Boomerang is an Internet browser add-on that does two things with Google Mail: It allows you to schedule when an email will be sent and it will take an email you received and put it back into your inbox at a scheduled time. Both features provide tremendous control over your email.

While delayed sending of email has long been available in Outlook, it is not a built-in option in Google Mail. According to a Google user forum, it may be in the works, but in the meantime, Boomerang fills that need. It’s a nice browser add-on for Chrome and Firefox that adds a button to the GMail compose screen so you can schedule to send whenever you like. It’s pretty straightforward, you pick a date and time and it queues it up for sending when you choose.

We do a lot of email deployments and migrations at Consul-vation and we have noticed that a lot of people use their inbox as a to-do list. A user may flag an email (Outlook) or star it (Google) to remind them that some action is required in the future. The problem with this approach is that you have to go back to these emails, and all to often with cluttered inboxes that doesn’t happen. The results can be missed follow-ups, deadlines, or even revenue.

Boomerang helps out by allowing you to clean up the inbox by moving mail out of the way into the archive but marking them to “Boomerang” back into your inbox at a scheduled time, like a snooze button on your alarm clock. For instance, if you get an email from someone that requires you to follow-up in two days, click on the Boomerang button and mark it to return to your inbox in 2 days. At the precise time you specify, it will reappear in its original form in the inbox. In the mean time you can be confident that your reminder to follow-up will appear when you need it.

We’ve made a short video demonstrating the basic capabilities below (Best viewed in full screen mode). Boomerang is free for limited monthly use and costs up to $15 per month for a pro account. It’s on the pricey side for a Pro user, but then again what is the value of the time and efficiency you gain and possible lost revenue you avoid?