You get a lot of emails on a day-to-day basis. It gets overwhelming at times. That plus all the spams that is coming in from you don’t even know where. It makes matter worst. What can you do to get more organized and give attention to all the email that is coming in?
Managing Your Email Account
Here are seven things that I do for my email account and what I do on a regular basis whenever I check them. This not only keep my inbox neat and organized, it prevents me from getting overwhelmed by all those emails.
Reply To Emails Immediately
When an email comes in and you need to reply to it, do it immediately. Don’t have the “I’ll do it later” mentality. Replying to an email is so much easier compared to replying to a letter. No paper, no envelopes, no address labels and no stamps.
Don’t keep thinking about formatting it like a business letter either. There isn’t a format to follow. Emails are supposed to be short and sweet. That’s the beauty of it. Greet the sender, thank them for sending it, tell them your point, what you want from them, a short signature, send!
Use Labels And Folders
Make use of folders (or labels as Gmail calls it) to organize your inbox. Filter email that comes in by sender and recipient and make them go into specific folders. This way you will know who that email is from or who it is for.
Not only that, you will have an easier time looking for a specific email whenever you need to refer to it.
Use Nicknames
If you use Google Apps that comes with Gmail, you can utilize the nicknames feature. What this does is you have one email account but several email addresses that you can be reached at.
The idea here is for you to use different email address for different purpose. An example would be to have your name as the primary email address and you have another one that starts with sales specifically for your customers.
Use Mail Fetcher
Have more than one email accounts? Check all of them from one of your email account that you use actively. This helps you by having a central location to check all of your emails. For example, you use Gmail to get all the emails from your Yahoo! Mail.
To do this, you must have an email account that can fetch mails and the other email account must support POP access. Don’t forget to also filter the messages that comes from your other account and create labels or folders for it to go to.
Report Spam As They Comes In
If you use a web based email like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, there are buttons that you can use to report an email as a spam. It just takes one click and the email service provider will know what to do it.
For you, it more or less ensure that you do not keep getting the same spam over and over again. So don’t ignore it or delete it. Report it as spam. You are also doing everyone else a favor by doing this. When someone else gets a similar email, it will automatically be flagged as spam.
Unsubscribe From Unnecessary Newsletters
If you like to subscribe to newsletter, ezine and etc., it may be a good idea to unsubscribe to those that you are no longer reading. By right, all email marketer are supposed to have an unsubscribe link in the message itself. Click on it and unsubscribe and that should take care of it.
Opt-out From Unnecessary Newsletters
Some times when you register for a service or you recently made a purchase, you have the option to opt-in to the service providers or sellers newsletter, updates and etc. Consider whether you would like to opt-in to those to prevent getting emails that you might otherwise not read.
One Last Tip For Email Management
There is one more tip that I would like to give you. Stop checking your email account every few minutes! I would recommend that you only check your email account once per day, do all that is necessary and then close it. Repeat the process tomorrow.
Don’t leave your email account opened all the time and then look at it every few minutes. It’s counter-productive! Close it altogether and focus on the important stuffs that you need to do for the day. You will not lose any of those emails, so why keep worrying about it?
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