Top 12 Gmail Web Apps for Outreach

Gmail is one of the best email clients out there (if not thee best) for outreach. The reason? Gmail Web Apps. With one click installs, you can instantly add new, awesome features to Gmail to help you become more productive, time-efficient, and personal while doing link building outreach. That’s why I put together this awesome list of Gmail web apps to save you time finding the best ones.

As I’m writing this, John Doherty beat me to some of the apps mentioned here earlier this week, but there’s still some awesome finds in here he left out. Enjoy!

12. Undo Send

This lets you delay sending your emails for a specified amount of time (i.e. 5 or 10 seconds) so if you want to undo sending it within that time, now you can. This is helpful when you’re writing up a ton of emails, because mistakes happen – that’s why you need an undo button.

11. Background Send

If you’re doing large-scale outreach, then you’ll be sending out a ton of emails. This app sends the email in the background so you don’t have to waste the 5 or 10 seconds for each email to send out; if you’re sending out 100 emails in an outreach campaign, this could save you 10-15 minutes.

10. Message Sneak Peek

This is great for (once again) large-scale outreach because when the responses start flooding in, all you have to do is scroll over each email to get a quick preview of what they said. That’s usually all you need in order to find out if they’re going to give you a link or not.

9. Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

Save yourself time by making keyboard shortcuts for words or phrases you use often. For example, if you constantly put your phone number or address, this could save you a lot of time.

8. Canned Responses

This is the best way to create simple templates to scale outreach. I only recommend cut & dry templates when doing outreach to the masses, so don’t use these templates for the influencers in your industry. I also suggest adding a personal note at the beginning of each (use Gist or Rapportive to find something specific) in order to have a personal connection from the beginning.

7. Gist

This helps you pull information on your contacts from their social profiles, blogs, and a few other sources. You can also post straight to Twitter & Facebook from the dashboard, so having all of their social & blog updates right in front when you do it helps a ton in becoming more personal & strengthening those relationships.

6. Multiple Inboxes

Filter your emails into multiple inboxes or panels. This is awesome for segmenting different projects. For example, if you’re doing at outreach campaign for an infographic at the same time you’re doing some broken link building outreach, they can show up in different panels. This is a great app for total customization.

5. Activeinbox

This is the best way to organize large outreach projects in Gmail. Easily start & maintain large-scale projects by keeping track of individual contacts. This is also a good tool to help clean up your inbox and set notifications & notes for each contact. If you sign up for the plus account ($25/year), you can get a few other features such as postponing emails & archiving your emails for future reference.

4. FollowUp CC

If you don’t get a response within a couple of days, don’t go back and send another email. Instead, let FollowUp CC do that for you when you first send it. Set how many days you want to wait until you send a gentle reminder, and then wa-la! You can now automate one step of your hustle plan.

3. Boomerang

This is the best way to send postponed emails (Activeinbox is good for this, but Boomerang is great). You can send 10 “Boomeranged” emails a month for free, or you could sign up for one of their paid packages starting at $4.99/month to get unlimited. The higher price packages also have other features such as Boomerang Mobile and open & click tracking. Eric Covino on SEO Book wrote a great post on using Boomerang & Gmail for scalable outreach.

2. Rapportive

This is the best way to get all of that contact’s social updates right in front of your eyes. It displays in the right sidebar. You really can’t go wrong with either Rapportive or Gist, but if I had to choose between the two, I’d choose Rapportive because of the simplicity & display. John Doherty wrote up a quick summary  on Rapportive and it’s features.

1. Toutapp

If you don’t know what Toutapp is, it’s an email management tool that integrates with email clients, including Gmail. Toutapp helps you find out if you’re email was opened, create smarter templates (even better than canned responses), and send out emails at a later time (just like Boomerang & Activeinbox). Plans start from $12/month. They have a free plan, but it’s very limited.

Honorable Mentions

A new Gmail app called eTacts is launching soon, so stay updated. They might give Rapportive a run for their money!

Highrise CRM is an awesome tool that can be integrated with Gmail to help keep track of all your conversations with prospects. This is a great tool for when you hit up the same prospects a second time around (so you know how the last conversation ended!). Thanks Cleo Kirkland for the find!

Are there any Gmail web apps I missed? Let me know in the comments! If it’s good enough, I’ll add it to the honorable mentions section and send a link your way .

Photo Attribution.