10 Gmail Automation Techniques to Save 100s of Hours of Work

As the standard  communication format for many different industries, email offers users a familiar, consistent correspondence tool. The flip side of this popularity, however, is an endless collection of cluttered inboxes—because everyone sends emails.

That's why it's so important to automate Gmail wherever possible.

Using a Gmail automation tool can significantly enhance your email management by automating repetitive tasks and streamlining communication.

Gmail offers valuable features to help streamline email management, but in some cases, these native tools lack the power to make a substantial dent in your inbox. Fortunately, Gmelius has all the features and integrations you need to help automate your team’s tools, manage emails, and save time and effort.

Learn how to automate Gmail without leaving your inbox, using both Google's built-in tools and Gmelius' automation rules that work inside your Gmail account without having to switch apps.

What is Gmail Automation?

Gmail automation means using technology to sort, organize, create rules for, and manage the way your email account functions. By leveraging the right Gmail settings and third-party tools, you can automate Gmail tasks such as labeling, assigning, and even deletion.

This not only saves time but also boosts your productivity. Imagine having your incoming messages automatically categorized, important emails prioritized, and unnecessary clutter removed—all without lifting a finger. Imagine a more organized inbox than you've ever seen before!

Another type of Gmail automation uses artificial intelligence. It can automatically complete certain words and sentences so you can draft your emails faster and sound more professional. The recently launched Google Gemini can write entire emails in Gmail, making your life much easier.

The main type of Gmail automation we're discussing today is workflow automation: cutting down the boring and repetitive tasks that a machine could perform instead of you.

For salespeople, marketers, and anyone who spends a significant amount of time managing emails in Gmail, automation can be a game-changer. It allows you to focus on what truly matters: building relationships, closing deals, and driving your business forward.

What About Email Outreach Automation?

Automating your outreach can save you a lot of time and energy spent on cold emails. However, outbound campaign automation is usually impossible without an external email marketing service or some kind of customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Instead, your team can automate email outreach with some of Gmail’s native tools—supercharged by the additional features Gmelius offers.

For example, you can automatically send emails to a list of contacts stored in a CSV file. Then, you can automate email follow-up actions, like checking in if there's no response after a certain number of days, or sending emails automatically to customers who reply.

Gmelius offers ticket automation for your promotional emails as well. This means that, when a lead or customer responds, you can automatically assign the email to a sales or marketing team member. This ensures your automated emails have a human in the loop and every single lead is investigated.

It's important to note that Gmail accounts have different sending capacities, with personal accounts limited to 500 emails per day and Google Workspace accounts allowing up to 2,000 emails per day. These limitations will apply when you automate emails, even in outreach campaigns.

10 Tips for Gmail Automation You Can Try Today

If you're struggling with too many emails in Gmail or looking for ways to automatically forward mails so that they reach the right team member, these tips are for you.

1. Create Templates to Automatically Send Personalized Messages

Email templates are an easy way to save time on repetitive emails in Gmail. Whether you're preparing an outbound campaign or an internal employee reminder, using embedded email templates can save time and ensure your message contains all the necessary information. 

How to create a Gmail template?

Here is a step by step explanation of how to create Gmail templates:

1. Open Gmail Settings by clicking the gear icon in the top-right corner of your inbox.
2. Select "See all settings." 
3. In the next window, Click the "Advanced" tab 
4. Select the "Enable" option next to the "Templates" section. 
5. Click "Save Changes" near the bottom of the page and return to your Gmail inbox.
6. Now, compose a new message, preferably a promotional email you'll frequently send to contacts. 
7. Once you're happy, go to the bottom of the email, click More options > Templates > Save draft as template > Save as new template.

Pro Tip: If you don't want to compose your own email template, copy-paste one of our pre-made templates into the compose window.

This doesn't mean your responses are robotic. Gmelius enables you to add personalized email templates by creating custom variables that can be populated later, thanks to an intuitive mail merge process

2. Automate Gmail Sequences and Drip Campaigns

Email automation via shareable sequences can improve your team’s outreach with automatic responses and other actions. Gmelius Sequences uses simple “if this, then that” filters to make sure your emails always reach the right person, at the right time.

