Note: these instructions have been taken from our Guide to Not Checking Email, which is available for download on the Getting Started screen for all AwayFind users.

iPhone

• Select the Settings application
• Select Sounds
• Change New Email to Off or None

You can also click here to download AwayFind for iPhone

Android

• Select the Gmail application
• Press the Menu button and then select Settings
• Uncheck Email notifications and any other options that may be available in your version of Android, such as Notify Once

You can also click here to download AwayFind for Android

Windows Phone 7

• Select the Settings application
• Select ringtones+sounds
• Change New email to None

Blackberry

• Select Profiles
• Select the active profile and click Edit
• Select Messages
• Change the volume to mute and turn off the LED repeat notification if you’d like
• Save when exiting the profile

One AwayFind client, Metzger Associates, actually uses AwayFind as a tool to generate new business, and even grow existing accounts…some by five figures! And in this interview he explains how you can do the same.

Metzger Associates is known throughout Colorado, where they call home, and nationally as a pioneer (no Colorado pun intended) in the PR and marketing world for leveraging emerging and leading-edge technologies to the benefit of their clients.

I recently interviewed Doyle Albee, President of Metzger. What he has to say—and even what he doesn’t want to say—can help you drive your business in a surprising new way. One that you can take to the bank!

Brian: Tell me a little bit about Metzger Associates.

Doyle: Metzger Associates is a PR-driven marketing firm. Since we are responsive to both client and reporter/editor deadlines, being able to separate emails that are important from emails that are time-critical — meaning if we miss them, a client may miss an opportunity for coverage — is very important.

Brian: How much email do you get every day?

Doyle: A quick (and probably non-scientific!) survey of the office says the average Metzger employee gets between 75 and 100 emails that require some level of action each day. If every email takes just two minutes to handle, that’s more than three hours each day just on email. What if one requires an answer to a reporter or blogger in just a few minutes to get coverage for a client? It’s important that we separate the “have to do” emails from the “have to do right now” emails, and that’s where AwayFind really helps us out.

Brian: How long have you been using AwayFind and when did you decide to make it mandatory for everyone in your organization?

Doyle: I’ve been using AwayFind for more than a year. When we revamped our website earlier this year, we also did some work on our email signatures, and I made AwayFind mandatory for the staff. After all, when the president is the guinea pig, it’s pretty hard to argue! We now tell both reporters as well as clients that if you really need a member of the Metzger staff right away, there’s no need to run down every contact number in your rolodex. Click the “find me now” link in any Metzger email signature, and you’re automatically put in touch with that staff member in every way possible… all with one click.

Brian: What’s the biggest value AwayFind adds to your company?

Doyle: We tell prospects about our system. I often use the old joke about “60 Minutes” being in your lobby. No problem! You can click on the “find me now” link, and no matter which screen your account lead is in front of, you’ll get an immediate response. That can be a pretty compelling differentiation point.

Brian: Have you told anyone about AwayFind, and if so, what did you tell them?

Doyle: I’ll tell you who I don’t tell: my competition! The most important people I tell are clients and prospects. They love the ease of finding me. Best of all, I find people really respect the way we use the system. That is, when a client uses AwayFind, it’s IMPORTANT. In all the time I’ve used the system, I’ve never had anyone “cry wolf.”

Brian: Tell me about your experiences with the contact form?

Doyle: I like that the Contact From gives my clients the room they need to tell me WHAT they need, so I can call back prepared. A generic “call me now” ping leaves me in the dark and actually slows down the process. I also really like that a traditional captcha isn’t required. Not only can those be difficult (and a client in crisis is not interested in difficult!), it allows me to further brand my firm. I ask my clients to type in the name of my company, reminding them who’s providing them with this interesting and leading-edge service.

Brian: Do you have any “AwayFind stories”?

Doyle: Let me share two. I had a client who suddenly found themselves with the opportunity to provide my company with a substantial budget increase for the coming quarter, but needed to get paperwork from me in less than an hour. Without AwayFind, I may have lost a five-figure budget increase due simply to some accounting closures going on at this large company. I was actually in a meeting, but seeing the AwayFind note, I left, signed the contract and returned it via fax, and secured the deal.

In another instance, a reporter at a national publication was running deadline and was looking for a quote from one of our clients. She sent the question to me via AwayFind, I called the client, secured the quote and returned it to the reporter within five minutes. The result was coverage in a major article — and one very happy client.

