Crafting a better work experience

You’re probably already familiar with the concept of an email thread or email chain. They certainly have been part of your email inbox at some point, or maybe you still use them for your business communication.

Email threading allows you to trace the history of your emails easily, but it comes with certain disadvantages.

In this blog, we’ll look at email threads' advantages and disadvantages, unspoken email etiquette around email chains, and how you can use Missive to take advantage of the future of email conversations.

What Is an Email Thread?

An email thread is the chain of messages and replies between you and other people, grouped together in a conversation. When you click "Reply" to a message, your new message is added to the end of the thread so that everyone can follow the conversation.

This way, you can see the whole conversation that has taken place between you and other people. Unless someone is removed from the copy, all recipients will receive all the group messages with their replies.

Email thread replies are typically arranged in chronological order starting from the first reply to the most recent one. This arrangement is helpful for recipients who are following the conversation because it’s organized the discussion in a simple structure.

Email threading can be helpful when you need to refer to a previous conversation.

With email threading enabled in your email client, all replies will automatically use the "RE:" preposition in the subject line and will be grouped in one discussion.

Advantages of Email Threading

An email thread can be extremely beneficial in several ways for your business communications. Here are some reasons why email threading can be helpful:

Reduce Inbox Clutter

First, email chains can help reduce the amount of time you spend managing your inbox. By keeping all messages in one place, you can quickly scan through a thread and get the information you need without having to search through your entire inbox.

Keep All Recipients Informed

A conversation view can help improve communication with your team. By using a group email, you can avoid miscommunication and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Organize All Related Emails

Email threads allow you to keep track of an entire conversation in one place by organizing related emails into one group. This can be very helpful when trying to resolve an issue or follow up on a task.

Disadvantages of Email Threading

While an email thread can be a helpful way to keep track of related messages, it can also have some drawbacks. Here are some of the disadvantages of email threading:

Email Can Get Long

It can be difficult to follow a thread if it gets too long or if there are too many messages in it. When email threading is enabled, each reply to an email is grouped with the original email and any previous replies.

Additionally, if you delete an email in a thread, it can delete all emails in the thread, which can be frustrating if you only wanted to delete one email.

Data Leak

When an email thread is shared with both people from your organization and people externally, there are high risk of sharing internal communication with the people in the thread outside of your organization.

This happens when people communicate internally about a specific thread and forget to remove the external recipients from the message.

Email Threading Is Not Universally Supported

Some email providers do not support email threading, which can make it difficult to keep track of conversations if you switch between providers. If you’re using an email provider that does not support email threading.

Some Recipients May Receive Irrelevant Emails

Some recipients of email threads may receive irrelevant emails. This is because when someone replies to an email thread, everyone who was originally included in the thread will receive the reply.

This can be a problem if the original email was not relevant to everyone in the conversation or if the reply is not for all the recipients of the emails and is only for internal communication.

Unspoken email etiquette for email chains

Now that we covered the advantages and disadvantages of email chains, here are some unspoken rules to maintain proper "reply all" etiquette.

Say no to tangent discussions

Email threads are great for a historical log of decision making, it is not good for discussion and even worse for discussion that doesn't involve or require the entire group. By doing the latter, you are stealing attention and time from everyone who has to open that email.

Do not share sensitive information 

This is obvious but often forgotten, so we wanted to remind you explicitly. Sensitive or private information should always be sent as a separate individual email. 

Missive: Communications Made Easy

Missive is a collaboration tool for teams built around emails. It’s a great way to communicate with your team and collaborate on emails and other types of communication mediums.

With Missive, you can take advantage of the best email threading practices to make while avoiding all its disadvantages. It’s easy to collaborate and discuss with your team members privately in an email thread with people from outside your organization.

Communications with your colleagues are sent as chat messages directly in the conversation with the emails. It ensures that you don’t send confidential information accidentally to the wrong people.

This way there is no data leak possible, internal communication happens via chat messages, and external communication happens via emails.

Missive also lets you easily share emails with other team members without having to send them a copy of the email. You can either link to an email in a new conversation, mention them in a chat inside the email conversation, or assign a team or someone personally.

