Are you managing your company email to the best of your abilities? Sometimes communication can get lost in translation, or your inbox is full, and you’re not sure how to respond to every message. You end up wasting time at work and falling behind on your projects.
The good news is that you don’t have to respond to all those emails. Most are irrelevant, and there’s a more efficient way to handle them at work, like using an email organization app. Optimize email for your company by having all your accounts in one place, stopping email overload, and securing your privacy.
Let us delve into why you should improve email management for your company.
Why Should You Implement Better Email Optimization?
There are quite a few compelling reasons for you to create better usage of email. It can be quite a waste of time and money. On average, employees spend 28% of their time reading emails each week.
You could spend better time elsewhere when it comes to productivity. Of course, some email responses have a higher urgency for a reply while others do not.
Without the proper use of email, you can quickly run into these issues:
- Wasting time opening hundreds of messages
- Reading emails that are irrelevant to your job
- Using email during personal time
- Distracting yourself from getting other work done
- Misunderstanding communication in the message
Managing Group Emails
Your team may have a shared company email that everyone receives. It probably looks something like contactus@company.com. Your whole team has to read these messages and decide what to do with them.
Emails like this may not be relevant to everyone on the team unless the message is directly related to all employees. Still, they read them, and it ends up wasting people’s time. The time that gets wasted can add up very quickly. What’s the solution to managing group emails?
Shared inboxes are the best way to handle this issue. One team member can manage company email to show that someone has already replied to a customer request. This way, everyone can see which emails are unread and which ones have a reply. Your entire team can avoid duplicate responses altogether.
If you’re looking for an easy shared inbox solution, Gmail and Outlook provide these options.
Establishing Specific Times for Emails
Are you constantly checking your inbox throughout the day? This means your other tasks are getting disrupted, and you aren’t focusing on what’s most important. Plus, those emails you’re constantly reading most likely have no relevance to you.
To avoid distractions like this, consider turning off your notifications. You can set appropriate times for when you can check your inbox. For instance, many people like to spend 15 minutes two to three times a day reading and responding to messages.
Now that you have a set schedule for checking email, you’re less likely to disrupt your day.
Writing Guidelines for Emails
About 300 billion emails are sent daily, yet many people tend to write them poorly. Messages with multiple paragraphs can be difficult to read. Instead of writing in large blocks of text, your team can send more concise emails.
Give your team a rundown of how to write better emails so you can be sure everyone is on the same page. It makes things more efficient and prevents any miscommunication from the sender.
Here are a few ways you and your team can write better emails:
- Remove fluff or filler words like “just checking in”
- Shorten phrases as much as possible
- Use bullet points whenever necessary
- Summarize longer emails for people who only need a quick overview
Create a Call to Action
There’s always a chance for miscommunication to occur. That’s why it’s essential to be clear about what you need the recipient to do. It helps to create a subject line with an action required and an estimated time along with it. This way, there’s no confusion about any expectations.
When you create a call to action in the subject line, your recipients will understand when a task is due.
Stick to One Email Thread
If you have a party included on the same email thread, things can get lost in translation with separate replies. Think about how everyone needs to be on the same page, especially if it concerns a project. If you respond with a follow-up question in a separate email, others in that group might need to know the answer.
Plus, separate emails can fill up the recipient’s inbox fast. The best approach to this is to adhere to the same email thread. This way, everyone can refer back to the same information seamlessly.
However, if your reply is entirely off-topic, a separate email is more appropriate.
Declutter Your Inbox
There are many ways to keep your inbox neat. If you get mass amounts of emails daily, then you know this can be overwhelming. The best method to manage this is to keep your inbox organized.
Block a specific time out of your day and give yourself 10-15 minutes to clean out your inbox.
Here are a few methods to keeping your inbox organized:
- Avoid wasting too much time on individual emails
- Archive messages that don’t require a response
- Snooze emails when you’re not sure how to reply at that moment
- Answer emails that need a reply
You should also delete messages whenever possible. Less is always better. However, if it’s an email you can’t delete, use folders and labels to keep things tidy.
You can create separate folders for designated emails. For example, a message waiting for your response can go into a folder labeled “waiting.” Send personal or social messages to a folder labeled “social.” When you keep your inbox fresh, you make your work life better.
Optimize Your Work Emails Efficiently
Email is an excellent tool for business and communication when used correctly. When you make the right impact, you can get more projects done and communicate effectively.
Unfortunately, poor email management can be a huge time waster and add costs to your business. Take advantage of optimizing your email today so you can work better tomorrow.
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