Brian: You indicated that you use AwayFind as a value-add in your client acquisition process. Could you elaborate on that?

Doyle: Absolutely. Because PR is an immediate world, prospect often ask “how easy is it to reach you?” I ask them to open any email from me and click in my signature on “find me now.” It takes them to my AwayFind page. I ask them to fill out the from, and a few seconds later, I show them my iPhone. I love the fact that many of the companies I pitch against answer that same question with “oh, we’re there for you anytime!” Nice words, but an AwayFind demo is dramatically more effective.

Brian: Anything else you’d like to add?

Doyle: Honestly, I’m a little puzzled about any professional that learns about this service and doesn’t incorporate it. Whether you use it to cut down on email in general, or to separate the important from the critical like we do, it’s incredibly useful.

1. Am I affected by the new plans?

If you’re currently a Free user with an individual account (i.e., not an account for your whole company) then you will be migrated to our Basic Plan in early November. This new plan will have the following differences:

• You can receive up to 10 alerts of any kind per month (see below, “What are alert credits?”). After that you’ll need to upgrade, or wait until the next month in your billing cycle before you can receive up to 10 more.
• All your SMS’s will go through our high quality paid gateway, which increases the likeliness of their delivery, will be better formatted, and will come from the same phone number consistently.
• You can now send SMS notifications internationally.
• You can now check email at a Microsoft Exchange account.

If you are currently on the Monthly Start plan, you were just upgraded to the monthly version of our Pro plan, which means you now have all the features of our previous Pro plan (checking more email accounts and faster notifications) plus the new features that the old Yearly Pro users received with their upgrade.

If you are currently a Yearly Pro user, you are now part of the yearly version of the Pro Plan, which means the following upgrades for your account:

• You now can receive up to 1000 alerts, of any kind–Voice, SMS, iPhone push, etc.
• You will now receive instant alerts, rather than an alert after a few minutes.
• You will continue to pay the same price as before (which is at least $11 less than the current new Pro plan’s yearly version).

2. What are Alert Credits? Do I need to think about them?

Alert Credits, or the monthly alerts you’re allotted each month may be important to you. Any time you receive an alert–regardless of whether it’s by SMS, iPhone, Android, email, IM, Voice, or Twitter–it reduces your alert credits. In the past, we only tracked paid SMS and Voice notifications, but now all forms of notifications are counted equally.

If you are a casual AwayFind user, it’s likely that you receive fewer than 10 alerts per month. If that’s the case, then you won’t need to upgrade to continue using all the features of AwayFind you’re used to.

If you are an active AwayFind user, upgrading to the Personal plan will allow you to receive 100 alerts per month, which is about 5 alerts on any given workday–this is more than enough for the vast majority of our active users. In addition to being able to receive more alerts, you’ll also be notified about 4x faster when an urgent email arrives

If you are a big AwayFind user (we love you!), then you’ll want to check out our Pro plan, which allows you to receive 1000 alerts per month–which is enough for just about all our users (unless you’re using AwayFind as a dispatch service, it’s nearly impossible to send more than 40-50 alerts per day). Along with being able to receive more alerts, Pro users receive alerts nearly instantly when an email arrives.

There are other differences between our plans, which are summarized on our Plans & Pricing page.

3. If I run out of Alert Credits, what happens?

As you begin to run out of credits, we will send you an email to warn you. If you’re on the iPhone, we will warn you right from the device (with the ability to upgrade).  [update pending Apple approval, est. by Nov 7)

Please note that even if you cannot receive alerts, we will continue to process urgent messages and place them in your AwayFind Inbox, which is available on the web and in our Android/iPhone apps. We may change this in the future.

4. Why are Google Apps and Exchange available in the Basic plan but not in the Personal plan?

In addition to launching our new individual plans, we’ve today also announced our group plans, which are better designed to accommodate Google Apps and, perhaps in the future, Exchange plans.

For people who use AwayFind for business purposes, we’re continuing to design features that excel for business needs and come at a premium, but affordable, price. For people who only need one license but use Google Apps, we believe the $10 package which includes all the Pro features you will likely need is a pretty good deal. And the new AwayFind Gadget is (at the time of this writing) the best way to experience AwayFind in Gmail.

For our existing users who are concerned about this and would rather use AwayFind’s individual Pro plan, we’ve offered a hefty discount on our Pro plans for a limited time–if you haven’t received that (and you’re reading this in October 2011), please email us at support AT awayfind.com.