For example, you can create a sequence of outbound emails promoting a new service. If a customer responds and places an order, then you can configure Gmail to automatically assign the task to someone from sales.

Using Gmail filters, you can even automate the sorting, organization, and assignment of your emails, ensuring that important messages are always prioritized. You can also synchronize emails with Kanban boards and automatically apply shared Gmail labels to different tasks, as we'll explain a little later.

Gmelius stores all your email templates in the “compose” window so you never need to keep a running list of follow-ups. And signing up with Gmelius is easy!

3. Build Efficient Team Workflows With Gmail Filters and Automation Rules

Gmelius’ workflow automation rules allow you to streamline your team’s daily processes and distribute their workload in a few clicks:

• Assign tasks
• Change conversation statuses
• Add tags and labels to sort related emails
• Drag and drop tasks
• Exchange email notes

You can create filters to automatically forward emails to designated team members based on specific rules, ensuring that relevant emails reach the appropriate parties without manual intervention.

You can also use email automation for assignments instead of delegating them manually. When incoming emails meet certain pre-set criteria, Gmelius automatically routes them to the correct team members.

4. Automate Kanban Boards

Kanban boards manage and automate email pipelines in an efficient, visual manner you can review from inside your Gmail inbox. While Gmail by itself cannot automatically fill out task cards and project boards, you can access this feature using Gmelius.

What's more, it's possible to synchronize all your tasks with Google Calendar and auto-assign tasks that are added to a column on a project board using "if this, then that" rules.  

For instance, when you organize a board in stages of completion, a task will automatically change status when it reaches a certain stage.

You can see this visual organization tool in action when you request a short demo!

5. Automate Your Gmail Meeting Scheduler

Sometimes scheduling a meeting takes longer than the meeting itself. Sending emails back and forth trying to coordinate times and dates is an inefficient process. That's why so many emails in Gmail inboxes are simply about trying to find the best time for everyone to meet!

Gmelius’ meeting scheduler can automate the entire scheduling process for you, including, but not limited to:

• Sharing calendar availability
• Sending pre-meeting reminders and questionnaires
• Sharing Zoom or Google Meet links

It allows you to embed a calendar snapshot within the email body itself, so that your recipient can choose their preferred slot. At the backend, you can set up reminders, questionnaires, and confirmation emails that'll be automatically sent before the meeting starts.

6. Automatically Delete Spam Emails in Your Incoming Messages

One of the most common questions when it comes to Gmail automation is, “Can you automatically delete messages you don't need?” Imagine if you never had to look at spam, marketing emails, irrelevant promos, and other mails that are just creating clutter. 

When you automate Gmail, this is actually possible. Set up a rule that says, when an email contains keywords like “Don’t respond” or “No reply,” it’ll be automatically deleted from your inbox. 

If you want to remove it for now, but retain it for future reference, Gmelius lets you: 

• Automatically archive messages that contain specific keywords or come from certain domains. 
• Automatically forward messages from your work inbox to your personal Gmail, or even to someone else.

7. Schedule Emails to Send Later

This is one of the few Gmail automation features natively available in your inbox. If you haven’t used it already, you’re losing out on a simple but incredibly useful feature! Here’s how it works: 

1. Open the Compose window to write a new message. 
2. Enter the email address, Cc or Bcc information, and the subject line. 
3. Write the email body or add it from a template. 
4. On the bottom left of the Compose window, next to “Send,” you will see a down arrow. Click here. 
5. A drop-down menu opens; click on “Schedule send.” 

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Gmail will auto-recommend a few slots, but you can also set your own. #ProTip: According to research, Monday is the best day to send B2C emails and Wednesday is the best day for B2B.

8. Share Emails With Co-Workers Using a Shared Inbox

If you’re tired of forwarding your emails to an assistant, co-worker, or superior, Gmail automation has the answer. You can create a shared inbox via Gmelius so that multiple users can access the same email without sharing Google credentials or compromising security in any way.

9. Trigger the Perfect Canned Response for Urgent Emails

We have all used out-of-office emails when we are on vacation, or out for the day. What if you could apply a similar Gmail automation to your urgent emails?

To do this, you can set up an “if this, then that” rule that’s triggered when you receive messages from important addresses or containing specific keywords. 

