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Label Sharing Is an Awesome Coaching Tool

September 27, 2016 by selim Dizdar

We’ve all gotten terrible emails.

Too long, too short, angry-sounding, unclear, full of grammar errors—the mistakes come in all forms.

It’s especially bad to get a bad email from your supplier or a salesperson. In fact, if it was a from a salesperson, it would most likely never even get a response from you.

Review Your Team’s Emails Before They Send Them Out

Here’s a simple way to coach team members or clients who need help writing better emails.

Using our free Gmail Label Sharing Chrome extension, you can easily review draft emails from your team. This process works:

Before the emails are sent to customers or sales prospects.
Without forwarding email drafts back and forth.

Here’s how to set it up:

Step 1: Have Your Team Install Gmail Label Sharing

Install the free cloudHQ Gmail Label Sharing Chrome extension. Have all team members or coaching clients do the same.

Step 2: Create and Share a Label

In Gmail, create a label to share with your team.

In this example, we’ve used “Draft Emails” as the label, but you can name it anything you want:

You can also set up multiple labels for 1-on-1 coaching—if you’d prefer not to share the label with the entire team.

Click the “Share” button.

Then share the label with your team members or coaching clients.

All team members will now have full access to the label, directly from within their Gmail.

Step 3: Use Chat to Provide Coaching and Feedback

Have your team apply the label to all client and customer service emails.

Then they can click “reply” and compose a message as usual, but save a draft of their response instead of sending it right away.

Their email draft will be accessible for both of you to review automatically through the label.

You can chat back and forth about their email response using the chat area.

When you’re both happy with the message, your employee can click “send.”

The Payoff: Better Emails = Better Business

Poorly-written emails cost you customers.

But well-written, professional emails can make you stand out from the pack.

By using Gmail Label Sharing, you can quickly help employees and clients improve their communications—and help them get better business results along the way.

Install Gmail Label Sharing For Free

Why Law Offices Adopt Gmail Label Sharing and LabelChat

June 15, 2016 by selim Dizdar

Information flows quickly in a law office.

A new case comes in. It’s assigned to a senior partner, who enlists the office’s interns to begin research.

The administrative staff gets involved. Other partners get involved.

Lots and lots of emails start flying back and forth.

Keeping track of it all can be a nightmare.

Today we’re going to show you how to reduce the number of internal emails you send and receive every day– dramatically.

We’ll start by introducing Gmail Label Sharing, which can quickly slash the number of group emails you send and receive.

We’ll then cover Gmail LabelChat, a new feature that can help you eliminate the long, back-and-forth, 20-email long “RE:” messages so common in most modern workplaces.

Part I: Gmail Label Sharing — Bring Sanity to Your Inbox

Law offices revolve around individual cases.

Your inbox—however—is a list of sequential messages about… all kinds of different cases.

By using Gmail Labels, you can easily organize your inbox by cases, instead of by the date a message was received.

Here’s an example to show you how it works.

Let’s assume you have a new case: Clarke vs. Stevens.

Here are the steps you’d take:

Create a new Gmail Label for the case:

For every email you send or receive involving Clarke vs. Stevens, add the “Clarke vs. Stevens” label.

Add the label to all messages related to the case

Now all your emails related to Clarke vs. Stevens will be easily accessible from one place. If you need to find an email related to the case, just open Gmail and click the label.

*Pro tip: You can also set up filters in Gmail that will automatically sort your emails for you, directly into your newly created Gmail label.

Sharing a Gmail Label With Others

Once you’ve set up a label, you can share it with other people on your team.

When you share a Gmail label, you make it possible for others to access anything you’ve put in the shared label.

This is perfect for casework. It means you no longer have to “forward” messages to a list of people working on a case.

Instead, just add them to the appropriate label.

Here’s how to share a Gmail label:

Install cloudHQ’s free Gmail Label Sharing Chrome extension.
Open your Gmail account.
Click the label you want to share.
Click the “Share Label” button in the upper right:

Add team members who are working on the case.

Each team member will receive an email invite to share the label. Once they’ve accepted the invite, they’ll have access to all messages in the shared label from that point forward.

Anyone with access to the shared label can add an email to the label.

This creates a simple, complete organization of all emails related to a case—accessible to anyone who’s working on the project. Next, we’ll look at workflow.

