Email Management Tips for Business Owners: What You Need to Know
Adobe surveyed 1,000 employees on their email usage. The results were surprising because people reported that they spend an average of 209 minutes a day on business email.
They also spend 143 minutes on personal email every day for a grand total of 352 minutes every single day.
We’re more comfortable communicating via email than by phone. If you want to give a status report, ask a question, or open a conversation, it’s done with email.
Everyone needs email management tips to handle the crush of emails to deal with on a daily basis. Think about the other things you could do if you just learned how to manage your email.
It impacts your productivity and stress levels each day. Don’t stress out over email anymore. Read these email management tips.
1. Organize Emails
One of the best organization tips is to use folders for your emails. There are emails that you need to save for future reference, such as invoices, project information, and receipts.
Create a folder for your main categories. Organize them by clients, topics, projects, or whatever system works for you.
Now, to take your email management to the next level, consider a specialized tool. If you’re looking for an easy and effective way do it, consider looking into how to manage your email lists with Simplelists or another similar service; using mailing lists and email management software can allow you to streamline your communication processes and ultimately improve efficiency.
2. Disable Email Notifications
There are apps and programs that send email, text, and push notifications. This can be a bit of overkill.
These notifications pull your attention and focus away from the important tasks you need to do each day. It doesn’t have to be that way.
You don’t need to know that someone you don’t know personally sent a tweet or posted a picture on Facebook. Disable as many of these notifications as you can.
3. Delete Emails Right Away
If you get more than 100 emails a day, they’ll build up over time. Most people manage email by scanning it, answering the most important ones, and leaving the rest.
Next thing you know, you have thousands of unread emails.
You could declare email bankruptcy and delete everything sitting in your inbox. The better email management option is to delete unnecessary emails once a day.
4. Set Email Boundaries
Do you feel like you have to answer every email immediately? You actually don’t.
There are other communication tools that are more effective for immediate answers. That should give you breathing room to manage your email on your schedule.
Set a few times during the course of the day to answer emails. Once in the morning, in the afternoon, and before you checkout for the day are good times to handle emails.
A mistake that small business owners make is that they offer unlimited email support to customers. They think it’s a benefit to customers, but it ends up being a drain on the business.
There are ways to offer email support without draining yourself. Some coaches go as far as to say to clients that they only check email twice a week.
You don’t have to be that drastic, but it’s a good idea to set boundaries and expectations with customers.
5. Use Filters
Some email programs have powerful filter tools so you can keep your inbox clean. You can create a filter by topic, sender, or even just a keyword.
You can create a filter for any email that has “unsubscribe” in it and send it to an email folder for promotional emails. That’s because any mass email has to have a way for people to unsubscribe to comply with SPAM laws.
One caveat is that if you send important emails right to folders, you might not see them. Filter the unimportant emails and leave the important ones in your inbox.
6. Create Email Templates
Do you find that you’re sending the same types of emails over and over again? You might have an email to welcome a new customer and another one to address a common question.
Rather than spending time typing everything out each time, create a template that you can use in these instances. Email programs like Gmail allow you to create an email and save it as a template.
When you need to send that email again, you bring up the template, customize it, and send it off. It’s a great way to save time and energy on email.
7. Automate Follow-ups
Most people give up after a single email. This is where sales get won and lost. Salespeople don’t want to seem bothersome, so they don’t follow up.
The thing to remember is that everyone’s inbox is unorganized and difficult to manage. Odds are, your email gets lost in the shuffle, and you need to send it to the top of the priority list.
You can set up a reminder to follow up in your email program. In Gmail, just go to Settings and scroll down to Nudges. It’ll give you a reminder to respond or follow up.
8. Unsubscribe From Lists
There are times when you sign up to an email list to get a discount or download a helpful guide. After a while, you get dozens of emails from these providers.
Their emails probably aren’t that interesting to you anymore. It’s not easier to just ignore the emails than to unsubscribe.
You need to be ruthless and get your email address off of as many lists as possible.
Easy Email Management Tips
You don’t need to spend hours dealing with emails. Cut down the amount of time you spend on email by following these email management tips.
Start by organizing your emails. Create folders and set up simple automations. Create templates and schedule follow-ups.
You’ll finally be more productive, know when you check your inbox and effectively manage your email. You can spend more time on marketing and blogging to build your business.
Check out the other articles on this site to help you save time and make money.