10 Tips To Increase Your Email Efficiency

10 Tips To Increase Your Email Efficiency Imagine its 9am Monday morning. Youve just got into work and decide to dedicate your first daily actions to sorting your inbox, clearing the weekends messages and setting yourself up for the week ahead. But by the time you glance up, its 11am youve fallen victim to the productivity trap of inefficient emailing once again. Frustrating and draining, its easy to feel overwhelmed so just how can you boost your email efficiency and cope? 1. Know your way around your inbox Though most business communication relies on email in one form or another, a surprising number of professionals are ignorant of relatively basic inbox management features. From knowing how to set out-of-office responses, establish filters to segment incoming mail, or create folders to archive important mail chains, automated management is the first step towards breaking time-management problems into smaller, simpler chunks. 2. Organise, organise, organise Just as a tidy room equals a tidy mind, a well-managed inbox equals a well-managed schedule. Preventing late, missed and ineffective communications, forming a few basic organisational habits will increase response efficiency, productivity and professionalism. As a starting point, you should make the most of automatic filters, file emails into relevant folders (say, colleagues or clients for search and archive simplicity), make sure contact lists are organised and regularly updated, and synch your inbox with your calendar to easily create events, set reminders and remember tasks. Dont be afraid to delete the things you dont need, and file the things you do it will save much more time and mail space! 3. Monitor for mail mistakes Once youre making the most of email features and are efficiently organised, theres no excuse for shoddy messaging. Showing a mastery of the basics of business email etiquette, double checking for error doesnt take much, but increases the professionalism of communications tenfold, saving hours of time and confusion in re-sent corrections. Before sending, always double check listed recipients (and their inclusion as Bcc or Cc), include a clear, concise subject header, and ensure any attachments fit to yours, and your recipients file upload limits. 4. Keep content concise and clear Efficient emailing garners responses. So to get those responses, consider your audience. Busy professionals will have their own inboxes to manage, so keep mail short, polite, clear and thoroughly proofread to make an impression and get your point across. Most inboxes will do this automatically, but when creating new and lengthy messages, always save the draft. That way, if you go offline or your computer crashes, you wont have wasted thought, effort, or time. 5.Make sure your signatures up-to-date Your email signature forms your virtual personality, giving message recipients a first-impression of who you are. Because of this, professionals should think of signatures like business cards with clear personal and company name/branding, contact details, and social network information/ links. Try not to have too many images, and keep it short for viewing ease on tablets and phones. An effective signature signals capability and inspires trust, so make sure yours is neat, short and sweet, and encourages tweets! 6. Know when to use other formats If youre really overloaded, spend hours waiting for responses and find usual management strategies are ineffective, ask yourself: Is email really the best medium for what Im trying to achieve? Knowing when to transcend to other communication forms picking up the phone, or speaking face-to-face, can avoid lengthy chains of unclear, slow mailing, save time and have greater impact as youre introducing personality and removing the anonymous nature of abstract mailing. 7. Post replies at the top, not the bottom of email chains Losing and confusing messages is a common problem of inefficient mail. But this isnt always a result of poor archiving sometimes its the fault of the sender. Mail is increasingly read on phones and tablets, so to avoid limiting visibility on these devices, and to make overall communications clearer, always post responses at the top of chain messages. This is where the most recent replies normally appear if your response is not immediately visible, it will be ignored. Busy people wont hunt for it! 8. Tackle email responses in chunks Taking a block approach to your inbox depends on the nature of your job and how integral email is to your hourly workload, but you may find increased productivity and efficiency in other tasks, plus higher quality replies if you are uninterrupted. If possible, focus on answering emails at set times, rather than dipping in and out, and half-concentrating. 9. Dont allow your inbox to become a to-do list graveyard Compiling outstanding actions in your inbox counts as creating inbox clutter. Instead of leaving outstanding tasks to fester messily, translate actions from email format into manageable to-dos, and keep your inbox clear. This will make incoming mail much easier to deal with and allow you to track, view and prioritise to-dos simply. Use Google tasks, reminders, project management sites, spreadsheets or even a simple notepad to collate and manage outstanding tasks. 10. Review your subscriptions Do you really need to be signed up to so many newsletter updates, e-casts and notifications? How much of your new mail is automated product promotion that you habitually skip anyway? Regularly invest in some dedicated de-clutter, unsubscribe time to keep your inbox free, relevant and manageable. Make sure you find a way to remove yourself from the subscription lists, or at the very least establish filters so that junk mail bypasses your immediate inbox to be dealt with when you have the time. Dont just delete these messages that wont solve the mail overload problem and youll still be wasting time in deleting them! Remember, great inbox management is the key to successful, productive emailing and reduced-stress environments. So find the time to increase your mail efficiency, and youll find much more time for the rest of your day!