Tired of sifting through hundreds of emails in your work email inbox to retrieve important information? Adopting email management best practices can help.
An average professional receives approx 304 emails/week. In such a case, keeping your inbox organized for easy data retrieval without disrupting focus on critical tasks is challenging.
Hence, our email management best practices at work to flush out all the disorganization and mess from your inbox. Let’s explore!
Consider investing in email management solutions that offer AI-driven email sorting and automations, saving you hours. Remember to establish clear email management best practices at work so employees don’t aim to respond immediately every time or spend more time than required on emails.
19 Best Business Email Management Practices and Tips
Managing emails well ensures focus on critical business tasks without getting distracted by incoming emails and lets you organize your Gmail inbox. To help you out, we’ve listed 19 business email management tips at work –
1. Schedule dedicated email time
Setting dedicated time for your emails is non-negotiable because unattended emails create the stress of missing out on important messages. To relieve this, you might spend all day checking emails and lose focus on critical tasks.
Avoid this by assigning time blocks for emails. During this time, avoid multitasking to check emails quickly and silence phone notifications to eliminate distractions.
While scrolling through your inbox, you may find old, unread emails that don’t make sense to reply to. In fact, 59% of Americans say that most of the emails they receive are not useful. They are just eating space, and it’s better to delete them. You must delete whatever you don’t need or won’t reply ever.
3. Organize with labels, folders, and categories
Creating Gmail labels, folders, and categories can help you manage emails easily. To do this, open the left sidebar in your Gmail inbox, find the categories option, and tap on Create New Label under the manage label button. Assign search-friendly names and colors to your labels to find the desired email in a few clicks.
4. Touch it once
The touch-it-once principle refers to the idea of opening an email, taking immediate action, and moving on to another email. This saves you from draining hours revisiting the same emails multiple times. If you’re unable to reply instantly, flag it and handle it later.
5. Follow the 1-minute rule
The one-minute rule propagates the idea that when you can respond to an email in a minute, you must just do it immediately. This helps you manage and control your emails and time efficiently by preventing you from sitting with an email without taking action for hours. Doing so also clears your inbox quickly.
: Distribution List vs. Shared Mailbox: Which Is Best for Your Business6. Read from top to bottom, write from bottom to top
Here, the idea is to read your emails in reverse chronological order and answer them in chronological order. The concept behind this is that the topmost emails are the latest. If you reply immediately, the sender might be available, which might end up in a long conversation. This will eat up the hour you’ve set aside for emails.
Group email accounts like info@<companyname[dot]com> are a hassle to manage. Why? Because such group accounts receive a huge influx of emails that may not be relevant to every group member.
Avoid this by streamlining the group emails with Gmail shared inboxes. It lets you manage support shared inboxes from your Gmail inbox and assign emails as tasks to team members without using forwards.
8. Prioritize emails with flags or SLAs
There are some emails that you cannot reply to instantly because they need a well-framed and in-depth response. You must flag them with appear on top or mark unread settings so they don’t get lost amidst the latest mails and you can easily come back to them when ready.
Under SLA, you can prioritize inbound emails based on pre-set rules. For instance, set a trigger to auto-identify and flag emails from crucial customers or clients so you can respond to them promptly.
9. Unsubscribe or “mass unsubscribe”
You often unintentionally agree to receive promotional emails while signing up for a platform, adding to the mess in your inbox. It’s best to unsubscribe to all emails that you often archive or delete and no longer want to receive.
If such emails are high in number, opt for mass unsubscribing with email management tools like Unroll[dot]me or Clean Email. These email management software display a list of all your subscriptions, which you can unsubscribe instantly.
10. Set up default responses
Customers often ask questions like service pricing or how to use a tool, and typing the same replies is time-consuming. Get rid of this by setting up default responses. Create broad categories of standard responses that you usually send. When needed, customize canned responses with names or information and send them.
11. Use filters to direct emails
Setting up filters to direct emails helps you automatically handle emails as per your requirements–send to a specific folder or trash. Leverage this feature by heading to your email inbox and tapping on the down arrow beside the search box.
Now, simply enter your custom search criteria and tap on Create Filter in the bottom right corner. Finally, choose the action you’d like to take with the filtered emails.
