A huge variety of data comes to you via email inbox. Invoices, orders, enquiries, attachments – relentless streams of emails and data. All this unrelated data sits in the same place. And, more often than not, it all needs processing differently.
You need to find a way to optimise, organise and process the mine of data that is your email inbox. In your attempts to find such a solution, you’ve come across the term ‘email parser’.
But what is an email parser, and how is it the answer to your cluttered inbox?
What is an email parser?
Data in emails is often buried by other emails, or left forgotten after being half-read. Your data is locked within an inbox, and it takes substantial manual effort to sort, extract, and sync that data appropriately.
This is where an email parser can help. An email parser is software that looks for and extracts data from inbound emails. A more advanced solution will also work across your email attachments, too. (Think a PDF, or a spreadsheet, or a CV.)
Importantly, an email parser uses conditional processing to pull the specific data that matters to you. You get only the information you need. So, what is an email parser? In a nutshell, it’s a program that handles the legwork of data sourcing and extraction on your behalf.
How does an email parser work?
An email parser works by using information and criteria that you supply to it. You tell it what keywords or terms to search for. Then, it looks for and parses data fields from places like email bodies, sender details, email footers, etc.
It does this on your rules and terms. For example, you tell the software that the words ‘payment due’ are important. So, it will extract data from any email that has the term ‘payment due’ within it.
Because an email parser extracts and saves important information from your emails, you have quick access to this information without having to search for it. It converts an unstructured email into structured data that is much easier for you to handle.
This means that using an email parser optimises the input of data from your emails. But that’s not all you can do with an email parser.
What is an email parser useful for?
With an email parser, you optimise the collection of data from your emails. That’s great. It saves time and effort, and keeps human minds on more high-value work.
Unfortunately, you still need to sort through it. Or do you? By using an email parser that also offers business process automation, you can have all your emails processed far beyond the extraction stage.
Instead, you get a solution that will automatically extract important data from your email inbox, categorise it, and paste that data into any other integrated program you like. So, your databases, files, CRM system, and more are kept updated with relevant email content.
The email parser side of the solution handles data extraction. The automation side sees that extracted data processed in custom workflows. This means you can automate huge chunks of admin tasks and keep your data touchpoints connected.
Making life a little easier
Emails are disorganised and often awkward to process. Specific information can be horrifically difficult to find in a rush when you need it – and it likely won’t be in a usable format when you do finally find it.
An email parser will make that email-based information easier to access, use and understand. And while it’s doing that, you can focus on furthering the growth of your business.
What is an email parser? It might just be the answer to inbox clutter that you’ve been searching for.