus, syncing it with Mailbird helps you work more effectively and efficiently. Hopefully, these tips will make you even more efficient, so you can get back to the important tasks in your day.

Have any other Google Calendar hacks? Share them with us in the comments below!

The post Google Calendar & Email – Keep Your Schedule Organized appeared first on Mailbird.

No, PANK isn’t another way of saying pink in a country accent. PANK is a new acronym used to describe a market of women that, until now, have been overlooked. It stands for Professional Aunt, No Kids; a term coined by Melanie Notkin founder of SavvyAuntie.com to describe her websites demographic. PANKs are digital influencers like myself who play a financially meaningful role in the lives of other people’s kids, are active on social media and influence the purchasing decisions of those around them.

Why is the rise of PANKs important?

The rise of PANKs is important because we live in a world that is obsessed with when a woman becomes a mother. No matter what she has achieved career wise, in pop culture becoming a mother is still the greatest thing a female can do with her life. It’s created a societal standard that women, even highly successful ones like Jennifer Aniston, should be looked down upon because they are not mothers.

The PANK acronym shows that a shift is starting to happen in our society. No longer are career driven women being called childless spinsters. Instead, we now have a term that celebrates this childless status and acknowledges that women who choose this alternative lifestyle play a major role and have untapped influence and purchasing power.

PANKs, Startups and Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia

Over the past few years, there has been a steady rise of female-lead startups. I had started Mailbird before I turned 30, and there are numerous other success stories of other female Southeast Asia entrepreneurs doing amazing things and disrupting gender and business norms.

I wanted to dive deeper and see how this new demographic is influencing Southeast Asia women and how it will undoubtedly affect our budding startup culture. A 2015 study by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reported that Southeast Asia has become one of the most entrepreneurial regions in the world, and this status will only be cemented in the coming decades.

More and more people under the age of 30 are being encouraged to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Forbes highlights this trend with their annual 30 Under 30 nominations. In Southeast Asia, I predict we will start to see the PANKs demographic explode as more women are encouraged and given access to entrepreneurship skills and resources.

The PANKs Influence Over Female Entrepreneurs

As women start investing more time into building their own business, they are going to have less time to meet the societal pressure to settle down and have kids by 30.

Besides the societal pressure in this region to get married and have kids, there is a cultural subset that by the age of 30 it’s time to settle down before your biological clock implodes. In Asia, if you need to enter motherhood on the cusp of your third decade, you need to invest time into finding a suitable partner. Time is the most precious thing when it comes to launching a startup venture. So this is where PANKs presents an alternative lifestyle for more women in Southeast Asia who are business professionals and entrepreneurs.

Tracy Young speaking about her startup baby, PlanGrid at TechCrunch Disrupt

For many founders, their startup is their child. With time being the most precious thing when it comes to launching a successful startup venture, PANKs represents an excellent alternative lifestyle for focused career women in Southeast Asia who aren’t ready to juggle the responsibilities of motherhood and the demands of the business world.

For many founders, their startup is their child.

Targeting PANKs as a Demographic

“Our deep dive into social networks has revealed vibrant communities of women who aren’t moms. They are groups – like PANKs – that are well worth a marketer’s attention.” – Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist, Weber Shandwick

Even if you aren’t a PANK yourself, if you want to get ahead of the curve, it’s time to consider how your business can target this influential demographic. According to research in the Digital Women Influencers Study, PANKs have a higher rate of full-time employment and are twice as likely to be single than other women. For marketers, it means this segment has a larger disposable income as they don’t have to stretch their income to support dependents.

Also, if your startup business targets kids or parents, this is even more reason to start paying attention to this segment. According to the report, PANKs wield influence over both kids and their parents. Nearly 68% report to be a role model for the kids in their lives, and 67% say they are sought out by friends for advice on a broad range of topics regarding purchasing decisions.

The 14 principals of PANKs

Redefining Single Career Driven Women

With nearly two-thirds of PANKs reporting that they are glad they aren’t parents themselves, this demographic is reclaiming the word “aunt” from its old-fashioned, stuffy clutches and breathing new life into the word. Aunts are now successful women with disposable income who are disrupting and crushing the business world.

The post The Rise Of PANKs And What That Means For Startup Culture appeared first on Mailbird.

How much time do you spend reading, sorting, and answering emails every day? How many times throughout the day do you have to stop whatever else you are doing to manage email in your work or personal inboxes? For most of us, bulk email is a fact of life. In jobs where constant communication with colleagues, clients, managers, and customers is necessary, email is in most cases certainly quicker and more efficient than jumping on a call or attending a meeting. However, just because email is convenient doesn’t mean it can’t impact your productivity.

Having the right email tools to manage your inboxes, and keep track of your email can make all the difference in the world. Suddenly, that long morning routine of getting your email down to “Inbox Zero” takes a fraction of the time. You have ways to avoid email-related distractions throughout the day—without missing important messages, of course. All of a sudden email becomes something that is there to boost your productivity rather than hinder it.

The Email Tools You Should Be Using in Mailbird

Mailbird is built around a series of email tools that are designed to make your email management process faster, more efficient, and less distracting. If you are already using Mailbird, here are a few tools you should be incorporating into your day-to-day routine. And if you don’t have Mailbird yet, these are the email tools that might inspire you to give it a try.

Unified Inbox

Are you tired of hopping back and forth between your personal inbox and your work inbox? Mailbird’s Unified Inbox feature can make your life easier. Our Unified Inbox allows you to view all your email messages, from all your inboxes, aggregated into one convenient inbox. The feature pulls together all your emails, putting them in chronological order based on date and time received. If you are in a hurry and need to go through all your emails quickly, Unified Inbox makes the process faster—especially if you have three or four different inboxes that you need to manage. Unified Inbox is displayed as just another inbox in the left-hand column of Mailbird, which means that you can easily switch back and forth between your isolated inboxes (for work, school, home, etc.) and the unified view.

Unified Inbox in Mailbird

Inline Reply

Inline Reply can be the most efficient way to draft an email response if you need to respond to different parts of an email message. For instance, if you receive an email that poses five different questions to you in bullet point form. You might use Inline Reply to type out your responses underneath each bulleted question. The problem is that replying inline can get confusing. Your responses can blend into and get lost in the original email. This issue is particularly problematic if you have an email chain going and multiple people are replying inline in their responses. With Mailbird’s twist on Inline Reply, it’s easy to color-code your inline responses and tag them with your name. You can use Mailbird to customize the color in which your inline responses will appear.

Quick Compose Shortcut

You are in the middle of a project at work when you remember that you need to send THAT certain email to someone. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to stop what you’re doing and open your email client or direct your browser to your preferred webmail site in order to draft an email? With Mailbird, you can use a Quick Compose keyboard combination to bring up a compose window and quickly type up an email. The process is quicker and allows you to get back to the project at hand much more swiftly. By default, the keyboard combination is ctrl + alt + space, but you customize the combination to be something else if you prefer.

Other Keyboard Shortcuts 

The “Quick Compose” feature isn’t the only keyboard shortcut that Mailbird has to offer. There are also keyboard shortcuts that you can use to quickly forward, archive, or reply to your email messages. Once you’ve mastered all the different shortcuts, you will be able to manage your email inboxes with new levels of speed and efficiency.

You can find a list of all shortcuts (Mailbird and Gmail)  in the Apps menu in the top left corner of the window.

Google Calendar Integration

Mailbird doesn’t just integrate all your emails into one central email management hub (or, if you need, into one Unified Inbox); on the contrary, it can also connect to your various calendars, task management, and other productivity apps. Do you use Google Calendar to keep track of your day-to-day agenda? You can integrate it with Mailbird to monitor your tasks and keep an overview of upcoming events. Check out our latest post on how to best combine Google Calendar and email.

Do you use apps like Evernote and Asana to keep track of your projects and track the productivity of your teams? Mailbird can integrate with those and much more. These integration features drastically expand your arsenal of email tools. You can simply activate the apps of your choice in your Mailbird Appstore. 

Mailbird List of Apps

Undo Send Feature

How many of you have accidentally sent emails before they were finished? Or mistakenly typed the wrong names into the recipient bar? How many of us have sent emails only to notice grammar errors and misspellings a moment later? Usually, email mistakes are small and resolved with a quick follow-up email and apology. If you’d rather avoid the embarrassment, though, you can use Mailbird’s “undo send” feature.

After you send a message in Mailbird, you will see a “Sending messages” dialogue box with an “Undo” link. If you realize that you made a mistake, you can click the “Undo” button to prevent the email from landing in the recipient’s inbox.

