Send Later In Outlook: The Most Under Appreciated Outlook Feature

Microsoft Outlook’s Send Later Feature

Are you chained to your email inbox? Continue reading to learn how Microsoft’s Outlook feature called “Send Later” can help you become more organized and more email savvy.

Fax machines and physical message delivery services may still have their place in today’s world, but undoubtedly emails rule the roost in terms of office correspondence. Incredibly, over 300 billion emails get sent and received every 24 hours! That’s a lot of data and information flying in and out of inboxes and, if you’re like most business personnel, a meaningful stack is likely sitting right now in your inbox. Sifting through the noise, pinpointing the critical stuff, composing emails, and drafting replies undoubtedly takes a good chunk of your time — and if you find yourself constantly stuck in email back-and-forths, then you may feel your blood pressure rise every time you get that smartphone email ding. The good news is that some available features can help you get better control of your email system, and one favorite is the Outlook Send Later feature.

Why Outlook’s Send Later is Powerful

As its name suggests, Microsoft Outlook’s Send Later feature is an easy tool that allows users to compose emails or email drafts and then schedule them to be automatically sent at a later time and date. Until the actual sent time, you can revise as needed or simply write and let it go out at the desired time.

Earlier this month, Menark Technologies’s CEO Mike Mendez released a tech tip video about this very feature. In the video, he uses a great example of receiving a frustrating or repetitive email from a colleague and how ineffective it can be to reply to such immediately as this often kicks off an oft emotionally-fueled back-and-forth reply chain, leading to a workday in which nothing gets done. Instead, with the use of Send Later, users can compose their initial rebuttal to an email, set it to send later, and then either revise as needed or let the email be sent at the end of the day when you won’t have to worry about a back-and-forth-chain clogging up your day’s schedule.

This is an excellent example of a situation in which the Send Later feature can come in handy, but it certainly isn’t the only one. This is an incredibly powerful tool that can make any businessperson’s email strategy (and you do need a strategy when you’re juggling upwards of a hundred relevant emails a day) more efficient and effective. Just take a look at the following common situations in which an email delay will improve your workday and increase the likelihood of getting a more favorable response:

When you work in a different time zone. If you have a colleague, prospect, or client in a different time zone, then you want to send emails when they’re most relevant to them. The Send Later tool offers a time zone dropdown menu so that you can compose emails when you have time and then set them to automatically send at a time most relevant to your recipients (i.e. just before their workday starts).
When you want to be first on someone’s list, if your boss comes into the office at 9:30 am every morning, then this is the time you want your email to be sent to be at the top of her inbox.
When you want to streamline your day, CEO Scott Clarke incorporates the great strategy of having most of his emails set to be delivered at 5 pm. This means he can spend the day focusing on work, setting aside a set time to draft necessary emails, and not worry about distracting replies until early the next day.