Best of all, you can merge all types of messages in one conversation, let it be emails, chats, SMS, social media messages, call logs, voicemail, etc.

How to Enable Email Threads in Your Email Client

The most popular email clients support email threads and enable them by default. However, here’s how to activate it in the most popular email clients:

Gmail Threads

By default, Email threading is enabled in Google’s email client. Here’s how to manage email thread setting in Gmail.

Gmail the Web

1. Open Gmail in your browser.
2. Click on the gear icon in the upper-right and then click on See all settings.

1. In General, select Conversation view on in the Conversation View section.

1. Click Save.

Gmail on Mobile

1. Open the Gmail app on your device.
2. Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon in the top left of the screen.
3. In the menu that appears, scroll down to the settings option and click on it.

1. In the settings menu, click Inbox customizations in the Inbox section.

1. Toggle the Conversation view on and off to enable or disable it.

1. Click Done to exit the settings menu.

Outlook Threads

Email thread is turned on by default in Microsoft’s email client. Here’s how to manage email thread settings in Outlook.

Outlook on the Web

1. Open Outlook in your browser.
2. Click on the gear icon in the upper right.
3. Select Group into conversations in the Arrange message list section.

Outlook on Mobile

1. Open the Outlook app on your device.
2. Click on the profile icon in the top left corner, and then on the gear icon in the bottom left corner to open the settings.

1. Toggle on Organize By Thread in the Mail section.

Apple Mail Threads

Email thread is turned on by default on Apple’s email client. Here’s how to manage email thread setting in Apple Mail.

Apple Mail on macOS

1. Open the Mail app on your Mac.
2. Click on View in the top menu.
3. Select Organize by Conversation from the list of options.

Apple Mail on iOS

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Scroll down to the Mail setting and click on it.
3. Scroll to the Threading section and toggle on Organize by Thread.

Missive

In Missive, email threading is always on. As a collaborative app, we think that threading is part of the core experience. However, we do offer an alternative for people who prefer each email to have its conversation.

You can move an email out of its original conversation and into a new one with just one click. This is a great way to keep important emails separate from the rest of the conversation, which can be noisy and overwhelming.

Best Practices for Effective Email Threads

If you decide that you prefer to stick with email threads for your professional discussions, no worries.

Here are a few etiquettes in mind to keep email threads effective.

Use a Clear Subject Line

First, always include a clear and concise subject line that accurately reflects the content of the email. This will help recipients quickly understand what the email is about and whether or not they need to read it.

Even if this rule doesn’t only apply to email strings, it is really important in a thread to be sure the subject line accurately reflects the content of the conversation.

Stay on Topic

When using a thread to reply to messages, always make sure to stay on topic. If the conversation veers off course, start a new email thread. This will help to keep the discussion focused and avoid getting lost in the messages when trying to follow the conversation.

Don’t Overuse Email Threads

Email threads are a great way to communicate in emails and organize replies in a nice and sorted conversation. However, if an email thread becomes too long or convoluted, consider moving the discussion to another medium, such as a phone call or in-person meeting.

Emails are not a chat. Other tools like Missive will be best suited for chatting and exchanging with your colleagues.

Be Clear About What You Are Replying

An email thread can quickly become confusing if people are not clear about what they are replying to. When replying to an email, always include a reference to the original message so that the recipient knows which part of the conversation you are replying to.

If the original message is no longer visible in the thread, quote it in your reply so that everyone can see what you are referring to. This will help to keep the conversation flowing smoothly and prevent misunderstandings.

Only Use Cc and Bcc When Necessary

Threads can quickly become confusing and difficult to follow when too many people are in CC (carbon copy) or BCC (blind carbon copy).

Only use cc and bcc when absolutely necessary to avoid overwhelming recipients and cluttering up the thread. When in doubt, it’s usually best to leave people off the cc or bcc list.

Conclusion

Email threading can be a useful tool, but it’s not for everyone. Some people prefer to keep their messages separate, and others find that email threading makes it harder to find the messages they’re looking for. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether email threading is a helpful feature or a hindrance.

FAQ

What Is an Email Thread?

An email thread is a sequence of messages with the same subject organized into a conversation. When you reply to a message, the new message is added to the end of the thread.

