• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, August 27, 2024

Google has added a feature that will enable users of the Gmail app to reply more quickly to emails on an Android device. It debuted on Monday.

Previously, there were three options: Reply, Reply all or Forward. Selecting one of those would result in the user being directed to a full-screen compose function.  

But now, “you can reply to emails directly from the bottom of the conversation, without opening a new screen, making it easier to reference the email you’re replying to,” Google writes. 

This feature is now generally available to all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers and users with personal Google accounts. It will be available on iOS devices later this year.  

Of course, there are limitations. Google writes: "We know this new option is best for quick, lightweight responses, so for longer, more formal responses, you can simply expand the text box to access more formatting options. “ 

The question is: What will this do for marketers?  Probably very little on the front end of email marketing. But it could help offsite customer service teams respond more quickly to issues if they used it on their devices — even streamlining it by a few seconds would be an improvement.  

Perhaps this could facilitate faster ordering by email recipients on Android, but that remains to be seen.  

In the meantime, this could at least facilitate faster workforce communications.