Email Management
Email Management is one of my favorite topics to talk about in business.
EMAIL MANAGEMENT, AND IN TURN, YOUR EMAIL INBOX, CAN MAKE OR BREAK YOUR WORKDAY FLOW.
DO YOU HAVE THESE FEATURES ENABLED OR HEAVILY USED ON YOUR EMAIL? IF NOT, IT MIGHT BE TIME TO REVISIT SOME OF THESE GOODIES TO MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER TODAY!
Have a solid email signature - Think name, email address, phone number, address, social icons, etc. A photo or using your logo is also helpful to make it quick and easy so your team or client know who’s responding and what they can do in the meantime before you respond!
Set clear client expectations in your email signature - This is an easy and a bit subtle of a way to let clients and non-clients know your office hours, vacation/speaking gigs, turnaround time, and anything else that is important to the work you do!
Set key canned emails and store them in your account - In Gmail, you can turn on canned emails in your settings so you can just insert the email of your choice into the body of the email! It saves you answering the same questions over and over again, and highlights a pattern for you to determine solid resources or blog posts you might want to create in the future to avoid answering some of these questions!
Use rules in your inbox - I love to setup rules in my inbox to automatically categorize your emails or set tags. This removes one more step of work that needs to happen before I can complete and archive a task or email!
Unsubscribe from content you no longer need - It’s easy to get your inbox out of control when you’re signed up for a lot of email lists, courses, and or potential freebies. Guess what -> I often find I’m less tempted to spend money unnecessarily when the flash sale emails aren’t hanging out in my inbox either. It’s an easy win for me to control spending too! And if I change my mind and miss the content, then I can always sign up again!
Set a timer to clean out your inbox - If you have a lot of emails, set a time each day or week to purge/categorize/archive the inbox. In gmail, archiving is a magic gift that you can search for anything, you can even drill down and search for specific keywords, people, tags, etc in your inbox! It’s why I think it’s a total gem and worth setting tags/categories before finishing and archiving an email message!