Xobni email organization [stuff we use]

I was invited to use an email tool called Xobni. The application is still in Beta so using the application is by invitation only (See invite below). It was recommended to me by an engineer and I figured if someone more geeky than me uses this tool, then it is worth taking a deeper look at.

Xobni Insight is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that offers effortless email management and provides instant access to the most important information in your email.

After a quick install, you’ll see the new Xobni toolbar appear in Outlook – and suddenly your Outlook productivity will burst to life with blazing fast email search, automatic phone number discovery, threaded conversations, and more.

The program adds a toolbar to the Outlook window. If you have a small monitor or are using a laptop then this may seem like a problem but Xobni allows you to collapse the bar into a minimal state and still lets you see relevant information.

At first I was thinking this would be a toolbar that I added, wrote a quick post on then removed after a couple of days. I have had Xobni running on my computer for the past week and it is making my communications much easier than before. Here are some basic features given on any given email.

Phone number:

I can’t tell you how many calls I make in a day. I run my own private Boiler Room and with that being said, the time I wasted looking up a phone number in the CRM or digging through email strings for the one time they gave me a direct line annoys me a lot. Xobni’s screen provides a contact phone number along with a reference to the email that it found it in.

Schedule some time:

This feature really only works if you use the Outlook calendar. By clicking the “Schedule time with NAME” button an email is automatically generated asking the recipient for a time to meet based on your scheduled events. Some of you may think this is rude. I beg to differ. Offering the times that you are available to the prospect makes the tedious task of ‘How does Thursday the 12th look?’ emails going back and forth a thing of the past.

Known associations:

One of the features that I was sold on from the beginning was the ability to see all of the names of people that have been included on past conversations. I deal with a lot of people on any given day. I am a smart guy but I cannot hold everyone’s name in my head for immediate recall. I used to have notes in each contact explaining who their assistant was and who reported to them. Xobni keeps these names in the tool bar and if you have to reference one of these people, the names and their emails are easily accessible.

Powerful email searching:

Along with all of the above features, the search tool really brings all of them together. Maybe you only remember a piece of information about the email you are looking for. Searching for the contact or the exact email is easy within Xobni. Find the people and the emails you are looking for quickly and drill into their contact information.

I have 5 free invitations available if you are interested. Leave me a comment and I’ll send you a link.

What email organization tools do you use?