2 Free Digital Tools To Help You Step Up Your Gmail Game

Today's theme: Gmail templates! Both of these free Gmail add-ons can save you a ton of time and effort in your inbox.

Hey!

It’s been a minute (2 weeks of minutes to be exact).

Welcome to our new folks! And welcome back to those who have been with us for a bit. I’d love to hear from you - which of our free digital tools have you found yourself using the most often?

If you couldn’t guess, I’m always looking for new free digital tool to explore. If you have one (or 20!) that you like, please send ‘em along.

If someone forwarded you this email, you should:

And of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you to drop a note to 2 friends who might appreciate what we’re doing here, inviting them to join in on the fun!

Both of today’s tools are specific to Gmail. So if you’re not a Gmail user, this one might not be the most relevant for you. (Though I’m guessing Outlook probably has similar tools built into their platform. ) But seeing as how Gmail has over 1.5 billion users, I’m going to assume this will be helpful for at least some of you. 😉

Both of these free digital tools work with standard free Gmail accounts, as well as with paid business accounts (which used to be called G Suite but are now called Google Workspace 🤷‍♂️).

Gmail Signatures

Tool type: Gmail Add-on

I’m a business owner. And a musician. And a podcast host. I sit on the board of several non-profits. I have a lot going on. You know, like most people!

While I have a primary email signature, over the years I’ve found it just doesn’t work for every situation. And just as importantly, lots of emails I send don’t require any signature at all beyond my standard “Best, Josh”.

Once upon a time, you could opt to have your Gmail signature on or off. Those were your options. I kept mine off and then had my formatted email signature in an Apple Note which I would copy and paste in as needed. It was a serious PITA, but for me, it was better than including it constantly, in every email, regardless of context.

Then Google rolled out this game-changing signature add-on!

Now, I write my email. But before hitting send, I click the pen at the bottom of the email.

Then I get the option to “Manage Signatures.”

I have “No signature” set as my default. But with just two quick clicks, I can add in my primary signature, my political signature (if you didn’t already know this about me, I do a lot of digital work with progressive political campaigns and organizations).

I also have a signature for a nonprofit of which I’m board president, one for my public speaking, something I do a lot of… with this simple tool, you can have the right signature for every email!

Building out these signatures is easy. Simply click the gear icon ⚙️ at the top right of your account and then select “See all settings.”

You’ll be in the General tab. Scroll down to “Signature” and you can “create new” or edit your pre-existing ones. You can also select which defaults (if any) to use, for both new emails and specifically for replies.

I personally use this tool multiple times per week, at a minimum. I’m a big fan - after all, it lets me easily customize one of the most important parts of my email and it does it for free.

In a future issue, we’ll talk about a free digital tool to help you create better-looking email signatures. But one step at a time!

FREE or FREEmium: FREE!

This work with both free and paid Gmail accounts.

Gmail Templates

Tool type: Gmail Add-on

While I love the ability to customize my signature with every email, there are also times I find myself writing basically the same emails over and over.

Emails for client onboarding, emails to share Facebook ad reporting, emails to pass along leads... the list goes on.

This free digital tool allows you to save any email as a template that can then be simply dropped into an email and edited, rather than drafting something new from scratch. A real-time saver, if used well.

To turn on templates, head back to settings (click that ⚙️ icon) and then go to “See all settings.” This time, you need to navigate over to the “Advanced” tab.

Once there, you’ll see an option to enable or disable “Templates.” Make sure it’s enabled.

The next time you find yourself writing an email that feels like something you’ve written before (or something you think you might need to write again), click the three dots at the bottom of your email (next to the pen icon).

From there you’ll see an option called Templates.

Select it and “Save draft as template.” Or, if you’ve already done so, select the template you’d like to insert into your inbox.

Selecting a previously saved template will populate a fully-formatted email, complete with signature (if you saved one as part of your template) and even your saved Subject Line.

From there, you can edit anything you want, add recipients and hit send.

Instead of writing the same basic draft over and over, this free digital tool will help you express yourself in a fraction of the time.

Another Gmail game-changer!

FREE or FREEmium: FREE!

This too works with both free and paid Gmail accounts.

That’s it for this fortnightly episode of Free Digital Tools.

Hope you’re enjoying reading about (and using!) these tools as much as I’m enjoying sharing them with you.

Please take a moment to share Free Digital Tools with 2 friends today who might appreciate what we’re doing here.

Until next time, keep on telling your story!

Josh
joshklemons.com

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PS - Since I mentioned above I’m a podcast host, I’d be remiss not to give a quick plug. My podcast is called Step Up Your Social. All episodes are short (~10 minutes or less) and provide quick, actionable tips to take your digital marketing to the next level. Listen at StepUpYourSocial.com or wherever you stream podcasts.