What is the Best Advice For Organizing E-mail Messages?

Team Polymail

With your email being your gateway to professional communication, the idea of organization becomes important to reduce the possible overwhelming stress found with many full inboxes. 

While some emails are important, a majority of emails found in most inboxes consists of junk, spam, and general disorganization. 

Keeping up with the constant inflow of emails can be time consuming, and ultimately takes away from other tasks that should be completed. It’s important to remember that while many emails may seem important, not every email needs to be read or responded to immediately. 

It’s important to set time aside in your day to comb through new messages, and with proper organization, reducing the time needed to check emails creates a better overall user experience. 

You Don’t Have To Reply Right Away

One misconception with emails is that you need to respond to them as soon as you read them, or, conversely, that you need to wait to respond until business hours. 

First, it’s important to remember the idea behind emails, in that you are sending a message or a set of information to be read when the recipient has time to take a moment and really focus on your message. 

Generally, emails are not sent when something is so important that it needs to be heard immediately, with a majority of consumers saying they would generally like a response in 12 to 24 hours, with 48 hours still feeling reasonable. This means when you receive an email, wait until you have the time to fully read and understand the content so you can actually give a thoughtful response. Of course, this is talking about longer emails, not emails that really just elicit an acknowledgment or yes/no to a quick question. 

If you feel sending an email outside of business hours is not within your comfort zone, using scheduled delivery or the “send later” option through Polymail allows you to write an email at any time, and send it whenever you feel is appropriate. 

Simply write your email as you usually would, and toward the bottom of the compose screen where you see “send,” look to the left and you’ll see a gray box that says “send later.” Click the box, and follow the prompts to choose when you would like your message to send. 

This is a great option to create a standard time frame for when your business operates and when customers can expect a response. So, regardless if you decide to work on emails late at night, your customers and business acquaintances will assume your operation hours are still within your shop’s “open time,” which can reduce people trying to contact you after hours. 

Create Email Templates

Writing and responding to emails has the potential to take up a lot of your day. If you find that you are writing very similar emails throughout the day, the use of templates should not be overlooked. 

Email templates are more than just sending the same exact email to multiple recipients. With Polymail’s customizable template options, you are able to add personalized details to the emails to create a more personable experience. 

Allow your team to send uniform emails across the company with Polymail’s shareable templates. At the top of each template, you will see who has access, starting with new templates labeled as “Private” for your use. Simply click the “Share With Polymail” link to the right and share with any of your team members. This means no more worrying how your team is wording their interactions with customers. 

For example, for your email introduction, you may want to use the person's first name, simply place {{First Name}} in your template, and any recipient of the email will receive a custom message with their name right at the top.

Many consumers have stated that no matter the size of the business, they would like interactions to feel personable like they are talking to a real person. This is one effortless way to help create that feeling. 

Use Multiple Folders

Folders play an important role in the organization of your email inbox. While you could leave all of your messages in your inbox, this creates a clustered mess as you try to comb through the personal emails, professional emails, promotional content, and spam that you receive throughout the day. 

Instead, create multiple folders to house the various types of emails you get. You may find that you want to save some promotions for later use, so simply create a folder and name it anything you would like such as “promos,” and begin to link your senders with this new folder. Open the Polymail Command Center (Cmd/Ctrl + J) and begin typing the name of the folder in the command option. 

Moving emails to folders allows you to clear up your inbox. Consider doing this for various types of emails, such as personal emails, promotions, receipts, and many more. 

You can also use folders to organize emails in the order in which they need to be addressed. For example, you might have a “next week” folder, which are projects that may not need attention right at the moment, though you don’t want them to get buried among the other emails in your inbox in the meantime. 

Archive Emails You Are Finished With

While you may be completed with an email, you may not necessarily want to delete the email from your account. Many emails are saved to use later as references. While these emails are still taking up room and cluttering your inbox, placing them in your archive is similar to placing them into a folder so they’re out of sight but still accessible when you need them. 

This means the emails will now be out of your inbox, but can be found by searching for the content in the search bar, through the sender’s profile, or by clicking on the Archived folder. 

This content can also continue to be shared, and be placed back into your inbox if the content becomes active again. 

Clear Out Junk Mail

From spam to subscriptions, the amount of unwanted junk mail can become overwhelming. While clicking through each email to hit the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of each page can be extremely time intensive, the Unsubscriber by Polymail has created an easy to use software to do all that work, in a matter of minutes. 

Simply link your email to the Unsubscriber, and Polymail will filter through each one of your messages to find out what subscriptions and spam keep filling your inbox, and they will create an easy to read list of all accounts. At that time, you can choose to unsubscribe from each account with just one click. 

Of course, spam mail plays a secondary danger as you may not always be sure of the source. Be sure to stop spam mail as an effort to protect your privacy.  

Use Your Contacts Options

While dealing with smaller numbers of individuals you email with, you may have overlooked the value of the contacts within your email. When it comes to emailing hundreds of emails, your inbox’s contacts feature can quickly become your best friend. 

Polymail, however, creates more than just a contact to find an email address -- we’ve created an entire profile to allow you to see an in-depth view of the other person’s name, info, alternative contact, title/role, and any notes and previous messages between the two of you. Furthermore, you can find all shared files in an easy to browse view within the profile, too. 

As you receive an email, Polymail will show this profile so you have a better idea of who the sender is, what company they’re with, and any previous communications you have had. These include options for a company, photo, location, phone number, social media profiles, and much more to keep you connected within your business. 

Mute Group Emails You Don’t Need

When dealing with groups, sometimes you get added to emails “just in case,” and not necessarily because they actually apply to you or need your response. Choose to mute these emails to avoid constant notifications that may not need your attention. 

With Polymail’s “mention” option, you’ll be sure to know when a conversation is intended for you or needs your attention, meaning you can spend less time reading through the things you don’t need to know.

Wrapping It Up

Organizing your email can become a breath of fresh air as you no longer stare at the clutter or waste your time digging through the mass of unwanted mail to find one important phone number from an old contact. 

With Polymail, it’s easy to take control of your accounts and get some of your valuable productivity time back with your newly organized inbox. 

Sources

https://www.fastcompany.com/3067012/the-only-five-email-folders-your-inbox-will-ever-need 

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-fast-you-should-reply-to-work-emails-2014-12-11 

https://www.lovemoney.com/news/76285/why-just-opening-a-spam-email-could-open-the-door-for-fraudsters 


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