Powerful Tools for Real Estate Marketing: 6 Google Labs Features You’ll Love

Guest contributor Showing Suite says:

Google Labs is a testing ground which allows you to try out experimental features that aren't quite ready to be made into regular features. Google described Labs as "a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototypes of some of our wild and crazy ideas and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them." They may change, break or disappear at any time; or some might work so well that they become integrated as regular features. Since Labs are tucked away in your mail settings, most Gmail users don't even know that Google Labs exists. If you're familiar with Google Labs, you know exactly how useful these tools are for real estate marketing. Take a look at six of our favorite Google Labs that will make your life a lot easier:

Undo send: Have you ever sent an email, only to realize that you made an error, or completely forgot a section of info? The Undo Send feature allows you to "unsend" an email up to 30 seconds after you've hit "send."

SMS in chat: Send and receive text messages through Google Chat. Just type in any US phone number in Google Chat, and save the number to your contacts. The Google Chat text messages will always show up on the receiver's phone as a "406" area code. Messages from the same person will always come from the same number, so you can bookmark your friends or clients Google Chat number in your phone.

Pictures in chat: Displays a picture of the person you're chatting with next to each message, making for a more personal and user-friendly experience.

Inserting images: Sometimes plain text just doesn't get the point across. Add images directly into your email message body by inserting a URL or uploading from your computer.

Google voice player in mail: Google Voice is already extremely useful, especially for small start-ups, real estate agents, and entrepreneurs. Google Voice player allows you to listen to all new incoming Google Voice messages directly from your mail. Whenever you get a new voicemail, you will receive an email containing an embedded player to listen to your message without having to log into Google Voice.

Google gadgets: Add a Google Docs or Calendar widget, or "gadget," to your mail screen and rearrange them as you wish by dragging and dropping them. This creates a more simple way to see what's on your agenda, get calendar alerts, view recently accessed docs, and search across all of your Docs without ever leaving Gmail.

Google Labs aren't only great tools for real estate marketing, but for anybody who wants to improve communication and collaboration. To set up Google Labs:

1. Go to your Gmail Settings
2. Click on the "Labs" tab
3. Choose or search for which Labs you would like to enable
4. Click "Save" at the bottom of the page after enabling any Labs

Check for updates about new Labs to the Gmail blog.

To view the original article, visit the Showing Suite blog.