Most of us have tons of e-mail we answer on a daily basis. Even with the best social media routine, e-mail is just one of those things that keeps piling up. If you’re a blogger, you also likely receive pitches for story ideas and product reviews – probably turning down many of them.
Do you find yourself using the same response over and over again? Instead of typing out your response each time, why not use an e-mail template?
What is an E-mail Template?
An e-mail template is simply a response you save so that you can use again in the future. It will save you time from typing out a reply e-mail and will instead allow you to simply copy and paste your response.
How Do You Create an E-mail Template?
The simplest way to create an e-mail template is to save a document on your desktop with your response(s). I currently have a Notepad text document on my desktop with a few variations of my response to PR pitches. This is the standard “no, thank you” response for those pitches I’m not interested in.
However, I just found that if you use Gmail, you can actually save responses within Gmail as “canned responses” and simply insert your response into a new e-mail or reply. Doing that, you won’t even have to copy and paste the text, just click a button and you’re done! Plus, if you use filters, you can automatically reply to certain e-mails using your canned response, without ever seeing the e-mail. Here’s a quick how-to for setting up canned responses on Gmail.
How Does this Help You?
Just think about the amount of time you’ll save each day if there were less e-mails to answer. Or, how much faster you could empty your inbox if all you had to do was copy and paste a response or click a button for each e-mail!
Of course, you can’t possibly answer every e-mail in this manner. Some will still require you to type up a customized response. But I’m sure you can find a set of e-mails you receive that you can use an e-mail template to answer them faster.
Do you currently use an e-mail template? Have you ever thought about doing so?
wow Melanie, thanks, this is great information. I've seen the templates but honestly I haven't use them, now I will!!
They save me so much time Silvia! Especially for those PR emails that you
keep typing “Thanks, but I can't” over and over. 😉
I have to admit, I have not thought about using a template. Hmmmm, I going to have to try this one 🙂
I just found myself typing the same thing over and over. It's something I learned to do when I was working full-time. Hope it works for you!
I just found myself typing the same thing over and over. It’s something I learned to do when I was working full-time. Hope it works for you!
I just found myself typing the same thing over and over. It’s something I learned to do when I was working full-time. Hope it works for you!
I just found myself typing the same thing over and over. It’s something I learned to do when I was working full-time. Hope it works for you!
I just found myself typing the same thing over and over. It's something I learned to do when I was working full-time. Hope it works for you!
Fabulous! THANKS – we are moving our work/blog related emails to Gmail for better functionality and this is a great tip. I have done copy and pasting in the past, but look forward to this faster method!
Hope this method works out for you! It really does help when answering many
of the same PR pitches. Good luck!
Melanie, does Gmail still have this feature? This is great!
Yes, as far as I know, canned responses can still be created. I know I still use mine that I originally setup. 🙂
Thanks for sharing ! great post!