Office workers, as well as freelancers, receive a bunch of emails every day. Whether it is a promotional email from another business, an urgent task from the boss or an inquiry from a potential client, the typical worker’s inbox can be quite a mess.
In order to avoid spending hours catching up with your emails, you will need to use the right email management strategies. Here are 6 hacks to help you organize your inbox like a pro!
1. More Than One.
Here’s a fact:
No one can stop you from creating more than one email.
So, why not try it?
Set up an email for personal use and one for work.
Shipping confirmations, marketing emails, social media promotions and even reminders from your bank to pay your credit card bill all just clutter your inbox, making it harder to spot the more important emails from your boss or client.
By using a separate email address for such messages of low priority, you can efficiently manage the more important ones and prevent you from getting distracted. You can also download a multi-email app like Edison Mail that automatically categorizes your emails in smart folders so you can access your shipping confirmations, bank notifications, etc., in one place.
2. Cleaning Up.
Next? Scan your inbox and see what messages you can delete.
Tick that promotional email you are never going to read or that co-worker saying they will be out today, or those messages from ears ago that you have already forgotten and delete or archive them.
If you would like to see your inbox cleared, then you need to let go of any unimportant emails and move them to the trash right away. If you are not in a rush, then you might even try to identify a few regular emailers that you can unsubscribe from.
3. Labels Please.
For Gmail users, there are no folders you can create and store emails. However, as an alternative, you can use labels that allow you to tag emails and organizing them to easily find them by those tags.
A major advantage of labels over folders is that emails can have several labels, making it easier to categorize messages when falling under different categories. Gmail already has several default labels, however, you can still create your own labels.
4. Use Distribution or Group Lists.
If you are sending a message to the same group of people regularly, then you can set up an email or group alias. For Gmail, you can just go to Contacts, mark the people you wish to add to the group and click on the label icon. Give the group a name and save.
From there, you can automatically compose an email to everyone in the group. Not only does it save time in eliminating the need to type each person’s email address when mailing the group, but it also helps for easy deleting when the time comes.
5. Canned Responses or Templates Are Time-Savers.
If there is a message that you send regularly, then make sure not to write it from scratch regularly. You can reuse what you have already made by making a canned response or template.
Once you have a few templates set up, you can use them to quickly reply to messages without even thinking much about it and allowing you to do more important work.
Bulk Unsubscribing Tools.
Want to unsubscribe from unwanted emails in bulk? An unsubscribe app will make this possible. The only downside is that you give these services complete access to your email in order for them to find messages with the unsubscribe link or button. Therefore, it is highly recommended to look for a privacy-oriented email management solution.
