Finding Time To Keep Up With Email
Don't miss another important email again! Today I noticed that my email in box had topped the over 1,000 unread emails. And I have many of my friends and family who complain about the same thing. Well this email is going to follow right on the tail of the importance of organizing.
As you become more and more successful in your online business, you are going to find you have more email that is important and needs to be answered. Or as you build your business and do research and join lists to keep up with your competition you may find that your email's inbox becomes too much to handle.
There are many ways that you can handle this and some of them mean you will be putting off email that you know in your heart you will never read. I know it's hard to get rid of any of it. And some of that mail you don't want to delete. It could be the one you need next week when someone says, "You need to pay me now!" And you know you paid that bill.
What is a good mix?
Only you can decide what email you need to keep for later and which email needs to be answered. And everyone has a limit. You probably know what that limit is already. For instance today when I looked in my inbox I felt a real sense of overwhelm.
To clean up the mess I sorted my email alphabetically. You would be amazed at what you find this way. I discovered email that I had been expecting but missed more than five days old. Since my policy is to answer email within 24 hours I felt really bad.
So it is apparent that my limit is well under the 1000 mark. But what do we do?
Create Folders
Yes, it's that old folder thing again. As you might guess, I am a great fan of folders. They make life so much easier. And as you may also guess, these folders can also get out of hand.
Not every email server allows you to create folders. And some may call them something else. Gmail calls their system of organizing "Labels". It is still the same thing. Except when you place a label on your mail in Gmail you have to take another step. That is to "archive". This takes them out of your inbox but not to the trash.
Don't worry they are easy to retrieve. Just click on the label list for the particular group of email you want to sort through and they will all be right there for you to find the one you need.
Yahoo uses folders but the concept is pretty much the same. One difference is when you have placed an email in a folder it moves out of your inbox.
Other mail systems may have different ways of organizing your mail. But one thing remains the same. It is important to start this organizing when your business is new. Otherwise you may be wondering if you need to higher someone to read your email.
Too late you say? You may have let those unread messages just get out of hand, like I did. You will find that the weight of the world is lifted off your shoulders if you take the time to place all that mail in it's proper folder, answer (hopefully you won't be too late:) the ones that need answering and put all of the ones that you just can't decide what to do with in a temporary file.
What is a Good Name or Label?
Be sure and label your folders with names that are relevant to the email you are saving. Sometimes the best name is the person writing the email. Sometimes it would be better to name them by the subject or Newletter name. It really depends on the From name and if they have a common subject.
Choose a name that will make it easy to remember where to file. But most important keep it simple. Group if you can. For instance I have one file that holds all of my Contact email. And one that holds all email from Family.
Once I tried naming a folder newsletters but then I discovered that was too full to sort through. You could break that down to types of newsletters or groups that you receive mail from.
Believe me once your inbox is clean you will feel like you have conquered the world. It is like being given a grace ticket. Now you can read and file that mail on a daily basis in a fraction of the time.
To your business success!
Sally
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