InsertText

Like you, I also suffered from the problem of having to read and respond to TOO MANY EMAILS or as several of my readers put it… 

I can do my work OR I can do my email 

Over the last 8 months, I have done a lot of reading, research and analysis. I’ve analysed the way that I work with emails and also the way my whole team works with emails. I’ve communicated with customers and readers of my blog. And I HAVE LEARNT A LOT!

The problem is NOT the volume of emails.
The problem is the inefficient way we write our emails. 

We often don’t realise it, but the emails we are talking about are an ESSENTIAL part of our work. They can’t be delegated… yet just looking at the long list in our Inbox just drains all the life out of us. Why?

Because most of us have a totally inefficient way of processing emails. Here are TWO SIMPLE TRUTHS.

1. We are wasting our time and energy rewriting the same email over and over again. Our research showed although we receive a lot of emails, many of them are similar to emails we have written before… yet we rewrite them again from memory each time we need to. Guess what…
   Writing the same emails again and again does NOT make us better at it. In fact it leads to boredom which leads to rushed lower quality (often) incomplete emails.
   
2. We are creating extra emails for ourselves by writing incomplete emails. Send an incomplete email to someone… and they need to write to you for more information… to which you have to reply again…

I know… there are other causes of email overload..
but the two listed above are IN YOUR CONTROL. 

What we need is a SYSTEM to create emails once and then use them again as many times as we need to.. basically some easy way of creating and using templates inside Outlook.

There are many solutions to this problem. Many users use Outlook’s built-in signatures as a solution. There are also other solutions but they are basically automated copy and paste. They fail to realise that an email consists of more than just the body of the email.

That’s why we created InsertText for Outlook. 

InsertText is one of the most brilliant Outlook Addons; i.e it works inside Outlook by adding buttons to Outlook’s menus and toolbars. This lets you use the power of InsertText without leaving Outlook while still working the same way you always have.

InsertText is NOT just a fancy copy and paste replacement. 

The best way to show you exactly what InsertText can do for you is with a few examples. These are examples of how we have used InsertText in our own company to reduce email processing times by 65%.

Example # 1: Send Product Details: I often get requests for information on our various Outlook Addons. With InsertText, I click the Reply using Template that InsertText has added to my Outlook. InsertText creates the reply for me with all the relevant information from the template as shown below (read the points in the numbered order).

Example #2: New email to report website problems to our webhost: When we have a problem with any of our websites, I click New Email using Template. InsertText creates a new email for me that is already addressed to the correct support person, it has all standard details in the body of the email identifying my site to the webhost, it has the Subject pre-filled for me and itautomatically CCs my webmaster. All I need to do is type in details of this specific problem and click Send.

This has turned a 10 minute chore into a 30 second point and click task. 

Example #3: Forward support requests to my webmaster: We get a lot of FANTASTIC feedback for our software from our users (THANK YOU). I pass on these testimonials to our webmaster by clicking Forward using Template. InsertText creates a forward email that is pre-addressed to my webmaster. It also has my standard instructions on it to add it to our website. All I need to do is click Send.

Example #4: Insert links and/or website addresses in emails: While writing emails, I frequently need to send people links to different files or websites… I have set up these links (often with extra instructions) as templates. Now all I need to do is position my cursor at the correct place, click InsertText on the toolbar and select the correct template to insert. The link and any relevant information is automatically inserted in the correct place.

Example #5: Support our customers: Our support team makes extensive use of InsertText to respond to customer queries. We have used InsertText’s Shared Templates feature to put the support templates in a folder that we can all access. Some of our support is done using a Web application i.e. using a web browser. We are still able to make FULL USE of InsertText Templates outside Outlook from the icon it puts in the Windows System Tray.

Now we are able to respond to customer questions quicker and in fewer emails.
Our response time has dropped dramatically and our customers are happier. 

As a company we were able to reduce our email processing time by almost 65%
Here is why InsertText can do the same for you! 

	Works inside Outlook so that you don’t need to change the way you write emails (InsertText adds a few buttons to the Outlook menus)
	Insert frequently repeated text fragments in the middle of an email at the click of a button.
	Save time by writing templates once and then using then to write similar emails in the future
	ALWAYS send better more complete information by using templates that have been written properly once (don’t be victim of your current state of mind)
	Avoid typing mistakes by reusing text that has already been proof-read
	Reduce the number of emails you receive and write by sending complete information every time (we were surprised by the number emails we used to receive that were the result of incomplete information sent by us in the first place)
	Have happier customers by reducing the response time it takes to solve customer problems (one email with all the information is better then 4 emails spread out over several days – particularly if your customer is in a different time zone)
	InsertText adds a personal touch to your emails by customising standard text with recipient names
	Easy to use even if you have hundreds of templates – you can quickly find the correct template by filtering by category or typing in a few words from the templates name.
	Much more than just copy and paste. This has been specially designed for Emails (templates can include To, CC, BCC, Attachments, Subject and the Body of the email so your templates can now include ALL the email information)
	Designed to work from Inside Outlook so that you can Reply, Reply-to-All, Forward or Create a new Email at the click of a button.
	Identifies which templates you use most often so you know where to put your business improvement efforts: InsertText can maintain a log of which templates are used when (logging can be turned off and on from the settings screen)
	Use templates outside of Outlook as well by accessing from the Windows System Tray(you can use InsertText templates in Word documents or Web Forms too)

How EASY is InsertText to use?
You already know how to create templates! 

InsertText’s templates are simply emails saved to a special folder. If you know how to create an email, you already know how to create a template. Create your email and then click Save Template (instead of clicking Send). InsertText will automatically save it to the correct folder ready to use. Easy!

How do you use a Template? 

InsertTextText adds buttons labelled InsertText, Reply using Template, Reply-to-All using Template, Forward using Template and New Email using Template.

1. Simply click the appropriate button to display the Insert Text screen.
2. Then select the template from the list and click the appropriate Insert button.