Master Inbox 3.0 Unveiled: Revolutionizing Your Cold Email Experience

Step into the future of cold emailing! 

The highly anticipated Smartlead's Master Inbox 3.0 is here to transform your cold emailing experience radically. 

Smartlead offers a unibox, the master inbox, that manages all your accounts in a centralized dashboard, offering a 360-degree view of all your customer messages. The new update, with a bunch of features, brings back the Master Inbox, only more powerful and responsive than ever before. 

It means your cold emailing experience just got better! 

And it's just a click away in your real-time master inbox. Welcome to the future of cold email management with Master Inbox 3.0.

Let's look at what’s in it for you.

Master Inbox 3.0: How It Revolutionizes Your Cold Email Experience

Smartlead launched the most anticipated Master Inbox 3.0. You might be wondering what’s in it for you. This latest update brings you a host of features and improvements that will make managing your email campaigns more efficient and effective than ever before.

Enhanced Lead Management 

First and foremost, Master Inbox 3.0 introduces real-time email replies. Earlier, waiting for lead replies was a time-consuming process, with delays of up to 30-40 minutes. With the new Master Inbox, you can see lead replies within seconds of receiving them. This means you get a 360-degree view of all your customer messages and can respond promptly, regardless of your email service provider.

Additionally, you can now schedule messages and set reminders directly from Master Inbox 3.0. This allows you to plan your email communications more effectively, ensuring that messages are sent at the right time and that you never miss an important follow-up.

The ability to add tasks and notes for leads within Master Inbox 3.0 enhances your campaign management capabilities. You can create tasks with deadlines and priorities, making it easier to stay on top of your to-do list. The collaborative workspace for notes enables seamless teamwork on lead-related tasks.

Attachments can now be added directly to your master inbox, making it convenient to send and receive files within your email conversations. This feature simplifies the exchange of documents, images, videos, and PDFs, enhancing your overall emailing experience.

Untracked Replies

The introduction of the Untracked Reply feature in Master Inbox 3.0 will allow you to track all responses, even those that don't have the usual tags or identifiers. This ensures that you don't miss any important messages from your leads, providing a more comprehensive view of your campaign's performance.

Easy Navigation 

Another game-changing feature is the ability to create custom views in Master Inbox 3.0. This feature allows you to save combinations of filters for easy access and navigation. Whether you want to find leads from a specific client, team member, or campaign, you can create predefined filters to streamline your workflow.

You can add leads to another campaign with Smartlead Master Inbox 3.0. 

VIEWS and Filters for Effective Management 

You can now refresh and fetch new lead replies across all your connected email accounts instantly. You can sort and filter your inbox by various criteria, such as unread replies, reply time, or sent time, making it easy to prioritize and manage your communications effectively.

Another groundbreaking feature is the ability to create custom VIEWS in Master Inbox 3.0. This feature allows you to save combinations of filters for easy access and navigation. Whether you want to find leads from a specific client, team member, or campaign, you can create predefined filters to streamline your workflow.

Efficient Collaboration & Team Management 

Team management is also made easier with the Team Member Assignment feature. You can assign leads to specific team members, ensuring clear ownership and accountability for each lead in your campaigns.

The new sidebar in Master Inbox provides a familiar interface, including categories like Inbox, Sent, Important, Snoozed, Reminders, Scheduled, and Archived. This layout enhances navigation and organization within your inbox.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Optimum Productivity

To boost productivity, Master Inbox 3.0 introduces keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts enable you to perform various actions, from assigning leads to blocking them, with a simple keystroke. This feature streamlines your workflow and makes managing your email campaigns more efficient.

Get Real-Time Email Replies in the Master Inbox 3.0

One Google search about Unified Inbox, and you will know users’ frustration about lag in loading lead replies and losing out on potential revenue. A real-time master inbox was a top priority for Smartlead users, and now it’s here. 

Earlier, there was a time gap of 30-40 minutes for the master inbox to fetch the messages, but with the revamped Master Inbox 3.0, you get all your lead replies in your master inbox in real time. 

