There must be a lot of days when you have realized that you are buried under a pile of emails which will take you hours to sort through. Locating an important message can become a struggle in such situations. You might even fail to follow up after an important event. In this article, we will discuss the best email management tips to help you with such problems.
In a lot of productivity related articles, emails are mentioned as something which consumes a lot of time. However, the actual problem is not the email but the medium. In fact, emails help you to send and receive quick information but the absence of proper email management resources and tools make it seem time-consuming.
Best Tips for Email management
Read on to find a few of the best email management tips and practices and follow them to save your precious time –
1. Decide how many times you will check your inbox in a day –
It is important that you don’t spend too much of your working hours trying to read and delete emails. Make a schedule and follow it to read new emails. If you thoroughly know your business, you will be able to predict when you will receive the most emails and thus, schedule your email reading time accordingly. This way, you will be able to manage time, be more efficient and not fall into the cycle of reloading your inbox page a hundred times a day.
2. Make a note of how much time you are spending on reading emails –
Notice how much time you are spending everyday just to deal with your emails. In this way, you will be conscious about time management and will be using your time wisely. If you think you are spending too much time, you can even reduce it and focus on something else.
3. Switch off email notifications and alerts –
In order to make sure you are not repeatedly checking your inbox for new mails, you can also turn off the email notifications. This will help you to avoid distraction. You won’t be tempted to check the new mails and will be more productive.
4. Make a few template emails to save time –
Many times we receive several emails which demand the same type of reply. In such a scenario, we type the same thing several times. By creating a template email, you will be saving yourself a lot of time and energy. You can always modify them. These premade templates will save you time and allow you to focus more on the current work on hand.
5. Unsubscribe to promotional emails and unimportant newsletters –
This is undoubtedly one of the most effective email management tips. Half of the time, we don’t even check promotional emails or unimportant newsletters. In such cases, it is a smart idea to unsubscribe to these as soon as possible to keep your inbox clutter-free.
Best Plugins for Email management
There are also many apps, plugins and extensions that will allow you to get the best of these email management tips. The best of the email management apps to help you with these are –
1. Mailman –
Mailman is one of the best email management applications. This plugin is very effective in filtering out unimportant emails. With its features, it can decrease interruptions and disturbances and as a result, boost productivity. Mailman is a plugin for Gmail only, as it offers a Gmail email management program.
However, it is compatible with numerous other email clients like Spark, Apple Mail, Polymail, Superhuman, Mailbird, and more. The primary function of Mailman is to separate and sort emails so that it can allow you to save some time and increase work performance.
2. Asana –
Asana is another plugin that allows you to follow the standard productivity method and properly manage work and tasks. When you combine Asana with Mailbird, your mailbox can be turned into a workstation where you can organize tasks, manage correspondence and also organize statuses. It is an amazing way to increase productivity.
3. Hiver –
Hiver, the chrome extension, serves as a very effective email management tool for Gmail. People who are comfortable using Gmail will automatically find Hiver user friendly. Hiver is very similar to Helpdesk, except it is for Gmail. It provides empathetic and prompt customer support to its users.
Conclusion
Your work productivity, time, and fate are a few things that you have control over. All the resources, tips and plugins are at your disposal. The fact that you read this article till the end means that you must be in severe need of some proper email management.
A compilation of the best email management tips with the best plugins for email management is provided to you in this article. All you have to do is to study them, utilize them and gain some extra time with increased productivity and an organized inbox.
