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Reminders Overview: What are @SaneReminders and how do they work?

SaneReminders notify you when an email you sent wasn’t responded to by a certain time. It’s also an easy way to send a reminder to your future self.

Add SaneReminders as a VIP contact. Learn More.

Three different SaneReminders use-cases

1. Get notified when people don’t reply to you. Say you want to follow up on a lead in a week, but only if you don’t hear back (this is how most people use it). In this case just send the email as usual and CC or BCC a reminder address.

2. You want to defer processing an email (i.e. put back into your Inbox by a certain time). In this case forward that email TO a reminder address and it will show up at the top of your Inbox at the time you specify.

3. Send a reminder to your future self. Just send an email TO a reminder address and it will magically appear at the top of your Inbox at that time.

How to get notified if people don’t reply to you

Put a reminder email address (e.g. tomorrow@sanebox.com, 3days@sanebox.com etc - more on the options below) in the CC: or BCC: field. SaneBox will track this email and put it back into the top of your Inbox at the time indicated, unless the email has been replied to.

Note: If you want the reminder regardless of whether or not you got a reply, add the word “keep” to the address (e.g. keep.tomorrow@sanebox.com etc)

Extra Example Details

Send an email To: my-milk-man@deliveries.com and BCC: Monday.10am@sanebox.com, and if the milk man doesn’t reply by Monday at 10am, we will put that email back into your Inbox, so you can resend it and make sure you get your milk. You can then simply click “reply” and remove the SaneReminders stuff at the top of the email. The milk man will feel horrible about missing the delivery.

How to defer processing an email or send a reminder to your future self

You can use the QuickReminders tool on your SaneReminders page.
Quickly set up a SaneReminders creation, from the SaneReminders section of your SaneBox DashBoard:

Create SaneReminders by sending an Email.
If you want to send yourself a reminder or defer processing an email, put the reminder email address (e.g. tomorrow@sanebox.com etc) in the To: field.

Or, when you send an email, CC a snooze address.

You have a meeting on Monday and you sent the details to everyone, CC:monday.snooze@sanebox.com to automatically bring the email back into your Inbox.

Extra Example Details

Send an email To: Feb.14.2pm@sanebox.com with the following subject: “Buy flowers for my beautiful wife”. And your Valentine’s Day will be a success.

Or if an email in your Inbox isn’t actionable for 2 more weeks, Forward it to: 2.weeks@sanebox.com. It will pop back in your Inbox then.

Making SaneReminder Addresses

Pretty much anything you can think of will work for a SaneReminder address.

  • Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months from now:
    • m = minutes
    • h = hours
    • d = days
    • w = weeks
    • mo = months
    • y = years

You can also write them out – 6.weeks@sanebox.com or 6w@sanebox.com

You can combine them – 1mo.3d@sanebox.com means 1 month and 3 days from now.

You can also attach a time to days, weeks and months – 3.days-2.30pm@sanebox.com.

Need to add a week?

Simply use week+1.week. For example, if you want to be reminded next Wednesday, you’ll use wed+1.week@sanebox.com.

Lastly, you can simply use tomorrow@sanebox.com (which is 24 hours from when you send the email), next.week@sanebox.com (which is Monday morning at your default reminder time), or next.month@sanebox.com (which is the same date in the next month).

Day of the week: monday@sanebox.com
You can use the full word or a weekday abbreviation – sunday@sanebox.com or sun@sanebox.com. Your reminder will arrive at the current time on that day. You can also set the hour if you prefer a different time – tuesday.9am@sanebox.com

Date: december.15@sanebox.com or december15.2pm@sanebox.com
You may use the month abbreviations – 5.april@sanebox.com or dec.25@sanebox.com.You can set the time as well – dec31.1159pm@sanebox.com (so you don’t miss that champagne toast)!

Time of day: 2pm@sanebox.com or 9am@sanebox.com. Receive a reminder at particular time in the next 24 hours – if you send to 5pm@sanebox.com at 10pm then you’ll be reminded tomorrow at 5pm; if you send to 10.30pm@sanebox.com then you’ll get one in 30 minutes. SaneBox does support a 24 hour clock. 23.30@sanebox.com is the same to us as 11.30pm@SaneBox.com. (Yes, we are respectful of people outside the USA).

Keep: tomorrow.9am.keep@sanebox.com. Want to send a reminder that can’t be canceled by a reply? If you send to tomorrow.keep@sanebox.com then you will be reminded tomorrow even if the person you send the email to replies.

Snooze: next.week.snooze@sanebox.com. When you send an email to someone have it automatically reappear in your own Inbox. Simply CC/BCC: next.week.snooze@sanebox.com

Repeating Reminders

Add “each.” or “every.” to your reminder address and we’ll keep sending you reminders until you receive a reply or cancel the reminder.