Once a reply is received from a lead, you will see it in your master inbox in just a couple of seconds. It means you get a 360-degree view of all your customer messages and reach out to them without any delay. No matter what your ESP is (SMTP, Gmail, or Outlook), you can expect all the replies within a minute in the master inbox. 

Click on “Master Inbox” from the main menu on the left of the screen. 

When you click on the Master Inbox, all the replies from your leads in your campaigns will show up in the inbox in real-time. With the new update, you can expect replies in your inbox in just a couple of seconds. 

However, you won’t see new messages rolling in the master inbox naturally. If you want to fetch all the new lead replies in all of your connected email accounts, refresh the page to retrigger the Smartlead algorithm to fetch new real-time replies. 

You can sort all the lead replies into three categories:

• Unread Replies
• Reply Time (descending order)
• Sent Time (descending order)

Unread Replies: When you sort the inbox by unread replies, the unread replies will stay at the top. 

Reply Time (desc): When you sort your inbox by reply time in descending order, the latest reply from the leads will come up on top. 

Sent Time (desc): When you sort the messages in the master inbox 3.0 by sent time (desc), the latest sent email lead replies will be at the top.

You can filter the Inbox section by clicking on the filter button. The filter has the following options:

• Lead Category**
• Email Status
• Email Campaign
• Email Account 
• Team Member
• Campaign Tag Name
• Client Name
• Reply Date Range

**In the lead category section, you get three options - Unassigned Leads, Ignore Lead Category, and Specific Lead Category. Under both the Ignore Lead Category and Specific Lead Category, you can further filter your messages as per your requirement into 7 subcategories - Interested, Meeting Request, Not Interested, Do Not Contact, Information Request, Out Of Office, Wrong Person, and Team member. You can choose up to 3 subcategories in each of these categories. 

You can sub-categorize the Email Status category as Opened, Clicked, Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Accepted. 

With the Email Account category, you can select particular campaigns you want to check. Similarly, you can also filter the Sender Accounts, Campaign Tag Name, Team Member, Client Name, and Reply Date Range.

Set the filters and click on Apply to see the leads replies as per your preference that you are looking for. Next, click on the leads you want to see the replies for, and the real-time email replies will show up as highlighted in the screenshot below. 

This is how you can view the real-time email replies in Smartlead’s master inbox.

Untracked Replies in Master Inbox 3.0

With Master Inbox 3.0, we aim to make Smartlead the one-stop solution for everything related to lead generation, sales, and outbound marketing. 

We will be launching the Untracked Reply feature in Mid January, 2024, effectively. 

VIEWS in Master Inbox 3.0

You wanted, and we delivered. 

Now you can create views in the newly revamped Smartlead Master Inbox 3.0. This will help you navigate through the master inbox effectively. It is a combination of filters that users can save to create custom views according to their needs. 

Note: “VIEWS” as a feature is available for three views for Base and Popular Plan users. Pro and Custom Plan users can add more views as per their needs. 

Click on ‘Master Inbox’ from the main menu. 

On the left panel of the Master inbox, you will find the VIEWS option under Archived. 

The “VIEWS” button at the bottom of the menu in the master inbox will help you manage the master inbox very effectively. Using the “VIEWS,” you can apply a combination of filters and save them for future usage. 

In the screenshot below, Custom, Team member, Unassigned leads, etc., are the saved views. Basically, you’re creating predefined filters. 

These feature filters are efficient in finding leads of particular categories or specific email campaigns. 

For instance, if you want to find campaigns by a particular client, you can use this “VIEWS” option and save it. So that next time when you want to see replies from the client campaigns, you can find them in the view that you have created.

In the screenshot below, I have clicked on a predefined, saved filter under VIEWS called “unassigned leads.” You can see the results of a filter named “unassigned leads” displayed in the middle section, highlighted with a red rectangle. This is how the VIEW works in the Smartlead master inbox. 

How to Create a “Predefined Filter” with VIEW? 

Click on the “+” sign to create your custom view filter.

