Best Tips for Email Organization
Best Tips for Email Organization
Either you control your email or it controls you. Here are my best tips for email organization and keeping your inbox in control.
When I chat with people about what I do and how I help, when I mention keeping your email organized the same reaction of Hallelujah is heard.
Your inbox should be treated as a tool in your online business, it should not be where you spend a bulk of your time. Here are the best tips that I provide or implemented for email organization.
Labels and Filters
Setting up labels and filters is the first step to an organized inbox. In the past, I've created a number of labels, but I've scaled that back a bit. 98% of the time if you go looking for an email, likely you’ll search for a keyword or person before you go and look for it. If that’s not the case, how are you finding those emails? Searching is quick and easy.
Here are the best labels or folders that I’ve found to use:
- 0-Immediate
- 1-Action
- 2-Active
- 3-Hold
- Finance
- Finance/Payable
- Finance/Receivable
- Review
- Unscribe
Any specific folders that are needed in your business. Such as client or product folder.
Let's talk about labels or folders and the purpose they serve.
A Little Side Note
When you need a mindless activity use this time to unsubscribe to all those marketing emails that are no longer serving you. This not only helps you but also the conversion rates of the list you're opting out of. It's a win-win for you both.
1-Action
These are emails that require action by you but doesn’t require immediate action.
2-Active
These are emails for active projects that are getting a number of emails. I would suggest creating a filter to put them directly in this folder. The filter can be on an email address or subject.
3-Hold
These are emails for meetings, travel, reservations, activities. Generally anything with a date or an agenda that will no longer be needed after the event has taken place.
Finance
The actual Finance folder is used to hold the emails. Once the email has been completed it can be moved to either the payable or receivable sub-label/folder pending what it is.
Review
These are emails that do not have a timeframe as to when they need to be reviewed. This is where I put the marketing emails that I like to skim and archive for reference later.
Unsubscribe
This folder can either be manually added to or a filter can be created. I’ve done it both ways, personally, I prefer to manually add these when I’m sorting through my emails because some of the marketing emails will be added to my review folder to be skimmed later.
Inbox Applications
You have options, options and more options when it comes to inbox applications. I can’t even remember all the inbox applications I’ve tried out. These days I use mostly Spark, however, Kiwi is a very close second. Do not be scared to try different applications, you need to figure out what works for you. You have so, so many possibilities!
Why I like Spark
I like Spark because it has an app for my iPhone, I can pin emails, save canned responses, I can schedule emails, and I can have them come back into my inbox. They also have a paid option for teams to chat back and forth on emails. One other feature that I like is Quick Reply this option allows me to set up canned responses that I can send with a click of the mouse. For example, that allows me to send a quick email to let my customer know that I’ve got the email and will take a look at the request. It is handy dandy.
Why Kiwi
Kiwi brings your Gmail to your desktop and if you have multiple Gmail accounts they receive tabs to jump back and forth with. With kiwi, you can use Boomerang. This will allow you to set up emails to be sent at a later time or to snooze a email to review later.
Get out of your inbox
As an online business owner, it’s important that you get out of your inbox. Your work should not be driven by the emails that you receive. It’s best to block time to work on your email. I check mine twice per day. About mid-morning and at the end of the day when I’m looking at planning the following work day. My emails are sorted when I open up my inbox to the appropriate project. Everything gets filed in the correct label or folder so that it is completed in the correct time block.
It is possible to get your inbox to zero, it just takes a bit of time to clear out the clutter. Once you have the system in place email is so much more.