
SMART WAYS, TIPS AND SOFTWARES FOR ORGANIZING YOUR EMAIL AND INBOXES!
Did you know that 121 emails are sent and received daily by the typical professional? Up to 28% of the workweek for the majority of people in the workforce is devoted to reading and replying to emails. Consequently, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that we are constantly barraged with emails, which causes us to work less effectively.You’ll have more opportunities for yourself and be able to generate output that has a more lasting impact if you give your email management process structure and organization. It takes a lot of time to manage emails. For more information, read the entire article!
Let’s look at some tried-and-true email inbox management tips/techniques.
Tips for Email and Inbox Management:
1. Schedule time for email on your calendar!
- As the average employee checks their email close to 74 times each day, it’s important to schedule a certain time each day to check your emails.
- That is a TON of work put into something that probably doesn’t require that much mental processing capacity.
- Nevertheless, while not being as intrusive as a phone conversation, emails cause far more stress.
- As working adults, we worry about them regularly, constantly check our email, and lose sight of what’s essential.
- That brings us to the simplest strategy, which is to designate a specific period of time each day to handle email.
You might finish this work right now or schedule a time to do it. It’s best to refrain from multitasking when checking your emails. That’s because it’s simpler to get everything done when you avoid distractions and maintain your focus is the best email inbox management tip.
KEEP IN MIND:
“If you clean some space and organize your emails, it will make your life a lot simpler.”
2. Create folders, categories, and labels!
- One method for simplifying email administration is organization. It is necessary to set up labels, folders, and categories.
- Keep in mind that there is no overarching rule that applies to the creation of categories.
- The individual, the emails they get, and the best manner for them to manage their messages will all determine the response.
- You may set up parent categories, create subcategories under them, and construct basic folders.
The trick is to categorize, prioritize, and aggregate emails into groups. For example, go to your inbox with Gmail and see the left sidebar option to accomplish this.
The “manage labels” option may be found under the “category” menu by one of the email inbox management tips. To start a new label, click this link. You may consider each label you create to be a folder. Please give it a name that is appropriate and simple to remember.
3. Touch It Once!
- The touch-it-once principle stresses making snap judgements while handling emails.
- It is also known as the Only Handle It Once (OHIO) technique.
- The argument being made here is that it is inefficient to return to an email over and over again.
- As a result, you give it one last touch, reply, save, and go on to the next email.
Although the “touch it once” guideline may seem straightforward, it can be difficult to put into practice when it comes to email since we frequently put off replying to emails.
You won’t constantly be worried about unanswered emails, which can greatly decrease productivity.
4. Stick to the one-minute rule!
By following the one-minute rule, you may better manage your time and emails. That implies that if answering an email only takes a minute, do it right away. Doing this prevents you from holding onto emails that may be viewed, replied to, and saved right away. By doing this, your inbox will be emptied more quickly.
As a variation on this, David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, developed the two-minute rule.
“The fundamental principle remains the same: if answering an email would only take two minutes, do it right away.”
5. Read Bottom Up, Write Top Down!
“Read emails in reverse chronological order by thread, then reply to them in the same order”, As said by Atish Davda:
This subtle trick takes advantage of the fact that some people react to emails right away, sometimes starting a “tennis match” of emails that consumes the hour you set aside to go through your whole inbox and makes you feel behind. You’re less likely to become bogged down in back-and-forth emails and more likely to stay on task if you react to emails in chronological order.
6. Understanding When To Send Emails!
Email management is a function of both the type and quantity of emails you send and receive.
- There is a famous maxim that says:
- “If you want fewer emails, send fewer emails.”
- The kind of job you conduct will determine whether or not you should submit them.
- Certain occupations need workers to spend most of their waking hours responding to emails.
- For instance, those who work in customer success roles routinely engage with existing clients. Also, the most popular way to accomplish this is by email.
- Be careful to maintain clear and concise communication in this type of position.
