What Is It?
Similar to previously reviewed LetterMeLater and Followup.cc, Boomerang is a plugin for Gmail that makes it easy to follow up on and delay certain emails.
What Do I Do With It?
Delayed Sending – Write an email now, send it later. Perfect for sticking to your shortened workweek. If you get an email you want to deal with on Monday, but you have chosen a Tuesday through Thursday workweek, and you want people to respect that, write it Monday and set it to be sent first thing Tuesday morning. You can also use it to set reminders for yourself by writing yourself an email and set it to be sent to you at a later date.
Delayed Viewing – Say you get an email while on vacation about something work related, and you really don’t need to deal with it until you return. Just hit the Boomerang button and tell it to return it to your inbox when you get back. The email will disappear and magically reappear on the selected day as if you just received it.
Following Up – When you send an email you can select a period to Boomerang it back to the person. Two things about this feature are really exciting. First, you can set it to send a reminder only if the person has not responded or no matter what. This is great if you don’t want to annoy someone by following up on something they already dealt with. Second, it uses smart algorithms to pick out time periods from the message contents. For instance, if someone emails you and says, “Let’s have lunch in two weeks,” Boomerang will automatically suggest a follow up period of 2 weeks.
Get It Now?
Use a tool like Boomerang in parallel with services like LetterMeLater and Followup.cc, and you can be an email ninja no matter where you are to effectively deal with emails.
