14 DAY TRIAL // One of the things that Google has been really good at, and probably still is, is iterating and updating constantly. It's always improving features, debuting new ones and tweaking. Google products are always getting better, or, at least, they're always changing.
In the latest example, Gmail has added the ability to label or star email messages before you send them. This way, you can be sure that any conversation is sent to its appropriate place even before you start it.
"Have you ever sent an important email that you wanted to follow up on, but a couple days later realized you hadn’t? Starting today, you can organize your messages before sending them by starring them or adding a label, making it easy to keep track of your sent messages," Craig Prince, a software engineer at Google, writes.
"When composing a new message, you can assign labels or star it by using the labels drop-down menu. As you’d expect, recipients of messages organized this way won’t see your labels or stars," he explained.
Most people don't bother to label their emails or even use things like the Priority Inbox too much. Then again, most people only get a few messages every day. But for those that rely on email for their work, whether they like it or not, have developed systems of keeping everything, as much as possible, sorted and labeled.
Filters are great if you can get the hang of them, but they're fairly complicated to set up. Priority Inbox is an automated option, but it still needs some pointers from you, such as starring a message or conversation so it knows it's important.
Of course, there are still major problems with email, the amount of it being one of the biggest, and small features like this won't fix them. But anything helps.