Top 5 Gmail features which you didn’t know about; a must use for start-up entrepreneurs

The e-mail has remained a central part of daily digital life despite the exponential growth and prominence of mobile messengers and chat apps. Tech giants Google and Apple are both in a constant battle for the top spot in terms of the most popular e-mail clients.

In 2024, the number of global e-mail users is set to baloon upto 4.48 billion users, up from 3.8 billion in 2018. In 2018, Gmail was the second-most popular e-mail client, accounting for 27 per cent of e-mail opened, ranking behind the Apple iPhone e-mail client with 29 per cent. 

Packed with user-friendly features, Gmail is currently one of the most popular free mail services in the world. However, there is a lot more to Gmail that many users actually know.

Here are 5 features in Gmail that most people don’t know about but are very important for a startup entrepreneur:

1) Groups

1. There are business updates that we want to send to some fixed set of people on a regular basis like updates about your startup to current or potential investors. Instead of typing the email IDs, again and again, every week/month, create a group:

1. Go to 9 dots on the top right which shows all Google apps
2. Click on Contacts
3. Create a Label
4. Select the Contacts and add them to the Label
5. Your Group has been created
6. When writing an email, into the field type the name of the Label. When you select it, all contacts in the Label will get added automatically

2) Schedule an Email

1. Very useful for sending birthday wishes, etc. Maintaining contact with potential investors, sending regular business updates, etc.
2. Dropdown next to Send gives an option to schedule the time you want to send the email.
3. Select preset options or pick the date and time.

3) Snooze

1. There is an investor or client query but you don’t want to respond immediately, you want to think about it. Prepare a document/report and then respond, maybe gather some data for your response.
2. Dealing with the email later:
   Hover on an email. Shows Clock button on the extreme right.
   Clicking shows preset options. You can also select specific date and time.
   The email disappears from inbox. Will show up again on the specific date/time as a brand new email
   Can use this feature if you want to deal with it later but don’t want to go through the hassle of searching for it as it keeps going further down with every email
   If you want to access the email before your specified date/time, the snoozed email can be found under the snoozed folder on the left column below starred.

4) Undo Send

1. Great to use in case you’ve sent an email to the wrong person or wrong attachment or incomplete email where you hit the send button by mistake.
2. Shown under Settings -> General. By default it's set to 5 sec. You can extend it to 30 sec.

5) Confidential mode

1. A great feature for sending your pitch deck to potential investors especially for cold e-mails. You don’t want your confidential information lying there in their inbox forever.
2. Lock with timer icon on the Send bar for a new e-mail allows you to mark an e-mail as confidential
3. You can select a number of days after which that e-mail will automatically get deleted.
4. You can also add a passcode to the e-mail so the sender will only be able to open the e-mail after they enter the passcode. The passcode can be sent by SMS or e-mail.
5. Confidential e-mails can’t be downloaded/forwarded or copied.

The author is the CEO of Zee Digital and you can follow him on @_rohitchadda