Tags
email, job, organization, sanity, skills, stress relief, tips
Sorry for the blogging hiatus friends!! The start of my FINAL semester of university has really thrown me for a loop and taken away a lot of valuable blogging time but I promise that I will get back on track with my new years resolution and share tips and tricks that I’ve learned with you more frequently..In fact we’ll start right now!
Today we’ll talk about how to manage your email inbox. This might sound mundane and simple to you but if plan on doing anything with account management (or are a breathing person who uses email) you should read this.
5 Commandments for Email Success
1. Think before you email. Is this a conversation that you could be having in person or via telephone. If yes, pick up the phone or talk in person. Second to that, if you have a bunch of topically related questions put them in one email instead of sending five separate emails.
2. Tag your emails appropriately. Working on a large number of accounts has taught me one thing- using Gmail labels is a huge sanity saver. Now instead of having to search until I find something, I can go to the label (I use the project code) and see all of those emails at glance.
3. Have a signature block! There, I said it. Possibly one of my largest pet peeves is not knowing how to get ahold of someone who has emailed me. Don’t just give me your email address; somethings need to be resolved by phone.
4. Don’t ignore emails. Trust me, you’ll forget they exist. My rule for my inbox is as follows. At designated times of day I read through my message and categorize them as one of three things-
a. Emails that I’ve been cc’d on so that I have a copy of the information. These are immediately filed by project number.
b. Emails that require a response. These I attempt to take care of straight away and try to ensure that no one waits more than one business day for a full response to their request.
c. Emails that will require a response in the near future but are on hold. These are starred so that I don’t lose track of them. At the end of each business day (or every other depending on how busy I am) I go through these emails and follow up with my team on whether or not these have been taken care of or if they are still pending.
5. Remove yourself from list servs, mailing lists and sale advisories that you are no longer interested in. Think about it. How many emails are you getting that you aren’t even interested in reading? Give yourself a break and delete the ones that no longer apply to you- I promise you’ll feel so much better afterward.
So those are my quick tips for email success. And yes, I do try to live by these myself. Are there any others that you think I’m missing? Share them!
E.
Definitely do not ignore emails! They can be forgotten about pretty easily.
Also, something I do is I have several different colors for my starred emails. You can change this in your gmail settings. I use different colors to sort priority and to keep certain topics together.
That’s also a great tip! Thanks for sharing, Mary. I like to use the colors too for the labels so they pop- but using them for starred emails makes a LOT of sense!