- Email would be suitable if you were only updating a customer.
7. Change your shared inboxes from group email accounts!
Group emails may become just as annoying and taxing as WhatsApp groups due to the rapid influx of new messages and the inability to assign emails to specific individuals or keep track of these responsibilities. You must be able to organize procedures and make emails that come in group inboxes simple to eliminate clutter and ensure that each team member is aware of the email they should be working on.
11 Practical Habits to Effectively Manage Your Email Inbox:

Spend no more than 15 minutes each day on email. According to Tonya Dalton, the founder of Inkwell Press and a productivity guru, reading emails periodically for 15 minutes at a time will help you be more productive. When you check your inbox in batches, you’ll be astonished at how many emails you can read and answer quickly, she claims. To know when your allotted 15 minutes have passed and it’s time to move on to other tasks, it’s important to set a timer.
- Allocate chunks of time for emails.
Productivity is eventually hampered by reading emails as they arrive in your inbox continually. Creating a schedule for jobs where regular interaction is required might not be practicable. But if you examine your work, you could discover you can set a time to check emails every 60 or 90 minutes.
- Use the drafts folder on purpose.
Open just the emails requiring your attention to create your to-do list. Only open or react to critical emails (such as those from your employer or on urgent tasks). Keep your computer’s reply window open, or leave the draft in the pending folder under drafts. Your task list is the stack of responses to manage email inbox. Instead of attempting to quickly go through a bigger volume of less important material, use your allotted email time to compose meaningful, persuasive answers. You may then set a goal of having an empty drafts folder rather than a spotlessly clean inbox.
- Batches of emails are received.
Use a program, such as the BatchedInbox plug-in for Gmail, which might save you from continual distraction if you can’t help but check every time you hear a ping. That is a simple approach to handle the constant email bombardment in your inbox (and reduce distractions). Your emails are grouped into waves and only distributed to you at the times you choose.
- Just unsubscribe
Deleting meaningless emails and sales notifications one at a time gives the impression of activity, but sorting through the same junk week after week makes email inefficiency worse. According to Dalton, all newsletters are required by law to contain an unsubscribe option. “Please take the time to click that link and submit your request to unsubscribe. The return on this 10-second effort will be a less cluttered inbox.”
- Activate the preview function.
If your email application offers a preview function, use it (most of them do). That will enable you to quickly discard unwanted messages by allowing you to quickly view the first few lines of a message in a separate window rather than having to read the full message. Also, it lessens the likelihood of opening mail containing a virus.
- Just touch emails once, and follow the “Five D’s.”
Dalton advises using the 5 D’s (do, delegate, delete, defer, and designate) to take action as soon as you open a message. Do the emails that can be completed in under two minutes right now, and assign those that need someone else to take action. Defer notifications that take more than two minutes of activity, and immediately unsubscribe from and discard any messages that require no action. Last but not least, save emails with important information to a unique folder so you can find them more quickly in the future.
- Assemble folders!
According to Peggy Duncan, a personal productivity expert in Atlanta, finding what you need might be challenging if you use your inbox as default storage since it soon turns into a digital rubbish drawer. Well, you can manually organize messages into folders, but it’s best to set up automated filters that send messages straight to the folders you like.
- Create a ready-made answer.
Dalton suggests drafting a basic scripted answer that you may tweak and customize with each email response if you receive several messages with the same demands.
To simply auto-fill the content of your emails, she advises saving the default response as one of your email signatures. Ingenious, yes? Just remember to adjust for the receiver and situation!
- To sort mail, create an alias account.
You may establish alias accounts that all sync to one inbox on several email services, including Google, to manage email inbox. Dalton responds that when asked how she arranges invoices and other important financial records, “I set up my alias accounts to feed into a single folder. When I set aside time on Friday morning to get down and organize all of my money, I don’t respond to any of those emails.
- Never respond!