When setting up undo send, you decide the time frame in which you get to “unsend” that embarrassing email. 

Snooze

Perhaps you get a feeling of thrill and accomplishment by reaching Inbox Zero. Maybe you are someone who tends to get very distracted by email when you are working on projects for your job. In either case, our Snooze feature can help. One of Mailbird’s most unique email tools, Snooze, allows you to temporarily archive emails to a special “Snooze” folders.

If you receive emails that you don’t want to deal with right now (but also don’t want to forget about), you can “Snooze” them like you would snooze an alarm clock. Set a time for Mailbird to remind you about the email (in an hour, later tonight, tomorrow morning, etc.). The email will disappear from your inbox for the time being. When the scheduled reminder time arrives, Mailbird will put the email in question back at the top of your inbox. 

Read our post to learn all about the Snooze feature, set up, and how to use it most effectively.

Are you tired of struggling with email management tasks? If so, consider giving Mailbird a try. The email tools above are all designed to help users manage their email inboxes more seamlessly and efficiently than ever. Email shouldn’t impair your productivity or stress you out, and with Mailbird, it need not do either anymore. To learn more about the many useful email tools that Mailbird has to offer, click here.

The post Effective Inbox Management: Are You Using the Right Email Tools? appeared first on Mailbird.

The list of “Best Gmail App for Windows” is growing constantly. No wonder. People are dealing with more email than they ever have. According to in 2017, Radicati on average we receive 90 emails. Every Day!

While Gmail is among the most popular web email clients, many people prefer to manage their email from their desktop on a desktop email client of their choice.

Especially for people managing multiple accounts the advantages of using a desktop client seems obvious. We have listed the main advantages of using an app to manage your emails in our post ” Should you be using a Desktop Email Client?“

The Windows market is still said to be underserved in terms of email clients, especially compared to what is being offered to Mac users. Nevertheless, there already is a great choice of apps to help you manage your gmail (and other) accounts from your Windows desktop.

Below is the list of apps that we find are definitely worth a mention. 

Foxmail 

Is a simple and effective mail management app for Windows. Foxmail has a pleasant interface and useful features. It reminds a lot of Outlook, it does not feel as heavy and cluttered though. Foxmail has undergone a complete overhaul with a fresh and more clean design. It is also said to be faster and more responsive than it was before. 

Smart integrations like Foxmail notepad feature lets you record while working to organize useful information very easily. Compose, reply, delete and forward buttons are placed at the top of the inbox perfectly visible and accessible to use for the next email. 

The major drawback about this software is that the installer is not in English. Also, in order to for any changes to take effect, you need to shut it down once you have configured it. Click here to get more details on Foxmail.

Mailbird 

Of course, we could not publish a list, without mentioning ourselves in it.  Mailbird is more than a gmail app for Windows. We are desinging Mailbird to become your app to unify all online communication. Not only are we working on providing all major email client features to make multiple account management a breeze. We have also implemented many features for you to literally fly through your inbox. 

Productivity enhancing features or email tools such as: clean Inline Reply, Quick Compose shortcut, Unified Inbox, LinkedIn Look-up, feature, the first integrated Speed Reader, quick action bar, snooze, undo send just to mention a few.

Mailbird also integrates super easily with different apps, for you to save time by not having to clicking back and forth the different browser tabs.  Or even having to change between your PC and mobile i.e. You can easily actuvate the Apps in your Mailbird Appstore and either open the webview of it from the left hand menu or in the Mailbird sidebar. 

Currently supported Apps:

1. Apper.In
2. Asana
3. Chrome
4. Contacts Manager
5. Daily Social
6. Degoo
7. Dropbox
8. Evernote
9. Facebook
10. followup.cc
11. FormSwift
12. Google Calendar
13. Google Docs/Drive
14. Lifehacker
15. Moo.do
16. (Sunrise Calendar)
17. Slack
18. Tech Crunch
19. Twitter
20. unroll.me
21. Veeting Rooms
22. WhatsApp
23. Weibo
24. WeChat
25. Wunderlist
26. The Verge
27. Todoist
28. Trello

And that’s by far not the end of it. We are constantly working on improving Mailbird and the experience we provide. Requested features are implemented step by step. The next big feature to come are our new contacts manager, that will unify ALL of your contacts form across all accounts! We can’t wait to finally launch it. Exchange support, Filter and Rules etc.

Do you have any questions regarding Mailbird? Let us know in the comment section below or shoot us an email and we will get back to you asap.

Opera Mail

Initially, it was known as M2 and was developed by Opera Software. That’s why it was merged within the Opera web browser from version 2 to 12. Now, since the release of Opera 15, it’s no longer an integrated component of Opera web browser. It is now its own, great product, Opera Mail, that runs on Windows and OS X.

It features a good contacts manager and spam filtering. Besides, it supports IMAP, POP3, Atom, and RSS feed. This software uses a database that stores the index of all data. So, reading, labelling, and filtering of emails is very easy. You can read several emails at once, thanks to the use of efficient tabs.

Opera Mail threads will help you to organize your email smart. So, you can easily go through your previous email conversations and keep up with any context of an email thread. Using the label feature, sort through your messages fast. Finally, it has an inbuilt feed reader that will notify you of any update.

credit: softpedia.com

(sources : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mail, http://www.opera.com/computer/mail)

Inky

Inky is a simple and yet very effective email client. It’s similar to Mailbird great for managing multiple accounts. This Gmail app for Windows works with any POP account including Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and others. Also, it works with IMAP and Microsoft Exchange.

One feature making Inky great for business use, is the ability to exchange encrypted and digitally signed emails with anyone. Apart from this, it has a classic design, a speedy search feature, and syncing between tools. 

Inky is available as a basic program and as a premium version. The premium version is split into Inky Pro and Inky Enterprise. The basic version is free and supports gmail, iCloud, and outlook email accounts.

With the pro version, you get access to Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Google Apps, and other IMAP accounts. Also, you get to enjoy Calendar support for Office 365/Exchange and customer support. 

The enterprise program features all features of Inky pro. In addition, it offers customised solutions, volume discounts, phone support, MDM, MAM, and EMM solutions. In conclusion, Inky offers a lot of variety depending on the users need and that’s why on the lust of our “Best Gmail app for Windows”.

(sources: https://inky.com/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inky_(email_client). )

eM Client

Is a great, Outlook look-alike app to manage your multiple accounts from our desktop. This program was developed as an alternative to the primary e-mail clients and calendar options. The new eM Client 7 supports touchscreen devices.

It has a conversation view feature, that groups your messages into the relevant conversation. This helps to keep your in box clean. In addition to that, you can customise the theme of your mail, just like in Mailbird. If you work till night and you feel there is need to rest your eyes, customise your screen using the so-called dark theme.

One feature that is really worth highlighting is the translation feature. If you receive an email in any language, eM Client will do the translation for you.

(sources: http://downloads.techradar.com/downloads/em-client, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM_Client, http://www.emclient.com/, )

Final Thoughts

Perhaps you have used one or two of the mentioned apps. What are the pros and hiccups you encountered? Also, what app is your favourite Gmail App for Windows?

The post What Is The Best Gmail App for Windows? appeared first on Mailbird.

The power of email is undeniable. Whether we are sending the latest viral Youtube video to our friends, setting up an interview for our future job, or communicating with potential clients. Last year, the Radicati group estimated an over 4.3 billion increase in email accounts worldwide. Pew Research told us that over 92% of adults use email regularly. It’s vital to our lives even in this technologically modern world that offers so many alternatives to email. Reality is, email is far from dead (it’s true – there’s even a site called emailisnotdead.com!).

If you are anything like the rest of the world’s email users, you have probably found an amazing email client that can handle anything you throw at it. And once you found your perfect email partner in crime making the move to a new email client can be very difficult and is avoided by many users. Sometimes you may be forced to look for a new client due to different circumstances. It may be that your current client is not being updated by its developers anymore, or it is not compatible with the OS of your new Notebook or Computer. 

Moving from Mac to Windows

Many Mac users are facing with this exact situation. They have to (for whatever reason) switch from Mac to Windows or Linux. You may be able to install the Windows compatible version of your current email client on to your new OS. Some clients are Mac specific though and you will need to find the best Windows alternative of your Mac email client. 

We decided to put together a list of our favorite Windows alternatives to OS X email clients. All the email clients below support IMAP and POP3, and we didn’t factor in pricing when considering these apps because picking the best email client is all about features, not price. Please also remember that mot of the windows alternatives on our list are availbale on Mac. For the listings below we are assuming though that you have not used them yet.

First up, let’s dive into a few of the best options available for Mac devices to see what Windows apps are up against.

