What Is An Email Parser?
An email parser is a service or software program that extracts relevant data from emails and condenses it into a structured form.
Why do you need one, you might ask?
Well, since emails are the most common medium for transferring information in the 21st century, most people are flooded with email messages daily.
And with all the messages they’re getting, it becomes almost impossible for them to comb through each email to extract and structure the data they need from the messages.
This results in them spending hours just extracting and formatting data from the messages they received — hours that they should be using to grow their business.
Why is email parsing important?
Email parsers can take pertinent details from an email message such as the sender’s email address, name, and phone number (among other things). It can then directly export the information to a CRM system automatically.
Imagine a fairly large travel agency getting droves of emails/inquiry (daily) about their rates and packages. If someone from the agency were to manually comb through each email to find the pertinent details and sort all the data out, it’d take days (or weeks) to complete the job — that, right there, is wasted manpower. If the company were to use an email parsing software, however, they’d no longer need to assign someone to do the sifting and sorting for them — the email parsing software will do it for them automatically. In other words, whether the company receives 3 or 300 inquiries via email daily, the travel company doesn’t need to exert extra effort to keep up with the increasing workload. That exemplifies one of the biggest benefits of an email parser software for scaling businesses.
Can you give me a few more use-cases or examples of email parsing? Sure.
Many companies receive purchase orders and invoices, which really belong in their accounting systems like Xero or MYOB.
An email parser can be used to extract the relevant data fields (e.g., Purchase date) from these emails.
More advanced parsers such as Parserr, allow users to extract information from tables, email attachments and even stripped HTML text.
Here are a few more examples of how Parserr can and should be used:
Automating order fulfillment in e-commerce
Recording invoice data from services like PayPal, AdWords, and so on.
Capturing the contact and personal information of real estate leads
Parsing vital data from automated PDF reports from third-party tools
Consolidating pertinent data obtained through web forms and direct
Monitor lead activity through social media notifications for scoring/segmentation
What can you do with extracted data?
Once email data is parsed and exported into structured data, it is made available in a useful format such as CSV, XML, JSON for download.
It can also automatically be forwarded to third-party apps such as Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Office 365, and MailChimp.
Is email parsing like web scraping?
Yes, email parsing is very similar to scraping the web for data. But instead of extracting data from HTML websites, it allows you scrape data from emails.
How do email parsing tools work?
Most email parsers allow you to either pull specific messages directly from your mailbox or forward them to the designated email address of your parsing account.
Once the emails are available to the parser, a parsing algorithm will extract the data fields you are after from the email.
Most email parsers are rule-based and will allow you to configure custom parsing rules.
Creating a parsing rule is usually straightforward and can be done without ever writing a single line of code.
Watch Email Parsing at Work
Now that we’ve covered the basics of email parsing, it’s time for a firsthand look at how it can be done. Configuring an email parser software to process the exact data you need may seem intimidating, but with a tool like Parserr, the process is made as intuitive and manageable as possible.
Using the visual parsing rules management tool, you start by selecting the email component or “attribute” where Parserr should look for data. This could be the email’s subject line, sender’s address, recipients, message body, and attachments.