How to Upload Emails to EchoMe

Your sent emails are one of the best sources for training your voice. Here's exactly how to export them from Gmail and upload them to EchoMe, in a few minutes.

3 min read

Included on every plan. Your sent emails are how you actually talk to clients, so Echo writes posts that sound like you on a good day with a client, not like a marketer.

Why sent emails?

Your sent emails are full of your actual voice: the way you greet people, explain things, follow up, and close conversations. Unlike blog posts or social media, emails are unfiltered. They're how you actually communicate.

But there's a catch: don't just dump your entire inbox. You want your sent emails from the last 6 months. That's the sweet spot for capturing your current voice without overwhelming the system.

Step-by-step guide (Gmail)

Open your Sent folder

Go to Gmail and click on the Sent folder in the left sidebar. You only want emails you wrote, not ones sent to you.

Search for your sent emails

Use the search bar to filter. Click the search options dropdown and set:

From: your email address
Date within: 6 months
Search: Sent Mail

Tip: 6 months gives Echo enough signal to map your voice without picking up patterns from years ago that no longer represent you.

Create a label for download

Select all the emails from your search results, then create a new label (something like "For Download"). This label is what Google Takeout will use to export just these emails instead of your entire mailbox.

Go to Google Takeout

Head to takeout.google.com. This is Google's official tool for exporting your data. Click "Deselect all" first. You don't want to download everything.

Select only your labeled emails

Scroll down to Mail, check the box, then click "All Mail data included" and change it to only include your "For Download" label. This keeps the export small and focused.

Tip: This is the step most people miss. If you skip filtering by label, you'll get a massive file with every email you've ever received, which is not what Echo needs.

Export and download

Click "Next step", choose "Send download link via email", select .zip format, and hit "Create export". Google will email you when it's ready (usually within a few minutes).

Download and unzip

Open the email from Google Takeout and click the download button. Save the .zip file to your computer, then unzip it. Inside the extracted folder, look for a file ending in .mbox. That's what you'll upload to EchoMe.

Tip: The .mbox file is usually inside a "Mail" folder within the extracted zip. It may be named after your label (e.g. "For Download.mbox"). Apple Mail exports also work. The file may be named just mbox with no extension. EchoMe accepts both. EchoMe keeps up to 100 emails from each upload. It favors longer emails you wrote, newest first, and skips calendar replies and auto-replies. For a very large mailbox, a focused date range makes the export faster.

Upload to EchoMe

Open the Create page in EchoMe. The Echo bar at the top says "Talk, type, or drop a file." Click the paperclip icon ("Attach a video, PDF, or document") and pick the .mbox file you extracted, or drag and drop the file onto the bar.

Echo will show what it plans to do with the file. Check that it says Adding to your Voice, then click Add to Voice. If it picked something else, switch it before you confirm.

Tip: The Your Voice page no longer has its own upload box. Everything goes in through the Echo bar: .mbox exports, PDFs, Word docs, text files, and audio.

Wait for processing

EchoMe reads the file in your browser, then uploads the emails it finds in batches. Stay on the page until you see Added to your Voice with the number of emails. It usually takes a minute or two.

If you see "No emails found," the file probably isn't your Sent mail. Re-check your label and export again.

Confirm your upload

Once done, open Your Voice. There's no sidebar link for it, so use the voice profile strip on the Create page, or go straight to /app/voice. Click Sources near the bottom of the page. Your emails show up under the Email category. Your voice strength score is in the header next to the page title, and it may move up with the new content.

Common mistakes to avoid

Uploading your entire mailbox: Export only your Sent folder, filtered to the last 6 months. Huge files will time out or include other people's writing.
Forgetting to filter by label in Takeout: If you don't select your specific label, Google exports everything. Use the label filter.
Uploading inbox emails: Echo learns from your writing. Inbox emails are written by other people. That's their voice, not yours.
Expecting every email to import: EchoMe keeps up to 100 emails from each upload. Want more in? Export another date range and upload that as well.

Go to Your Voice →