: How to Write An Automated Email Response: Tips & Examples12. Leverage multiple inboxes
Multiple inboxes are the sub-inbox under the primary inbox that you can create based on email types, topics, and clients. To leverage this, tap on the top right corner of the main inbox and select the settings option. Next, select the inbox option, search for multiple inboxes, and set the desired filters to create multiple inboxes.
13. Pause incoming emails
Sometimes, it’s so overwhelming to deal with a huge number of emails that you do not want to deal with them immediately. In such cases, you can take control of when you receive emails by pausing incoming emails from the selected sources via email management systems.
The best email management software disappears specific emails from your inbox until you need them.
Email about social media alerts is extremely distracting and does not need your attention instantly. They only add to the unread email heap and workplace distractions. In fact, American businesses lose a whopping $650 billion/year due to workplace distractions.
So, it’s better to turn off Gmail or Outlook inbox notifications for all your social media accounts. This will also keep your inbox cleaner and more organized.
15. Address group emails immediately
Handling group emails immediately means setting filters to assign emails to relevant folders that you can later go through. This will also prevent unimportant emails or colleague birthday notifications from piling up in your inbox. As a result, your inbox will remain organized, and you’ll never waste time sorting emails.
16. Schedule regular inbox cleanup
Your inbox fills up with emails with passing days and weeks, which may lead to missing important emails. Avoid cluttering your email inbox by sparing a few minutes daily to clean up your inbox. If you cannot remember this among the other tasks, set up a calendar reminder for the same.
17. Use keyboard shortcuts
Gmail keyboard shortcuts help you perform the required task quickly, adding to your overall productivity. Leverage these shortcuts by tapping on the settings option in the top right corner and enabling the keyboard shortcuts in the general tab. Some of the common shortcuts are Ctrl+C for a new compose window and Ctrl+S to start an email.
: Omnichannel Messaging Inbox Platform18. Manage multiple email accounts
If you own one email account, you’re bound to receive personal and work emails in the same inbox. This will inevitably clutter your inbox and increase the chances of missing critical work emails. That’s why we recommend you manage multiple email accounts based on your usage.
For instance, one for sign-ups, others for email marketing campaigns (marketing emails), and another for customer support.
19. Disable email notifications
Email notifications are a major cause of productivity loss because we tend to check emails as soon as we receive a notification, setting aside the ongoing task. That’s why you must turn off your email notifications. Doing so gives you control of when you want to check your emails and you’ll do it only when necessary.
Start Managing Business Email Inboxes with ControlHippo
In a business setting, often, multiple users work on the same email. This only leads to more mess, missed emails, double replies, lack of accountability, and miscommunication. But not anymore! We have a solution–a shared business email inbox, by robust email management solution like ControlHippo.
Here’s how the best email management tool, ControlHippo’s shared email inbox, adds to better management –
- Share emails with colleagues by assigning them without forwarding emails and adding inbox clutter.
- Offers a full history of email threads to eliminate missed or double replies to emails.
- Add statuses for emails like open, closed, and pending so everyone knows about the email’s progress. No need to go through each email to stay updated, saving time.
- Lets you manage company email from your inbox, eliminating the need to drain time on going through emails that don’t belong to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Email management refers to the process of organizing, prioritizing, and handling emails to enhance employees’ efficiency and productivity. It covers email inbox management best practices, managing inbound emails for easy retrieval, and responding to emails quickly.
Some of the best ways to manage emails are setting time to respond to emails, adopting an email management tool to automate tedious tasks, using the 4 D method (delete, delegate, do, defer), applying email management strategies, and enabling filters to automatically sort inbound emails.
The 4 Ds of email management are–delete (unimportant emails immediately), delegate (emails to the relevant person via the right email management software), do (answer critical emails immediately), and defer (emails that require more time to frame).
Email management is important because it keeps your inbox organized and ensures you don’t spend hours on emails, adding to your productivity. This can be best done with an email management system.
Updated : August 2, 2024
Naina Khare is an experienced content writer specializing in business communication solutions. Her expertise in omnichannel communication shines through in her clear, engaging content. Naina’s writing helps businesses navigate and enhance their communication strategies, making complex concepts more accessible.
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