How to never miss a follow-up email

Two kinds of waiting

Every open conversation is waiting on someone:

• On them. You asked a question, sent a quote or a contract, and nothing came back. If you don’t chase it, nobody will.
• On you. Someone asked you for something, and you meant to answer later. Later turns into next week.

They need different tools. The first needs a reminder that fires only if no reply arrives. The second needs your inbox to stop treating a read message as a dealt-with message.

Habits that work in any mail app

• Decide when you send. When you write something that needs an answer, decide right then when you’ll chase it: tomorrow, in three days, next week. Put it in your calendar or your task list if your mail app has no reminders.
• Ask a clear question, with a date. “Could you confirm by Thursday?” gets more replies than “Let me know”, and tells you when to follow up.
• Keep a “waiting for” list. One folder or label for sent mail you expect an answer to. Look at it once a day, and remove what’s been answered.
• Reply in two minutes, or turn it into a task. If an answer takes less than two minutes, write it now. If it takes longer, write a task with a date, so the email can leave your inbox without being forgotten.
• Follow up kindly. A short nudge in the same thread works best: “Just checking whether this reached you.” No guilt, no wall of text.

Ask mello to remind you

In mello, the reminder goes with the message itself, so you set it while you write.

1. Write your message as usual.
2. Next to send, choose the bell button Remind me if no reply.
3. Pick tomorrow, in 3 days or next week (at the start of the working day), or Pick date & time…, then send.

The message in Sent shows a line: follow up reminder, the date, if nobody replies. Cancel reminder removes it.

The reminder fires only if nobody has answered by then. If a reply arrives in any folder, nothing happens. If not, the message is pinned above your inbox under No reply yet. It also works with Send later: the reminder waits for the message to go out.

The server keeps track, not your browser. It works with the webmail closed, and from any mail app that sends through mello.

Follow-ups you didn’t ask for

You won’t always think of setting a reminder. So when you send a message from the webmail without one, mello checks it after three days. If nobody has replied, the assistant reads it and decides whether it needs a follow-up at all. A thank-you or an FYI doesn’t. A question or a request does.

When it does, the message shows under No reply yet, with the reason in one line, and a follow-up is waiting in Drafts: in the same thread, to the same people, with your signature. Open the message and choose reply: mello opens that draft. Change what you like, then send it, or don’t.

This needs the assistant. Reminders you set yourself always come, with a draft when the assistant is on, and without one when it’s off.

Mail that’s waiting on you

The other side works the same way. Seven days after a message from a person arrives, mello checks it. If it’s still in your inbox, you haven’t answered, and the assistant thinks the sender is waiting on you, the message is pinned above your inbox under Waiting on you, with a reply drafted in Drafts.

• Reply opens the draft. Sending it removes the reminder.
• Done removes the reminder and leaves the message where it is.
• Archiving or deleting the message counts as dealing with it, so mail you’ve filed away doesn’t come back.

Only mail from people is checked: newsletters, notifications and Junk never are.

To find what you haven’t answered yourself, any time, choose Unanswered first in the list’s Sort by menu, or search for is:unanswered.

Turn mail into tasks

Some emails aren’t answers to write, but things to do: send the contract, book the room. Keep those as tasks, not as unread mail.

• From a message: open its more menu and choose Add task. The task links back to the email, and the email is marked To-do. Ticking off its last task clears the mark.
• Suggested to-dos: when mail from a person arrives, the assistant suggests up to three tasks, dated when the email says when. They appear under the message and on the Tasks page. Choose Add or dismiss them: nothing is added without you.
• Just a flag: press s on a message to mark it To-do, and find it again in the inbox’s To-do view.

On the Tasks page, the From email view lists every task that came from a message, with a link to open it. Tasks are stored in your calendar, so they show on your phone too.

What the assistant does, and turning it off

Automatic follow-ups, reply reminders and suggested to-dos use mello’s assistant. They’re on by default when mello offers the assistant, and each has its own switch in Settings → AI:

• Suggest a follow-up, drafted, when a sent message gets no reply in 3 days
• Remind me, with a reply drafted, when mail waiting on me has had no answer for 7 days
• Suggest to-dos from new mail (the assistant reads mail from people as it arrives)

AI reply drafts turns the assistant off altogether. For these checks, the message’s sender, subject and text go to mello’s AI provider, never its attachments. The assistant only drafts: nothing is ever sent without you. More in AI for email, without giving it everything.

With the assistant off, the reminders you set yourself still work, without a draft.