Part II: Why Law Offices Are Adopting Gmail LabelChat

Sharing labels is only the first step in organizing your inbox (and cutting down on the number of emails you send and receive every day). Still, it is the only way to reliable share a chunk of emails without getting lost in numerous email threads.

The second step is to eliminate the 20-message, back-and-forth, “RE:” chains.

That’s where Gmail LabelChat comes in.

How Gmail LabelChat Works To Reduce Time

Gmail LabelChat works by creating an instant-chat area inside Gmail.

Instead of sifting through countless mass emails, you and your team can simply chat back and forth inside Gmail.

You can even share files without having to attach them to an email.

All communications are timestamped and saved, making it easy to find past communications as a case moves forward. The entire conversation is also backed up automatically in a Google Drive document.

All Conversation About a Case, All in One Place

By using Gmail LabelChat, you can set up unique chat areas for each case, then archive them once the case is over.

That means no more digging through your email to find a conversation from two weeks ago.

Instead, the full conversation will be at your fingertips anytime you need it. Simply scroll back through the history to find the message you’re looking for.

How to Set Up Gmail LabelChat for Your Office

Here’s how to set up Gmail LabelChat for your office.

Follow the instructions in Part I above to create and share a Gmail Label.
Click the label for the case.
Click the “Click to Chat” button to open the chat area.

From there, you’ll be able to chat back and forth with your team.

The Benefits

If you work in a law office, you might have developed a love-hate relationship with your email.

Adopting Gmail Label Sharing and Gmail LabelChat can bring some sanity to your inbox, perhaps for the first time.

It can help you cut down the number of emails flowing into your inbox. It can keep everyone on the same page. It can help your team work efficiently.

And it’s 100% free to use for anyone who uses Gmail or hosts their email through Google Apps.

Try It Now

10 Ways to Be 10x More Productive with Gmail

June 9, 2016 by selim Dizdar

Modern productivity starts with email.

According to a Mckinsey study, knowledge workers spend 28% of their day on email.

That’s 11 hours a week in your inbox. Fully 14 weeks of the year (assuming a 40-hour workweek).

If you want to find more time in your day, getting good at email isn’t just a productivity hack.

It’s essential.

The Problem with How We Use Email

Many of us allow email to control us. We spend our entire day, every day, working on our computer with our email open and notifications on.

If you’re like most office workers, you send and receive over 100 emails per day.

Every time that little notification flashes, it stops us from what we’re doing, pulling us out of that magically productive state known as flow. Instead, we jump into whatever “urgent” item just landed in our inbox.

This reactive pattern kills productivity.

It pulls you away from your important work—the work that will make a difference for you and your company.

The good news is this: you don’t have to be a slave to your inbox.

In fact, with some planning and a bit of setup, you can turn your email inbox into a productivity machine (instead of a productivity killer).

Ten Ways to Become an Email Productivity Master

Here are 10 things you can do to get much more productive with your email:

10. Work in Gmail, in Chrome (if Possible)

Gmail is the most powerful email client available today—and that’s true whether you use the free version or the Google Apps version.

Gmail works best in Chrome. Working in Chrome also gives you access to a huge library of Chrome Extensions that take Gmail and make it even more powerful.

9. Go Ninja with Your Notification Settings

It’s okay to have your email open in the background. But do you really need an active notification for every single email?

No. You don’t.

Turn your notifications off. Or at least set notifications to appear only when messages arrive in your “Important” inbox.

That way you won’t get pulled out of your work every time another all-company announcement or marketing newsletter hits your inbox.

To change your notification settings, go to Settings > General, then scroll down to “Desktop Notifications.”

8. Use Gmail Labels

Gmail’s label system is far more powerful than traditional email folders.

With folders, your email is locked away in a single, specific location. Over the years, many people have developed elaborate folder structures in their email.

Labels work like tags. You can create and apply multiple labels per email, making it much easier to find and retrieve emails.

You can use labels to track people, projects, assignments, topic ideas, due dates, or whatever makes sense for you and your work. You can apply labels manually. You can also use filters to automatically assign labels to emails as they come in.

For real productivity power, try adding cloudHQ’s free Gmail Label Sharing Chrome extension, which gives you the ability to share a label with someone else on your team—or in a completely different organization.

7. Don’t open an email until you’re ready to take care of it.

If the email includes a task that will take you less than two minutes to complete, just do the task and move on.

