How often do you spend a full day going through your work email inbox, reading, and replying to emails? Dealing with never-ending messages that seemingly need replies can be quite frustrating. It can get to a point where you find yourself checking your work email every couple of minutes because you want to respond to customers as soon as possible.
This is not smart in the long run. Checking your inbox all day and replying to each and every piece of correspondence can be time-consuming and inefficient, to say the least. Read on for tips to better manage your business email.
1- Set a Specific Time To Check For Emails
Having a task that is continuously being done with no end in sight is draining. If left unscheduled, you will find yourself checking your emails all day, and even if you need to focus on other tasks, unread emails will always be in the back of your mind where you feel the need to go back and see if anything new was sent. Setting up specific working hours and days dedicated to checking and replying to emails helps you navigate your workload without having emails piling up on you. To maximize efficiency, check your email for new mail at a certain time daily, but dedicate specific days in your schedule to replying to emails that you could not reply to in the allotted daily time.
2- Do Not Procrastinate
When it comes to your business email, procrastinating will cause a complete mess of things. You will find yourself having to answer hundreds of emails. Not to mention, you might cost yourself opportunities and clients because you did not reply to their requests and inquiries within a suitable time frame. As mentioned before, this task will be a constant nag in the back of your mind, affecting all the other work you need to be doing.
3- Create Different Folders and Labels
Nowadays, it is very easy to navigate through your inbox, but you have to actually set it up correctly, or else you will feel lost and irritable trying to find mail that you have to reply to or want to read over. Setting up different folders and labels within your inbox ensure that you can sort all the messages you receive into different categories, including things that you need to follow up on, messages you already replied to, and ones that you need to reply to by a certain date.
4- Get Rid of Unwanted Promotional Material
To maximize productivity when perusing your business inbox, you need to make it a point to unsubscribe from any promotional material that is just taking up space in your inbox. If there are any newsletters or ads that keep popping up from certain websites that are taking over your inbox, you need to take action as soon as possible, if you do not want your inbox to be littered with tens of messages distracting you from actual work.
5- Create Reply Templates
When you have a business account, there are bound to be questions sent by potential clients or ones from your customer base that are similar in fashion and require the same reply. Instead of rewriting the same reply over and over again, or looking for old replies in your account so that you can copy and paste it as your reply, you can create various reply templates to help you out. Experts at CirrusInsight.com note that you can create one email template and send it to however many customers you want at once, or separately. This can save a lot of time, and using the right tools, you can ensure that each person you replied to believes receives a customized email. mass-email.
6- Prioritize Emails
Setting priorities is something that any person working in business needs to be familiar with. Not all mail is created equal; thus, not all mail needs to be treated with the same level of attention. You can prioritize your own messages by noting whether the message you just got needs to be replied to immediately or can wait until a later time in the week.
Mail that comes from important clients or that provides you with opportunities to further develop your business takes precedence over ordinary inquiries and requests that will not affect your business exponentially if left unanswered for one or two more days. During this step, you can begin sorting your mail into the above-mentioned folders so that you can reply accordingly.
7-Use Filters
Filters can be quite helpful if you want to find out how many emails you need to reply to as soon as possible and what can wait. Filters also help you find any previous correspondence with a certain customer so that you can reply accordingly. If a person has previously sent an email inquiring about an issue, you cannot possibly reply with the same template you have used when replying to a previous email with the same client.
These tips can prove to be quite crucial when it comes to keeping up with your business email. They might seem very simple; however, they do make a big difference if used consistently. Using these tips is going to ensure that you can increase productivity and decrease the stress that comes with constantly checking your inbox.
As someone who does ample work with email from day to day, I can’t agree enough with the tips here. I always find it best to scroll through my email each morning; if possible, I’ll do it once more before the day is out. Keeping a routine makes things easier.