Efficient email management is crucial for maintaining your productivity and ensuring that you don’t miss important messages, but it gets more difficult every day as more messages flood your inboxes. Fortunately, there are tools and strategies you can use to help you organize your inbox, prioritize tasks, and automate repetitive actions.
Here are some useful email features you can take advantage of and best practices to optimize your email experience.
Email filters
These tell your email software to automatically sort incoming messages based on specific criteria. You can use them to organize emails into different folders, mark them as read or unread, apply labels, or even delete them, all as soon as the message arrives. Here’s how:
Creating the filters
Most email clients, such as Gmail and Outlook offer filter creation options. Here, we’ll use Gmail as an example, but other platforms will likely have a similar process:
- Open Gmail and go to Settings: Click the gear icon in the top right corner and select See all settings.
- Navigate to the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab: Click Create new filter.
- Set filter criteria: You can filter emails by sender, recipient, subject, keywords, or size.
- Choose an action: Select what you want to happen to emails that match the criteria (e.g., skipping the inbox, applying a label, or deleting).
Examples of useful filters
While you can create various filters based on your needs, some practical filters include:
- Client communication – Filter emails from key clients into a specific folder or label them with the client’s name. This ensures you never miss an important message.
- Newsletters and promotions – Automatically archive or label newsletters and promotional emails so they don’t clutter your primary inbox.
- High-priority tasks – Highlight emails containing specific keywords like “urgent” or “ASAP” by marking them with a star or flag.
Labels
Unlike folders, labels can be applied to multiple emails simultaneously, allowing for more flexible organization. Let’s go over how to best utilize these, again using Gmail as an example.
Creating and applying labels
Here’s how to create labels for your emails:
- Open Gmail and go to Settings: Click the gear icon and select See all settings.
- Navigate to the Labels tab: Scroll down to Labels and click Create new label.
- Name your label: Choose a short, clear name for the category (e.g., Invoices, Project X, or Follow-Up).
To apply these labels manually, select the emails you want to label, click the label icon, and choose the appropriate label. But to save time, you can automatically apply labels via filters, as explained above.
Labeling best practices
To supercharge your digital labeling, keep these best practices in mind:
- Consistent naming – Use clear, descriptive names for your labels to avoid confusion.
- Color-coding – Your email client should have color-coded labels, making it easier to visually identify categories at a glance.
- Sub-labels – Create sub-labels for more granular organization, such as individual project labels under the main “Project” label.
Automation features
Automation features perform repetitive email tasks for you, saving valuable time and sanity. Here are a couple of automation tools that should come standard with whatever email platform you are using.
Auto-responders
These send premade messages as replies to certain kinds of emails, based on your instructions. Some of the best uses of auto-responders are to answer basic inquiries and acknowledge receipt of emails. For example, if you receive frequent customer service requests, an auto-responder can inform senders that their message has been received and provide an estimated response time.
Third-party integrations
If you utilize other productivity software, it is likely that they have built-in email integrations to make using both tools easier. You can integrate your email platform in project management software such as Trello or Asana to automatically create tasks based on incoming emails. If you operate customer relationship management software such as Salesforce, you can automatically log emails from clients to maintain an easily accessible communication history.
Most email clients are easy to use, but for peak optimization, you’ll likely need the advice of IT consultants who have experience with your software of choice. Contact outsourceIT if your business is in Virginia or the DC Metro Area, and our knowledgeable team will set up your email tools for maximum productivity and efficiency.