Otherwise, add the to-do to your tasks list. Then delete or archive the email.

6. Write Really Descriptive Email Subject Lines

Gmail’s search function is powerful. When looking for an old email, you should use it first—rather than digging around labels or folders.

The best way to ensure you can find what you need is to write very descriptive subject lines.

Don’t use “Approval.”

Use: “Approval needed by Wednesday on customer invoice issue.”

If you need to search for the email later, it’ll be much easier to find that way.

Pro Tip: If an email chain changes subjects, change the subject line to reflect the new topic.

5. Avoid Email Debates

Email is perfect for standard requests and established processes.

It’s not good for open-ended questions such as: “What do you think about the new initiative?”

Here’s the rule:

For closed-ended questions, email works great.

For open-ended questions that require back-and-forth discussion of ideas: use the phone, use a chat app, or talk to the person face-to-face.

4. Use Gmail’s Archive

Don’t let emails sit in your inbox.

Delete them, or put them in Gmail’s archive.

This keeps your inbox clean, and it allows you to easily find old emails if and when you need them.

3. Share Communication with Your Team and Outside Contractors

Gmail Label Sharing is by far the most popular and free tool we’ve ever created at cloudHQ.

It can help you share information in a wide variety of ways. For example, instead of sending an attachment, you can sync a Gmail label with a Dropbox folder, then share the Gmail label with someone in another organization.

Doing so will give everyone involved instant access on an ongoing basis to every message in your Gmail label, and every document stored in your specific Dropbox folder.

It even works cross-platform, allowing you to sync a Gmail label with an Office 365 Mail folder, for example.

This is one of many things you can do to increase productivity by sharing and syncing Gmail labels.

2. Use Chrome Productivity Extensions

There are thousands of Chrome productivity extensions available to help you get more done.

At cloudHQ, we currently offer 14 free Chrome extensions, many designed to help you do more with Gmail. In addition to Gmail Label Sharing, here are a few FREE extensions we think you might find useful:

1. Use Label Chat Within Gmail

Instead of exchanging emails back and forth, you can easily set up Slack-style chat conversations directly within Gmail.

Doing this is free for anyone using Gmail. All you need is cloudHQ’s free Gmail Label Sharing Chrome extension.

This can dramatically cut down on the number of emails you have to send—and that’s always a good thing for productivity.

You’re going to spend time in email.

Might as well make the time productive.

Use these tricks and let us know how they work for you.

To see all of our free Chrome extensions, just click the button below.

Free Chrome Extensions

The Beyond Simple Way to Save Emails to PDF

May 26, 2016 by selim Dizdar

Ever download emails to PDF? If so, we have a brand new Chrome extension we think you’ll love.

It’s called Save emails to PDF.

It’s free to use for anyone who uses Gmail.

With one click, the extension will download a PDF version of your email. It’s beyond simple.

How It Works

1. Open the email you want to save

2. Click the save as PDF button.

Voila! A PDF copy of the email will be instantly downloaded to your “Downloads” folder.

Any attachments to the email will also be saved.

No Configuration Required

The extension works right out of the box.

There are no configurations required. There’s also no need to have the Dropbox or Google Drive clients installed on your PC or Mac.

Better than Print > Save as PDF

With Windows 10, Microsoft finally included Print to PDF as a native feature.

But if you regularly save emails to PDFs, the new Save emails to PDF Chrome extension makes it much simpler by clicking 1 button.

No more Print, Choose Printer, Print to PDF, Choose Destination Location

Instead, just click one button within Gmail. Save email to PDF will take it from there.

It is by far the easiest way to save an email to PDF.

Other Free Ways to Be Productive in Gmail

Save emails to PDF is just the latest in a series of productivity tools for Gmail, including:

If you’d like to create a complete, automatic backup of all your email without pressing any buttons, just set it up once and forget about it. You can easily achieve this through cloudHQ’s synchronizing service.

Save Gmail to PDF

Gmail CRM Workflows for Teams

April 27, 2016 by selim Dizdar

It’s not easy to stay organized. And if you have a team, it’s exponentially more difficult to manage everyone.

That’s why we love using shared Gmail labels. For our small team, they let us keep track of our work easily, and in a way that everyone on the team can follow.

Using Email to Help

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working hard to expand the features of our free cloudHQ Gmail Label Sharing Chrome extension.

