Mail Rules

You may have emails that arrive to your inbox which you don’t necessarily have to read.   But do have to store then this is when setting up an email rule can come in helpful.

Most email clients (Gmail/Outlook etc.) offer this as a standard feature.  You can set up email rules depending on the email subject, who it’s from or even specific words in the body of the email.

I generally use email rules to trigger actions that automatically move specific types of emails into subfolders.  This keeps my primary inbox somewhat clean.  Of course, I’m never going to get to “inbox zero” but setting up email rules does help considerably.

Notifications

If you’ve read any book on managing time, then this is probably one of the top tips.  Turning off email notifications on both your phone and your desktop computer is a must.

Depending on your business, this can’t always be done, but the upside will keep you more focused.

The general rule of thumb is to keep notifications turned off and only check your inbox once or twice a day.  Set some time aside which you specifically use to conquer your inbox each day.

Let’s face it the notifications are a distraction, and it’s not a productive way of working unless you thrive on jumping from one thing to the next.  The keyword here is focus.

Template Emails

Do you find yourself replying to emails almost word for word the same as others?  This is where email templates can come in useful.

It can be a real time-saver, and again, most email clients like Microsoft Outlook and Gmail offer email templates.

Your reply can consist of the template and all you have to do maybe change a few words.

To give you an example of this in the IT industry there are some problems which have a specific process to fix.  The process is so simple that it only requires eight words…  Can you guess what they might be?  “Have you tried turning it on and off”.

I’m joking here, but you get the idea – have a think on how you or your staff could implement email templates in your daily business.

Monthly Unsubscribe

How many email lists are you a member of?  Set up a monthly reminder to do a purge and unsubscribe of email lists you are on.

Whilst there may be many useful email lists to be a part of. It seems like anytime I enter my email address into a website, I am then bombarded with weekly, even daily emails.

Luckily most email lists offer a way to unsubscribe, and I’ve got a monthly reminder to go through my inbox. Clicking the unsubscribe button on anything that is not performing any value apart from clogging up my inbox.