Your business inbox is much more than just unread emails and attachments — it’s a treasure trove of data. Data that must be manually extracted and sent to a specific business software.
Businesses receive a ton of emails every day with invoices, receipts, quotes, leads, contact information, order confirmations, delivery updates and more.
Then comes the daily hassle of sifting through emails to pick out important ones. And manually extract specific data to be added to Google Sheets, CRM, ERP, accounting software or other business applications.
Imagine doing this manually for hundreds or thousands of emails – and the resulting problems! This process simply cannot be scaled – especially for large enterprises. This is why many businesses are turning to email analytics solutions.
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Email analyzers can help automate or optimize email data workflows to a great extent.
An email analyzer or email extractor is software that can sort incoming emails and attachments, extract specific data from them, and export them to other business applications.
In this article we look at some of the best email analytics software and how they can streamline your email data entry workflows.
The best email analytics software in 2023
- Nanonetworks – automate advanced email analytics workflows
- Zapier Email Parser – to integrate email data via Zapier
- Parsi – for pattern-based email analysis
- Mailparser – for rule-based email analysis
- EmailParser – for stand-alone rule-based email analysis on Windows
- Analyst – for pattern-based email analysis
- Sigparser – to extract signatures from emails
Still manually entering email data into your CRM, ERP or spreadsheet? Automate email analytics workflows with Nanonets.
Why should I analyze emails?
Extracting email data is quite a difficult problem to solve. Email data is unstructured – it has no shape. Emails come in many forms and there is no standard representation.
Sorting emails, identifying email data and extracting only the relevant information requires a combination of automation, rules and cognitive data mining. That’s what email analysts do.
Why should you consider email analytics for your business? Here are some of the benefits of adopting email analytics:
- Analyzing emails with a software is faster and more accurate than the manual alternative.
- Email analyzers can be automated to extract vital data from incoming emails – without any manual intervention.
- Data can be extracted from the email header, body, signature and attachments (PDF, image or other files) – all without ever having to open the email!
- Incoming email data can be sorted and sent to appropriate business applications (CRM, ERP, etc.) – forget manual copy and paste.
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Did you know you could automate your bookkeeping with email analytics? For example, an email analyst can pull all relevant invoice data (dates, amounts, vendor details, etc.) from emails/attachments and update the records in Quickbooks, Sage, Netsuite or any other accounting software.
How to choose the ideal email analyzer?
In this post we only look at the top seven email analytics software on the market.
There may be even more out there. But which one is best for you?
Here are some pointers to keep in mind when choosing the best email analytics software for your business:
Case for use
The email analyzer you need will mainly depend on the type of data you want to analyze from your incoming emails.
Do you only need to analyze data from email bodies or metadata such as headers and timestamps? Also need to extract data from attachments, PDF files or images?
Pattern vs. rule-based email analysis and cognitive email analysis
If you are looking for an email parser, do you mainly need to extract some specific data or fields from your emails?
Are you receiving emails in the same format, with data in exactly the same place in all emails? Want to set up rules to define/identify data in each email? Or do you need an email analyzer that will automatically select all relevant data?
Data integrations
Email data is mostly analyzed so that it can be sent to a specific business application for further processing.
Can your email analyzer seamlessly integrate with Google Sheets, CRM, ERP, accounting software, databases, or even Slack? You will need to test whether the email analyzer can improve your current processes without changing your existing workflows.
Data transformation
Can the data analyzed from your emails be processed, converted or modified in other formats? Business applications may only ingest data that is imported in specific file formats or structures.
Top 7 Email Analytics Software in 2023
Let’s look at some of the top email analytics software out there:
Nanonetworks
Nanonets is an automated AI-based analyzer that can extract information from emails, metadata, attachments and more.
Unlike other parsers on this list, it is neither rule-based nor standard-based. After being trained on a few sample emails, it leverages AI and machine learning capabilities to analyze emails with different data and formats. The AI continues to improve as it encounters more variety!