Best Mac Email Clients

1. Apple Mail

credit: http://images.macworld.com/

Apple Mail is the default email client available on all Mac computers, and it’s a favorite of many die-hard Apple loyalists. The Mail app offers basic features like the ability to intuitively manage multiple email accounts and organize your inbox as you please. Along with the added bonus of integrating seamlessly with other Apple products and apps (the main draw to using Mail) the interface is clean and intuitive. It does remind a little bit of a modern version of Outlook, just less cluttered.

Why It’s Popular: Clean Design, Intuitive Integration With Apple Products

2. Airmail 3

credit: http://assets.ilounge.com/

Airmail 3 is another, very popular OS X email client. The main reason is its combination of a beautiful, streamlined interface and a completely customizable experience. For Apple lovers who preferred the Mail app’s intuitive design but want more functionality and productivity, Airmail 3 is the winner. It offers just what you need out of an email client while adding a touch of advancement (like integrations with Asana and Trello) that has kept it a consistent crowd pleaser for the past few years.

Why It’s Popular: Productivity Powerhouse, Customization

3. Spark

credit: http://media.idownloadblog.com/

Just like the other Mac contenders on this list, Spark has an easy setup and streamlined interface. The main reason it is one of the most downloaded OS X email clients is its ability to integrate with nearly any other productivity tool you may want to use (Evernote, OneNote, Dropbox, Google Drive, Pocket, and more). There are dozens of add-on widgets you can choose from to personalize your experience along with Spark’s standout feature, a smart inbox, that categorizes your emails intelligently.

Why It’s Popular: Complete Customization, Comprehensive Third-Party Integrations

Now, let’s get into the best Windows alternatives for these loved OS X email clients.

Best Windows alternatives

2. Microsoft Outlook

credit: https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/

We can’t write a proper review of the best email clients for Windows without mentioning Microsoft Outlook. This email client has been around for ages and has consistently ruled the game in terms of a functional, collaborative email program. You can download Outlook as a desktop client (if it’s not already on your computer), but you also have the option to use the virtual suite on its own. Outlook integrates with the rest of the Microsoft Office Suite smoothly, providing an incredibly productive option for those who like having the whole package. For multiple account management and contact integration, Outlook is strong because of its connection to the Microsoft Office Suite. Setup for Outlook on its own, and the entire suite is simple enough but isn’t as intuitive and clear-cut as it could be.

Also, the calendar app has been neglected for a few years, making it weaker than other email clients. Organization and customization are decent in Outlook but are not at the forefront of worthwhile features. MS Outlook can be overwhelming especially for previous Mac users, that are used to clean and intuitive UX and UIs from their Apps.

Why It Compares: More Comprehensive Alternative To Apple’s Mail App

2. Mailbird

Mailbird is inspired by a Mac email client called Sparrow. Our Founders loved the email client that was acquired for $25 Mio by Google in 2012. They decided to build a Sparrow-like App for the very much underserved Windows market. Mailbird was born.

Many of our users, that came from Mac love Mailbird for its customization options, visual clarity, and a better overall experience that will allow you to become a superior email ninja. Our developers put a lot of effort and focus on a super clean and intuitive UX and UI to give people a unique alternative to Outlook.  Multiple email account management is ridiculously easy in Mailbird, storage management is also a breeze, with the ability to coordinate with Dropbox, Google Docs, Evernote, Asana, and more.

Just yesterday we have launched the Alpha of our brand new Contacts Manager, that allows you to import and export contacts from your current email provider and keep your entire network organized. It will sync with Outlook and Gmail and combines unique and known features to unify all of your online contacts with ease. 

You are also able to sort and search correspondence via profile photo or customizable folders and labels, ensuring an efficient system. If customization is what you care about, you will love Mailbird. You can customize pretty much everything starting from the ability to customize account icons, font formats, and color schemes, along with shortcuts, languages, email notification sounds and dark theme options i.e. While Mailbird doesn’t have its own calendar app, Google Calendar integrates to allow you to merge your emails and appointments in one convenient place.

The Setup is intuitive. The design and interface of the app are made for those who like beautiful productivity, with new features constantly being added to improve the overall experience. We have added advanced touch support for all your devices, third party apps for your social networks, and a speed reader to allow you to cut your email reading time in half.

Why It Compares: Host Of Third-Party Integrations, Customization, And Overall Experience

3. eM Client

Customization is better in eM client than Microsoft Outlook, nevertheless, it is very similar to Outlook. Contacts and calendar integrate well. The setup is easy and overall the app supports incredible customization and add-on features, meaning that just like Airmail 3 and Spark available for OS X or Mailbird for Windows, you’ll be able to adapt your client to your changing needs.

The interface is stylish, clean, and incredibly natural to use, making the experience pleasant and mostly hassle-free. One could argue, that the app isn’t quite as modern as other email clients out there, but if you love the base design of Microsoft Outlook coupled with the customization available in Mac apps like Airmail 3 and Spark, you’ll love eM client.

Why It Compares: Customizable Like Airmail 3 and Spark

4. Thunderbird

Similar to MS Outlook, Thunderbird has been around for quite some time already. And even though Mozilla has suspended its development, it is still a very popular choice for people that are looking for a reliable and free email client.  

As with Mailbird and eM Client, multiple account management is a complete breeze. Import and export of contacts is fairly simple. While Thunderbird doesn’t come with an intuitive calendar integration, you can download the Lightning add-on to create a calendar you can use in conjunction with the main app. The setup process for Thunderbird is fairly easy. The overall interface is a bit more “rough around the edges” than Apple’s Mail app i.e.. This may matter for some users making the big switch. But Thunderbird offers endless customization, allowing users to create an email experience that is just right for them – something that even the best Mac apps haven’t completely mastered (yet).

Why It Compares: For Use On Both OS X and Windows, Individualized Experience

So, Which Windows Client Is Best For Your Switch?

At the end of the day, choosing the ideal email client will come down to two things: (1) Your daily use and (2) the features that are critical for your productivity. Finding an app that works with you, not against you is key. Hopefully, the list above helps you find the best email client to support you making the move from Mac to Windows. 

What do you think? What is your favorite Windows email client?

The post Windows Alternatives To The Best Mac Email Client appeared first on Mailbird.

Did you know? The first email was sent over 40 years ago—in 1972, to be exact—by a man named Ray Tomlinson, who is often credited as the inventor of email. Since then, email has become ubiquitous in communication. Every day, more emails are sent and received than the previous day. Its place in our society is the norm, to the point where if you don’t have email, others might find that odd.

At first, the usability of email was limited. Some early systems required both users to be logged into the same host to send a message. Later iterations only allowed communication between the same email client. But as the internet has advanced, so has email. Now, you have a choice on what email client you would like to use… and there’s a lot to choose from!

The first decision you have to make is whether or not you should use a desktop email client or webmail/cloud-based email. Both systems have their advantages, so it’s mainly just a personal preference. We’ll outline the pros and cons of each in the next section.

Desktop Email Client vs. Webmail: Which Should You Choose?

To start, let’s look at desktop email clients. Desktop email clients are applications that enable you to manage your inbox by sending, receiving, and organizing messages directly from your desktop or mobile device. A few names that might ring a bell include Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, and, of course, Mailbird.

Desktop email clients are best for people with multiple email addresses, especially on different domains. You simply cannot beat the functionality and organization of managing multiple email addresses in a desktop email client. They also allow you offline access to your email, which webmail cannot do. Desktop email clients typically have better security features and far superior filtering, sorting, flagging, and tagging capabilities than webmail. Plus, desktop email clients have become so sophisticated these days that they’ve become more than just “email.” Many applications integrate with calendars, to-do lists, and other apps to increase productivity. If any of these features are important to you, a desktop email client is the way to go.

Desktop Email Clients

Webmail, on the other hand, is an email system that allows you to access your email via a web browser. Think Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. The obvious advantage to webmail is that you can access your email from anywhere on any device without needing to access a third party application. However, webmail does not typically support custom domains without upgrading or paying. You might also be inundated with advertisements. And, for users with multiple email accounts and different domains, you’d have to log into all your accounts on separate tabs or browsers. It can get messy and complicated.

Webmail

For the purpose of this article, we are going to focus on desktop email clients.

Choosing the Right Email Client

Now that you’ve decided to go with a desktop email client, the big question becomes: Which email client should you use? There are tons of options available, and it can be challenging to sift through them all. Fortunately, we have a list of questions to ask yourself to narrow your search.

