Get NEO, Forget Spam, Gain Free Time

According to a recent E-policy Institute study the average business person spends 2 to 4 hours a day on email and email is growing at a rate of 66% annually. Part of the problem is Spam, but in reality, the 300 million users of Microsoft Outlook (the main email program) suffer far more from “SPAR” (Somewhere in this Pile Answers Reside). SPAR is the annoyance of needing to find what you’re looking for FAST in Outlook and there’s a superb program that makes managing tons of mail, old and new, a breeze. NEO Pro by Caelo is an amazing productivity tool that can save hours of time every day while making you shine with all the answers you need at your fingertips instantly. The program is elegant, uses few resources, is intuitive and doesn’t muck with your Outlook data. Instead, NEO pulls data into itself from Outlook while leaving Outlook files and all information in Outlook alone. That’s a really smart design for a program because “plug-ins” and “add-ons” to Outlook can crash leaving the user with corrupted Outlook data and lost files and correspondence. Not something you want with a mission critical program like your email.

What’s the problem? - Current email programs offer a number of methods of filing and sorting messages. In general these methods require the user to set rules or to manually ‘drag’ messages into folders. Microsoft Outlook is built on a two-box model: Inbox and Sent mail. There is no automatic way to view messages to and from a particular correspondent. This design results in users getting less than what email has to offer. Email tends to be viewed as a one way communication method because you are either looking at your received messages (Inbox) or your sent messages (Sent Mail), not looking at the conversation that is taking place. NEO Pro fixes the whole problem elegantly and has a total learning curve of about 10 minutes. Neo’s main features are:

1. Better ways to track conversations with individual correspondents (both sent and received)
2. A way to separate Bulk Mail from Personal Mail
3. A method of locating attached files
4. A fast search capability
5. A unified view and access to multiple message stores (search your archives and your active mail together or multiple mail files on LAN’s)
6. Automatic operation of all of these capabilities

Find that darn letter - While NEO offers a bundle of support and productivity tools, the hands down best feature is their search feature. You can enter a word, words, email address or number into a search bar and search through 30,000 emails before you can blink. I often play a game with caller ID lighting up on my cellular phone where I type an unfamiliar number into Neo on the first ring or so and can see correspondence from the calling party before the third ring. (I know, get a life!) Trying to search and wait for the results of your query in Outlook’s search dialogue can take minutes to complete. Furthermore, Outlook often requires minutes of scrolling to find the items you seek in the search results pane after the search is complete. One search with NEO Pro and you’ll be converted to a daily user instantly. The Neo searches also offer conversation searching (I wrote, then she replied, then I replied to her . . .) as well as attachment searching (I know I sent another version of that contract six or eight months ago as a Word doc but . . .) and a handy days, weeks, months search that can narrow any initial search with one click.

Less stress and frustration – Effective organization of the Inbox means that users have control over their messages. No more overflowing Inbox that might contain overdue, unanswered messages. NEO Pro actually does it on the fly in real time. You pick important people, topics, key words and NEO allows you to see grouped information that makes sense out of the mess. The program even lets you set priorities for different levels of people you receive mail from. If you flag your main customers as “high” you get a special beep and quick-fading note if one of them sends you a mail. This little gem of a feature has rewarded me time and time again. There are days when you’re buried in a project and can’t look at all the mail coming in. “Ding” the special sound of a client and I go right to the important sender’s mail the moment it comes in. All these features make a day more productive and far less stressful.

Free Trial - NEO Pro has been praised by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Barron’s, PC World and has Editor’s Choice Awards from Cnet, Laptop Magazine and Globetechnology.com among others. NEO Pro is easy to download, easy to use and a true blessing for those who crave more organization, less stress and extra free time. The product is $69.95 but there is a free trial of the full software available for 30 days at www.caelo.com/try.

Writer/producer Jonathan Todd is president of the entertainment marketing firm SabreMark, Inc. With an extensive background in the music industry, his clients include #1 Billboard and Grammy winning stars. You can reach him at info@sabremark.net.