The future of mobile email has arrived. We’ve taken the very best of The Email Game and combined it with ideas from the best-of-breed mobile apps. We’re ready to revolutionize the way you interact with your email on your phone. Behold Email Munchers! Gobble your emails as fast as you can! Send before the muncher gobbles you!

It’s faster than any email client before, because it has TEETH!

Of course, you can’t just start using the product today. Everyone knows mobile email apps require several weeks of waiting in line first! So click HERE to wait in our line! It moves really slowly. Happy Munching!

The Baydin Team

Need to download Boomerang again? Just visit http://www.boomeranggmail.com and click the Download button!

To add a read receipt to Gmail messages, just click the Request Read Receipt and Track Clicks button in the bottom right of the compose window. You will need to use the New Compose experience in Gmail to access the feature. Boomerang will add a read receipt notification to the bottom of the message, and will also track clicks on any links you include in the message. Shortly after the message is read, you’ll receive a notification email from us that the recipient has read your message.

We’ve also added a new tab to the Boomerang Manage page that provides more detailed information about how many times the message has been read and which links have been clicked. To get there, click the Boomerang link in the black bar at the top of your Gmail window, then click the Manage Scheduled Messages menu item. You can also choose to have the message return to your Inbox after a period of time if it hasn’t been opened, or if the links have not been clicked.

Note: some mail clients are not compatible with this feature, so they will not send a read receipt even if the recipient opens the message.

While the Gmail Read Receipts feature is in beta, it will be available (with unlimited use) for all Boomerang users, regardless of your plan. The update should have already made its way to you, but if you don’t see the new button yet, click the Reload button in your browser (next to the address bar) while on the Gmail page.

Read Receipts vs Open Tracking

We’ve had dozens of requests for this feature over the past few months. We wanted to share our thinking for how we have implemented the feature.

There are two approaches we could have taken – read receipts vs open tracking. Open tracking hides a transparent one-pixel image (about the size of a period) somewhere in the message. When someone opens the email, open tracking notifies the sender of the exact time the message was opened and provides the IP address of the computer that opened the message. If you’re out of town, all a tech-savvy burglar needs to do is have you open one of their spyware-laden messages and see that the location of your IP address is in a different country. Or, more commonly, an aggressive salesperson can call you or send you a follow-up saying that he noticed you read his email 32 seconds after 9:28 this morning. Creeptastic!

Read receipts are different, because they respect the recipient’s privacy. The recipient sees an explicit notification and has an opportunity to choose not to provide a read receipt. We also do not collect the recipient’s IP address, location, or the exact minute someone opened the email. Unlike read receipts in Outlook, however, Boomerang defaults to providing the read receipt — the recipient must explicitly choose not to do so.

Even more important, our early data shows that including a read receipt in an email you send out may increase the chances that you’ll get a response to your message. Try doing that with open tracking!

Please enjoy the new feature, tell your friends how to see if an email is read in Gmail, and let us know how it works for you!

We asked Scott to tell us a little about how he uses Boomerang and to answer a few innocent questions just for fun.

How do you use Boomerang? I could write a series of posts on how I use Boomerang for Gmail! I love it and can’t imagine email without it! Here’s a couple:

My email inbox functions as my to-do list and Boomerang helps me only keep actionable items in view. Emails come in from contacts, businesses (bills, etc), and from Captio (an app for iOS that makes it easy to send yourself emails). A couple times a day, I process my inbox and everything gets one of three actions:

This simple process has been a huge productivity boost because it ensures when I look at my Priority Inbox, I know I am seeing what I need to be doing now – and there is minimal distractions from the rest of my inbox. With this method – and thanks to Boomerang – I’m nearly always at Inbox Zero.

Another way I use Boomerang is to schedule birthday greetings. Every week I receive an email from Facebook with all the birthdays of my friends that coming week. Using that digest, in one sitting I can write personal email birthday greetings for the rest of the week by scheduling them to be sent on the appropriate day with Boomerang. A bonus tip is using TextExpander to have your birthday greeting in a keycommand shortcut!

Favorite Color? - Blue, no yellow.

Peanut Butter or Nutella? - Peanut butter (every morning I have a breakfast stack of one slice of toast w/ peanut butter + scrambled eggs w/ ketchup all on top of each other – wife is disgusted but it is delicious) PS~ Boomerang just got the heebee-jeebies too!

How many licks in a Tootsie Pop? - I prefer baked goods.

Favorite President and why? - George W... just like saying that to get a rise out of people.

What’s your Favorite Book? - I’m a big reader so A favorite would be hard to say… a couple I’m in right now and enjoying are “Wheat Belly“ by William Davis (almost talking me out of the toast in my breakfast stack), “The Intelligent Investor“ by Benjamin Graham (Warren B’s favorite book on investing = must read), “Churchill Style” by Barry Singer (I’m fascinated by Winston Churchill and this is a fun look at his lifestyle), and “The Conviction to Lead” by Albert Mohler (less about how to be a leader and more about the importance of leaders knowing what they believe… challenging). Looks like a new Kindle will be put to good use!