If you want the filter to fetch emails from all leads or from unassigned ones, you can choose one of the options under the lead category. You can also choose “ignore category” or want to search from a particular “specific category.”

To create a filter based on email status, click on “Email Status”, and pick one option as shown below. 

You can also create a filter with a Client’s name or team members’ names. The best part of the VIEWS option is that you can also create a filter based on the reply date range. Just click on the “calendar” icon, and you’re good to go. 

Moreover, you can add Email Status (Opened, Clicked, Replied, Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Accepted), Sender Email Account, Campaign Tag Name, Clients, and Team Members. 

Once you have selected your desired filters, click on “Create View” on the bottom right of the pop-up dialog box, and your custom view is created. And you can check the saved views from under the “VIEWS” button.

You can also make a view available for your team. Just click on the “Make View as Public” while setting up the view, and your team members will also be able to check the view.

Once you’ve filled in the pop-up, click on “create view,” and you’re done.

The final view will look something like the screenshot below:

Master Inbox Attachments in the New MI3

Another desired feature; now you can add attachments directly to your master inbox. These attachments can also be fetched when a lead replies to your email. 

Click on “Master Inbox” from the main menu on the left of the screen. It will open to the master inbox, which will appear like the screenshot below.

Next, choose one of the leads in the left panel to see the message. Click on the lead that you wish to send a reply by attaching files. The entire conversation will show up as highlighted in the below image. 

Now, click on the reply icon.

 It will open a dialog box on the right side of the screen for composing a new message, as shown below. 

Next, compose the email you want to send and click the upload file option. 

The photo-like symbol is for attaching images. The file-like symbol is for attaching images, videos, and PDFs, and the symbol on the right is for inserting links. 

Once done, the attachments will be added to the email under the email body, as shown in the above image. 

You can also tick the signature adding box below the attachments to add an email signature, and you’re good to click the “Send Now” button.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Unmatched Productivity in the Master Inbox 3.0

We are introducing another cool feature to offer you unmatched productivity – Keyboard Shortcuts. In the new master inbox, you can use keyboard shortcuts to take various actions against a lead. From assigning a lead to blocking it, you can do it all by just pressing shortcut keys on your keyboard. 

Go to the “Master Inbox” from the main menu on the left of the screen. Now, click on the lead you want to take action against. Now, click on the three dots “More” option from the dashboard pointed out in the screenshot below.

You will get 6 options by clicking on “More”:

• Replace Lead 
• Push to Subsequence (you can move the selected lead to a subsequence) 
• Pause Lead or, Resume Lead (This will either pause or resume further communication for this lead for this campaign)
• Mark as block (This feature blocks any active lead matching this domain/email across all campaigns including all client campaigns currently in your account. Any existing campaign containing the selected lead will be blocked. And the same leads uploaded to Client Campaigns in the future won't be blocked. You can either block the entire domain associated with this lead or block the lead restricted to a client)
• Mark as unread 
• Keyboard Shortcuts 

Click on “Keyboard Shortcuts” to see available shortcut options on Smartlead’s master inbox.

Here’s a list of the keyboard shortcuts provided in the master inbox:

TO BE ADDED

To implement any of the above actions with shortcuts, click on any lead from the inbox or other options in the menu. 

Next, press the keys written against the action you want to take. 

There will be a pop-up box asking you to confirm your choice. Once you consent, the lead will be marked with the desired action. Once you remember the shortcuts, just click on a lead and press the shortcut keys for the particular action. 

‍

Team Member Assignment in MI 3.0

Team management and workflow assignment is now easier with the Team Member Assignment in Master Inbox 3.0. 

Go to the master inbox, and click on a lead that you want to assign to an individual team member (it will show up in their interface). Now, navigate to the top right corner of the dashboard and click on the “Assign to” button. 

The names of the team members will show up, as shown in the screenshot below. All you need to do is choose the team member to whom you want to assign the lead. 

That’s it. 

