Business Miscellaneous Technology

10 Tips for Improving Your Email Management

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Have you ever wondered how to bring order into your inbox? Alternatively, have you thought about boosting team productivity by implementing a better email management strategy? If that’s the case, then this article is written for you. We are going to present you with the 10 most efficient email management tips in 2018, and you can decide which ones are worth pursuing.

1. Learn how to prioritise – Not every email in your inbox is essential, thus determining which emails are a priority and which are not can save you a lot of time. The most efficient approach is to focus only on high-value emails that contain deadlines, project guidelines or any other significant information or data that has an impact on your workflow. Once you learn how to sort your messages according to importance and information value, you will free up your time for more critical tasks.

2. Check emails once a day or at designated intervals – This is an email management hack that productivity enthusiasts and large companies have been using for a while. It goes hand-in-hand with learning how to prioritise emails and the three-minute time rule. The best way to focus on what you’re doing is to do only one task at a time, instead of checking emails, drafting documents and talking with colleges. When you assign yourself time in your schedule for reading and processing emails, your inbox will become just another task in your to-do list.

3. Purge the subscriptions list – One of the best ways to deal with the clutter in your inbox is to get rid of the unnecessary emails you have been getting for years. Taking your email address from subscriptions lists will free up your storage space and save you time because you won’t have to delete a bunch of emails every day without even opening them. If you’re not reading that newsletter, then you should do your yourself a favour and unsubscribe.

4. Start using folders – Another organisational trick is to put emails in specific folders and focus on them when you have the time. Some people use folders for assigning priority emails, and others sort them according to clients and projects. Depending on the nature of your work and personal preferences, you can make your organisational folder structure.

5. Use email clients – One of the easiest ways to bring order into your inbox is to use a desktop email client with advanced productivity features and full business app integration. Email clients offer a unified inbox and an array of useful tools that can help you manage the email according to your preferences. Some of the more popular and valuable email clients on the market are Outlook, Airmail, Mailbird, Evolution, Hiri and others.

6. Spam filters – Strengthening the spam filters in the email account is a simple trick, and it can be quickly done in the settings section. The email provider settings might not work for you so that you can level them up a notch, but be careful not to overdo it by making the spam filters too sensitive.

7. Create templates – One of the best practices for people that have a strong B2B communication is creating templates. If you found a particular wording phrase that you like or if you know that every new client/customer has to go through the same process of onboarding, then create a few templates and use them regularly.

8. Your inbox is not your to-do list – You can’t treat your inbox as your to-do list and get everything done during working hours. On the contrary, it should be the other way around. Spending too much time on your emails causes distractions, and you can lose a good portion of your productivity trying to organise messages or get on top of everything every few hours.

9. Implement a three-minute rule –The rule is rather simple, and if you can answer and archive an email in less than three minutes, then there is no reason to leave it in your inbox for later and add to the clutter. If it’s an email that requires more time and effort on your part, and it’s not ASAP labelled, then you can pencil it in for later when you have more time.

10. Deep-clean once a week – Give yourself an hour every week to do a deep-clean of your inbox. You can do it every Monday morning or Friday afternoon, depending on your work schedule, and organise messages, delete them, archive them and put a star for importance. Once you figure out a system, one glance at the inbox will always keep you up-to-date.

We hope these quick tips and tricks can help you boost your productivity levels and de-stress when it comes to your inbox. Implement the ones you like and make your inbox squeaky clean!

About the author

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Sam Hoffman

Sam Hoffman is a business and marketing consultant who helps digital businesses reach their exact audience. Sam is passionate about optimization, web hosting and analytics. His current focus is helping decision-makers design their perfect business tools. He frequently writes about the latest advancements in the tech industry.