As someone who works remotely for a good portion of my day, e-mail communication has become an integral and indispensable part of how I do business, and is much easier than sitting in on multiple phone calls. The downfall of this is how easily my inbox can become inundated with information, some of which is critically important in how to do business, and others, not so much. You don’t want to have to scour your e-mail for an essential message because it wastes both time and money.
The upside is that there are some simple techniques you can implement, and applications you can use in order to manage your inbox and keep those emails under control. If you find yourself struggling with a filled, unorganized, inbox, here are 5 e-mail inbox management tools.
5. Sorting Using Folders and Labels
Before we get into any outside applications to help you manage your inbox, let’s start with the basics. One thing you can do is take a methodical approach each morning when you first check your e-mail. Something that I found helps me is to set up separate folders for common categories of e-mail you get regularly. I have a folder for each business I work for, then I have a separate folder for personal finances, one for my social life, etc. Take your new e-mails each day and sort them according to your life. If you want to go a step further you can assign e-mails tags, to break them down even further for easier searching in the future. I suggest using Gmail, as it’s become somewhat of an industry standard.
If you don’t have enough time to fully ready an e-mail, re-mark it as unread so you can come back to it later. This will aid you in making sure that you read critical updates.
4. CloudMagic
The usefulness of CloudMagic will depend on your industry, but if you use any of the tools that I’ve mentioned in previous articles like Evernote, Trello, and Mailchimp, CloudMagic will be a huge time saver, and will help manage and organize tasks in your inbox. With a seamless integration, it ensures that you can sync tasks from your other applications right in your Gmail, so you never have to leave that screen. Lastly, if you use visual social media like Instagram, Flickr, or Tumblr, it also has integration with that as well.
As people on the go, we should always have access to the internet, but as a city dweller myself, I realize that some places may not have a hotspot on every block. If you don’t always have access to wireless, or the capability to jump online because you’re traveling, Gmail Offline is a great addon that will help you organize your e-mail when you’re not online. Then, when you log back online it will sync up with what you did offline. A great tool for people who might have the time, but might not have the internet access.
Boomerang for Gmail is a lifesaver, and has a lot of other tools beyond just uncluttering your mailbox. Boomerang actually allows you to schedule e-mails to be sent later, and lets you to set up reminders if you never get a response from a specific e-mail. This will allow you to keep track of correspondence, which is really important if the project hinges on responses from people.
The management aspect of Boomerang entails a nifty tool that allows you to archive e-mails and then have them reappear at the top of your mailbox unread, when you need them. This will help unclutter your box with e-mails that might be important in a week or two, but don’t need to be taking up space now.
1. Unroll.me
If you are subscribed to many newsletters, daily deals, or updates, like so many of us are, this can amount to many unimportant e-mails per day. The problem is that some of these “spam” e-mails are things we actually want to read, but don’t want to take up space in our inbox. Say hello to Unroll.me, an awesome addon that allows you to unsubscribe to unwanted newsletters or junk mail in a single click.
What’s even better is that you can organize the ones that you actually want to read, whether it be from a political website or a fashion blog, and put that into one helpful e-mail a day called your daily rollup. Check it out if every other e-mail in your inbox is another daily offer.
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