Sidebar in the New Master Inbox

Smartlead introduces a sidebar for the new master inbox to offer you unmatched maneuverability. It’s pretty much like any familiar email inbox comprising Inbox, Sent, Important, Snoozed, Reminders, Scheduled, and Archived.  

Inbox

This is where you see all your messages and get a 360-degree view of all conversations from all the connected accounts. 

Sent

In this tab, you can see all the replies sent to the leads from accounts connected to your Smartlead account. 

Important

Now you can mark leads as important. All you have to do is go to the master inbox, click on the lead, and click on the star mark just beside their names. 

Snoozed: How to Snooze a Lead? 

With Smartlead Master Inbox 3.0, you can now snooze a lead and bring it back to life after a certain period. 

Open the lead you want to snooze and click on the clock icon (Snooze button) on the top right side of the dashboard. 

Once you click on the Snooze button, you can choose a set time and date, or else you can set a custom time and date for snoozing a lead. 

Once you remove leads from the snoozed state, Smartlead automatically moves them back to the top of the inbox and marks them as unread. 

Reminders: How to Set Reminders? 

Now, you can set reminders when a lead replies to your message. Open a lead (who replied) from your master inbox and click on reply. On the message composing dialog box, you will find the “Set Reminder” button on the bottom, just beside the “Send Now” button; click on it to set reminders.

Once you set a reminder for a lead, it will automatically show up in the “Reminders” section on the sidebar. 

Scheduled: How to Schedule a Message? 

Now you can schedule your emails and also set reminders for desired leads. Let’s see how you can do it. 

Click on the lead you want to schedule a message for. Click on reply to open the message composing dialog bar. Compose the message, and on the bottom right, click on the Schedule Send (calendar icon) button. 

Once you click on the calendar icon, a scheduling dialog box appears. Schedule your email and set conditions if you want to send the scheduled message if there’s no reply from the lead. 

You can either choose the sending time manually or schedule the message according to the campaign’s time zone. Once you schedule a message, the scheduled email will show up in the “Scheduled” section on the sidebar. 

Archived

To archive a lead, go to the master inbox, click on the lead and you will see the archive button on the top right side of the dashboard. Click on it. You can also use a shortcut (A+L) to archive a lead. You will see the archived leads on the "Archived" tab of the sidebar.

Adding Tasks for a Lead

With the Task feature, you can now create tasks. Click on the lead you want to create a task for (in the Master Inbox), as shown in the image below. 

Now, you can create a task on the dialog box. 

The “Associated Campaign” box will have the campaign name of the lead. In the “Due Date” box, you can set the deadline for the task. And, in the “Priority” box, there are three options—High, Medium, and Low. You can choose one of the three depending on the importance of the task. 

After filling it out, click on “Save” to add the task. 

Adding Notes for a Lead

Click on the button on the right of the task button, and you can create notes for the lead on your dashboard. 

This will open a dialog box where you can add notes. Smartlead is working on developing the “Add Notes” feature as a fully collaborative workspace where you can tag team members and work simultaneously on a task together. 

Push Leads to Another Campaign

The “Push Leads to” button lets you push a lead to another campaign. The “Push Leads To” button is placed right next to the “Notes” button. When you click on the button, the “Push Leads to Another Campaign” dialog box opens, where you can choose the campaign. Check out the reference image below: 

On the “Settings” tab (beside the “Select Campaign” tab, you can select all the options you would have done while actually adding a new lead to a campaign. 

Conclusion 

The revolution has just begun. 

With the Master Inbox 3.0, Smartlead is here to revolutionize how you approach cold email campaigns. 

With features like Untracked Replies, Custom Views, Attachment, and Keyboard Shortcuts, your efficiency is set to skyrocket. The ability to assign leads, schedule messages, set reminders, and collaborate seamlessly with your team makes campaign management a breeze.

Say goodbye to lags in lead replies and manage your email campaigns with precision and ease.

So, why wait? Embrace the future of cold email management with Master Inbox 3.0 and elevate your email game to new heights. It's time to unlock efficiency and productivity in your email campaigns. Try it today and experience the difference for yourself!