It’s been said there. Our guidance extends beyond handling the obvious junk mail, and it goes without saying that we do not support ghosting your boss.
We’re referring to the message sent by your coworker who is seated two desks away. How do you practice this type of thought without coming out rude? By being more concerned with your time than other people’s time?
“There’s no reason I should answer to folks simply because they contact me,” is a good slogan to repeat to yourself.
- Reconsider your connection with your email inbox.
That may not be the best advice for everyone, but there is something very pleasant for many individuals about closing and beginning each day with a clear inbox. Yet, this expectation may be unreasonable and even oppressive for you. Pressing delete, delete, delete may be pleasurable or appear to be productive, but why bother? “Are you doing it because it makes you feel good, or because it’s genuinely useful?” he asks.
What precisely is Email Management Software?
Email management software for email inbox organization is a program that assists you in managing, sorting, organizing, and sending emails. In general, email management software focuses on a few key areas:
Received email – Tools in this area are mostly concerned with managing incoming emails from your target audience, including customers, clients, students, patients, sales leads, or staff from different departments. These technologies are mostly intended for one-on-one encounters.
Bulk email — The tools in this category are mostly used to send emails. These are tools for one-to-many communication. You also can examine information like open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics that a solution focused on received emails would not.
Personal email — The tools in this category are mostly concerned with managing one’s email inbox. They may assist you in automating sorting and sending and even unsubscribing from particular emails to make managing your inbox easier.
Top 6 Organizational Email and Inbox Management Soft-wares:
Help Scout: The best email management program for small and medium-sized businesses for email inbox organization.
Help Scout software for managing emails was created expressly to assist teams in doing so.
Tools:
- Private notes
- Collision
- Detection
- Workflows
- Saved Profiles
- Customer Profiles
- Docs
- Build out a knowledge base
- Beacon
- Live Chat
- In-app Messaging
SaneBox: SaneBox is among the best we’ve come across. As emails arrive in your inbox, they are automatically sorted by their sophisticated AI, which has learned your unique email habits.
Tools:
- Lower-priority messages are transferred to a different folder, while messages with a higher priority are shown in your main inbox.
Features :
- SaneNoReplies
- Do Not Disturb
Gmail: For good reason, Gmail is undoubtedly the most widely used email client.
Tools:
- Customizable Interface
- Editor of Mail Composing
- Labels
- Filters
- Powerful Search Engine
Features:
- Snooze Messages
- Create Templates
- GoogleWorkplace
- Google Business Offering
SendinBlue: Sendinblue can assist you in reaching your consumers through their preferred methods of contact, such as SMS, WhatsApp messaging, and push notifications. Sendinblue also offers live chat, CRM, and transactional email tools apart from its marketing platform.
Front: On their more expensive services, Front also includes more sophisticated tools like analytics and automation and collaborative capabilities like internal comments, shared drafts, and message templates.
Missive: Missive offers connectors with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for people that need to handle other channels outside email (the latter for an additional fee). Also, you may manage SMS, WhatsApp, and live chat through your Missive workplace, although this will necessitate a third-party service subscription (Twilio, Dialpad, or Signal Wire).
HEADS UP:
“Employees may experience stress due to a crowded inbox and an unmanaged system.”
Conclusion:
The majority of us experience email overload. Although being a fantastic tool for communication, people frequently abuse it. Your productivity might be considerably increased when you handle it well. Moreover, make an effort to maintain a clutter-free inbox. Use folders like “Action,” “Waiting,” and “Archives” to categorize mail. When you check your mail, follow the two-minute rule and react as soon as possible to any email that can be read and answered in two minutes or less.
By using email inbox management tips, you may also cut down on the amount of mail you get by requesting that others send you fewer letters and by promoting efficient email and organizational techniques inside your company.
Start by checking and processing email only at specific times of the day to regain control over your inbox. If the delayed answer worries you, tell them you don’t always check your email.