I am sure you are like me and have several email accounts and lots of subscriptions that you subscribe to and it can often get overwhelming. So, as a very organized person, I thought I would share a few organization tips to help show you what I do so that maybe you can devise a system that works for you and maybe helps ease a little email pain.
- First, I love Outlook and no I am not being paid to promote them! However, it works really well for me because I have a junk email account that I use for catch all type things, my business email, another 2 emails for companies that I do outsource work for and then yet two others for my Juice Plus and Legal Shield part time gigs. So, yea, quite a bit of mail, but they all come into the same one program – Outlook. I don’t have to log into all those different accounts, they come to me. So, my point here is to have a place to house all of your emails.
- I have devised a file folder system in Outlook so all mail that after the email has been taken care of it gets filed in case I need to revisit it. I have a folder for each of my kids; my business and then a folder under AVB for all of my clients as well as a folder for prospecting; a folder for each of my outsource clients and then a folder for each of those clients under it; and then a SAVE folder which has an account (for all those registration, confirmation emails), house, school, ex and so on under there that I need to save for one reason or another. This leaves my inbox which only has action items in it.
- Another tip I do is to cc myself on everything. This way I know that I finished the conversation so I am waiting on the client’s response. Nothing like having to search through the inbox, trash, folders and sent files! Ugh. Once I receive my cc’d version, I would delete the old one, as it really isn’t necessary to have 2 emails that essentially say the same thing. Less clutter too!
- Ever read that subject line that says… “proposal” or “update” or something very generic. At a quick glance, who is it from, what is it about? When I reply to those emails, or start emails, I create a subject that has 2 things – the client’s name and the specific subject of the email. This way it will be easier to find an email about that client before it goes into the folder and then when searching for a topic, it will be easier to find.
- Outlook has some really great tools as well, like flags and categories. Flags are great in that you click tag and it will show up in another window (as long as it is set up) and serves as a visible reminder. Categories are limitless since they are customizable. I have created some that say, account info, reminder and follow-up, for example. I would mark these before I file them into one of the folders.
- So instead of having an email with my flight information for 3 months away sitting in my inbox, I mark it with a flag or with a reminder category and file it in SAVE. Your inbox is limited into what you can see at a glance so it is helpful to have only the more important actionable items there.
- Lastly, I like the tasks. You can create a task and set a pop-up window to remind you at a certain time. I have a task set up to call the attorney general about my ex, every month, but who could remember that every month? I set up a task I get a pop up when the time is due, plus, it show up with the flagged events in the To-Do Bar, if visible.
I could write on this stuff all day long, but didn’t want to put you to sleep. So, I hope these have been helpful tips to help your inbox be a little more organized and less overwhelming. I’d love to hear if you have certain tips that seem to work well for you as well.
Should you need specific help with organizing and optimizing your website, please do contact me, as I would love to help. Thanks!
~Kristen
Great tips. Organized email is the easiest, especially when you get an overwhelming amount of email each day!
Great advice on organization. The month reminder to call the Attorney General about your ex is likely particularly useful. Made me laugh!
Like that one huh? Yea, it just happens to have been in my to-do list…hence my mentioning of it! LOL
I also have several email accounts for various reasons. I do like the ability in Outlook and Gmail to have folders. Very helpful.
I used gmail for a prior company I worked for and made use of their folders as well!
Outlook has amazing capabilities and most people only know about 10% of them. I also CC myself on important emails (like the invoices I send out!) and use flags to follow up with prospects as well as a number of client folders to keep track of our correspondence. Good stuff, Kristen…thanks for sharing!
Thanks Jackie. I use an automated invoice system that happens to copy me on all outgoing email, so I have a copy of those too. Very handy when I need to verify when they were sent… however, I can always check the invoicing system too! 🙂
Good ideas for keeping emails sorted. It definitely helps to do that.
Thanks Beth!
I have a pretty similar setup in my Gmail. I keep finding new ways to organize my inbox. My most recent find is Unroll.me. I get so much email from PR reps, and this has really helped clean up my inbox!
That’s awesome Stacey that you found something that worked for you. I didn’t find Gmail as clean as I would like it.. but it does work