Why it's important for your email to stand out
You probably send an awful lot of email, and as a result, that means that your messages are just one of hundreds that other people are seeing.
So how can you stand out and increase the chances of people connecting and replying to your emails?
Well in this video, I'm going to share with you five tools to help you stand out as you're creating your messages right here within Gmail.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And let's start off simple and we're going to work our way up to something a little more complex, including how to create a professional-looking signature just like the one you see here.
Professional Grammar checker
Now, the first one on my list is something you've probably heard before, and that is Grammarly.
Grammarly is free, or at least there's a free forever version, but Grammarly has saved me so many times.
It's the reason why I mention it on a regular basis.
So here I am crafting an email.
I want to send a relatively short email to this individual, but you can see that Grammarly is helping me out before I hit the send button.
Why? Well, it actually hasn't caught any spelling mistakes.
Gmail has some basic spell-checking built right in, but what it wants to do is make me sure that I sound great when it comes to writing my emails.
So in this case, you can see I've used the wrong form- Yeah, that's not your, it should be you're, or you are.
And all I have to do is hover over these red underlined words and I can make the change.
I can say, yeah, let's use the correct version here.
This second one is a very, very silly mistake.
But how often are you in a rush?
How often do you forget to double-check or reread your messages?
So, yeah, it's not meat, it's M-E-E-T.
Can we meet next Monday?
And then this last one that Grammarly is suggesting to me, there's no spelling mistake.
In fact, thanks for all you do and keeping us in the loop.
It actually looks pretty good to me, but if I hover over it, you know what, I'm actually not using the proper format here.
It should be for keeping.
Thanks for all you do and for keeping us in the loop.
So now, I'm going to sound that much more professional and that much more accurate when it comes to my grammar.
The other nice thing that I like is if you hover over the Grammarly icon in the bottom right-hand corner of any of your emails when you have the Grammarly extension installed is you can also see how your text may sound to your readers.
So for example, if I click on this icon here, Grammarly is telling me that this particular message is relatively optimistic and friendly.
Now, I can choose to grade this either up or down to see if I think they are accurate.
But I know this can be the handy, especially if you're a little heated.
Maybe if you're a little angry or upset, maybe you want to take a quick glance down below and see, oh, is that really how I come across?
Maybe I can change this message.
Identify weak messages
The next tool on our list is an extension called Just Not Sorry.
And the whole idea behind Just Not Sorry is to look for certain words that often make us sound weak or less confident in our messaging.
So with the Just Not Sorry extension installed, here you can see it's picking up on a few key words or key phrases.
So for example, I just wanted to check in.
If I hover over just, it's actually going to tell me that this often demeans what I have to say.
In fact, just often shrinks our power.
So I may want to remove just, and just say, hey, I wanted to check in and see if you had a chance to review my proposal.
I'm sorry.
Now, sorry is a powerful word.
And I think there are times when we do want to use that term, but if you're overusing it, it may also undermine your messaging as well.
And then lastly here, in this last sentence example, but if we can set up a meeting next week, I think that we can come to an agreement.
I think is another one of those terms that often displays an overall lack of self-confidence.
And I like these little descriptions that they give us when we hover our mouse over these words.
So instead of I think, maybe I can say I know that we can come to an agreement.
That's a much more confident stance.
It's not overly aggressive, but it's a positive stance as well as I'm replying to this message.
So if you'd like some hints as to when you are using some of these weaker terms, you can install the Just Not Sorry extension.
Awesome email signatures
Now, one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd and look professional is by having an awesome email signature.
And for that, we're going to take a look at a website called MySignature.io.
Now, MySignature allows you to quickly and easily create a custom email signature that is either as complex or as simple as you like.
So for example here, here, I was creating an email signature here on the right-hand side of the screen, but I can swap out or remove or customize any of these call to action settings here as I like.
But I can either go from what I've been working on here, or let me show you how to start from scratch.
So here from the MySignature dashboard, all I need to do is select new signature.
And I'm presented with a variety of custom-made templates.
Now, there's several different categories in which you can choose from.
We can look at professional, modern, elegant, creative.
I'm going to stick with this friendly one.
And I'd like to get started with this one right here.
So I'm going to click on it.
And yeah, it's a beautiful email signature.
It just doesn't have my information.
But no problem, it's quick and easy.
Just by filling out the fields here on the left-hand side, I can customize all of my branding, all of my colors.
I can add a logo so I can keep that branding consistent whether they're coming from my website, to my email, to my social media, I can bring it all together right here from within my signature.
So for example, let's just put in my name here.
So it's myself.
And the very next thing I want to do is actually swap out this image.
So I can either click on the tabs over here on the left, or I can click on the different elements here within the signature preview on the right.
So maybe I want to swap out that picture.
I'm going to remove that.
And let's go back and choose a file that is yeah, a little bit more me, shall we say that?
Now, the great thing is, is that there's a lot of customizable features here.