It all started with our release of Slack-style chat capability, directly within Gmail so that noone needs to leave Gmail to chat in a separate service like Slack or Podio to chat about a project or comment on an incoming email.

Last week we announced a series of additional new features that give you new ways to stay organized. One of these is called “status commands,” which gives you the ability to add sub-labels to emails.

For example, let’s say your sales prospects regularly send you requests via email. Using status commands, you could easily track the status of each of their requests. Your labels could be:

Qualified
Inbound
Contacted

To use these status command labels:

Create a Gmail Label that’s named something like: “Sales Inquiries”, and share it out with your teammates.
Create a filter so that all emails responding to your email like “info@yourcompany.com”, gets funneled to this Gmail label
Type “/status [keyword]” in the chat to the right of an inbound email that you received.

The result will be a status sub-label that your entire team can see, and work on together.

In this article, we’ll outline 4 scenarios to use status commands. By the end, we think you’ll see the tremendous potential of this new feature.

Status Commands open up a world of opportunities for businesses that use the Gmail Label Sharing Chrome Extension.

Scenario 1: Selling a House as a Real Estate Agent

Real estate sales tend to follow a similar pattern. As a realtor, you could easily use Status Commands to track each step of the sale process. For example, you could add status tags that say:

Listed
Open house
Offer received
Sale pending
Closed

Since everyone on your team will have the shared label in their inbox, it will be easy for everyone to see which stage of the process each property is at.

Scenario #2: CRM Within Your Email

Love it or hate it, CRM is a staple of modern sales organizations.

Unfortunately, many CRMs are complex, difficult to learn, and paradoxically also difficult to use.

Instead of syncing your inbox to a CRM system, then trying to figure out how to see messages in both places, you can use Status Commands to easily track leads through your pipeline.

Just type “/status [pipeline stage]” in the chat box next to a lead.

Then update the status as the lead moves through your pipeline process. Your Status Command sub-labels might be:

Website lead
Qualified lead
Demo scheduled
Negotiation
Pending contracts
Closed
For future cultivation

Scenario 3: Tracking a Legal Process

Like real estate sales, lawyers often have well-defined stages for their work. If you’re a lawyer, your process might look like:

Research
Preparing documents
Documents filed
Negotiations
Court date set
Settlement offered
Trial
Closed

Scenario 4: Managing Incoming Leads

If you use online ads or inbound marketing effectively, you’ll constantly get emails about new leads or new signups.

Set up an automatic filter to automatically add a Gmail label to these leads, then track them using status commands such as:

Lead
Trial
Paid signup
Cancelled

The Payoff

If your team uses email, we believe Status Commands can help you be more productive—especially if you have a standard work process.

As we said earlier, Status Commands and Instant Chat are 100% free to use for anyone with the Gmail Label Sharing Chrome Extension.

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Review Your Team’s Emails Before They Send Them Out

Step 1: Have Your Team Install Gmail Label Sharing

Step 2: Create and Share a Label

Step 3: Use Chat to Provide Coaching and Feedback

The Payoff: Better Emails = Better Business

Part I: Gmail Label Sharing — Bring Sanity to Your Inbox

Sharing a Gmail Label With Others

Part II: Why Law Offices Are Adopting Gmail LabelChat

How Gmail LabelChat Works To Reduce Time

All Conversation About a Case, All in One Place

How to Set Up Gmail LabelChat for Your Office

The Benefits

The Problem with How We Use Email

Ten Ways to Become an Email Productivity Master

10. Work in Gmail, in Chrome (if Possible)

9. Go Ninja with Your Notification Settings

8. Use Gmail Labels

7. Don’t open an email until you’re ready to take care of it.

6. Write Really Descriptive Email Subject Lines

5. Avoid Email Debates

4. Use Gmail’s Archive

3. Share Communication with Your Team and Outside Contractors

2. Use Chrome Productivity Extensions

1. Use Label Chat Within Gmail

How It Works

No Configuration Required

Better than Print > Save as PDF

No more Print, Choose Printer, Print to PDF, Choose Destination Location

Other Free Ways to Be Productive in Gmail

Using Email to Help

Scenario 1: Selling a House as a Real Estate Agent

Scenario #2: CRM Within Your Email

Scenario 3: Tracking a Legal Process

Scenario 4: Managing Incoming Leads

The Payoff

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Gmail Label Share & Chat

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