1. Is the interface simple, clean, and intuitive? By far the biggest complaint with desktop email clients is that the user experience is outdated and clunky. Fortunately, new desktop email clients like Mailbird come equipped with a modern, sleek interface that’s uncluttered and easy to navigate. You’ll want to select a system with that type of experience.
2. Does the email client support multiple email addresses from different providers? 90% of the time, they will. Still, it’s safe to double check. 
3. Can you integrate with other apps, such as Google Calendar or social media platforms? As we’ve mentioned previously, desktop email clients have evolved into productivity hubs that do more than just send and receive email. Accessing your calendar, social media accounts, messaging apps, and more in one place turns your email client into a productivity machine. 
4. How much storage space do you get? A differentiator between desktop email clients may be the amount of storage you get, which affects attachments and how much email you can backup. If you need to backup everything, more space is better. If you don’t really care to backup your emails, then storage won’t matter to you as much.
5. What is the set up process like? Some desktop email clients get you signed up with just a valid email address and a password. Others require protocol addresses, port numbers, email aliases, and additional preferences. If you’re not particularly tech savvy, this can be intimidating and frustratingly complex. Take a quick look through the email client’s set up process so you can get up and running with minimal irritation.

Of course, these questions will only help you if you know which desktop email clients to look at. And we’ve already done some of the work for you! This blog post describes Mailbird, Thunderbird, Inky, Outlook, eM Client, Zimbra, and Hiri, and provides the necessary input to help you make your decision.

How to Set Up Your Desktop Email Client

Phew! You did it. You picked your desktop email client. Now it’s time to get it all set up! This process can seem daunting, especially when they start throwing acronyms out there like POP3, IMAP, and SMTP. It’s not as complicated as it looks, especially with an email client like Mailbird. We’ll use this as an example of how to get set up!

If this is your first time opening Mailbird, you’ll be greeted with an “Add account” dialog box that asks for your name, email, and password. Type in your information (email and password) and click Continue. Mailbird will find all the required information to set up your account.                                                                                                                        

To add an additional account (after you’ve already added your first account), click the menu button on the top left of Mailbird and select “Settings.” In the accounts tab, you’ll see a button for “Add.” Use this method to add multiple email addresses.

Once you’ve done that, a box titled “Network settings” pops up. Click Continue. In this step, the system will use your email and password to search for network settings—aka all those funky acronyms we mentioned earlier. Once the system detects your settings, you’ll be prompted with the next step.

If you’re using a custom domain, it’s possible the system will not be able to detect your network settings and a “Settings not found” box will pop up. In this case, you’ll have to enter the settings yourself. If you don’t know this information, check with your email provider. (For example, if it’s your work email, your IT team will have this information.) Once you’ve filled in all the required information, click Continue.

1. After the system connects all your network settings, a few other prompts to customize your Mailbird experience will pop up. The first asks you to assign “Profile photos” to your contacts, which you can do by connecting to Facebook or skip this step.
   
2. Next, you’re offered the opportunity to customize your layout and theme color. You can always come back to this setting later if you want to try different things.
   
3. Finally, you’ll be prompted to connect third part applications, such as WhatsApp, Google Calendar, social media accounts, and more. Select the apps you’d like to integrate and click Continue. If you do not want to connect any apps at this time, just click Continue.
   
4. And voila! Your account is set up. The last step allows you to add more accounts, or simply click Close to start playing around in Mailbird!

See how easy that can be? In less than five minutes, you’ll be on your way to becoming an email ninja!

Conclusion

Considering how often we check our email in one day, and how frequently we use it for communication, having an awesome email client makes that process much less stressful. The more organized your inbox, the simpler the interface, the more intuitive the system—the less time you’ll waste on email. Which means more time for the important tasks!

Do you have any other tips for choosing the right email client or getting it set up quickly and easily? Let us know in the comments!

The post How To Set Up A Desktop Email Client appeared first on Mailbird.

Mailbird Contact Manager unifies your contacts in the best way possible

The Mailbird Contact Manager deserves a full write up, because this feature is ridiculously awesome. It’s been a year in the making, so this feature release means a lot to us. We built this for email users worldwide, to make their lives better with the most critical contacts that keep our personal and business connections thriving.

Let’s look at the highlights of your brilliant new Contact Manager and how to best use it. It is our ultimate obligation to you to deliver the absolute best damn unified, beautiful and synced Contact Management tool that practically manages itself. It’s beautiful. So here we go…

Get started with the best Contact Manager ever

Before you become a contacts managing machine, first thing is to get all your contacts into Mailbird. It’s simple and will be done in no time. A heads up, the more contacts you have, the longer it may take (we are talking, instead of 10 seconds, it may take 20 seconds). A step by step guide to get the Mailbird Contact Manager as soon as possible:

1. Activate the ‘Contacts’ app in our Mailbird App section.

2. Once you have activated the app an introduction window will pop up. Press the blue “Connect accounts” button on the final slide of the introduction. 

3. Mailbird gives you the option to choose contacts from your Google and/or Outlook accounts (including Google Apps and Office 365) that you have added to Mailbird. Check the boxes next to the Google and/or Outlook accounts to start syncing and adding your contacts to the Mailbird Contact Manager.

4. Should you want to add another Google and/or Outlook account that are not yet in Mailbird, hit the blue “+ Connect other account”. 

5. Choose your account.

-> Note: If you add a new account to Mailbird, you will need to log into your account with your email and email account password. Both Google and Outlook will ask you to grand Mailbird certain permissions to access the account, necessary to sync your contacts.

Agree to the permissions to proceed with syncing your contacts in Mailbird. If at any point you do not feel comfortable, please get in touch with our support team to confirm this process. We assure you your information is safe and secure, you have nothing to worry about.

Voilá! All your contacts as synced in Mailbird. Search, add, remove, edit and connect seamlessly with all the important people in your life with Mailbird. Anything you do in Mailbird will sync with Google and Outlook. Finally, the Mailbird Contact Manager is here and life just got a heck of a lot better in how we stay connected.

Linking! You will love this one

After you have added your contacts to the Mailbird Contact Manager, it’s time to get them organized. When searching for a contact, notice that a single person may be listed in two or more accounts. The single person will show as two different entries even though they are the same person. Here’s the magic of linking, where you can link both entries into one in the Mailbird Contact Manager. You contact details of this one person is unified into one entry. Let’s do it.

1. Mark both contacts, right click and choose “Link contacts”. Mailbird will combine the details from two separate entries into one linked contact. Note: These contacts are not merged, only linked.

2. Editing a linked contact (unified contact) is easy. When you edit any details in a linked contact, the edits are automatically applied to the individual contact as well. Imagine the time you save when you only have to edit a contact once!

In some cases you may link contacts that are not 100% identical. As an example, a contact might have different last names in two separate entries, even if they are the same person. To decide and set the name you would like to use for that contact, go the unified contact and check the last name you would like to display in the linked contact. It can also be empty if you wish. The same can be applied to the image and other contact details listed.

3. Unlink contacts. Some people prefer not to link their accounts and keep them individually separated. No problem you can easily unlink either individual entries from a unified contact or just unlink all of them.

-> Note: linking works only in Mailbird! You will have separate individual contacts in your web based accounts. Any changes you are making within your unified/linked entries, will be synced.

Copying contacts

You may want to copy or add a contact from account/group A to account/group B. You have 2 options to do that.

First, you can add the contact to a new group by using the “+” icon in the group section of the individual contact.

We want things to be easy for you when you choose Mailbird for managing your accounts and contacts. So, we’ve taken the time to make it so you can drag & drop contact entries to and contact group or account you want, which is totally awesome.

If you add a contact to a group in another account, they will be linked, because it’s another account.

Why will it link them? Because, when copying the contact it will create an identical entry in a different group. To save you time, Mailbird creates a unified contact for you. As mentioned before, you can easily unlink those contacts again.

Move Contacts

There is also the option to move a contact between accounts and/or groups, but NOT copy it. Hold the shift key while dragging the contact entry. The contact will be moved to the group you chose.

Based on experience, it is very easy to end up with a large number of copies in your virtual address book due to the convenience of moving contacts around. To avoid a huge amount of copies, Mailbird will actually delete the contact once you “drag” them out of the group. Other clients like Apple Mail i.e. will leave the contact there, but Mailbird will keep your contacts free of “rubbish”. Mailbird removes the contact from the group you moved it out of.

-> Note: Moving contacts does not work if you are in “All Contacts” so be sure you are not in “All Contacts” when trying to move a contact entry.

Customization and layout

No matter how long you have been using Mailbird, you will have noticed one thing for sure. We love customization. We know that people are more productive when they can arrange and customize their experience with the design and layout of apps they use every day.

