Inbox Management Strategies For Increased Productivity

Team Polymail

As companies continue to push into the future of technology, one software has remained a staple for communication and project management: email. 

Email has remained a primary platform for internal communications within business to get work and information passed in a reliable manner, as well as being a great source for businesses to connect with their consumers, too. 

Email not only allows the reader to receive information then wait to read it until they have time to sit down and fully focus, but it also allows written information to be stored and files saved in a place that’s easy to come back to later as needed.

To truly appreciate the full extent of email, it’s important to successfully manage and optimize your inbox and the features it has to offer you. 

Remove the Clutter

To get the most out of your inbox, it’s important to remove the clutter and spam that may otherwise be getting in your way of more important information. While you may think simply deleting the unwanted emails may be enough, you will soon find similar emails coming in to take their place. Plus, having to sort through all the clutter can be a huge distraction in what would otherwise be a productive session of work. 

Removing Spam

Spam has remained an issue in nearly every user's inbox for decades, with a majority of users claiming they felt spam was a major problem in using email as a whole. While you would like to believe your inbox would never be affected by spam, most websites on the internet today require its users to input their email address for account creation or even just to receive discounts, and sure enough, those companies will begin to send you a weekly, or even daily update on all the sales you weren’t aware you needed, and still probably don’t need. 

While normally, you would have to mark each one of these emails as spam and hope that takes care of the issue, Polymail has introduced a simple to use solution. When coming across unwanted spam mail, simply bring up your Command Center (Cmd/Ctrl + J) and begin to type the word “spam” into the search bar. You will be prompted to move the sender to the spam folder. 

Unsubscribe

Going from email to email hitting the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of each can seem like a hassle, because it is. When signing up for your favorite shop’s newsletter, you may have thought it a worthwhile idea to receive what they referred to as “periodic” emails about savings and special promotions -- they didn’t tell you that their version of “periodic” meant every single day. 

While unsubscribing one email at a time may take a ton of time, Unsubscriber by Polymail allows you to handle the task in just minutes. 

Simply link your inbox within the Unsubscriber software, and Polymail will search each email to make a list of all current subscriptions. 

Once this list is created, you can easily see all the companies filling your inbox with newsletters, promos, and other regularly received emails. 

Determine if you would like to continue seeing them, or simply hit “unsubscribe” and you will not only be removed from their mailing lists, but the Unsubscriber software will place their profile within a “do not receive” list to further protect you from pesky emails. 

This software also shows items such as notification emails from social media sites, which you may already be receiving on the sites themselves. This redundancy can create a large amount of clutter that is simply not necessary, so cleaning up this part of your email is helpful to boost your productivity, too.

Utilize Your Calendar 

While you may be using your inbox for simple communication, your calendar can become an essential part of the communication process. 

Your inbox should not be your to-do list, with a drive for Inbox Zero. It’s not about having zero emails in your inbox, but instead it’s about having zero thoughts focused on your email when you’re away from your computer. Utilizing your calendar to track tasks will allow you to focus on your work, instead of worrying or checking your emails throughout the day.

While calendars in general have remained a great tool to keep track of upcoming work, the Calendar by Polymail uses the functionality of a modern calendar along with the advantages and accessibility of online meeting bookings, and brings them to a single platform visible to you and your team. 

Regardless if you need time to finish a project, speak with a customer, or find yourself wanting to pull together a meeting among colleagues, this multi-purpose calendar reduces the chance of overbooking. 

No more bouncing between multiple calendars to ensure which time slot is free -- add your personal and work times onto one easy to use calendar, and allow the software to show when you have open slots within your schedules. 

Optimize Team Email Efficiency 

While emails have remained a great source of communication within the workplace, especially with the growth of freelance and remote workers, internal work emails can begin to add up quickly. With an entire team sending messages back and forth with different questions or ideas,  were the last five emails you received from your team even relevant to you? 

Collaboration by Polymail allows you to communicate within your team in a simple, quick, and well-organized manner as you are able to “comment” to each other in real time. Ensure that information important to a specific user gets their attention by using the Mention option: simply type @ + the user’s name, and the user will be notified.

See What Happened With Your Past Messages

While we would like to believe each and every email that we take the time to write and send is opened, the reality remains that many of them are simply missed. Remove the guessing facto with Polymail’s Email Tracking, which lets you see if the recipient has received the email, opened the email, and clicked the attached links. 

By understanding how often your messages are being read and engaged and by whom, you may better understand who in your team is being active in the process and who might be missing out in parts of the project they should be involved in. This is a great tool for business leaders, teachers, and workers within nonprofit organizations

This removes the classic question going around the conference room (or rather, Zoom meeting) of “did you get my email?”. You now know who has opened the email, and who has actually reviewed the content. 

Set Reminders

When did you send the last email to this client? When should you follow up? 

Regardless if you're emailing your team, customers, or business partners, you may find yourself lost in when you last touched base with them. Simply click the “follow up” box at the bottom of your email and select your timeline -- if the recipient does not respond to the email in the given time, a notification will pop up reminding you to follow up with them. 

This quick and easy setup paired with the email tracking will ensure projects aren’t forgotten about.

Create Templates

The more you write emails within your day to day, the more you may find yourself writing the same general style of message. Continue to save yourself time by designing customizable email templates. 

To take these customizable templates one step further, self-filling personal information allows a generic message to feel more personalized. It’s been proven time and time again that customers want to feel that a company is more personable, and simple solutions such as using their name or using professional while relatable language creates a more engaging tone. 

Customizable templates ensure that emails can be created quickly while maintaining your brand voice and offering a touch of personability to what’s actually a commonly used canned response. 

Summary

The idea of increasing productivity through your inbox may sound complex, but with Polymail, the accessibility of easy to use and easy to manage services becomes available for businesses, students, or just the everyday user trying to take control of their inbox to better organize their day to day lives. 

Simply cleaning out a path to success starts with cleaning out the clutter, rather that’s a cluttered desk, or a cluttered inbox. 

Resources

https://justagirlandherblog.com/conquering-email-7-steps-to-a-clutter-free-inbox/ 

https://www.spamlaws.com/spam-stats.html#:~:text=Spam%20accounts%20for%2014.5%20billion,%2C%20some%2073%25%20in%20fact

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/inbox-zero 

https://medium.com/@aqusaglivechatagent/how-to-write-the-best-customer-service-emails-e084ff4b2a90 


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