So if I want, for example, maybe some rounded corners on the side.
Maybe I want a rounded picture here.
All I need to do is now drag this so my face is within that circle.
I'm going to hit apply.
And immediately it's added to the signature here on the right-hand side.
Maybe I want to customize my social buttons here.
Maybe I want to add my Facebook page.
Well, no problem.
All I would need to do is put in my Facebook ID over here and then I can drag and rearrange the order of those social icons.
And if you have a call to action, if you want a book me button or anything of the like, you can do so and include it right here within your signature.
Now, when you're all finished designing your signature, all you need to do is select save signature in the lower right-hand column.
Now, this will give us the ability to copy it to our clipboards.
I'm going to copy it right here.
And now, if we go back into our Gmail account, all we need to do is hit the gear icon and select see all settings.
And on the very first tab, if we scroll almost all the way down to the bottom, we can add a new signature.
So I'm going to select create new in this case.
I'm going to call this one a my signature, for example.
I'm going to say create.
And right here, all I have to do is paste what we copied to our clipboard right here on the right-hand side.
Now, at the very bottom, don't forget to hit save changes.
And now, let's go ahead and compose a new message.
I'm going to swap this default signature out for the one that we just created here.
This my signature.
You now have a professional-looking signature, which is also useful to your readers.
Embed meeting times
Now, the next tool in our list is designed to remove friction when it comes to creating meetings.
Many of us are using scheduling tools, such as Calendly.
And you may be used to just copying and pasting your meeting link right here within the email.
But why not stand out from the crowd and make it that much easier for your recipients to select a time?
If you have the Calendly browser extension installed, all you need to do is select it from your browser window.
And here, you can see some of the meetings that I already have set up here.
Now, I could just copy the link for this 30-minute meeting and paste it in my message.
When they select that link, they would be brought to a new browser tab and see my entire calendar.
But what if I choose this option, add times to email.
This is a fantastic solution, especially if you want to propose just a few specific days.
So I'm going to say add times to email, and I'm brought up with a miniature calendar here.
I'm going to select the Thursday and Friday of next week.
And I'm going to say finish and share.
It tells me that the times are copied to my clipboard.
I can now close this.
And I'm going to come back to my message and just paste it in here.
And look at this, I've got the options embedded directly into the calendar.
So when I send this message, the person on the other end can come right in here, right from the email itself and select a time that works for them.
Now, the last tool on our list today
Email video messages
is only for those who really want to wow the socks off the people they're sending emails to.
You know, we're so used to a text-based world, whether that's text messaging, instant messaging, or of course email, but if you really want to impress the people that you're messaging with, why not send a video email?
In this case, we're going to be using Loom, and in particular, the Loom extension.
Now, Loom is a great tool for recording screenshots and screencasting, especially if you're trying to help solve a problem or share something online.
But in this case, we're just going to use the video format and embed it into our Gmail message.
So here with the Loom extension installed, I've clicked on it to open up those settings.
I'm actually going to click this up here so it's a little bit closer to my camera, so it looks like I'm looking at you.
I can adjust my settings here in terms of the microphone and which camera that I'm using, but all I need to do is start recording.
And it's going to give me a quick countdown.
And now I'm recording.
Hi Sariah, I just wanted to reach back out to you and see if this might answer your question.
And of course, this is where I could answer the question directly.
At this point, all I need to do is hit this little check mark down below, which is going to finish the recording.
It's going to open up Loom in a new tab where I can make changes and adjustments, including trimming this particular video, so I can always preview it before I send it out.
But here's a, another quick tip.
Loom allows us to add a call to action button.
So for example, if I click this option here on the right-hand side, I could say something like book a time with me or something like that.
And maybe I could add the link directly to my Calendly appointment or to some other booking tool.
I'm just going to put in some text here just for fun just so I can save this call to action.
If I want to change the color and be on brand, yeah, I can do that as well.
Let's give this a, let's give this a color like, oh, I, don't know, something that's a little more Simpletivity blue.
And this doesn't look like a valid URL so let's just type in my website here for example, Simpletivity.com.
Now, I can save that call to action and what's going to happen is that it's going to appear here in the right-hand side of the screen.
So now when they're watching this video, they can also come up here and click this call to action.
Now, when we're happy with the finished product, all we need to do is come up here and select the share button.
Now, we want to choose the third option, which is embed, and I'm going to select copy GIF thumbnail.
This is going to copy it to my clipboard and I'm going to come back to my email message and I'm going to paste it in directly into my message.
The great thing here is that now they're going to see a quick preview of that video.
It's that much more engaging.
It's that much more inviting.
And because it's my face on screen, they know I'm not just spamming them with an advertisement or something else.
They know that it's me.
Now, the text up here above can be removed, it can be altered, so if I don't want to see that, I can just remove that here.
So if you want to truly engage with your email audience, try the Loom extension for Gmail.
If you have questions about any of the tools that I mentioned today, or if you have recommendations of your own, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple
