The Ultimate Guide to AI Email Management

AI-powered email management software helps email users save time and work more productively. With features for drafting emails, personalizing replies and sorting through conversations, AI for email management keeps your communications organized and efficient.

In this article, you’ll learn about AI email management software and its benefits in a business setting. You’ll also discover how the software helps sales teams.

What is AI email management?

AI email management software uses artificial intelligence to help users manage their day-to-day email activities, such as machine learning algorithms to automate email workflows. It also streamlines tasks such as writing new emails, sending follow-ups and managing a busy inbox.

AI email management software integrates with an email account. Most products work with major email clients like Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, and they’re usually compatible with their corresponding iOS and Android email apps.

Some companies market their AI email management products as AI email assistants. The software provides a similar service as a virtual assistant, saving time and allowing users to focus on their most important tasks.

How does AI email management differ from AI email marketing?

AI email management software is often considered synonymous with AI email marketing software. However, while they share some features, they’re used for two distinct purposes.

AI email management focuses on organizing and streamlining your inbox to boost efficiency. AI-based email marketing leverages AI to build, optimize and manage email campaigns more effectively.

The following table breaks down the differences:

The most significant distinction between the two is purpose. AI tools for email management help you organize and prioritize individual communications, such as between sales reps and prospects. AI tools for email marketing focus on reaching a broader audience with specific campaigns.

What are the benefits of AI for email management?

AI email management helps make communication more efficient and effective. Here are some of the ways the technology benefits you and your team.

Increased time savings

AI for email management helps users spend less time on administrative tasks by:

• Automating repetitive tasks, like email categorization

• Generating the wording for new emails

• Summarizing lengthy or historical email discussions

• Categorizing emails and flagging high-priority messages

AI email management software enables users to manage their email communications while allowing them to focus on business-critical activities.

Better organization

An AI email assistant can quickly sort and prioritize incoming emails, reducing stress for individual users.

Some AI email automation solutions also manage shared customer service or sales inboxes to help reps meet strict response times. Efficient organization in these shared spaces can result in greater team collaboration.

More professional communications

AI email management software is full of features to help users create professional emails that leave a positive impression on prospects and customers.

These features include built-in spelling and grammar checks, templates for formatting emails and tools that generate email content from scratch.

This functionality can help you strike the right tone with long-time customers and draft cold emails to new prospects.

Ways to use AI for email management in sales

Email management software can be an advantageous AI sales tool. Here are some of the tasks it can complete to add value in a sales context.

Writing emails

Many AI tools for email management include features for composing messages.

While writing emails may sound like a fairly basic task, it can be time-consuming in sales. The stakes are often high in email communications because they have the potential to generate revenue and win new business.

Effective outreach includes a range of considerations AI can automate. These include:

• Content. Does the email say what it needs to say?

• Structure. Is the order of information logical?

• Clarity. Is the email easy to read and understand?

• Tone. Is the writing style appropriate?

• Accuracy. Is the information about the company’s products, services and pricing correct?

• Appeal. Does the email have an enticing subject line that will make the reader want to open it?

• Persuasion. Does the email encourage the reader to take the next step with a clear call to action (CTA)?

• Correctness. Is the email free of spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes?

The email generator tools in AI email management software use natural language processing – a feature of generative AI – to write personalized emails to prospects in a user’s regular writing style.

Email generators help ensure accuracy by cross-referencing the contents of an email with information online. They can highlight errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation and analyze tone. These tools can even write subject lines to help ensure readers open cold emails.

We’ll look at Pipedrive’s AI email creation tool later in the article to explore more detailed uses.

Sending follow-up emails

Unlike a cold outreach message, a follow-up email comes after a sales rep has made initial contact or built a relationship with the recipient.

Sales follow-up emails are a standard courtesy after a sales call or a customer support inquiry. They also play an essential role in nurturing customer relationships and clarifying the next steps in the sales journey.

When writing a follow-up email, sales reps must encourage the recipient to stay in touch without being “pushy”.

Here’s an example of a follow-up email created using Pipedrive:

Effective follow-ups aren’t just well-written – they’re timely.

Sales reps should send emails to follow up with prospects as soon as possible after their most recent communication. Waiting until the next day (or later) could result in the prospect losing interest or forgetting about the conversation altogether.

AI email management tools can help sales reps craft a nuanced and persuasive message quickly.

Many solutions include features that automate both writing and sending follow-up emails. Seamless follow-ups allow sales leaders to build relationships with prospects and nurture them through the sales funnel.

