Every painter I’ve talked to in the last few weeks is moving at a hundred miles an hour. Anything we can do to simplify or speed-up tasks is welcome. Email reinvented how we communicate with clients and potential customers. But it’s also become overwhelming.

Any reply is better than no reply.

Say a new client wants you to make changes to an estimate. You want to quickly respond to let them know you’re working on it (you can follow-up with the changes later). With the need for fast, concise responses in mind, here are two email tools that can help you communicate better:

 1. For Gmail users: Smart Reply

This feature popped up on my phone a few weeks ago. Smart Reply suggests 3 responses based on the content of the email received. Choose one and a reply email will open with the selected text already there. You can edit it, add to, or just click send.

2. For PEP users: Automated eBid Campaigns

Use an automated customer follow-up campaign to solve the problem of remembering to touch base with clients after you send them an eBid. Just set it and forget it. Your customer will receive the emails in the campaign sequence automatically. You can also set up a “Thank You” email to automatically send when the eBid is accepted. Check out this post for video links!