Your Mailbird Contact Manager delivers the customization you need. Show or hide all the groups if you prefer the layout to be less cluttered. Customize profile pictures/avatars of your contacts by uploading any image you choose to associate with that contact entry.

Last but not least, unlinking accounts is done by clicking on the drop down arrow at the top of the linked contact and select any of the accounts you want to unlink. This unlinks and removes the account one by one.

These are the key functionalities of your Mailbird Contact Manager. The best way to experience how it all works, is to experience it yourself. This was not an easy feature to build, so we really hope you love it given the hard work and over ten thousand hours put into it.

With that being said, we welcome any questions, bugs or suggestions in the comment section below or by simply sending us an email.     

The post Our new Contact Manager with Contact Sync is out appeared first on Mailbird.

In this modern day anyone is able to pick up a laptop and throw a couple of hundred words onto a web page about any topic whatsoever; so how can we tell whether the article you’re reading is factual and relevant?

The Internet is crawling with poor quality content that’s there solely to give the author a presence on the internet (which is why we’re told a thousand different things when we’re looking for one simple answer on Google). This issue is all too relevant when it comes to technology, it seems like everyone is a ‘tech blogger’ or ‘cyber security expert’ these days.

Conflicting content goes hand in hand with technology, internet and cyber security. Everywhere we look we’re given different tips on how to keep your business safe online, very few of which are relevant or trust-worthy.

Malware, ransomware, DDOS attacks, phishing and identity theft are all on the rise as the Internet of Things (IoT) and M2M communications (M2M) is becoming more popular. This paired with the fact that it’s harder than ever to decide which content to trust has caused many myths arise.

That being said, there are articles out there that address the importance of online security, but we don’t even feel safe enough to follow their steps. We’re stuck in an ongoing battle of sifting through trustworthy and irrelevant sources. So ignore the clickbait, obvious exaggeration and content-churners; we’ve debunked 3 of the most common myths when it comes to internet security so you don’t have to…

Myth #1: “I’m not a target to cyber attackers”

We like your optimism. No really, but what makes you think you aren’t a target?

It doesn’t matter what internet connectivity solution you’re utilising; just because you aren’t ‘rich’ or don’t use your devices for business-use it doesn’t mean that you’re invisible to threats. And if you’re sat there thinking to yourself “well even if I do get hacked there’s nothing the hackers will find that’s of any value”, you couldn’t be being more naïve.

How many times have you saved a password or bank details to a website? Hackers target vulnerabilities in your system to collate data about you, no matter how insignificant you think that data is.

The truth is that they don’t have an interest in how important or how ‘big’ a target you are, they just focus on the vulnerable. There’s a plethora of security options out there to choose from, so don’t take it personally, you’re a target; just ensure you have software such as Norton or McAfee in place to avoid being a victim of cyber-crooks.

Myth #2: “I’ll be fine; I already use a security application”

Let’s get things straight, no security solution will make you completely immune to cyber-attacks. Even if you’ve forked out for the latest security application unfortunately you’re still not 100% safe… Sorry!

We all fall for intriguing marketing or convincing salespeople, and that’s because they’ll tell us everything we want to hear in order to make a sale. So, you might have been told your system is now bullet proof, but the sad truth is it’s not. Admittedly you’re now less vulnerable, but it goes without saying, you can’t just rely on one security application.

By putting all your eggs in one basket and utilising a single security program, you’re simply trusting one individual line of defence to prevent financial-stealing, malware and other non-traditional attack vectors. Multiple waves of defence is much more effective.

If you want to be at minimum risk you need to have multiple forms of security in place. Here are a few examples of free security applications that you can implement within your system. As long as you’re well educated in cyber-security and all your software is updated regularly to the latest version, your data will be better protected.

Myth #3: “I don’t access unsafe websites, why do I need security software?”

We’re aware of many methods a cyber-hacker uses to entice us in and give them access to our network, but that doesn’t mean we know all their hidden tricks. It can be as obvious as someone emailing you with ‘an offer you can’t refuse’, or a more complex, invisible method.

Although it’s the easiest to spot, cyber-crime including malware, phishing and identity theft doesn’t just stop at email. What we’re saying is you can’t rely on your own common sense to spot a cyber-hacker’s tricks. There are plenty of other vulnerabilities you could be susceptible to including website exploits, malware in ads and other invisible security breaches.

You don’t even have to click on some websites to be swarmed by malware, in fact some of your favourite and most-trusted apps can be the source of a security breach. Just last week Unroll.me were in the headlines for selling on private and personal data to Uber; it goes to prove that even the sites and apps we put our faith in can cause you problems. So keep your wits about you, read the Ts & Cs and invest in security software. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

Bio: George is a Digital Marketing & PR Assistant for telecommunications and IT specialist DuoCall.

The post 3 myths about internet and cyber-security appeared first on Mailbird.

As a business owner, especially for small businesses, your contact list is your most prized possession. Many (small) businesses rely on relationships to sell products or services, and every relationship is recorded in your coveted contact list. Using that list to keep in touch with your clients and customers is crucial to maintaining those relationships, and ultimately securing repeat business.

Of course, the bigger your contact list becomes, the harder it is to manage. And with more relationships to remember, the harder it becomes to keep track of the details, like how you met this person, what products or services they’re interested in, and more. But all of this is key to effective contact management.

Effective contact management plays an important part in your business success because it allows you to move leads through the buyer’s journey. Whether they’re a new lead or a loyal customer, contact management allows you to effectively communicate with them to maximize business opportunities. It also saves you an incredible amount of time, and for someone running his or her own business, time is money! So how exactly can you succeed at contact management? Here are some of our favorite tips!

2 Tips for Effective Contact Management

1. Group or Segment Your Contacts

When managing your contact list, groups and segments will be your best friend. Which groups you use will depend on how you want to separate your contacts. You can do it by referral—how you met them or how you gained their contact information, such as a Website Lead or Conference Lead. Maybe they’re someone you know from a previous job, which would also be a great way to group them.

Another way to segment your contact list is by stage in the buyer’s journey, such as prospect to lead to client, or whichever label is pertinent to the way you run your business. You can even group contacts by the services they’re interested in. For example, if you run a fitness center, you may have contacts that are interested in yoga, personal training, group fitness classes, aquatics, etc. Regardless of the way you do it, it’s absolutely critical that you take the time upfront to categorize your contact database in a way that streamlines future communications, which brings me to our second tip…

2. Tailor Communications to Specific Groups

Once you’ve grouped your contacts and you’re ready to start emailing, create email campaigns specific to that group. Don’t just send a blanket message to everyone in your database. The more relevant the email is to the person, the more likely it will resonate with them and create the desired action, whatever it is that you want them to do (join, buy, call, etc.).

For effective contact management, you should always keep in touch with your contacts, especially former customers, at a regular cadence (without being overly pushy or annoying). Each message should provide value to the recipient so you can stay top of mind the next time they’re ready to buy.

4 Ways Mailbird’s Contacts App Helps You Manage Contacts

Not too long ago, Mailbird introduced a new feature, called Contacts App, that helps users effectively manage their contact lists. With this feature in mind, here’s how an email client can help you achieve effective contact management.

1. Consolidated Contact Lists

It’s safe to say that most people probably have fragmented contact lists. Some people in their personal account, some in their work account, some in a pile of business cards in their desk, maybe even some written in a paper ledger (because, believe it or not, people still do that!). So the first thing you’ll want to do is activate the “Contacts” app in Mailbird Apps to connect contact lists from all of your accounts, including Google, Office 365, Outlook, and more. Now, all of your contacts from your various accounts will be synced in Mailbird. That was easy, right?

You may be wondering what happens when you have the same contact on multiple accounts. In this case, you can “link” multiple contact entries into one. The article above explains this feature in detail.

2. Add Contacts to Groups

As I’ve mentioned before, good contact management isn’t complete without properly segmenting your contacts into groups. There are several ways to add, move, and copy contacts to groups in Mailbird however you see fit. You can use the “+” sign in the contact view or you can drag and drop the contact into a group in the accounts viewing pane. If you simply drag the contact, Mailbird will create a copy of that contact and link it to the original contact. If you do not wish to make a copy, hold the shift key while dragging to move the contact (but not copy). Whatever is most convenient for you.

3. Email Groups

After you group your contacts to your liking, you’ll be able to email group contacts with just a few clicks. In Mailbird, in the contacts viewing pane, click the gear icon and select “Email group contacts.” Craft your tailored email message that’s relevant to your group and send—Mailbird will take care of the rest.

