Courtesy of World Start
Do you forget to follow up on emails because it's becoming impossible to remember each and every message thread that hits your inbox every day? Are you looking for a simple solution which will let you set up email reminders in your Gmail account?
Well, here is a very nifty online service called FollowUpThen which lets users set up email reminders using email itself. There is nothing to download or install, no registration or signups are required.
Why Set Up Email Reminders?
Imagine this - you just received an email from John about a meeting scheduled on the weekend. You replied to him instantly and a couple of days later - you completely forgot the message.
John never replied to your message and hence you were not reminded about the meeting that's in progress. The result - both you and John forget about the conversation after a couple of days.
By setting up email reminders, you can get timely notifications of important tasks directly in your email inbox. This can include a variety of options e.g reminding yourself to follow up an earlier conversation, reminding another person to reply to a message within a deadline, sending a scheduled email to someone and so on.
How to Use FollowUpThen to Set Up Email Reminders
There is no need to create an account with the FollowUpThen website. Just remember the following syntax or make a note of it:
- 3am@FollowUpThen.com - This will send a reminder email to your email address at 3am local time.
To use this format, all you have to do is compose a new email message and enter the details of the reminder in the message body. Then enter a relevant subject line e.g "Complete the assignment within two hours from now" and send it to 3am@FollowUpThen.com.
That's it, your reminder has been scheduled at the FollowUpThen service and you will receive the reminder at exactly 3am local time.
The above format is just an example; you can replace 3am with any time format of your choice e.g 11pm@FollowUpThen.com.
Here is an example of using the time format of FollowUpThen:
- 10pmtomorrow@FollowUpThen.com - This is the format to get an email reminder tomorrow at 10pm (local time). Works exactly the same way as described in the above example - you have to enter a relevant subject line and a description of the reminder.
This reminder email will hit your inbox at the specified time, scheduled by you.
- 20minutes@FollowUpThen.com - This format is handy when you want to setup instant reminders within your email account. Replace "20minutes" with a duration of your choice
- 2days@FollowUpThen.com - This format sends the reminder email after 2 days at the same time of day that you send the email reminder.
- Jan18@FollowUpThen.com - This format sends the email reminder to your inbox at the specified date. This is a very useful format to remember birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions, meetings and other "On date" events which you don't want to miss.
Now that you have learned all the time formats, it's time to get the reminders working. Just follow the instructions below:
1. Open your email inbox and compose a demo reminder. Enter a relevant subject line and the details of the reminder in the message body. Then enter a time format in the To: field and send the email to 2minutes@FollowUpThen.com.
2. Since this is the first time you are setting up the FollowUpThen service, you will have to verify your email account with FollowUpThen.
After you have sent the first demo reminder email, you will immediately receive a confirmation email from FollowUpThen service. Open the message and click the confirmation link to verify your email address.
3. This will open a new browser window; enter the two words shown as Captcha (distorted letters) and hit the Confirm Account button.
4. In the next page, you will be asked to select your time zone. The website will automatically detect the closest internet time zone, so all you have to do is check the time zone again and hit the Set Time Zone button to confirm.
5. All done, your FollowUpThen experience is ready to begin.
Now compose a new email message and type your email reminder in the message body. Enter a preferred subject line and choose the To: address as 2minutes@FollowUpThen.com. This is again a demo reminder which you are checking; you can always add the real email reminders later on.
Send the email reminder and refresh your inbox after two minutes. You will receive the reminder email, as shown below:
Isn't it really awesome?
Now you can set up as many email reminders as you want. Every reminder email will also contain a link for Pending followups, as shown below:
To get a list of all pending reminders you have set using the FollowUpThen service; hit that link to open a new browser window. Then send the email to pending@FollowUpThen.com and you will instantly receive the list of pending email reminders.
Overall, this is one of the best free services to setup email reminders directly within your email account. Works with Gmail, Yahoo, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL and majority of other email providers. Do give this a try!