  • every.day@sanebox.com – receive a reminder at this time every day
  • every.week@sanebox.com – receive a reminder every monday morning
  • every.thursday@sanebox.com – receive a reminder every Thursday at this time
  • every.april5@sanebox.com – receive a reminder every year on April 5th
  • every.10th@sanebox.com – receive a reminder on the 10th of every month for bills and such
  • every.first.wed@sanebox.com – receive a reminder on the first wednesday of every month
  • every.2.weeks.on.friday@sanebox.com – receive a reminder every 2nd Friday

You may also create Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly reminders.

  • daily@sanebox.com – receive a daily reminder
  • weekly@sanebox.com – receive a weekly reminder
  • monthly@sanebox.com – receive a monthly reminder
  • yearly@sanebox.com – receive a yearly reminder

Addressing Auto-Complete

To make it even easier, we have common @SaneReminders addresses set up for you to download and import to your email client address book:

Save time by adding one of these templated lists to your email client and you won’t have to type them in every time - click the .vcf or .csv link to download.

And here’s an example of what auto-complete will look like:

Snooze Button controls For SaneReminders

You can now choose how the snooze controls appear in each type of SaneReminder (To:, CC:, BCC:). Remember, you can snooze reminders anywhere from a few hours to a month later.

Visit Tools > Reminders in your SaneBox Dashboard to select which options you want to use: Full, Simple, or None.

Recent Reminders in the Digest.

You can review both upcoming reminders AND recently-created reminders with your SaneBox Digest.

The @SaneReminders folder

  • After you create your first reminder, we will create a new folder called @SaneReminders. This will hold a copy of the emails that you have requested a reminder for. Please don’t delete these emails.

  • If you do, we will only be able to send you a generic reminder instead of resending the actual email back to your Inbox. Unlike all other Sane folders, please do not rename the @SaneReminders folder.

Why is the reminder still in my calendar?

When the reminder gets replied to or you are reminded, it will still appear on the iCal but for a limited time or a limited amount of reminders. It is 7 days or the last 5 inactive followups, whichever is more. At this time, there’s no configuration to remove the older reminders or fulfilled ones from iCal.

Why did my account get disabled after I sent reminders?

We only allow 50 reminders to be sent per hour.

Resend Reminders

Want us to go the extra mile and remind your recipient to reply to you? Include .resend in your SaneReminder address and we’ll not only remind you that they didn’t reply but we’ll nudge your recipient that you are expecting a reply from them.

Example: 10.minutes.resend@sanebox.com

What we send you:

What we send the recipient:

Clicking on one of the snooze links in a resent reminder will only snooze the reminder and will not cause us to resend the reminder.

Can I change the default time SaneBox puts the reminder in my Inbox?

Yes! Simply go to the SaneReminders page and you’ll see an option to adjust the time at the bottom along with your other Reminders settings.

SaneReminders Settings

On the SaneReminders page of your SaneBox account, you can customize your SaneReminders behavior, including the default reminder time and adjusting the controls for snoozing reminders using the controls seen below.

You can adjust the Reminder headers to include controls that allow you to quickly snooze your reminder emails. This allows you independent control over how those snooze options appear when you send and email to a SaneReminders address and when you CC or BCC a reminder address.

Here’s an example of a reminder email with Full Reminder Headers:

Here, you see the Simple Reminder Headers:

And, this is a reminder email with “None” selected for the Reminder Headers:

Another Note:

  • If you put the reminder address on the To: line - which indicates to us that you want the email put back in your Inbox at that time for processing - then, replying to the reminder will snooze the email again.
  • If you put the reminder address in the CC: or BCC: line - which indicates that you only want it in your Inbox if you didn’t receive a reply - then replying should go back to the original recipient.
  • If you want, you can just delete the SaneBox Reminder stuff or leave it to so the recipient knows that they really really do need to reply because SaneBox is like Santa and knows who has been naughty and who has been nice.

You will know your SaneReminder didn’t get created if…

1. The email you sent to make the SaneReminders creation wasn’t copied into your @SaneReminders folder, in your email account.

2. You received a “mailer-daemon” email bounce notice for the sent item.

3. Or if you go here https://www.sanebox.com/dashboard/reminders to the SaneReminders section of your SaneBox DashBoard and you do not see the item listed there.

Reasons this might have happened:

  1. You haven’t properly set up your Sent folder so it contains receipts of all your sent mail. Click here for directions on how to fix that.
  2. You didn’t use a recognized SaneReminder address.
  3. All Dates must start with a Month word in English like Jan or January.
  4. Day of Weeks must be in english like Mon or Monday
  5. All Times end with AM or PM.
  6. We understand delimiters like . or + or - (try to delimit your address)
  7. Don’t use spaces
  8. So Jan.8@sanebox.com or Jan.8.8AM@SaneBox.com is OK
  9. So Monday@sanebox.com or Mon.9PM@sanebox.com is OK