Because effective contact management is all about saving you precious time, making it quick and easy to email your groups is hugely important. Once your database is set up, keeping in touch with your contacts should be super simple.

4. Customize Your Experience

Every small business owner is different, and wants to organize their contacts differently. Your email client should allow for some level of personalization to create an experience that makes the most sense for you. In Mailbird, for example, you can show or hide all groups, upload pictures for your contacts, sort by first or last name, and choose how the contact name is displayed (last, first name or first, last name). Once again, a streamlined experience means saving you valuable time and more efficient communications with your contact list.

Conclusion

Effective contact management is important for any business, but small businesses especially. Keeping your contacts updated and organized saves time and streamlines communication. This again likely results in more sales—and that’s what it’s all about! Categorizing your database is a bit of work upfront. It’s worth it when you have an email client, like Mailbird, that simplifies the process and makes email communications super easy going forward.

The post Why Efficient Contact Management is Crucial for Your Business appeared first on Mailbird.

According to BrightTALK, and as reported by Hubspot, 80% of marketers say their lead generation efforts are only slightly or somewhat effective. That’s not very effective! And yet, 58% of marketers say their lead generation budget will increase in the coming year. With more money and more emphasis placed on lead generation efforts, it’s becoming even more crucial to understand how to most effectively attract and engage leads.

This increase in dollars towards lead generation is understandable. Without it, businesses have to rely on customers randomly stumbling across their products, services or website (or repeat customers, which usually isn’t enough to sustain a business). On the other hand, lead generation involves intentionally driving qualified prospects to your business—usually your website—and collecting their information to follow up for the sale. These are typically new customers, and by the time they engage you or your salespeople, they are moderately-to-highly interested in buying. Because of this, securing those leads can unlock a ton of new sales for you.

Clearly, the potential exists if you have a solid lead generation strategy. But how do you build that strategy? And how do you effectively attract the right leads? Here are 6 of our favorite tips to get you started.

Tips for Effective Lead Generation

#1 Choose the tactics best for your audience

There are so many tactics to generate leads, how do you know where to start? With your audience, of course! The best resource to determine where to focus your lead generation efforts is the people you’re targeting. Are they mid- to late-twenties women on Pinterest? Gen Zers on Snapchat? Are they professionals looking to enhance their careers? Do they check their email religiously? Any of these insights would guide how you gather lead information.

At the very least, every brand should have a place on their website to enter information. Even better if it’s a sign up for a regularly published email newsletter. Otherwise, you can offer content (whitepapers, ebooks), online/email courses, webinars, or collect leads directly on social media sites with paid advertisements. The possibilities are endless. What you choose will depend on your unique audience.

#2 Write a clear and specific call-to-action

Your lead generation strategy will fail without a strong call-to-action. If the user doesn’t understand what they’re supposed to do next, you won’t see results. Be specific. Be clear. Do not overcomplicate things with several steps and clicks, or you risk leads dropping off before completing the conversion. Your call-to-action should be simple and compelling to drive the desired outcome of the user’s visit.

#3 Incentivize the offer

Most of the time, your leads aren’t going to give up their information without something in return. Try offering a promotion or discount for entering an email address. Ask users to enter their contact information before receiving a piece of content, such as a whitepaper or ebook. Only if you provide value will leads respond by giving their information.

#4 Match the form to the offer

Building on the previous point, the more fields the user has to fill out, the less likely they will be to complete the conversion. Make sure the form length matches the value you’re providing. Don’t ask someone to fill out their name, title, company, email, and phone if they’re signing up for your email newsletter. A single field for an email address will suffice (and get you more leads in the long run).

#5 Test, test, and test again

The only way to know which calls-to-action, which ads, which content offers are most effective at converting leads is by testing. Deliver one call-to-action to half your audience and another to the other half. Then continue with whichever one performs better. Or, if you’re unable to split your audience like that, run each call-to-action for at least 30 days and compare results. Do the same with every piece of your strategy—content, copy, titles, offers, etc.—until you’ve crafted the perfect lead generation tactic.

#6 Drive traffic to your tactics

Lead generation is not an “if you build it, they will come” tactic. To help people find your offers, you need to attract or direct them to it. For example, if you publish a whitepaper that you’d like to offer in exchange for contact information, you can build a landing page with a form and promote that page on social media or in an email campaign. The key is to tap into the places your audience lives (see: point #1) and entice them to follow your offer. Bonus points if you can include paid promotion, as many of the distribution platforms are more effective if you pay for them.

How Contact Management Supports Lead Generation

Once you’ve captured a lead, it doesn’t stop there. If you’ve followed the tips thus far, then you’ve promised to deliver value to your lead in exchange for their information. You owe it to them to do just that.

After you’ve collected the user’s information, they should be added to your contact database and placed into a nurturing campaign. Consider sending a “Thank You” note and asking their opinion on the content or offer. Did they receive the value you promised? If they respond, the feedback could be used to refine your lead generation strategy going forward.

Another key to effectively managing your leads is segmenting or grouping your audience in a way that helps drives the sales process. Maybe your database is grouped by the products or services the lead placed interest in. Or perhaps you segment your audience by the topic they engaged with. For example, if your company offers marketing services and a lead downloads a whitepaper about branding and logo design, you may want to segment them by their interest in branding. Then you can send tailored, relevant content to that person based on their interests. All of these tasks can be done with Mailbird’s new Contact Apps feature, described in detail here.

Manage your leads in Mailbird’s Contacts App

Conclusion

Lead generation is no simple task, especially as customers become savvier to it. And with many companies bombarding leads with emails and marketing messages once they do give up their information, people are becoming less inclined to share their contact unless they perceive true value in return. Of course, it’s never enough just to those coveted capture leads. You need an effective tool like Mailbird to manage your contact list and follow up to close the sale.

The post Improve Your Lead Generation through Effective Contact Management appeared first on Mailbird.

Mailbird aims to make your professional endeavours easier by integrating a variety of intuitive functions into one friendly email interface – organize, search and find information with a click of a button. One important feature we have integrated is the undisclosed recipients email feature.

Sending mass email requires a few points of etiquette one being to keep email addresses private. There are a number of reasons why employees prefer to keep their email IDs private. Sending emails to undisclosed recipients ensures that you can do so in a professional manner.

The Benefits

The best way to do send an email to multiple people is to use an undisclosed recipients feature that can be integrated into Gmail or Outlook with Mailbird.

Some main benefits of sending email to undisclosed recipients are:

Professionalism

Concealing email addresses is a thoughtful and professional way of sending mass emails. This protects the privacy of your recipients’ responses too and ensures that other people don’t get a build up of email responses stemmed from replies to your mass email that does not concern anyone but the original sender.

Reduce junk email

Sending email to undisclosed recipients helps to ensure that people actually get your email and that it isn’t filtered out as chain emails to the junk folder.

Spam protection

Truthfully, when you send mass emails with exposed email addresses, it subjects other people to spammers, malware and viruses. Furthermore, it makes it easier for spammers get a hold of information, in extreme cases cause a breach in security through hacking.

Send personalized email 

Instead of seeing a list of emails, names can show up in place or a general title can be given such as “To the Content Department.” This allows you to send email to multiple parties with none of them knowing the other recipients.

How to send undisclosed emails using Mailbird

Make sure you have an address book entry that is set up for undisclosed recipients. Here are the following steps to set up your contact list to send an email to undisclosed recipients:

1. Make sure the contacts app is enabled in Mailbird
2. Go to Apps in the left sidebar and select ON under contacts
3. Hit the add contacts button
4. Type “Undisclosed” in the first name field
5. Type “Recipients” in the last name field
6. Click Add email and type in your email address

Next, send an email by completing the following steps:

1. Formulate a new message and type “undisclosed” in the To: field to select undisclosed recipients (with a contact email) from the auto-complete list.
2. Click the pointed triangle in front of To: (▶) to add all the recipients to Bcc
3. Separate each recipients’ email with a comma
4. Compose your message and send it off!

Privacy protection

After sending an email to undisclosed recipients’ only you, the sender, has access to the recipients’ list and their responses. This is a much cleaner and effective way of sending mail to mass groups – especially ones who may not know each other and may not want to have their information exposed.

Save undisclosed recipients lists

Do you send out weekly meeting minutes? Order lunch on Fridays at the office? Are you a professor who sends out weekly emails to students? Do you rely on email marketing? No matter the case, creating a regular list of undisclosed email recipients is a far more convenient way to manage and execute mass emails. You can also create and save your undisclosed recipients for recurring email lists with Mailbird.

Read Mailbird’s testimonials to learn more about what our users think and try Mailbird for free today!

