7 Tips for Managing Your Email

Welcome to my blog! If you would like to keep updated on new posts, please subscribe.
And consider following me on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Sometimes email feels like more of a burden than it’s worth. But the truth is, email is a valuable tool that has revolutionized the way we work. When used correctly, email is a terrific time saver and productivity tool. But to keep your email from becoming a drag, it’s important to learn how to manage it better. Here are seven tips:

Use labels and folders – Check out your email software’s capabilities to automatically put emails in specific folders or to add labels to them as they come in your inbox. It will greatly reduce your stress if things go into folders as they come in, so you can take one look and differentiate what is an emergency and what can wait until later.

Check your email regularly – Don’t allow too much time to pass by before checking your email. You don’t want to be tied to your email, but you don’t want hundreds of email messages to pile up either. Check your email on a regular schedule, and then deal with each email accordingly. Try to have no more than 10 to 20 unread emails in your inbox at any given time.

Read respond, and file – When you check your email, you should read, respond, or file each message, depending on the topic. A simple reply of “Thanks! Got it!” is all you need to do. If you don’t respond immediately, download the item then put it in a dated file or tag it to deal with it later.

Reduce incoming email messages – Turn off notifications from social media sites and unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read. Or use a service called Unroll.Me to get it done fast. Unroll.Me will return a list and ask you to choose which email subscriptions you want to keep and which ones you want to delete.

Create a “burner” email address – Think about creating an email address where you can receive non-urgent newsletters and email messages. This can exponentially reduce the messages you receive in your work inbox.

Learn your email software – Do you know all of the perks of your email software? For instance, does your email program allow you to “un-send” messages? This feature gives you about 30 seconds after sending a message to click “undo send” to retrieve the message. Learn all of the features of your email software to use it to its fullest potential.

Outsource – If you receive a lot of customer service emails, don’t handle them yourself. It could take a long time to deal with each customer service issue. Instead, hire someone to take handle this for you. They will alert you to the most pressing issues that only you can deal with and then handle the rest.

Getting control of your email will make you more productive, organized, and effective at running your business. You will experience less stress and accomplish more if your inbox is under control.

Does your inbox overwhelm you? Regain control by following these tips then let me know how your life has improved!