Advantages:
- advanced email analytics workflows;
- high resolution accuracy
- easily expandable
- post-processing and data conversion capabilities
- can automatically parse data from any type of attached document
- can analyze data from any source: email, websites, documents, etc.
Disadvantages:
- cannot handle sudden high spikes
- Table logging UI could be better
Still manually entering email data into your CRM, ERP or spreadsheet? Automate email analytics workflows with Nanonets.
Zapier Email Parser
The Zapier Email Analyzer is the perfect basic analyzer to get you started – especially if you’re already using Zaps in your workflow.
It is a free, standards-based mail parser that automatically captures text from incoming emails. You can create a template using a point-and-click interface to highlight the email data you’re interested in.
![Zapier Email Analyzer](https://nanonets.com/blog/content/images/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-26-at-2.53.46-PM.png)
Advantages:
- easy to configure and use
- unlimited mailboxes
- it can be integrated with almost any app through Zapier
Disadvantages:
- it can only analyze simple emails
- it cannot handle emails with unknown or different templates
- unable to parse metadata or table data from emails
- cannot parse attached or repeated elements
- lacks advanced analysis features
Parsi
Parsio is a pattern-based email parser that requires users to define patterns or fields of interest using a simple tagging function. It integrates with a wide variety of applications.
![Parsi](https://nanonets.com/blog/content/images/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-26-at-2.58.04-PM.png)
Advantages:
- can parse data from metadata and file attachments (based on templates)
- tabular data analysis (pattern based)
- unlimited mailboxes
Disadvantages:
- cannot handle emails, attachments or metadata with unknown or different templates
Mailparser
Mailparser is a popular and powerful rules-based email parsing tool. While more flexible than their standards-based counterparts, setting up email parsing rules can get complicated – especially for complex email layouts.
![Mailparser](https://nanonets.com/blog/content/images/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-26-at-3.02.58-PM.png)
Advantages:
- can handle complex email layouts
- can parse data from metadata and file attachments (based on rules)
- tabular (rule-based) data analysis
Disadvantages:
- extract data from attachments with certain restrictions
- dated UI/UX
- it can be overwhelming for first-time users
- difficult to configure for complex email structures
Still manually entering email data into your CRM, ERP or spreadsheet? Automate email analytics workflows with Nanonets.
EmailParser
EmailParser is a rule-based email parsing software that works by taking line-by-column text, regular expressions, and scripting rules.
It works as a Windows application as well as a web app and allows integration of email information with local files or internal tools.
![EmailParser](https://nanonets.com/blog/content/images/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-26-at-3.03.52-PM.png)
Advantages:
- can connect to email servers (IMAP/POP3)
- supports local files
- can analyze a wide variety of file attachments
Disadvantages:
- web app not as advanced as windows app
- it can be overwhelming for first-time users
- difficult to configure for complex email structures
Analyst
Parseur is an excellent standards-based mail parser that we use quite intuitively. It also offers advanced post-processing features and a Chrome extension that serves as a web scraper.
![Analyst](https://nanonets.com/blog/content/images/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-26-at-3.04.40-PM.png)
Advantages:
- easy to use with nice UI
- it can scrape a wide variety of attachment file formats
- template library to manage common email types
- supports parsing from a wide range of word processing file formats
Disadvantages:
- more expensive than other alternatives
SigParser
SigParser is an email parser that focuses exclusively on reporting email contact information and email signatures.
It can even check all your current emails and consolidate a list of contact details – which can then be sent to your CRM.
![Sigparser](https://nanonets.com/blog/content/images/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-26-at-3.06.07-PM.png)
Advantages:
- specializes in email signature analysis
Disadvantages:
- it is not a complete email analyzer
- attachments cannot be parsed
Still manually entering email data into your CRM, ERP or spreadsheet? Automate email analytics workflows with Nanonets.
Take away
While there are many email analyzers available in the market, choosing a company depends on its specific needs.
The right email analyzer can help save a huge amount of time in extracting vital information from emails and can ultimately help fully automate all the activities of a business.