The post How to Send Emails to Undisclosed Recipients appeared first on Mailbird.

The digital age has brought stress, overwhelm, and mind-clutter to extravagant heights with 70% of U.S. employees—and 96% of senior leaders—saying they feel burned out. The pressure most put on themselves to perform consistently at high levels, paradoxically, creates more chaos in an already chaotic world which spills into day-to-day life unless managed carefully.

By implementing a few proven strategies to better organize your day at work—you will see your productivity, creativity, and efficiency shoot up—with any associated stress from an overly-stimulated mind ease off while providing you with better mental clarity and feeling of content.

Here are five simple tips to better organize your day at work

1. Write

Take 5-10 minutes at the end of your workday to write in a journal and evaluate the day. There is so much going on in our heads that it’s almost impossible to process and gather thoughts without some form of outlet. At the end of the workday, most want to run for the hills—and by doing so—bring their work and associated stresses home with them. A study by UCLA psychologists revealed that by verbalizing your feelings—whether you speak to someone or write them down—will help ensure any associated negative emotions are much less intense. So, instead of bringing any anger or stress home with you, leave it behind in your notepad.

On top of that, by writing down specific challenges you’re facing, your subconscious mind will get to work on coming up with corrective solutions while you sleep at night so you can wake up fresh and motivated to tackle the day.

2. Plan ahead

Now that you’ve released all anger and frustration, you’re in a position to plan the day ahead to increase the likelihood of it going smoothly. Take out another notepad and write down your tasks for tomorrow in order of importance, and leave the office knowing your subconscious will take care of the rest and ensure you’re way ahead of yourself when you arrive for work tomorrow. Challenges and distractions will always arise so be realistic in your goals—and if you fall short—don’t beat yourself up. Just make sure to bump it to the top of tomorrow’s list.

3. Declutter your workspace

A cluttered workspace = a cluttered mind. If your desk is a mess, how can you expect your workday to flow without unwelcome distractions? Organize your desk similar to how you would like to organize your mind: free from clutter and distractions. 

Same goes for your desktop. Keep your desktop clutter free to easily work your way through your tasks including your email.

4. Don’t multi-task

According to a study by the University of California Irvine, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to a task once you’ve taken your concentration away from it. So, when you set out to complete a task, be sure to free yourself from all distractions. That means no social media, email, internet, etc. until the task is complete or the allotted time to work on it has passed. Use a timer, and start off with one hour of uninterrupted work. If the ambient noise is too much, play some music to wash away distractions and help you focus. Tell your colleagues what you’re doing and ask them not to disturb you unless it can’t wait.

5. Obey the 80-20 rule

Most of what we do is not that important, but because it’s easier, and can provide us with that instant hit of dopamine, we have a tendency to spend too much time on simple tasks while procrastinating on the more demanding, important ones. This creates unnecessary struggle. By tackling the more important stuff first, when it comes to completing the other less meaningful tasks, you will be able to do so with a greater sense of accomplishment and contentment.

6. Manage your email

Email is a messy business, and like many other tasks is rarely urgent. Take time to organize yours so when you do go in there, everything is running efficiently and organised in terms of importance. Email desktop clients like Mailbird (Windows) or Airmail (Mac) are great tools for this and come in handy especially for people that have to manage multiple email accounts. 

By applying these simple tips to better organize your day at work, you will experience a range of benefits to help ensure you leave your work at work, and get out on time. Unless tasks are of the utmost importance, don’t take your work home with you. That time to decompress, have fun, and do what you love is just as important as the time required to pay the bills. You will most likely meet resistance from yourself starting out, but if you stick to this, in time, you will see your productivity and quality of work go up as well as your quality of life. A win-win for everybody.

About the Author:

Nicky Cullen is a writer and anxiety coach. Having suffered from anxiety, panic attacks, and depression for a decade: he uses his experience to teach his clients the solutions he wishes somebody taught him 15 years ago. You can learn more by clicking here.

The post How To Organize Your Day At Work appeared first on Mailbird.

Hold your arm out straight for a minute while holding a book, and it won’t cause you too much distress. However, if you keep that arm held out for days, months, or even years, that distress will very quickly turn into pain, and that pain will soon become unbearable.

According to the WHO, the number of people suffering from depression and/or anxiety has increased by nearly 50% between 1990 and 2013. That’s stress on steroids.

As a means of management, most strive to endure it as if it’s just part of the transaction for life.

The consequences of not addressing stress are nothing short of catastrophic—anxiety, depression, panic attacks, an endless list of life threatening diseases, and yes, suicide—can all stem from chronic stress. A pretty high price to pay I think you’ll agree.

You can always fold the cards your playing for a better hand. And if you are dealing with chronic stress, that’s exactly what you should do because life is far too short not to be lived.

Regardless of how severe, everybody can benefit from better managing stress.

Here are seven tips on how to reduce stress in your life today:

1. Meditate

There is too much research on the benefits of mediation to be ignored. If you think it’s some hippy-dippy practice reserved only for the ‘spiritual enlightened,’ think again. When 50 Cent’s not wearing his bulletproof vest—he meditates.

Meditation is not about emptying your mind. It’s about peace of mind. All you’re doing is focussing on your breath and the sensations in your body. That breath plays a vital role in controlling emotions and keeping anxiety at bay. So address whatever misconceptions you may have because the benefits are very real. And yes, you CAN do it.

2. Clean up your diet

If you eat like crap, you can’t expect to not feel like crap. Consume more plant-based foods, eliminate processed foods, drink more water, eat foods with high anti-inflammatory properties, make sure you are getting vitamin D (preferably from the sun. If not, from a supplement), and take a B12 supplement if necessary.

3. Exercise

Get your daily dose of endorphins through exercise—the antidote to many diseases and an excellent means of combatting stress. Your options are endless—if you hate the gym, don’t go. Find an activity you love and do that.

4. Practice yoga

I’ve never been to a yoga class where I haven’t left feeling more relaxed. The benefits are ridiculous—for both the mind and body— so much so that it feels like cheating.

5. Practice gratitude

We’re reluctant to pat ourselves on the back and quick to shoot ourselves in the foot due to our brain’s hard-wired negativity bias. Remind yourself often just how lucky you are, and you’ll soon see a positive change in your mood and outlook. From air to relationships—the little to the major. There is so much to be grateful for—take it a step further and do something to help others less fortunate than you.

6. Stop people pleasing

So many people today live conceptual lives. Influenced by celebrities and social media, we have become obsessed with painting a picture of perfection for the world to envy. Social media and pop culture have created an epidemic where our values are so skewed, we are now more concerned with a concept, and all that is superficial to impress those whose opinions don’t matter. And, of course, there is a direct correlation between this behaviour and stress levels. It’s essential that you work on your values, and stop concerning yourself with irrelevant opinions.

Put more emphasis on relationships with your nearest and dearest. The majority of those you’re wasting energy on most likely aren’t that invested in you (a good thing), because like you, they’re worried about themselves and how others perceive them. Adopt that mindset, and over time you will free up much unnecessary stress.

7. Reduce your social media consumption

Using Instagram likes as a metric for measuring your success and happiness—paradoxically—will leave you feeling unsatisfied and wanting more. And this will bring with it much stress. Social media isn’t real. It’s a platform from which—at a guess—99% of people will only use to display the good in their life that is likely to cause envy. It’s scientifically proven to make us feel bad, so unplug from time to time and try connecting more with a pulse. 

So disconnect from social media some time of the day. Some desktop apps like Mailbird for example give you the opportunity to deactivate the implemented social media apps. This is a great way to focus only on the tasks (like email) you need to at the time. This is a great way to reduce stress as it declutters your brain by only focusing on one thing.

*BONUS*

To reduce stress at work you will need to organised your day in the way that is most comfortable for you. This list may help you organize your day at work.

If you incorporate just a few of these tips into your daily routine, you are almost guaranteed to see a fall off in your stress levels. And that’s always something worth pursuing.

Let us know what you do to reduce stress in the comment section below.

About the Author:

Nicky Cullen is a writer and anxiety coach. Having suffered from anxiety, panic attacks, and depression for a decade: he uses his experience to teach his clients the solutions he wishes somebody taught him 15 years ago. You can learn more by clicking here.

The post 7 Tips On How To Reduce Stress appeared first on Mailbird.

Work-related stress is a major issue for many in today’s society—often spilling over into everyday life. An epidemic in itself—if weed is a gateway drug—work stress is a gateway for anxiety disorders and depression. With such high stakes, stress at work should never be ignored.