As time goes on, we will continue to offer different features to business customers. Our rates are either the same or have declined for our group editions, so we hope you’ll take advantage of them. We can’t promise that we’ll offer these prices in the future.

5. Why all the changes? I liked AwayFind before.

There are a number of reasons that range from serving a wider array of customers with our Basic package to providing an affordable package for our active users.

To read a lot more (and a more personal story) about these changes, here’s more background on this from our Founder, Jared Goralnick.

To date, we’ve charged people based on which features they use rather than the value they get out of AwayFind.  One way to think of it: right now we charge people for the meatballs on top of the pasta, but the pasta is free.

Let me give an example: we’ve been charging a subscription for sending SMS outside of the United States but offering unlimited push notifications for iPhone users.  The underlying technology is the same, the benefits of AwayFind are the same, but we’d been charging for the SMS notification and not the iPhone one.

So I have to ask: why should someone in India with a less-expensive phone pay to receive one SMS while someone with a $650 phone receive 50 alerts per day for free?

The inherent inbalance here bugs me, but it’s not just about who gets access to AwayFind. It’s about the benefit they receive.  International SMS does cost us more than iPhone push notifications, but, well, just because the meatballs cost more money doesn’t mean the pasta should be free.

That’s neither a sustainable business model (9 people’s wages far exceed our SMS bill) nor is it correlating our price with the value of our product, which is that that we help you to spend less time in your email while being more responsive to the people who matter.

So our new plans now track how many alerts one sends, not whether those alerts are sent over SMS. IM, iPhone, Android, Voice–they all count as one alert credit.

And we’ve set the threshold for free accounts relative to how much value you’re getting out of AwayFind–if we’re helping you to escape your inbox more than ten times in a month, then the cost is $5 per month or $50 per year.  This is part of a new plan and price (at one third the cost of our previous plans), which we’ve introduced for those who are notified 10-100 times per month.

If AwayFind saves you a few hours and opens up a couple business opportunities each month–then I trust that time is worth well more than $5.

But if AwayFind isn’t a big part of your workflow and you get just a few notifications per month, now AwayFind won’t discriminate on your location or phone–you now can receive SMS anywhere in the world and even use AwayFind with your Exchange account…for up to ten notifications.

With these announcements, we’ve also announced additional features for businesses (like our Google Apps Marketplace product) and business users (like INSTANT alerts), and we’ve upgraded all of our existing Monthly Starter users to our new Monthly Pro plan, at no additional charge.

I hope all these changes make AwayFind that much more useful to you.  There are still tens of millions of people who spend more than half their days staring at their inbox.  We want to reach them, and we hope this is one more step in that direction.

Some things can wait.

But some things can’t.

Some people can afford to wait, and be patient.  Here at AwayFind, we not are particularly patient.

If you’re the same, we’ve got a treat for you today.  

You know that email that you absolutely, positively need to know about now?  Want to wait five or ten minutes for it?  Now you don’t have to!

With our current alerts, some users still find themselves checking their email for something they need to know about NOW.  And that’s no fun.  :-/

So that’s what instant alerts are.  You get notified NOW—literally—when the messages you need arrive.  This is available on our Pro, Max and Google Apps Marketplace plans.

And when you sign up today, you can give it a spin for 30 days at no cost.  

The wait is over.  Now, give it a try!

To date, we’ve worked with nearly two thousand companies to enhance their email productivity, and we’re now releasing some major updates as well as our upgraded plans for businesses.

Here’s what we’ve introduced (and more is coming soon)…

New Administration Control Panel

In addition to Google’s built-in Apps dashboard, we’re now offering a Control Panel for Administrators.  This Control Panel enables administrators to provision specific users for AwayFind, check the status on any account issues, and generally better manage AwayFind for the whole company.  Marketplace users, access this here…

Company-Wide Billing

Previously, companies either had no mechanism to pay for AwayFind’s premium features, or individuals had to purchase those features themselves.  Now all AwayFind’s billing is centrally managed.  And plans start at just $10/month (with discounts for both volume seats and yearly purchases).  Our plans will soon be listed here (they’re the same as the Pro plan, except with 500 alerts per month), and for now existing admins can see the pricing within their account.

Super-Quick Setup Process, Right Within Gmail

Google Apps users users can now setup their AwayFind gadget without even visiting our website, and the whole setup process only takes about 60 seconds.  It’s as simple as entering your phone number or installing our mobile app for iPhone or Android.

