15 Must-Know Strategies for Effective Email Management

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  • Published on
    September 29th, 2015
  • Updated on
    June 16, 2023
  • Read Time
    8 minutes

With the excessive use of emails in today’s world, its management has become a matter of deep concern for all of us. Emails are commonly used for everything related to communication and collaboration at work. Be it an individual or an organization, we are heavily dependent on emails to communicate with our friends, family members, office colleagues, and business clients.

I’m sharing here 15 Must-Know things for managing your emails effectively. I hope the tricks would be useful for you and all the readers out there. If you are getting irritated handling this unmanaged Email Tool, then this post is going to be a boon to you. Read it out and know effective email management strategies to imply.

15 Effective Email Management Techniques

Below are the 15 things you can consider to manage emails in a Striking Manner:

#1 Deal With In a Routine Way

Try to respond immediately or once a day, don’t make a pile of mails. We often leave the emails to process for later and it creates a jumble of them which becomes harder and tiring to handle. So, try to process the emails at least once a day. You can schedule it for the morning or evening. I prefer the evening time because most of the people and organizations are done sending them by office time.

#2 Keywords are Best to Filter Emails

Searching an email in an untidy inbox is quite difficult. So, try keywords. You can simply look for the keywords mentioned in subjects or body of emails. Emails addresses can also be used to filter emails. Simply use the search box and hit the keyword which can relate or part of that email and it will sort out all the emails related to that keyword. Then, you can simply look for the email you want.

#3 Find Your Blessing Days to Reply

Most of the corp[orate community use this method. They select 3 days of the week and just dig their inbox on these blessed days. It doesn’t mean that you don’t reply to emails on the other days. You just dig your inbox hard on these blessed days. It keeps your Inbox organized and you manage emails in a better way. If you are operating B2B then Tuesday and Thursday are said to be the best response day of the week.

#4 OHIO Is The Best Strategy

OHIO is the best way to increase efficiency. OHIO stands for Only Handle It Once. As the name suggests, you should open the mail for a single time and analyze its content line by line. Think before the response for that email and then respond. It saves time and effort by opening an email for a single time and taking the appropriate action in a single go. No need to open an email again and again.

#5 Analyze Before You Respond

Most of the time, we take action in a hurry which is not good. It is a good practice to give a full read to the content of the email and analyzing the action required for that mail. Then reply to the email in an appropriate manner and with full description. Your response should be intuitive and compact because people skip lengthy content. So, try to respond in fewer words and intuitive manner for effective email management.

#6 You Don’t Need to Reply Every Email

If you are handling a website, blog or posting content online then you better know this situation. People or your following can fill your inboxes with “Thank you” messages or “great work” texts which are not supposed to be replied. It can take a whole day to reply to each and every email that comes to your inbox. So try to reply to specific emails that are important and need immediate responses. This increases your productivity by reducing the time you spent replying to each email.

#7 Canned Response Means Faster Replies

Canned replies or templates can also be used for responding quickly. If you receive many emails that are supposed to respond the same way then it is beneficial to create templates of those replies or responses. So, whenever an email belonging to a similar response type comes, you just click on that canned response and reply in no time. This can save a lot of effort and time which it will take to type the same message for each similar type of email.

#8 Categories Them Accordingly

Categorizing your emails can help you to organize your emails in a good way. You can create folders to store emails of similar type. Categorizing your emails can help you to manage emails. You can also create sub-categories if any email is a subsidiary part of any email class type. In easy words, you can label your emails and set the email client to automatically archive them. This lets you prioritize your emails as well.

#9 Reply and Archive

Keeping all the received emails in your inbox can make the storage full. So try to read them and then archive them. You can also delete the emails that are of no use. Doing this, you save your mailbox space and the hassle that a humongous mailbox can create. So. always follow Read, Analyze, Reply and Archive strategy. This will help you to make your inbox clean and spacious.

#10 Send Fewer Receive Fewer

You send less, you receive less, this applies to emails as well. The more you send the more you receive. So try to send fewer and important emails and you’ll get fewer emails in response. It will save your time and effort to read all those inessential emails that you will get in response.

#11 Unsubscribe Inessential Letters

Most of the users face this issue. Our mailboxes get filled with unwanted newsletters, feeds and promotional emails that are not essential. These are filling our mailboxes because we have subscribed to these letters. If you found any irrelevant or inessential email then just unsubscribe to that feeds or newsletters to save space and make the mailbox clean. If you are deleting emails from a specific sender again and again then its a sign to remove the subscription of that letter or feed.

#12 Long Shoving is Not a Good Deal

People spend so much time digging deep into their mailboxes. Try to limit the time you spend shoving your mailbox. Give a specific and short window in your schedule to read, reply and filter only relevant emails. Don’t give too much time to your mailbox, just focus on the relevant and essential emails. There is one more thing you should keep in your mind that you don’t need to give a long reply just because someone has written a long email. Try to respond in fewer and intuitive words.

#13 Separate Your Work Mail-Flow

Many of us make mistakes by dropping personal and work mail-flow into a single mailbox. This creates complexity because these are two different things and they are not supposed to mix in a single mailbox. So, try to separate them by using two different mail-ids, each for a specific purpose. This will make it easier to handle each type of email. This is a good strategy for effective email management that you can opt for.

#14 Kill the Notifications and Stay Focused

It becomes destructive when a notification pops up. It distracts you from your work and you lose focus. So, try to turn off all the notifications you receive for the time when you need to focus on your work. This will make you concentrated on your work and you will become more productive. It doesn’t mean that you turn off the notifications for the whole day. You have to follow Rule#1 Deal With in Routine Manner as well.

#15 Pick Up the Phone and Drop the Mail..Yes!

The best way to save time and keep the misunderstandings away is by responding using your phone. It might sound or feel strange that someone has asked you about any issue in an email and you are trying to resolve it over the phone. But, believe me, a real-life conversation is far better than any misconception or misunderstanding. It becomes more efficient and the evaluation of that problem also becomes easy. So, don’t be shy to pick up your phone.

Recommended to read: Easy Outlook Emails Management Methods

Sum-Up

It is not that difficult to maintain the emails efficiently if you follow or imply these strategies. Following these 15 strategies for effective email management can really give you a new and efficient way to handle your emails. They are easy to apply and it will take less time to form your shaggy mailbox into a maintained & well-organized mailbox. I hope, it will help you out.

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