These​​ features are available in the platform’s email marketing software, Campaigns. Campaigns automates, personalizes and tracks follow-up emails to save users time and help close the deal.

Managing your inbox

Many AI email assistants include features to help sales representatives prioritize urgent emails and reach “inbox zero”, the state of having an empty email inbox.

Sales professionals receive many email notifications throughout the day as they focus on revenue-generating activities. Add pings from social media and internal messaging platforms to the mix, and reps can easily become distracted and overwhelmed with “email overload”.

Reviewing and addressing every unread email in a busy inbox is tedious and time-consuming. However, failing to do so carries the risk that users will miss important emails from prospects or customers.

Email management tools can use AI to:

• Review incoming emails and categorize them based on content

• Alert users to high-priority messages from specific senders

• Flag important messages that contain certain keywords

Other tools include features that help users save time, reduce stress and avoid missing critical emails when managing a shared inbox.

For example, inbox management software Missive integrates with Pipedrive to provide shared inbox functionality within the CRM.

Working from a shared inbox lets your team communicate, share attachments, assign tasks and organize conversations by category (e.g., by project).

Summarizing email threads

AI email summarization tools analyze email threads and generate reports summarizing the content. Summaries quickly bring reps up to speed, sharing key points so they can draft effective email responses or restart the conversation.

Revisiting lengthy or historical email threads can be time-consuming and mentally draining. Email summaries are a smart solution, saving reps precious time so they don’t leave prospects waiting for critical responses.

Summaries include:

Some email summarization tools include more sophisticated technology, such as sentiment analysis. This feature assesses whether participants are feeling positive or negative emotions in the conversation, revealing how they feel about the content.

These features help sales reps quickly identify the appropriate next step to take.

We’ll take a look at Pipedrive’s AI email summarization tool shortly.

Prioritizing leads

AI email management software can help sales reps decide which leads to pursue by analyzing an email thread’s content and tone.

The technology can assess a recipient’s readiness to buy based on keywords, sentiment and engagement patterns. It then alerts sales reps to prospects with the highest chance of converting into customers.

Use your CRM’s AI email assistant to automate email management

You may already have access to some of the tools you need to optimize your approach to email management with AI. Many of these features are available in customer relationship management (CRM) software.

For example, Pipedrive’s user-friendly AI email writer helps sales reps manage their emails so they can spend more time delivering a personalized customer experience. It does this through two robust features: AI email creation and AI email summarization.

Pipedrive’s AI email creation feature

AI email writers turn simple prompts into professional, high-quality sales emails.

With Pipedrive’s AI email creation feature, users can eliminate writer’s block and save valuable time by crafting effective emails with just a few clicks.

The feature goes beyond the capabilities of general content creation solutions like ChatGPT to help users craft effective emails. It personalizesd the writing process by asking them for three key pieces of information about the email, as shown in the table below.

Pipedrive adapts to each user’s language style, detecting it in the content description and suggesting matching email wording.

Once enabled, Pipedrive’s AI email creation tool is available in any email composer within the software.

Simply open the composer and select “Write my email”.

The software will display a prompt with fields for content, tone and length.

Select “Generate email”, and an email content suggestion will be ready to review after just a few moments.

Edit the results, send the email and move on to other vital sales tasks.

Learn more about this feature in Pipedrive’s AI email creator Knowledge Base article.

Pipedrive’s AI email summarization feature

With Pipedrive’s AI email summarization, users can get all the information they need from a long email thread with a single click.

This feature summarizes the points each participant makes in a conversation and the key themes of the discussion. It also analyzes the conversation’s sentiment and indicates the recipient’s readiness to buy.

These thorough summaries help sales reps assess their chances of closing a sale and determine their next steps.

When enabled, the email summarization feature is visible in any email thread in Pipedrive.

Open a thread, click the reply icon and select “Summarize”.

In a matter of seconds, you’ll have a summary of the email thread that includes the following information:

Here’s an example of what a conversation summary looks like in Pipedrive:

Learn more about this feature in Pipedrive’s AI email summarization Knowledge Base article.

Final thoughts

AI email management software helps business owners, company leaders and sales reps manage their email communications more efficiently. AI email assistants automate time-consuming email tasks and help team members stay on top of critical communications.

Pipedrive’s AI email and communication automations ensure no prospects fall through the cracks by freeing up your sales team to focus on revenue-generating activities.

Sign up for a free 14-day trial to try Pipedrive and start streamlining your sales team’s email management activities today.