New Gadget Design, New Marketplace Design

All of the above changes are part of a complete redesign of our business product.  Everything blends in better with Gmail’s design cues, is super quick, and now loads much faster.

Learn more about our new Gmail Contextual gadget here…

Instant Alerts

In business, time matters.  So now when a Marketplace user is waiting for an email, they won’t have to wait long.  Now, with AwayFind’s Instant Alerts, they’ll be alerted within a few seconds of the email arriving.

All of these features together make AwayFind feel like an easy-to-manage, built-in part of Gmail.  With no plugins to install and no passwords for your users to memorize, Google Apps Marketplace users have a path with no obstacles toward combating email interruptions.

Grab AwayFind for Google Apps Marketplace today.

It only takes minutes.  Nothing compared to the hours spent in the inbox every single day, right?

1.  Instant status reporting for alerts

If you already have an alert setup for a topic or sender, not only can you see that there’s an alert created but also how you’ll be notified and when it will expire.

Right within your email view you can see that you’ll be notified by an iPhone push notification if the author of this email emails you again in the next week:

2.  1-click settings for alerts

Instead of having to click several  times every time you create an alert…it now takes just one click (“Follow this Person” or “Follow this Topic”).  We even store your most frequent settings. But of course, you can always modify the settings for each alert you create.

For instance, you might generally want to be notified by iPhone for one week from now if a person writes or a topic is updated.  You can set [iPhone, one week] as the 1-click preference for your account.  To set your 1-click preferences, click the Settings link right from the gadget.

3.  Faster, more fun setup for new users (pardon me, but I think saving time is fun)

While existing users don’t need to worry about this (since their account’s already configured!), we’re pretty excited about our new setup process, which takes place entirely within the AwayFind gadget that appears right at the bottom of your emails.  You can finish the setup right there, or even with your phone over SMS.  This is pretty much the entire setup:

If you’re on Google Apps, learn more and try it out today in our new Google Apps Marketplace edition!

All Notifications Are Now Equal

In the past, we tracked how many SMS and Voice calls you sent and allowed an unlimited number of other notifications.  Now, all our paid plans allow a ton more notifications, but all notifications are treated the same.  Whether you receive an alert by iPhone, Android, SMS, IM, email, or Twitter DM, each one of these notifications will count toward your total credits that you can receive per month.

We’ve Introduced a $5/Month Personal Plan

Now for just $5 you can receive alerts 4x faster than with our free plan–a notification of anything urgent within about 5 minutes.  You also can receive notifications when someone emails you right before your appointment with them.  Both of these features were previously priced at $15 month, and included 60 SMS notifications…now these are available for $5/month or $50/year and include 100 notifications of any kind.

All Monthly Starter Plans are Now Monthly Pro Users

We’ve upgraded anyone who signed up for the Monthly Starter edition of AwayFind to the new Monthly Pro edition.

Pro Users Now Have Instant Alerts

Pro Users now receive alerts within a few seconds of an urgent email arriving, instead of waiting a few minutes.  Read more about instant alerts here.

Free Plans Now Receive Any Kind of Alert, But Only Ten Per Month

A lot of users don’t send many notifications for month, and those users can now receive those alerts over SMS anywhere in the world.  However, those who receive more than ten notifications per month will need to upgrade to the new Personal plan or the Pro plan to receive more than ten alerts in a month.

A New Max Plan

Some people push AwayFind to the limit.  Maybe they check 10 email accounts.  Maybe they monitor their company’s support account and do all kinds of advanced routing.  Well, now we can support you better with our new Max plan.  At $50/month, Max subscribers can monitor an unlimited number of email accounts and send an unlimited number of instant alerts.  We know quite a few customers who were always buying more credits or asking for more email accounts…now they can push our software much further.

More Information?  Questions?

These new plans both widen the audience for AwayFind and address many of the requests we’ve had over the past year.

We’d love your feedback.  Feel free to leave a comment below, visit our forum, or write us any time at support [at] awayfind.com.

On both the Important People and Waiting for NOW screens we’ve added a sophisticated autocomplete tool that makes it lightning fast to add contacts (these contacts will trigger AwayFind alerts).

When I’m waiting for an email from one of my rockstar engineers like Sergio Kaszczyszyn I don’t have to remember how he spells his name or what his email address is.  Now it takes about 5 seconds to tell AwayFind when you need to know about something–It’s like productivity just got productive!

