Automate your follow-up emails. Send Later if No Reply is here!

Posted By on Jun 1, 2012


Boomerang for Gmail now lets you completely automate follow-ups to important emails. We’ve been testing this feature with a subset of current users over the past couple weeks, but it’s now here for everyone, as part of all pricing plans.

One of Boomerang’s most powerful features is tracking responses. When writing an email, you can have Boomerang automatically remind you if you don’t get a reply after a few days. When the message comes back without a response, though, most of our users then react by sending another email to follow up.

Starting today, you can schedule that follow-up note right when you send the original email. If the person replies to your original email, Boomerang will detect the response, and will not send the second email. If they don’t reply, Boomerang will send the follow-up message automatically, without you having to think about it.

Here’s how to use the new feature:

1. Open an existing thread. Or write and send a new email to someone, then open that new message in your Sent Mail folder.

2. Open a reply to the conversation and write your follow-up note.

3. When you finish writing your reply, click the Send Later button, and then check the “Only if nobody replies” checkbox before scheduling your message.

That’s it! If you don’t get a reply to the thread before the scheduled time, Boomerang will send your message automatically. If someone does respond before the scheduled time, Boomerang will not send the message. We’ll remove it from the conversation and copy it to a special sub-folder of the Boomerang-Outbox.

We’ve heard a lot of great ideas about how this feature can make life easier. For example, let’s say you have a friend who’s slow to pay his share of the rent. When he inevitably ignores your first message asking him to pay, you can go ahead and automatically preschedule a reminder to be sent to him a couple days later. If, surprisingly, he replies to your message ahead of schedule, your reminder will automatically be cancelled when Boomerang detects the response.

 

Automatic follow-ups can be combined with a couple other features to make them even more powerful. If a message is really important, you can use Boomerang’s compose window checkbox to track responses to your automatic follow-up email as well. So if you don’t get a response to your first message, the follow-up email will automatically be sent. If you still don’t get a response to your follow-up email, Boomerang can bring the conversation back to your attention a few days later.

If you’re using Boomerang for sales or business development, you can mix automatic follow-ups with Canned Responses to dramatically increase your success rate. By automatically scripting check-ins if you don’t hear back, you can make sure that your messages don’t slip through the cracks.

We hope you’ll enjoy using the new feature, and please let us know how it works for you!

19 Comments

  1. This is another BRILLIANT feature from Boomerang! Thanks for sharing!

  2. Guys, I love this feature!

    I’m using Boomerang for follow-up emails with customers of our startup foretaster.

    The combination of Boomerang, Canned Responses and Rapportive transform my Gmail to simple, but powerful Marketing Automation/CRM tool.

    Keep up the good work.

  3. Hi Guys, it would be great to have this feature in the Outlook plugin too. Is there any chance we’ll see this any time soon? It would make chasing for feedback so much more manageable!! Thanks!!

  4. We’re planning a big update to the Outlook version in the future. Hang in there!

  5. I take it that this does not work for group messaging? I’m trying to play around with it by sending to two of my other email addresses. I have one email address respond and the other one ignore, but the one that ignores never gets the auto follow up.

  6. Hi Sasha,

    If you send the original email to more than one address and ANY of the recipients responds, the follow-up will be cancelled. So, if in your case you are sending it to two email addresses and you respond from one, Boomerang cancels the automated reply. I hope that info helps, if not, please email us at support@baydin.com

  7. Would be great to be able to configure the follow up email from within the compose window of the first email.
    Going to “Sent” label after composing the message to configure the follow up mail is a bit annoying (specially when you need to do a lots of follow ups)

  8. Hi Dario –

    Cool idea! I’m not sure if we can build something like that, especially with new compose, but we’ll definitely discuss it!

  9. Agree with Dario’s comment. As its not really saving much time if you still have to go through and set the follow up email up.

    The best way I see to do this have another check box asking if to automatically send another email if no reply after x days/weeks. This text it uses is usually generic anyway so have a template function you can select what message to use.

    e.g.

    Hi,

    I sent you an email a few days ago now and worried you didn’t get it? Can you please confirm receipt.

    Many thanks,
    Jamie

  10. Hi Alex! Any chance that the Outlook version has caught up with this feature? I just purchased Boomerang for Outlook and had assumed that it had all the features that Gmail has. In particular, I really want to be notified when someone doesn’t respond an email I that send in a certain number of days, but there is no Boomerang button on my compose-email form.

    Thanks for staying on top of these discussion boards, it’s really appreciated!

  11. Hey Alex,

    Great product – use it for gmail, and its fantastic.

    However, I much like Alexis – I’m also using it for Outlook, but unfortunately the automated “if no reply” feature isn’t there.

    How is this coming along?

    Cheers, Wasif

  12. I was wondering if you can use boomerang to create automated emails sent to people who have scheduled appointments? Meaning, if someone has a scheduled appointment for friday at noon (and this is listed in my gcal), is there a way to have boomerang automatically send an email to this person with a reminder about their appointment?

  13. Alex is this available for Outlook yet? If not, when?

  14. Hi Guys,

    I do not see any reply to the consistent questions regarding adding this feature to Outlook. Any updates on timing? I only use Outlook and would prefer not to add this until I know if and when the feature is scheduled to be released. Thank you!
    Tom

  15. No easy way to add it to Outlook right now, unfortunately, but we’re always looking into new options!

  16. This is a great feature! However, what if someone replies to your original email with a different email address?

    Say, for instance, I send an email to john@acmecompany.com, and he replies to that email from his personal account, john380@gmail.com?

    Does it currently cancel the follow-up email in this circumstance?

    (Would be awkward if not. Showing your hand that you’re using email automation tools.)

    P.S. Dario makes a great point from an email automation standpoint!

  17. I agree that is VERY annoying, having to go LOOK for the email in the sent, then do all these steps…
    Better Solution:
    There should be a “send default” follow up message check box.
    The default would say: Hello, I sent you an email previosly but you have not replied. Please search your spam and inbox for our email address. We’d love to hear from you!
    YES, it would be nice if WE had a default message we could change, but for ease of programming the stock default would be fine.
    the other way you provide is JUST WAY TOO time consuming!
    EVEN easier solution:
    A check box to resend original email in 3 days, if no one replies.
    How simple.

  18. Hi Will,
    If you send an email to a person on one email addr and he replies from another addr, it will cancel the follow-up email as long as he’s replying to the same email thread.
    Hope this answers your question.
    Moah

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