Email management is one of the pillars holding your business up, and this is what makes it important to spend some extra time on improving it any way you can. We’ve made a list of ten things to do in order to improve your email management and see your business bloom!
1. Unsubscribe!
The first thing you will want to do is stop your subscription to any emails you have not been reading for longer than a month. You already know how fast emails can pile up, making it hard for you to focus on the ones that are important.
2. Make the best of “Rules”
A rule is a feature that will allow your emails to be sorted into folders as soon as you receive them. This feature makes it easier for you too, for example, receive emails from your team without having them get mixed up with clients’ emails. Although setting up Rules will take up a bit of your time, it will definitely be worth it!
3. Categorize your emails
Since not all email providers offer “Rules”, you should categorize your emails into folders manually. You can set them up any way you want to, as long as everything is organized and tidy!
4. Snooze emails
Some email providers offer this great feature that will help make your time management easier than ever! How many times have you read an email and forgotten to reply to it? Well, using the snooze feature you can just set up an alarm and never forget to reply to an email ever again.
5. Create whitelists and blacklists
The majority of email providers allow you to create lists of emails that you would like to keep sending to your primary inbox, and which ones to send straight to trash. Making your inbox spam-free was never easier!
6. Use your smartphone on the go
In our modern age, just about everyone keeps their phones on them 24/7. They make it easier to stay in touch with the people in our lives and to keep track of your emails on the go. This means that your smartphone can help you with both email management and time management by simply checking your inbox every now and them, snoozing the emails you cannot reply to at the given moment and deleting the ones that are not important at all. This way you won’t have to spend hours on opening emails when you get to the office!
7. Use apps for informal conversations
Sure, you want to keep in touch with your team as often as possible, but not all of these conversations require sending emails. Using apps like Trello or Slack will help you communicate with your team without having to send emails for everything you want to say, resulting in an organized inbox!
8. Reuse sent messages
Why spend your valuable time writing the same emails all the time, when you can simply reuse them? If you often have similar conversations with your clients, the easiest thing to do is to keep a few of such messages in a folder and copy-paste them anytime necessary. Talk about time management!
9. Empty your trash every now and then
I say every now and then because emptying it every day won’t help you as much as you think, but not emptying it for months at a time is just a bad organization! If you try deleting all the non-essential emails at the end of the workday, the chances are that you will end up needing the day after. This is why you should make a habit of deleting the emails you no longer need once or twice a week!
10. The 1-minute rule
It’s quite simple, really! If replying to the email will take only about a minute, do it right away. If not, either snooze the email or create a note that will remind you to reply to it when you have the time. Again, if you reuse your sent messages, this process will be that much easier!
Conclusion
Using these ten simple tips, you will not only improve your email management but it will also be easier to be on top of your game. Make sure that you are getting the best service from your email provider, and get more information on the subject on Mailbird!