How to Reply to an Email in a Thread?

You usually can "reply" or "reply all" in most email clients. The first option replies just to the form, and reply all replies to From + TO + CC.

How to Remove Someone From an Email Thread?

To remove someone from an email thread simply remove their email address from the CC or BCC section of the email.

Is email threading the future?

There’s no doubt that email threading is a convenient way to keep track of conversations, especially when multiple people are involved. But threads are actually a hindrance to productivity, as it can be difficult to follow a conversation. It also poses a security risk as it can be easy to accidentally share internal communication outside the organization.

With new tools, like Missive, that enable teams to collaborate outside the regular emails there is no doubt that a collaborative inbox will soon replace the traditional email thread.

No matter what system you have for managing your Gmail inbox, we've all received an email from a customer, executive, or direct report that we just can't respond to immediately.

We don't always have all the answers and need to check with colleagues to get their input.

Until we do that, it just sits and lingers in our inbox.

Wouldn't it be great if you could add notes, annotations, memos, and tasks to your emails to give yourself context for when you eventually get back around to responding?

What about being able to have a private conversation with another team member in Google Workspace or add Gmail notes on an email a customer sends you without having to forward or blind-copy things?

Something like Google Doc comments, but for your Gmail account.

Yeah. We'd like that too.

Gmail doesn't offer this sort of functionality, though.

There are some workarounds native to Gmail that can help with scenarios when you need to add notes to Gmail or collaborate with others without creating a mess of FW: chains.

We'll cover 5 (and a half) options native to Gmail and one third-party option that makes it easy to add notes, comments for your team, attachments, tasks, and more without forwarding or jumping through hoops.

What Are Gmail Notes?

Gmail notes are a feature that allows you to save notes and attach them to specific emails. This can be useful if you need to remember something important about an email thread, or if you want to keep track of something related to the email.

5 (and a half) Native Gmail Notes Options

1. Using Google Tasks

You can add an email to Google Tasks to leave notes for yourself in the task description area.

Right-click on the email you want to add notes to and select "Add to tasks." You can also click on the email and use the keyboard shortcut ⇧ + T (Shift + T).

You'll see a task appear in the sidebar to the right of your email message. Click on it and add notes to yourself in the details area.

Click the mail icon below the task to open up the email you've associated with the note.

The Downside: You can't share your Google Tasks with others. If you want to collaborate on an email with a team member within Gmail natively, you'll need to forward the email to them or use Google Chat.

2. Using Google Keep

Google Keep can be used to add notes to email in Gmail.

Open the email in which you want to add a note.

Open the sidebar if it's not already by clicking on the arrow on the left side of the screen.

From the sidebar, select the Google Keep icon. Google Keep panel will appear.

In it, you can add as many notes as you need.

The Downside: No text formatting and poor note organization.

3. Using Google Chat

You can use Google Chat to collaborate with team members—sort of.

To do this, click Google Chat in the left sidebar of Gmail to trigger a chat pop-up.

Add the team member or members you want to collaborate with. Then copy, paste, and send the contents of the email you want to discuss with your team.

It's helpful to add a link to the specific Gmail message thread so you can easily open it back up later.

The Downside: Other team members can't click the link you've added to reference the original email because it lives in your email inbox—not theirs.

If you don't provide enough details, it may not make much sense to the people you share it with.

This causes a lot of wasted time going back and forth. It usually saves more time to forward the email to team members instead.

4. Using Drafts to Add Comments

You can also use a draft to add notes for yourself. Reply to the email without sending it, and your message gets stored in your Drafts.

5. Replying Inline Using Quotes

Step 1. Sign in to your Gmail account, find the email you want to work with, and copy the text from the body of the email you want to reply inline to.

Step 2. Click reply.

Step 3. Click the Quote button to add a quote block in your email reply.

Step 4. Paste the text you copied from the original message next to the gray quote block line where your cursor is.

Step 5. Press Enter and reply with your response below the quote block.

5.5 Using Gmail labels

Now you can't use labels to add a note, but you can use Gmail labels to indicate that a note is needed before a reply can be sent. 

Think of it as very, very lightweight process tracking within your inbox.