Inspirational Quote - Here’s one from Conviction to Lead: “Leaders need to possess and develop many qualities, but the one element that drives them to the front is passion.”

Thanks for sharing, Scott!! You can be a winner too, get started by referring your friends to Boomerang.

Happy Email!
Team Baydin

Here’s a recap of what was new from Baydin in 2012:

• We created Revive Your Inbox: a free 21-day program to help you take control of your email.
• Boomerang for Gmail added Bulk Boomerang, Send Later if No Reply, support for International Gmail, a shiny new Manage page, and more minor improvements than you can shake a stick at!
• Boomerang Calendar, a smart calendar assistant integrated into your email, made using email to schedule meetings and events infinitely better.
• Our hackathon project, Inbox Pause, provided a way to stop the flow of incoming messages until you’re ready for them – helping you clear your backlog, or focus on your non-email life.

We’re looking forward to another great year in 2013!

So when Tom from GoHaircut posted on our Facebook wall offering free haircuts to any shaggy members of the Baydin Team, we couldn’t say no. Last week, we scheduled Haircut Day at Baydin, with three of our team members taking advantage of the generous offer.

GoHaircut is sort of like Uber for haircuts. Just use their mobile app or website to book a time and a location, and they’ll send a stylist. You don’t need to go to a salon, wait in line, or have cash. They bring all the equipment and clean up when the haircut’s done. Here’s Tim, our stylist setting up his equipment in our office.

Tim, thanks for some quality haircuts.

Since you love Boomerang and have found your holiday spirit, give the perfect gift: a Boomerang Pro Subscription. They are perfect for your boss, coworkers, friends and family – or anyone who could use a little help managing their email better.

When you’re sending out dozens of cover letters, it’s easy to lose track of an application once you hit ‘send.’ You can use Boomerang’s response tracking feature to bring your message back to your inbox if you don’t receive a response after a given number of days. You can then react by sending another email to follow up. Sending a follow-up email can give you a slight edge over other candidates by showing you are proactive and enthusiastic about the position. It can also help keep your application from getting lost in the pile.

We provide some sample emails and tips here on following up with job applications.

If you just had a great interview, make sure to send a thank you email within 24 hours of meeting with the hiring manager. If they give you a time range in which they will make a decision, you can have Boomerang send you a reminder if you don’t hear back within that period.

In some cases, a company might not have a position available for you but would like to keep in touch. You can use Boomerang’s send later function to send a periodic ‘check-in’ email every month or few months.

Here are sample thank-you letters and more tips on following up after interviews.

If you have any success stories or feedback we would love to hear them: info@baydin.com

Good luck!

Any messages you scheduled to be delivered during the maintenance period will be delivered immediately after service is restored. Thanks for your patience!

Hi, everybody! I’m Mai-Chi, the newest member of Baydin. I’m so excited to be here.

I’m joining Baydin as the Graffiti Artist, which is a fun way of saying that I’ll be providing the design and artwork for all of Baydin’s products.

After growing up in San Jose, I went to California Polytechnic State University where I studied Art & Design with an emphasis in graphic design. After school, I came back to the Bay Area to work at Earthbound Farm where I designed packaging for organic food.

I first found out about Baydin through a mutual friend. Most of my work in the past has been print-focused, so I was excited to try something new and Internet-based. I helped Baydin with their 5 Million Emails Infographic, designed some Valentine’s Day emails, and made their main website look awesome.

After working part-time for a year, I joined Baydin full-time this month, and it’s been a great experience so far. I’m especially excited to be the first California native to join Baydin, so I’ll be able to show them around and make sure they don’t get in trouble.

I’ve been a fan of Baydin since the company first started in Boston. The productivity space is something that I’m passionate about. Their improvements to email are definitely needed in today’s work environment, and I’ve been a happy, early user of Boomerang for Gmail, the Email Game, Boomerang Calendar, and all the others.

I grew up in Mission, Texas. I went to MIT where I studied Computer Science. My favorite classes were 6.042 (Mathematics for Computer Science [aka Discrete Math]) and the Magic of Magnets. In 2006, I participated in ADPrentice where I got a crash course in entrepreneurship with our CEO Alex Moore.

After college and realizing that front-end development was my calling, I stayed in Boston to work for VistaPrint and Novell. Later, I moved to Bay Area to work with Zynga. If you’ve played Cityville, you’ve seen some of my work!

After working for several large companies, I was ready for something new. I’ve always been interested in startups, and I’ve worked with Alex and known him for nearly 10 years, so joining Baydin was a no-brainer. I was impressed by Baydin’s technical ability and how quickly they could build. I’m excited to help bring Baydin to the next level.

My first month of working at Baydin: Not bad! My next task is to upgrade our source control to git. I’m hoping that someday I can convince our team to try using node.js for one of next projects.