For example, let’s say you have a high-value customer whose emails you can't ignore. You can configure Gmail so that whenever a message comes in from their address, night or day, a thoughtful and pre-designed response is sent right away.

In addition to these automated replies, Gmelius’s workflow automation feature can sort your shared inboxes, organize emails by shared labels, trigger Service-Level Agreement (SLA) rules, and more.

10. Auto-Tag  Emails for Seamless Inbox Automation and Team Collaboration

Another way to automate emails and organize your inbox is by applying the right tag. When you apply a tag to an email, it is automatically categorized as, let’s say, “important” or “accounting” or “Amazon” or anything else relevant to your team.

#ProTip: Use Gmelius to associate a tag with a team. This allows you to automatically highlight specific Gmail emails to entire team without having to forward it.

Can You Automate Gmail with Scripts?

Yes, you can automate Gmail using scripts as part of the Google Developer’s Program. You can head to script.google.com and start a new project, where you can write scripts for simple automations—such as automatically sending an email with a G Doc link whenever you create a Google Doc. 

You can find the exact process here, but bear in mind that script-based Gmail automation takes a lot of time and technical skills to master. Usually, it’s better to use third-party services like Gmelius that offer a similar level of control and automation prowess without any of the backend work. 

Third-party tools like Zapier can also be incredibly powerful. By integrating Gmail with other apps, you can automate entire workflows. For example, you can use Zapier to generate a to-do list from your inbox and automatically save email attachments.

Fun fact: Zapier works with Gmelius too! 

Who is Gmail Automation For?

It is a good idea to automate Gmail for anyone who receives a high volume of messages every day. This could be: 

1. A customer service team 

Your customer support will receive multiple emails every day, and nearly all of them need urgent attention. You may even have service level agreements (SLAs) that set strict response times. Here, Gmail automation will automatically categorize and assign every issue to the right agent and also escalate pending issues automatically. 

2. A C-level executive 

CXOs are key decision-makers in any company and, therefore, receive a barrage of emails every day. Not all of them are relevant and some don’t need an immediate response. Automation allows CXOs to share their inbox with an assistant, assign email-related tasks, and step out of the loop to keep their day free for more value-added activities. 

3. Dispatching teams 

Dispatching teams are tasked with looking after order fulfillment, and that’s a hectic role. Gmail automation brings some order into this chaos by automatically forwarding emails to the right departments, assigning tasks, flagging important orders, and much more.

Challenges in Organizing Your Gmail Inbox (And Their Solutions)

A clean inbox is the cornerstone of effective email management. However, that’s easier said than done. As you embark on your journey towards inbox zero, you’re likely to face: 

1. Confusion about what to automate: Get your priorities right. Automate responses to your most high-value customers and most frequent queries.
2. Lack of organization: First get your team structure in order, so you know who’s in charge of what. That way, the Gmail automation will actually make sense.
3. Limited technical skills: Advanced automations (e.g., through scripting) require coding knowledge. Find a third-party solution that’s easier to use. 
4. Not enough time: Gmail automation is highly configurable, but it takes time to set up. So, assign a dedicated resource for this purpose, or ask for your vendor’s help. 
5. A cap on automation features: While Gmail has built-in features like scheduled messages, email templates, and automated replies, it can’t do everything. Look for an affordable third-party tool that’s Google-certified and goes the extra mile.

Gmelius helps automate your outreach and streamline team workflows—all from inside your existing Gmail account—so you can stay connected and be more productive.

• Save hours spent copying and pasting
• Automate your team’s daily workflows
• Streamline customer outreach from Gmail
• Fortify your connections, with in-app chat
• Never leave your Gmail inbox

Conclusion: Gmail Automation is a No-Brainer

For instance, you can create Gmail filters to automatically label and sort incoming messages based on criteria such as sender, subject, or keywords. This way, important emails are always at your fingertips, and less critical ones are neatly tucked away.

Gmail’s built-in features, such as delay message send, sort emails, filter emails, label emails, and email templates/canned responses, can further streamline your workflow. For example, you can use canned responses to quickly reply to common queries, saving you from typing the same message repeatedly..

Whether you’re a salesperson, marketer, or simply someone who wants to manage their email more effectively, Gmail automation is definitely worth exploring.

Find out how Gmelius can help—try it for free today.

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