It’s simple when you look at it…but that’s the point : ).  And it’s a joy to use:

Grab the latest version on the iOS AppStore now!

Email IS a problem—it’s where we spend between a third and half of our business days, and very few of us ever clear our inbox or feel in control. This weight is on many of us throughout the day, and it obviously got on top of MG.

Single parent of 15, or comfortable bachelor?

But let’s be clear—MG is not you. Not many people get 15,000 emails in a month (500 per day).  Entrepreneurs reading TechCrunch maybe get 100 per day, and a typical employee gets far fewer.

In the real world, serious email volume is mostly present in two cases–larger companies, and those in the public eye (journalists, public figures, etc):

• In larger companies – distribution lists, announcements, and discussions with large groups fill most inboxes, often driving the number to over 150 messages per day. (For management at larger companies, the volume is often over 300).
• For people in the public eye – nearly all of their emails are from outside of their company/close-circle. Someone like MG likely gets 99% of email from people who only message him a few times per year and most likely have never met him.

When you start digging deeper into email in the workplace, you’ll see that the types of messages people receive, the responsibilities tied to them, and the timelines associated with a response are very different. I should respond differently to a Fortune 500 sales lead than MG to a PR agent’s startup pitch, etc.

Picture one person raising 8 kids as a single parent in the city. Picture someone else as a bachelor(ette) with a 9-5 in the same city. They both will comment on the virtues/pains of that city, but at the end of the day their needs are fundamentally different. If you’re discussing a city, schools and safety will likely be a part of the conversation depending on who you’re chatting with.

But I very rarely see people talk about how their email circumstance is completely different than someone else’s. People spend close to half their day in their emails, but that time is spent very differently.

Unfortunately, MG didn’t address these differences.  But his struggle is like raising 15 kids in a 2-BR apartment. If that were my situation, I too would look for other options…or maybe even run away like he did.

So is email a problem if you’re not MG Siegler?

Every beneficial technology has its drawbacks, and email is no exception.  The two biggest problems with email (from my 9 years experience building solutions & training in email productivity):

• It’s the accumulated volume in your inbox that’s overwhelming
• It’s the constant interruptions that keeping you away from your task at hand

The only real way to resolve them that I’ve found to be effective:

• Turn off email when you’re not working on email (i.e., check email a few times per day, rely on tools like AwayFind not to miss things)
• Have a system for processing the inbox when you’re there (Getting Things Done, Inbox Zero, etc – and, seriously, use a task list!)

What About Other Email Clients? Is Email Broken?

I agree with MG that there’s room for improvement in email, and that other forms of communication have won their place.

The area where there’s been the most progress is the area where there’s the most room to gain -– changing the norms. As people begin to accept 1-sentence responses, better structure their questions, and carefully craft their subjects, email will be easier for both Q&A discussions and long term knowledge management. In other words, WHAT WE SAY AND HOW WE SAY IT (which is cultural, not technical) is the greatest opportunity for improving email.

As for other forms of communication, they certainly have their place—by shortening the message length (SMS/DM/Shortmail), setting expectations around the timeliness/likeliness of a reply (SMS), and involving the public (Quora, Facebook Status, Twitter, etc), there are distinct advantages to each of them.

Adding wikis and project management tools to the mix are usually the most obvious ways to improve on communication. These tools help to aggregate knowledge for others, improve on knowledge without having to follow deep into a thread, and they provide metadata that allows people to prioritize and find data later. People working together at a company (the main source of email overload, not outreach to press) can most benefit from these types of improvements to email tools (i.e., they shouldn’t use email when these tools exist).  (I could see MG arguing that these tools take more work than email does, but there’s a huge a payoff in the long-term.)

At the end of the day, email is the communication medium that is most like the real world—we talk to one or more persons, and we don’t cap the length of our discussions—but with the benefit of universal reach and the option of a delayed response. That’s something that all of the groups described above do need.

And like with the real world, email is generally between real people who often do deserve real responses. It’s up to you whether a particular person or a particular topic merits a reply (and it’s true, we sometimes have to say no), but my guess is that your ratio of reply won’t be the 0.3% that MG stumbled on as necessary.

Email itself is not broken. We all need to do our best to stop checking email so often, to better process our incoming mail, and to write more concise and worthwhile content. All of these things are manageable with the tools we have now.  At least those 99.7% of us who are not like MG with 14,957 unimportant emails a month.