Ridiculous demands, bullying, perfectionism, and immense pressure from parents, peers, employers, and the individual themselves all contribute to this vicious cycle. On top of that, an education system that focuses on conformity—and rewarding only those with high grades—sends children out into the world ill-equipped to deal with their emotions.

The so-called path to “success” has been laid out long before we were born with little deviation in spite of the tech explosion and a massive cultural shift which leaves many people asking questions they can’t seem to answer. This path to success—it would appear—focuses solely on money. And while we know that money doesn’t buy happiness, the narrative remains strong and fears of breaking from tradition ensure most remain trapped.

Our strong desire for success and happiness, along with a distorted view of what that is, paradoxically, carries with it high levels of stress which often ensure financial freedom or happiness is never achieved.

Unfortunately, most career decisions are made for others. If your work causes you more stress than joy, you’re not doing it for you: You’re doing it to impress others, make peers jealous or parents proud. And that mindset will get you in a lot of trouble.

Chronic stress at work is not something you should accept. Here are nine tips to manage stress at work better;

1. Plan your day

At the end of each day, by taking five minutes to write, and plan out your next day, you will leave with greater clarity, and a plan of action for tomorrow so all work associated stress is left behind in the office. On top of that, your subconscious will get to work while you sleep coming up with solutions on how to best manage any challenges ahead.

This includes your email-time too. Try to plan the time spend on your email ahead by assigning a certain time to email to avoid getting lost in your email task. Email desktop clients like Mailbird (Windows) or Airmail (Mac) are great tools for going through your email in the most effective and fast way possible, especially for people that have to manage multiple email accounts. 

2. Change your environment

Sitting at your desk all day is not only bad for stress—it’s terrible for overall health. Best practice suggests getting up at least once an hour for two minutes. If stress levels are high, go for a walk and get some fresh air to clear your head.

3. Listen to music

Not only is music a great distraction from stress. Listening to slow, classical or chilled-out music is incredibly relaxing for both the body and mind. The soothing power of music is well-established. It has a unique link to our emotions, so can be an extremely effective in decreasing the levels of stress hormones. Try this playlist on Youtube to keep you calm and focused.

4. Meditate

Meditation is one of, if not, the best tools to manage stress. Make a habit of taking 10 minutes a day to sit undisturbed in a silent room just to breathe. Play some relaxing music in your ears to enhance your experience.

5. Ease off the caffeine

Caffeine is a stimulant, and if you consume too much, it can cause anxiety. I wouldn’t deprive you of your morning coffee, but by limiting consumption, you will avoid the adverse effects that come with it. Instead, try substituting for herbal teas. There is an endless supply of delicious teas that promote a feeling of calmness.

6. Sleep

Sleep is so important to your overall health. I used to be of the opinion that the sooner I went to sleep, the sooner I had to go to work. And I didn’t like that because I didn’t like work. So I would deprive myself of sleep to put off work. Stress, focus, mental clarity, and productivity will all take a hit if you are sleep deprived. On top of that, it can contribute to many serious diseases in the long run. Take the time to unwind, turn off all distractions, unplug from social media and get yourself tucked in for seven or eight solid hours sleep every night.

7. Adopt a solution focused mindset

Problems will always arise. How you respond to them is what matters. Focusing on what happened, placing blame, or allowing yourself to get worked up will only increase stress and prolong the punishment. What’s done can’t be undone. The only question you should be asking yourself is “what’s the solution?” Once you’ve figured that out, execute on it

8. Communicate 

Don’t suppress any frustrations or emotions as they will manifest over time if left ignored. Communicate with your manager or colleagues if something isn’t working out for you. The conversation in itself will be liberating, and it might provide you with everything you are looking for.

9. Quit

If all else fails and you’re doing something you can’t stand—you shouldn’t be doing it. If you’re working with people or for people you don’t get on with—you shouldn’t be working with them. There is no magical formula for this one besides two magical words, “I Quit.” Whether it’s for a new career or a similar job for a new company—your options are endless. So get out there and make something better for yourself. Life is way too short to hate what you do everyday.

“For optimum performance, we need balance—time for work, time for rest, time for play—honor them all and you’ll be far more productive and happy in all aspects of your life.” Nick Cullen

For more tips to eliminate stress in general, you can check out or previous article. 

About the Author:

Nicky Cullen is a writer and anxiety coach. Having suffered from anxiety, panic attacks, and depression for a decade: he uses his experience to teach his clients the solutions he wishes somebody taught him 15 years ago. You can learn more by clicking here.

The post How to best eliminate stress at work appeared first on Mailbird.

In some cases, webmail clients can be a great way to receive, read, and respond to email. Gmail, for instance, is an extremely accessible and intuitive webmail app. In addition to its ease of use, Gmail is also 100% free (with 15 free gigabytes of storage per account, no less), making it a go-to solution for personal email and business email alike. Microsoft’s Outlook.com (formerly known as MSN Hotmail) is another example of a popular webmail client.

But what happens when you have multiple Gmail or MSN Outlook accounts for different purposes? Google does allow you to stay logged in on multiple accounts at once, and switching back and forth between those accounts is as simple as clicking your profile photo icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and selecting a different email inbox. Still, toggling between inboxes takes time. Worse, if you need to stay up to date with each inbox at all times, there is no easy answer—at least not while you are using Gmail or Outlook.com in their standard webmail formats. After all, the last thing you want is to have three or four different webmail tabs constantly open just to monitor your email.

A Better Way to Monitor Your Webmail Accounts

If you have multiple webmail accounts and are tired of switching between them 30 times a day or leaving half a dozen email tabs open on your browser, it might be time to make the switch to a desktop email client. A desktop email client will free you from having to do all your email management in your web browser, eliminating tabs and probably reducing the resources your machine is using. (This last point is particularly key for laptops, which generally don’t have as much RAM or processing power to spare in the first place.)

Mailbird is especially attractive to people who have, up until now, always relied on webmail applications for their email-related needs.

Why Use a Desktop Email Client Over Webmail? 

1. Unified Inbox

This feature makes the biggest argument for most users for switching from webmail to Mailbird. If you are tired of juggling half a dozen Gmail, MSN Hotmail, or Outlook.com accounts, our Unified Inbox will probably become your best friend. With this feature, Mailbird will automatically create what is essentially a “master” inbox for your email management. This inbox will populate with every email you receive in every account you link to Mailbird—be it an MSN Outlook account, a Gmail account, a Yahoo account, or something else.

If you’re someone who constantly longs to reach “Inbox Zero”, Unified Inbox will make it a lot easier. Even if you don’t care about keeping your inbox relatively clean, Unified Inbox will save you time and reduce the chances of you missing an important message. (Of course, you can also view your inboxes individually within Mailbird, if you prefer.)

2. Contact management

Another great feature that can be tough to manage when using multiple webmail accounts.We at Mailbird took contact management to the next level. It has built-in tools that let you share and sync your contacts across all your email accounts. You won’t have to jump from one email account to the next while trying to find a specific email address. Instead, all your contacts will be available from anywhere inside the app, making it easier to keep track of people and faster to get back in touch with them.

3. Social Media and Messenger App Integrations

Something that definitely differentiates Mailbird from Gmail or MSN Outlook.com. These days, some of us do as much communication via Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Slack, and other social networks as we do via email. Especially if you are a business owner, you are probably even using social media as a key platform for marketing your business and communicating with customers. Our apps let you incorporate Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, WhatsApp, and more into your email management client. There’s even an app for Google Docs, so you don’t lose one of the key perks of using Gmail in its native webmail configuration.

4. The List goes on and on

There is a slew of other Mailbird features that can help justify the jump from webmail to desktop. Snooze lets you save email messages for later, making it easy to prioritize different emails, so you maximize your productivity. Undo Send allows you to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation if you send an email to the wrong person or suffer some kind of Freudian slip. Our Inline Reply feature simplifies the process of responding to email messages point-by-point. These features represent just a fraction of what has made Mailbird an award-winning piece of software over the past few years.

Conclusion

Don’t let your webmail clients overwhelm you. If you need to spend five minutes toggling between your different accounts every time you go to check your email, then you are losing precious productivity time. Similarly, if you constantly have to leave four or five webmail tabs open on your browser, that could create a visual block that makes it harder to get work done.

Sure, you may have been using webmail for years, starting with AOL or MSN Hotmail and eventually transitioning to Gmail or Outlook.com. You may even be convinced that webmail is the right choice for you, just because it’s been your go-to email management strategy for so long. However, we bet that if you try Mailbird, you’ll fall in love with how it streamlines and simplifies email for every facet of your life. 

The post The Best Way to Read MSN Hotmail on Your Desktop appeared first on Mailbird.