How to Easily Comment & Collaborate on Email with Missive

Missive is an email and chat tool that syncs with email platforms like Google and Outlook to make collaboration easy.

You can use it as a native desktop app on macOS and Microsoft Windows or as a web app in browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

Here are some valuable ways we use Missive at our company to add private annotations and collaborate with other team members.

‍

Add Private Comments for Yourself to Emails

You can add private comments for yourself to refer back to them later.

Tag Your Team in Comments on an Email

You can tag other team members in a comment by typing @ + their name. Tagging others will automatically share the email with them (without having to forward anything), so they can see your comment and reply to it.

They can reply with an inline comment or within a thread if they have multiple conversations within the email and want to keep topics organized.

Assign Tasks with Comments

You can turn a comment into a task if you have something you want to delegate to a team member or yourself without having to tab over to a project management tool and bog it down with more tasks.

If you're anything like us, you like keyboard shortcuts. Missive makes it easy to create tasks; just start typing your task description, then switch to task mode by pressing ⌘  + ⇧ + X on Mac or Control + Shift + X on other platforms.

Alternatively, type [ ] or - [ ] at the beginning of your comment. Assign the task to a team member using the @ + their name anywhere in your comment.

Suppose you want to send tasks to a more formal project management tool. In that case, Missive has several add-on integrations with Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Todoist, and a Zapier connector for any others you rely on.

Comment in Style

Missive comments support styling options beyond plain text too. You can add styles for bold, italic, strikethrough, quote blocks, inline code, and code blocks!

Share Attachments in a Comment

Make it easy for people to send attachments to customers without spending 10 minutes searching for them in Google Drive by sending them as a comment. We frequently use this to send zip files, PDFs, links, and screenshots without using apps like Slack, where we lose the context of the email itself.

Use Rules to Automate Comments

If you want to save time and maximize your productivity, you can use Missive's powerful rule feature to automate comments based on various conditions.

Delegating Customer Support to When You're Busy

Let's say you receive a new email from a customer that you can't get to immediately and your organization likes to keep customers happy by responding to them within 24 hours.

You can set up a rule in Missive to automatically move the email to a Team Inbox after a certain amount of time and add a comment that goes out to all members, letting them know you need someone to step in to help.

Respect Service-Level Agreements

You can set rules to apply to an entire team as well.

For example, you can help your team maintain SLAs established with customers by creating a rule that sends a notification to everyone on the team whenever receiving an email during business hours that goes 30+ minutes without a reply.

Automatically Add Reminders about Critical Customer Details

It's not uncommon for individual customers to have important details that your team needs to be aware of whenever they're interfacing with them.

For example, imagine you're a major OTR carrier or 3PL provider and have a particular shipper/receiver who restricts certain types of drivers from their facility.

You can use rules to automatically add reminders as comments to email exchanges involving that customer's domain address (e.g., *@acme.com).

Adding Comments to Gmail from a Mobile Device

You can also add comments, tasks, and attachments using the mobile app for iOS or Android.

This is something I often do when I'm taking a break mid-day to get some fresh air and get drug around the block by my Husky.

Don't Let Gmail Get in the Way of Work

Gmail is great for personal email but comes up short for collaboration. While you can use tasks for meta-level Gmail notes on your private emails, things get medieval again when you need to get someone else's input.

Hopping on Zoom for a quick chat is mentally exhausting and makes it harder to be productive remotely.

Teams should start embracing asynchronous communication and the tools that enable it—like Missive.

FAQ

What Is the Difference Between Gmail Notes and Google Keep?

Gmail Notes and Google Keep are both note-taking apps by Google. While Google Keep was developed to be a personal, simple way to jot down thoughts, Gmail Notes was designed to help users take notes through email seamlessly.

Can I Export Notes from Gmail?

There is no official way to export all your Gmail notes without copy/pasting them individually. Though it’s not a Google-supported feature, it is possible to export notes from Gmail via add-ons.

Most people use a simple and static email signature telling basic information about themself and their company (job title, phone numbers, address, etc.).

Others have more complex usage; for instance, they will gather feedback on how well they answered their customer questions.

