Email is one of the useful media in business. This system helps you build a relationship with your clients. By sending them a campaign, you can start a strong connection with them.
But if used the wrong way, it could hinder productivity and success. According to research, 1/4 of an employee’s day is spent on reading and answering emails. This study proves that email is the second most time-consuming activity of a worker.
Executives and managers receive thousands of hundreds of emails a day. It can be stressful since they have to read and answer those messages. However, it’s an indication that the business is successful. Otherwise, they wouldn’t receive any email from their employees or clients.
However, having a cluttered email account is like living in a messy house. You can’t concentrate on your work if you know that your emails are all over the place. To de-clutter your email account; you need to manage your messages.
There are numerous email management tools that you can use. This software helps you control your emails and puts them in order. But before you get this product, you need to know how to manage your emails.
In this article, you will learn why you need to manage your emails. You will also learn some tips for managing your inbox. However, you need to know what an email is before discussing the mentioned topics.
What Is E-mail?
Email is a short term for electronic mail. It’s an act of transmitting messages through communication networks. Typically, these are the notes entered using a keyboard or files stored on any storage device. Most of the minicomputers, mainframes, and desktops today now have an email feature.
Some email systems are limited to a single computer network. Others have gateways to other systems, allowing the user to send messages all over the globe. Companies that use computers take advantage of emails to improve reliability, flexibility, and productivity.
Typically, the email system has a text editor, which enables you to compose messages. This feature lets you change the font size and color to make the content more appealing. Furthermore, it allows you to send similar content to multiple recipients simultaneously. With these basic features, you can create a fun email campaign or just a simple letter to your friend.
Why Should You Manage Your Emails?
There are several reasons why you need to manage your emails. However, you need to know how an unruly management of emails can compromise compliance, efficiency, and electronic discovery.
Endangered Compliance: If your workers receive numerous emails with attached legal files, getting an email inbox management tool is critical. It will ensure your emails are complete, recorded, and retrievable.
However, before you implement this system, you need to ask these questions to yourself:
“Do my workers document read receipts received through emails?”
“What kind of report received that isn’t in the system?”
If you’re not sure of your answer, your company’s compliance could be at risk. Undocumented contracts and unsaved legal records are two of the problems that may arise if the email is left unmanaged.
Compromised Efficiency: As mentioned earlier, 1/4 of an employee’s working hours is spent on reading and answering emails. Hence, email overload can keep a person away from her responsibilities.
Capturing, segregating, keeping and retrieving messages by hands can affect the employee’s efficiency.
To know the cost of manually handling your emails; multiply the number of personnel who receives emails by one hour. The product is the number of hours spent on manually controlling your messages. For this reason, getting an email management service is a must.
Endangered Electronic Discovery: Legal discovery is needed, especially when someone files a lawsuit against your firm. It recovers and examines records, which are relevant to your case.
It’s crucial to use an email response management tool that allows you to retrieve messages and documents. Not only are you improving the employee’s efficiency, but you’re following the law. However, not all companies use a formal system for storing employee emails.
What’s even worse is that some businesses don’t have policies when it comes to deleting such emails. Thus, you may find yourself explaining why you don’t have a record of such critical data.
Improved Security: One of the reasons why you need to use an email list management tool is it enhances security. This tool has encryption features that strengthen data protection. Moreover, it has unified email storage, which reduces security breach. Using a management tool that has these features reduces human errors and ensures compliance.
A Competitive Solution: Compared to hiring an email manager, getting an email marketing management tool will help in saving money. You don’t need to pay someone in exchange for their service. You only have to pay a few bucks or nothing at all, depending on the platform you’re using.
Tips for Managing Your Email Inbox
There are four ways that you can do to manage your emails in your inbox. Here are these techniques:
1 – Schedule your reading and responding to emails.
Sign out to your email account while you’re busy doing something else. Beeps and alerts can take away your focus on what you are doing. Instead, set a time when you can welcome all your emails. For instance, you’re free to read and reply messages from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM. When the time is up, you can sign out or switch it into a “busy” mode.
If you can’t concentrate on your work, you can switch off your phone or close the door.
Here’s an example reply to all your clients:
“Due to heavy tasks, I am only online at 9 AM and 4 PM. If you need urgent assistance, you can call me at 777-777-7777.”
The number of hours spent on reading and replying to emails will rely on the frequency of email checking. Moreover, it will lie in the amount of emails you receive. Some people find it efficient to check their emails every 50 minutes. Others prefer checking their account two to three times daily.
2 – Make a move quickly.
The statement, “Do the things that you can do today” is perfect for this situation. Making rapid decisions and implementing critical operation will help in managing your emails.
When checking emails, look for messages that you can delete now. Examples of such emails are spam messages and email campaigns. After that, select emails that don’t need your response. You can put them in the archive folder for future reference. If you do these things, you can better weigh in which messages are crucial.
Don’t keep valuable emails waiting. Answer their messages once you read them. If you’re on a break, make sure you reply to those messages within two days.
If you can’t respond immediately, tell them you’ve received their emails, and you’ll return to them shortly. Follow up and set a schedule.
3 – Plan your emails by folders, categories, and labels.
Though you can delete emails, you want to keep some of them for your business. The communication between colleagues, clients, and personnel can solve any misunderstandings. Most of the email management tools allow users to put a mark on messages by using labels and categories.
Segregate, group, and file your emails to keep them in order. The better you categorize your emails; the easier to find a particular message when needed.
Make a main folder for general subjects, then create subcategories for messages relevant to a particular project or client. Before filing an email, make sure the subject is easily searched. If the email’s content is not accurately described, change it before you categorize the message.
4 – Cancel a subscription from unwanted email campaigns.
Email ads and newsletters can be overwhelming. Moreover, it can bury valuable messages. If this happens, you need to de-clutter your inbox.
To do this; you need to cancel your subscription from unwanted promotional emails. Search for the word, “unsubscribe,” in your email account. Review the results and unsubscribe to those promos that you don’t need anymore.
These are the things that you can do to manage your email inbox. However, if you can’t do these strategies, then you should use top email management tools. This app will help you control your emails.
There are many email management packages that you can choose. Unfortunately, they all claim that they have the top email management tools. Though it could be true, it’s best if you read email management tool reviews. It will tell you what you need to know about a particular software.
When looking for credible email management tool reviews, make sure they come from a reliable source. Ensure that the site provides real reviews and not promotional blogs. There’s nothing wrong with such articles. But if you want to weigh the pros and cons, then you should read an unbiased review.
There are many sites dedicated to giving customer reviews. However, if you want to read fair email management software reviews, then CrowdReviews is the best choice. It ranks top email management systems based on customer reviews.
Jeev Trika
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