Twitter email tools top 10: tweets, alerts & plugins for your inbox

Twitter is a great way to share what you are up to live but, not everyone is able to spend all day watching TweetDeck. Twitter email tools to the rescue! The 10  email tools below offer  summary services, Microsoft Outlook plug-ins, filtered alerts, and cool different ways to engage with the twitterverse, all from your inbox!

1. Nutshell Mail

Nutshell Mail offers a daily social media summary service that is second to none. The email nutshell mail sends you offers updates about new followers and un-followers, mentions, and direct messages.  If a summary of tweets and other social media activity is what you want Nutshell Mail is the way to go!  Nutshell mail also offers a daily facebook and linkedin email summary service.

2. Topify

Topify takes Twitter management a step farther then most services, and offers integration of some basic tweating functionality.

The features Topify offers are:

• Follow back by replying
• Reply to direct messages via email
• Un-follow & block by forwarding

3. TweetBeep

TweetBeep offers free straightforward tweet alerts by email. The competitive advantage TweetBeep offers is the option of receiving hourly updates. You can use TweetBeep to keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything. You can even keep track of who is tweeting about your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL.

4. SocialOomph Alerts

SocialOomph is a productivity suite with many different social media tools, and tools for tweeting. I encourage you to check out the entire suite of services SocialOomph offers since some are very powerful, and their alert emails are just one exceptional example of this. As the screen shot above shows SocialOomph offers filtering your alerts by many different details, including attitude and geo-location. Geo-location is an especially attractive feature for local businesses which may be interested in people near them tweeting about related terms. Alerts can be sent every 12 or 24 hours.

5. Listimonkey

Listimonkey is a free service that allows you to subscribe to Twitter lists or users by email.   This service also allows you to Filter tweets by keywords, and offers hourly or daily digests.  No sign up is necessary, simply fill out the three form fields above and click “Subscribe.”

6. Twilert

Twilert is a simple free web app that sends you regular updates about specific tweet search terms at a time that you specify. For example, you could set up a weekly #FollowFriday email, sent to you at the end of each Friday. The Twilert value proposition is that they offer Google and Twitter sign-in options, and the ability to manage your alerts in a user friendly way.

7. Xobni

Xobni is a powerful plug-in for Microsoft Outlook that you can download for free. Xobni adds the ability of viewing your Outlook contacts’ tweet updates beside their emails. Xobni also allows you to update your own status without leaving Outlook.

With Xobni you can follow people that email you, and you can easily reply to or retweet the messages you see in the Twitter stream from your Outlook contacts. Integration is just one feature of Xobni, there are many features of Xobni that supercharge Outlook and are worth checking out, such as Facebook and Linkedin integration.

8. Twinbox

If you are a Microsoft Outlook user, you can have a fully-featured Twitter client at your fingertips by installing TwInbox.

The features of TwinBox include:

• Update your status directly from Outlook
• Receive your friend updates in Outlook
• Archive, manage, group and search your tweets the
  same way you manage your email
• Search, track keywords. TwInbox will automatically download ALL tweets matching the keywords you specify, even if you are not following the tweet sender. This feature is perfect for keeping up to date with the Twitterverse buzz on your name, brand, interests, etc
• Group tweets by sender, topic, etc using the Search feature
• Manage multiple accounts
• Upload and post picture files and Outlook email attachments
• See new tweets at a glance
• Assign custom folder and categories to new messages.
• Use Outlook’s “Reply” and “ReplyAll” commands to send twitter direct messages and @replies.
• Automatically sort new tweets into per-sender folders
• Shorten URLs with bit.ly
• See graphs of your usage statistics
• Tweets sent to you (@replies and direct) are marked with high importance, so you can see them at a glance

9. Tweetymail

Tweety Mail may not have the most attractive logo, but they offer a simple, and useful, free service.  To use Tweety Mail you must first sign-in and link an email address. Linking an email address tells tweetymail to associate that email address with your Twitter identity. You can then use your linked email address to:

• Tweet via email by sending an email to tweet@tweetymail.com
• Automatically receive tweets, mentions, and searches in your email
• Send and reply to direct messages using email
• Attach pictures and share links with automatically shortened URLs
• Follow, block, or unfollow users by forwarding the emails

See the Tweety Mail User guide for complete instructions about the different features of this free service.

10. Moomeo

Moomeo is a simple service that allows you to post and share an email.  The simple three step process involves 1. Sending the email to post@moomeo.com, 2. Receive a Moomeo link, 3. Share the link (tweet it), and that’s all there is to it!

Takeaway: Not everyone has the time to tweet live. Having great twitter tools such as these for your inbox, will keep in you in the twitter stream.

About the Author:
Garin Kilpatrick is the Director of Communities @ The eMail Guide.