What if you could be more creative? For instance, what if you could change your signature copy based on the day of the week? Like adding the sentence "Have a great weekend!" in emails sent on Friday!

Let me show you how, with Missive, the best business email client.

Copy-paste the following code snippet in the signature editor where you want the sentence to appear:

{% assign today = "now" | date: "%A" %}
{% if today == "Friday" %}Have a great weekend!{% endif %}

The first line parses the current date and assigns the day value to the today variable. The second line checks if the today variable is equal to Friday and, if so, outputs the Have a great weekend sentence.

By adding an else statement, you could display an alternative sentence. The below code will display Have a great weekend! on Fridays and Cheers, every other day.

{% assign today = "now" | date: "%A" %}
{% if today == "Friday" %}Have a great weekend!{% else %}Cheers,{% endif %}
Philippe Lehoux

How is this possible? Missive takes advantage of the powerful templating engine liquid.js that allows you to do crazy stuff! Learn more.

p.s. Thanks to Laura Soar, one of our customers, who suggested this cool idea.

Missive was built with privacy in mind. It's a fundamental part of our business, as it should be for every company dealing with people's communications. Honesty and transparency are also at the core of our values.

The above sounds nice and all, but actions speak louder than words. That's why we have created this blog post to answer some of the most frequently asked questions regarding Missive's reliability, privacy and security practices.

To kick things off, a few key points:

• Missive does not sell any kind of data to any third parties.
• All data stored in our database and cloud storage is encrypted at rest.
• Missive is fully GDPR compliant.
• We've successfully passed security audits by security firm Bishop Fox, as required for apps handling Google user data.

You can consult our full privacy and security policies.

Good, now let's answer some questions!

Can you access my emails?

Technically speaking, it would be false to claim we cannot read your emails. Missive imports your emails via IMAP like any email app does, and stores them in a database. This includes text content and attachments.

Storing this data in our own database is the technical foundation of a collaborative product like Missive. Thus, we naturally have access to the database that contains your emails in order to manage and maintain it in good shape for Missive to operate properly.

This is the same situation as with your main email provider (Gmail, Office 365, etc).

That said, only a few of our engineers have access to the database in question. Even for these people, getting to your actual email content is not trivial. We built internal tools that allow our engineers to do their daily job (eg. see what is going on in the system, number of emails processed, etc.) but none of these tools display email contents.

Needless to say, we are not in the business of scanning, sharing, or selling any of our users’ data. We never access a user’s data unless this user has specifically granted us permission and asked us to investigate a bug with their account, for instance.

Can people know if I've opened their emails?

No. Missive automatically blocks read trackers and 1x1 images to prevent senders from spying on what you do with their email. We currently block read trackers from these services.

Where are Missive's servers located?

Missive's servers are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). All our servers currently originate from the US East 1 (N. Virginia) region. AWS is used by companies and organizations such as Nasdaq, Netflix, the CDC, etc.

If you need a list of IP address ranges to whitelist on your server, you can use the following file provided by AWS:

https://ip-ranges.amazonaws.com/ip-ranges.json

If I were to migrate Missive, I won't see you close shop in a year or two, right?

Definitely not. We are completely bootstrapped, meaning we don't depend on investors' whims or decisions. We control 100% of our company and we've been in the market for over 5 years. We've been cash positive and profitable for some years now. We enjoy a healthy and growing monthly revenue rate.

There are over 1000 organizations using Missive, including big names like Pipedrive and Buffer.

As a pioneer and key player in the collaborative email space, it's safe to say we're in for the long run.

Do you sell or share my data?

No. Never have, never will.

We don't even collect cookies or identifiable data points on our public website! Unlike most companies out there, who use this for website analytics and metrics. Not us.

Can I get a copy of my data?

Absolutely. As a GDPR-compliant company, you have the right to access, correct, export, and delete all personal data associated with your account.

To request any of the aforementioned actions, please contact us at privacy@missiveapp.com

How do I delete all data from Missive?

Please know this action cannot be undone.

1. Login to Missive
2. Go to your Organizations settings
3. Remove all members from your organization
4. Click the Billing tab, downgrade to the Free plan
5. Delete all your email accounts, if any
6. Delete all your integrations, if any
7. Delete your organization
8. Go to the Login & Security setting tab, enter the password if requested, scroll down, delete your Missive account

You will immediately be logged out of Missive with no means of logging back in.

