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Published August 17th, 2016 by

Staying on Top of Your Inbox: How to Manage Your Emails

Staying on Top of Your Inbox: How to Manage Your Emails

It used to be that sending mails is a nightmare. You have to get and write the address of the recipient and you have to get it right otherwise your letter won’t arrive. Then there are envelopes and post stamps and the dropping of the actual letter to the post office. It was a lot of work and costs money. But the development of emails has really changed the way we view mail correspondence. What used to be weeks of waiting for a letter or telegram to arrive can now be done in mere seconds. This should be a cause for celebration right? Not when you are receiving more emails than you can handle. And they accumulate if you let them stew in your inbox until you don’t know what’s important and what can be ignored. Staying on top of your inbox is the key to managing your emails. Here are some tips to help you with email management.

Check Emails

Checking your email as soon as a mail arrives can tremendously help with managing your emails. But this is also counterproductive if you are the type of person who receives emails, every hour of the day. That would mean a disruption to your daily routine and you might end up being non-productive for the day. Multitasking might help you do many things at the same time, like working and checking your emails. But a study by CNN revealed that multitasking is actually counterproductive. Doing multiple tasks at a time doesn’t actually increase productivity instead it does the revers. So it is better to focus on one task at a time. That would mean that you shouldn’t check your emails while working. So how will you hit that coveted zero in your inbox if you shouldn’t even check your emails? It’s not that you shouldn’t check your emails. It is that you should set a specific time of day where it is the only thing you will do. If you aren’t supposed to be multitask at work, then do it at home. Before going to work, set aside at least thirty minutes to tackle your inbox. In a week or two, you might actually be done with the mail you have let sit in you inbox for too long. An email management software has also been able to help employees and manager manage their emails well.

Organize Your Emails

If you want to hit zero in your inbox, it doesn’t just consist of reading all your emails. To ensure that chaos in your inbox does not happen again, you have to keep things organized. Getting an email management tool can help with organizing your emails. You can set up folders in your email applications about the different types of email that you receive. You could set up folder titles like urgent, action items, reference, archives and waiting. These five categories aren’t the only ones you can make. If you receive a lot of coupons on your email then add that category too. Organizing emails might be different for everybody; it will all depend on your needs.

Another organization tip is to set up different accounts. For different needs, you have to make different email addresses. For example, if you need an email address for work. Make one that will be specifically used for work only. If you are in social media which requires an email address to sign up, make one for that specific use too. Make another address too that will receive all your newsletters and subscriptions. This last one is not urgent so when checking emails, you wouldn’t have to prioritize this.

If you find that you have no longer a need for a certain subscription, don’t be shy and click that unsubscribe button. It would save you a lot of time and hassle if you are receiving one less email a day.

Be Efficient

When sending telegrams before, people would need to count the characters of their letters because every letter and character is paid. Use that style of communicating with your emails today. It doesn’t mean that you should omit vowels or only use sounds of syllables when messaging but use precise words and instructions when writing your email. Write an email that will give a clear picture of what you are trying to say. This will prevent follow up questions and general confusion regarding your message. This will also ensure that you will not be receiving more emails than in necessary. The best email management tools will help you make your emails efficient and precise. According to a statistics report done by The Radicati Group, Inc., there were more than 205 billion emails that were sent and received in 2015. That is a lot of emails; imagine if only a handful of people are receiving that number, they would never be able to stay on top of their inbox. Using an email tracking software will greatly help manage that kind of enormity.

Another way to be efficient is to use a template. If you find yourself sending the same message everyday it would be wise to just make a template. That way you wouldn’t have to write a new mail every time you would send that same message.

Establish a Routine

You have set a time to check your emails, now stick to it. According to BrainPickings.org, it takes 21 days of continuously doing the same thing to make a habit. This is the same with checking your emails; build a routine of only checking your emails once a day for a certain set of time and eventually it will become a habit. You would have stayed on top of your inbox and you haven’t let emails rule your life. This would differ of course, if communicating via email is a part of your job and would necessitate several checking a day. Then the best way to deal with that is to only open emails that you deem are urgent or work related. You have to use your sound judgment on this one. All the others can wait until the designated time of checking. Once you have established a routine, you will find that you have managed your inbox and that it is easier to maintain it from then on. If your email list management is effective, you will find that you have no more emails to check, this means that you will have more time to do other things. It is just important that you build a routine around checking and replying to emails.

Rules About Non-Essential Emails

According to spam email statistics, 14.5 billion of messages received every day in the whole wide world are actually spam. That is about 45% of all emails received. This is one issue that has caused people to not stay on top of their inboxes. The general rule for non-essential emails is to just delete them immediately. If you choose to avoid receiving them altogether, here are some things you might want to try.

  1. Don’t sign up for newsletters that you have actually no plan on reading. Let’s say, you found a site about planting during the winter and thought to yourself you might try it. You received their emails but winter has come and passed and you haven’t read any of their emails. It might have started out as intentional emails but eventually they have just become spam. Unsubscribe from them immediately.
  2. Don’t put your work email in sites that you use for personal matters. Signing up for a social networking site means you are bound to receive emails that are irrelevant and non-essential to your work. If you plan to use an email for the sign up process, make another one so you don’t get unnecessary emails to your work mail.
  3. Set up a filter to your email application or your email list management software to avoid receiving spam emails in your inbox folder. You will still receive them but they will go directly to another folder dedicated to spam emails.

Good Team Traditions

Sending fewer emails will also let you receive less email. If you regularly use emails for work then you should try to be as efficient and precise with it as possible. You will always have workmates that feels it is necessary to send long nonsensical emails, only to find out they didn’t have a point to make. That would mean you have to reply and ask what they want. This email back and forth is taking a lot of time that you could use productively. One thing you can do about this is to tell your workmate to use emails like you do, which is precise and efficient. This will help both of you stay on top of things. An email management tool also helps with these kinds of things. It will help you stay precise and on point. Not all tools will be able to help you though, so check out reviews of email management tools to know which one will fit all needs nicely.

Receiving lots of emails doesn’t have to be overwhelming anymore. With the help of the tips mentioned above and the best email management tools, you can stay on top of your inbox every day.  No more large numbers of unread emails will be sitting on your inbox. Be sure to read email management software reviews to know which tool is best for your email needs.

Worried about tons of emails sitting in your inbox? Get an email management software to help you effectively manage your emails.

Trevor Price

Trevor Price helps small businesses leverage mobile technology to reach their audience and extend their capabilities in delivery, information, and tracking.

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