5 must have Chrome extensions for Gmail

There are a few extensions I use on a daily basis to help me make the best of my Gmail account.

#5 Assistant.to

Assistant.to lets you easily schedule a meeting depending on each person’s availability.

It’s a great tool that avoids unnecessary back and forth emails for scheduling a meeting.

Chrome extension for gmail

Receiver just need to click on one of the ‘works for me’ to automatically schedule a meeting with you. Genius !

I used Assistant.to:

1. Reach out to someone I’ve agreed to have a meeting with.

2. Reaching out to someone I’ve never talked to for partnerships.

I’ve sent emails to people that did not know me at all and still manage to talk with them just by getting them to schedule a meeting through this tool.

3. I usually avoid putting too much available time spots as it might appear that I have nothing else to do. Two to Four-time slot availability at two separate days worked great for me. You also don’t want to provide them with too many choices to avoid the choice paradox ;).

#4 Yes ware // Gmail canned response

Both of these tools allows you to have pre-written email templates so you don’t have to re-write the same email every time.

Gmail canned response is a tool that is already included in Gmail. You just need to go into settings and labs to activate it.

Yesware is a little more advanced. You can create templates and have white-boxes that you have to fill out so that you remember changing variables such as name, timing and what I call the “special interest”.

chrome extension for gmail

Gmail canned response lets you easily insert and edit email template

I use canned response with Gmail // Yesware:

1. When there is a specific partnership I am looking for and I’ve managed to get the email addresses of all the people I want to reach out to. With an Excel, you can make sure that the white boxed fields are filled in automatically.

2. Reaching out to people in order to introduce myself and my company before I have something to ask.

Note: The features I used are free for Yesware. Like Boomerang you can have a premium to track emails that have been opened.

#3 Grammarly

I don’t pretend to have perfect writing skills and this can be a big issue for some people. It doesn’t look profsional (see 😉 ).

Grammarly is a great little tool to help you get rid of small mistakes as it corrects you on the spot while you write your email.

It’s easy to use and I’m saving lots of time when not sure about a particular word as it appears right when I write.

chrome extension for gmail

Example of how Grammarly works

#2 Boomerang

Boomerang is known for helping you keep track of people who did not answer you. When you send an email to someone, you can ask Boomerang to put a reminder for you if that person didn’t answer you.

Now you have a tool that allows you to send emails and be sure to follow up with the people without ever forgeting about it.

chrome extension for gmail

The way I use Boomerang:

1. When reaching out for possible partnerships, I get notified after three days if the receiver hasn’t followed up on me. I repeat this every three days until I get an answer.

2.  I like to use the send later features so it’s sends on the perfect time for the person to read it. I usually send email to different time zones and I found out that people are usually very responsive in mornings.

Note: All the features I used are free. There is a premium version to track emails and more features if you would like to.

#1 Rapportive

Rapportive helps you put a picture on an email. When you receive or send an email the LinkedIn summary and picture of the person will automatically appear on the right of your gmail inbox.

chrome extension for gmail

This plugin saves me times at different occasions:

1. When reaching out to people I’ve never been in contact before. It helps me know what they do, where they live and I can send them something much more relevant.

2. Receiving emails from people I don’t remember. We are human and it happens that we don’t remember a person’s name. Instead of typing the name in Google and to find their LinkedIn account, it’s right there and it helps me reconstruct when I met them.

3. There is a way you can use this plugin to find out people’s email addresses. Rob Ousbey explains it really well in this post .

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