Top 7 or 10 Tips |
10 E-mail Organization Tips
Who doesn't have issues with organizing their inbox!? I receive close to 600 e-mail each day due to the variety of activities and contacts I have online. Some I am truly interested in their content - most I am not. A big part of keeping your inbox and your e-mail organized is discipline. Yep, good ole' fashioned discipline! You need to make a consistent practice of checking your e-mail and accomplishing several tasks to keep ahead of the increased traffic of bits and bytes finding their way to your inbox. What are we to do? Let's get organized! 1. Put your DELETE button to work! If you do not recognize the sender, look at the SUBJECT: field. Are there funny characters, alpha-numeric gibberish or it just doesn't make sense? Delete! Don't fall for tricky SUBJECT: fields that say any number of enticing comments only someone you know would say: "You left your umbrella...", "They said it's free!", "Hey how is it going?", "You blocked my IM", "Meeting is Rescheduled", or the one almost everyone wants to open "About Your Tax Refund". None of these are from friends or folks you know or even companies you are doing business with. They are from spammers - the worst kind too - the ones who underestimate your intelligence by thinking these e-mail will be something you would take seriously. If you don't know the sender and the SUBJECT: field looks off, send them on their way to the trash! 2. Once you go through all your new e-mail and follow step #1 above, you are now ready to determine what to do with the e-mails that are left. Do you have several e-mail from the same party? Do you have e-mail from folks who e-mail you quite regularly? Do you have some e-mail that is personal business and others that are more serious and therefore, you probably need to keep a copy on hand? This is where filters come in. Filters are your friends! Filters, or Rules as they are called in Outlook, are what allow you to organize your e-mail on the download. Yes, as you download your e-mail it can go into e-mail folders setup for specific topics or contacts! You can have a "Mom" filter that sends all e-mail from dear old Mom right into your Mom folder. Set up filters to have e-mail from some of your hobby sites, go directly into their own folder. Your best friend can have his or her own folder. Another example is to have information from your financial institutions automatically end up in a folder specifically divided into further folders - Annuity, CDs, Stock, Bonds. The sky is the limit! A side benefit of filters is that if you organize your e-mail to go into their own folders on download - your inbox has less e-mail that you requested or were expecting leaving only the questionable e-mail for you to review. Filters only need be setup once and they are in place until you delete them. Get your filters tightly setup and you can literally find only e-mail from spammers are left in your inbox. One thing is clear about being online and e-mailing - it behooves you to become familiar and proficient with your tools. E-mail software being probably the most important. Check the HELP area or Web site of your e-mail software for further guidance on filters or rules. This is reading and skill building well worth the time when you realize how easily you can control your e-mail's organization moving forward. 3. Another use for your filters? As if filters are not already sounding like the best thing since sliced bread, you can use them to send certain e-mail right to the trash bypassing your inbox all together! You know, the e-mails for certain male enhancement products and adult sites - right to trash. Filters and rules can be used to not only send an e-mail to a certain folder by virtue of e-mail address, company or person's name, they can be configured to find certain adult or offensive terms when listed in the SUBJECT: or BODY of an e-mail message to you can send them right to trash on the download - gotta love it! 4. Back to your inbox... We now have filters in place that organize your e-mail on the download so all the e-mail you requested and or are expecting, is in their appropriate folders for you to read at your convenience. Now your inbox should only have the orphan e-mail with nowhere to go. After following the suggestions in #1 above, begin to review your e-mail. If you run into an e-mail that is from a new mailing list you've subscribed to and plan on getting regular e-mail from, stop right there and make a folder and filter to accommodate these future e-mail. Set up a filter to look for something specific to that e-mail (usually e-mail address works best) and moving forward, on the download, those e-mails will go right into their own folder. Do this for any e-mail topic or contact you plan to receive e-mail from on a regular basis. 5. Read and delete. Read your e-mail as time permits and then delete any e-mail that doesn't have content worth keeping for future reference. Then, empty your trash daily. Loads of e-mail files use a ton of your system's resources. Not keeping copies of e-mail you really will never need in the future helps remove the clutter and drain on system resources. 6. When reading your e-mail you can prioritize when you want to address them. Many e-mail programs allow you to label e-mail by color when viewing a particular folder. For example you could have labels that at a glance tell you how you have prioritized your tasks. Say, red for urgent, blue for later, yellow for maybe. By opening that specific e-mail box you know, at a glance, which e-mail you have set to address right away and which you can get to as time permits. 7. Empty your trash daily but before emptying your trash, you want to be sure to take a quick look-see just in case any of your filters inadvertently picked up on some terms that were included in e-mail that you possibly didn't want to trash. This happens all the time! A quick once-over before deleting your trash will ensure legitimate e-mail you do want to see didn't get lost in the shuffle. 8. Create a folder called Follow-Up, Interesting or To Do. This is where you will file some of the e-mail from your inbox that peaked your interest that you would like to review in more detail but just don't have the time. Then, when time permits you can go to that folder and check into the e-mails worth keeping. Once you review them, though, either send them to another folder for keeps or send them to trash. 