Within 30 days, all traces of your Missive data and activity will be permanently deleted from our database, cloud storage, backups, and logs.

If you have any other questions regarding privacy, feel free to send us an email!

Sometimes you need to take particular actions for different groups of customers. Handling these exceptions can be difficult as your company grows. Without an automized system working on your behalf, it's easy to make mistakes.

With Missive, companies can create groups within their contact books. These are very useful tools for segmentation. But even more helpful is the ability to create workflows using these groups or individual contacts as conditions to trigger automatic actions.

It might sound a little cryptic. So let me break it down a little. Imagine you have a group of highly-select customers that require special attention and faster service. Instead of always having to be alert for when they contact you, with Missive, you can designate a group for them and then let it alert you when someone from this select cluster makes contact.

The previous is an example of our powerful contact-based rules. We're going to explore three scenarios (instructions included) on how you too can leverage this feature.

But first, let's learn how to create contact groups.

1. Click on your name
2. Go to Contacts

1. If you don't have one already, create a Contact Book.

1. Create a contact
2. Create and add a group

1. Repeat for other contacts

PROTIPYou can add contacts to a group directly from the email viewer. Click on the email address > Add to Contacts > Add Group

Scenario 1

Your top 20% of customers bring 80% of the revenue. You signed a strict Service Level Agreement and they expect the best treatment.

Group name: VIP customers

Actions: Notify Sales Team when they email + label as VIP + display 15 minute SLA post

Scenario 2

You're dipping your toes into the German market and you've hired Hans to help. He's bilingual, so he can answer emails in English and German. You need to have them translated automatically since you don't speak the language.

Group name: German customers

Actions: Assign messages to Hans + translate them to English using a webhook

Scenario 3

Your business (Company Inc) is consulting to the sales and legal teams at Acme Inc. Both teams email you to john@company.com. You need the lawyers' emails to be directed to your own legal team and forward a copy to another outsourced firm.

Group name: Acme Inc (Legal team) customers

Actions: Move messages to the Legal Team Inbox + forward them to the outsourced firm.

Bonus

Trash spam or undesired emails in the future by adding them to the contact groups Spammers.

Group name: Spammers

Actions: Trash emails

Batching emails is a concept that's been around for many years now. Everyone, from small bloggers to productivity gurus, has talked about the benefits of this practice. And there's a simple reason behind this. It just works. It does make you more productive.

How can I achieve this using Superhuman + Gmail:

I want to receive batches of email a few times a day vs email just flowing in constantly.

I just want new email 2-3 timed a day. Like an old school postman.

Any ideas?

— Andrew Wilkinson (@awilkinson) February 17, 2020

Let me ask you this: Do you turn on the washing machine for a pair of socks 🧦? I think you get my point. The same applies to emails; it's more efficient to write/reply to many of them in a single batch maybe 2 or 3 times a day, max.

One thing is sure, being notification free most of your day will help you focus on important stuff.

Here are 3 ways to receive emails in batches:

Set an alarm

This is the most straightforward way. There's no science or long explanation needed for this. Set two or three alarms at the times you wish to check your email.

A few of problems could arise from this no-frills solution.

• You might forget to close the app and continue to get distracted by incoming emails.
• You might not hear the alarm.
• You might miss important or urgent emails.
• It is not scalable.

Try Boomerang

Boomerang is an app that works on top of Gmail and Outlook. Among their features, they offer a way to receive emails in batches. It lets you receive emails at certain times, send autoresponders, and it can handle exceptions, so that you can still receive emails from particular senders, for example.

If you're happy with working and consuming your email from a web browser, and you don’t work with a team this might be a good option for you.

Get Missive

Missive is the team inbox and chat app that helps teams collaborate around many channels. It also offers a robust way to receive emails, SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and other types of messages in batches.

It’s crazy that no one has mentioned @missiveapp but I do this every day with this email client. This feature and so much more has dramatically improved my productivity. No affiliation, just a happy paying customer.