9. To avoid e-mail backup, be sure your inbox is cleared each day. Move e-mail to trash, a specific folder or your "To Do" folder, and then empty the trash. If e-mail is older than 90 days in your "To Do" folder - send them off to trash as most likely the information or offer is no longer current. By doing so each day, you keep your inbox clear and your e-mail much more organized. 10. What about all these folders? Have as many folders as you need to be organized and call them whatever will intuitively work for you with a glance. This system is different and unique to each and every user - make sure you use terms and a system that works for you. The above 10 tips when practiced daily will make the world of difference in keeping your inbox organized and clutter free. Just a bit of discipline is all it takes to be on the road to less time spent dealing with e-mail which frees you up to do other important things... like responding to e-mail. About the Author:
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Media Training: Seven Ways to Instantly Improve Your Media Interviewing Skills Imagine if you were going to address a stadium full of people. You'd probably spend hours (if not days or weeks) agonizing over every word you were going to say. How To Use The Power Of Focus To Build Massive Momentum In Your Business Getting focused on what you want to achieve and creating an action plan for making it happen are critical skills for you to master.As bestselling author Napolean Hill once said, "Every well-built house started with a definite plan in the form of blueprints. Top 7 Ways to Profit from Foreign Trade Here are seven excellent ways to earn income from international trade.1. How to Hold An Extremely Successful Event - 10 Tips Every event you hold can be extremely successful. Apply these 10 tips to guarantee a memorable event for everyone who attends. 10 Steps for Business Owners to Take if They Are a Victim of Identity Theft Be aware that 40 million crooks obtained credit card numbers this past year, "Be Suspicious". Also be aware that most identify theft is not reported, especially when it involves family members, so the statistics are off. 10 Marketing Tips For Your Business Here are a few ideas to get you started, all with low or no cost, which should especially help you in the early days of your business.This is by no means an exhaustive list, but is just a few ideas to start you off. Seven Steps to Achieving Your Dream "Vision is the spectacular that inspires us to carry out the mundane." -- Chris WidenerCan achievement be broken down into steps? Well, it isn't always that clean and easy, but I do know that those who achieve great things usually go through much of the same process, with many of the items listed below as part of that process. Seven Ways to Get the Most Out of the Next Training You Attend Sometime soon you will be attending some training. It may be a one hour tele-seminar, a one day class, professional conference, or a weekend retreat. 1 Step Program to Achieve All of Your Goals In Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen's original "Chicken Soup for the Soul," I am reminded of the short story titled "Another Check Mark On the List." This is a story about a 15-year-old boy named John who, on one rainy day, when it was too wet outside to play, he decided to write a list of goals. The Ten Best Kept Secrets For Protecting Your Business Property Against Theft 1. Locks and Padlocks - Locks on all outside entrances and inside security doors should be double cylinder deadbolts with removable collars. How To Finally Unlock Your True Potential And Discover The Secret To Lasting Success Did you know that there is one critical difference between average businesses and super-successful businesses?Many of the success experts who are quoted time and time again refer to this one common characteristic as the big differentiator between being mediocre and actually unlocking your true potential.Take a look at the following popular quotes and see if you can identify the common thread that ties them all together. Wealth Building Scams I have some good news and I have some bad news. First the good news. 10 Tips to Successfully Use Business Networking as a Marketing Strategy Networking is probably the best way to build a profitable business, or sales pipeline over the long term. Many of us understand the value of networking, but we don't always know the best way to go about it. Brainstorming! The Key To Wealth Advertising executive Alex F. Osborne first coined the word "brainstorming" in the early 1940's. The Top Ten Ways to Attract Buyers, Not Just Visitors to your Web Site Have you put a lot of effort, time, and money into your site and are frustrated with low sales? If you are like many professionals out there, you know your subject; you are excellent at your craft. You have a great service and maybe a great product to sell. 7 Things You Can Do To Weather The Lows Of A Business Cycle Hey, as hard as this may be for you to swallow, business online is no different than a business on Main Street in your home town or city. We have good times and we have slow times. My 7 Most Important Business Lessons Millions of people start new small businesses in the United States every day. Many fail at running a small business every day. Positioning Your Company for Debt Financing Positioning Your Company for Debt Financing:There was a time in the old days when going to the bank was the only way to get outside capital for your business. These days with the explosion of raising equity investment, many of the guidelines for running a company have been revolutionized. The Top 10 Reasons Businesses Succeed Only one of every 5 businesses makes it to its 5th year, and fewer still make it to 10 years. What do the successful businesses have in common?1. How To Move Your Business Online in 7 Steps So you have set up your company, fairly established and generating some sort of revenue. Why should you take the most important step of starting online?The online audience is massive - it's an information resource used by millions worldwide and continues to grow. |
home | site map | contact us |