— Zee (@Zee) February 17, 2020

With Missive, you can create rules to define which emails arrive in your inbox at precisely what times.

Let's start with a simple reception time rule.

When enabled, all emails arriving between 12 am, and 7:59 am won't show up in your inbox until 8 am.

The same rule can be created for other types of messages (WhatsApp, Messenger etc) and for different times of the day. You can also create one to stop all emails during weekends or holidays.

The above rule is rather general and not practical for everyone. It’s naive to think that all messages have the same level of priority. So let's add a couple more conditions to filter out all emails except the ones coming from your business partner and husband.

The setup is very similar, but we added an exception for all email coming from partner@company.com and john@mail.com.

We can add another condition to the rule, where it lets through any email that contains the word "urgent" in the subject.

Now all important emails will make their way to you instantly, and the rest will wait.

Missive rules offer endless combinations to make email batching work as efficiently as possible. You can filter incoming emails based on:

• Reception time
• To and From
• People in CC
• Subject
• Content
• Attachment name
• Email accounts
• Labels
• Conversation state (unassigned, assigned, closed)
• Unreplied and open for X time

As a collaborative tool, Missive even lets you snooze emails for coworkers.

Another way to stop checking emails all the time is to turn off all push notifications in the desktop and mobile apps. Missive lets you choose what types of messages should trigger notifications and which shouldn't. This works great if you are delegating email to an assistant, they can triage messages and @mention you only for the really important stuff.

If you ever want to check emails before the scheduled time, you can easily access them in the Snoozed unified mailbox.

Bonus

You might want to let people know about your new email policy. So we recommend you add a small text in your signature for a few weeks.

Or even better: add another action to the rule we previously configured to send an automated response when people contact you during the email-free periods. This way, they will gradually stop expecting speedy replies, and you won't feel guilty.

Here's how you can do that:

It's time we take back control of our time!

To learn more about the productivity benefits of this practice, you might want to read this article.

According to this piece from Wired, a modern smartphone user receives around 73 notifications per day. It also states that people receive more than double the amount of pings they think they are getting.

But as much as we all try (or not) to limit the number of notifications that come through our phones and computers, we just can’t shut them all off. It’s an intrinsic part of modern work life.

What we can do is manage them better.

In this straight-to-the-point blog post, I’ll share three ways to take control of your notifications with Missive.

‍

Snooze with rules: Restore work/life balance.

Rules in Missive can help you automate many things, including getting some downtime.

Turning off notifications is an excellent way to reduce stress, rest better and be more present when in the company of loved ones or friends.

It may soon be a matter of legality like in France where employees can’t be emailed outside of business hours.

With Missive, you can create rules to snooze incoming emails to work on them later. You can get very creative and finely tune the rules to only let extremely important or personal messages go through.

Here’s a sample setup for snoozing all incoming emails arriving before and after business hours + weekends.

Unwatch: Call me when you’re done.

This is probably one of my favorites, it lets you see the level of granularity that Missive offers you to focus on your work.

Let’s suppose you’re in customer support and there’s a new email about an urgent feature request from an important customer.

Without the ability to unwatch you would have endured a steady stream of notifications for something that is not within your scope of work. This allowed you to keep responding to other customers without any noise in the background.

Read more about this feature.

Team Inbox: A manager’s dream.

This new feature is great for businesses receiving a lot of emails that have dedicated teams (e.g. sales, support, finance) tackling them.

Previously in Missive, incoming messages could be handled in two different ways:

• Unassigned flow. New messages appear in the Unassigned mailbox of everyone receiving the messages.
• Inbox flow. Everyone has their own unread and archived state. New messages will be added to everyone’s inbox.

With this third new flow, new messages appear in the Team Inbox. The team inbox is shared among its team members, meaning that whenever a message is assigned / archived / closed, it will be removed from the Team Inbox for everyone in that team.

So how does this reduce the amount of notifications?

When creating a team, you can define two types of users:

• Active members. They receive notifications for all new messages.
• Observers. They do not receive notifications. This is perfect for managers who want to monitor the team inbox instead of actively engaging with messages.

The examples above are rather broad and may not apply to your current workflow. But Missive is very flexible and a wide array of setups can be achieved with a little tweaking.