Practical Tips to Increase Your Daily Email Productivity
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What does an average day at work look like for you?
Most of us spend a lot of time reading, answering, and organizing dozens of emails, some of us more so than others. Emails have a rather utilitarian quality about them, after all. It’s an “always on” technology that we simply can no longer do without.
But have you ever wondered if you’re handling emails correctly?
Diligently sending and receiving emails day in and day out is not enough for the modern worker. You need to measure your email productivity to ensure you’re using your time well.
Today, we will learn everything there is to know about email productivity and how you can enhance it for your benefit.
What Is Email Productivity?
For those unfamiliar with the phrase, email productivity refers to a measure of efficiency pertaining to emails. In simpler terms, email productivity tells you if you’re handling email-related tasks efficiently.
Since an average working adult spends 28% of their time on emails, it is crucial to understand if you are using your resources wisely. Losing two to three hours of your work day because you’re trying to get your inbox under control is a tremendous waste. This rings especially true for you if you’re part of a medium to large business or you are in a role where you have to send or receive mass emails.
Why Should You Measure Email Productivity?
Keeping your inbox clutter-free by reading every email as you receive it is not a sustainable solution. This system—or lack thereof—eats too much into your productivity. Studies show compulsively checking your inbox wastes at least 21 minutes each day.
But you cannot keep the emails piling up in your inbox, either.
Scouring through your inbox every day can feel like a chore. This kind of mental fatigue can be damaging to your well-being.
Emails are meant to simplify your life, not become your source of dismay. This is why you should increase email productivity to stay on track.
How Can You Increase Email Productivity?
These best practices can help you boost your email productivity. These tried and tested tricks will keep you from wasting time in your overflowing inbox.
Master the Art of Resistance
We all experience that irresistible urge to read a new email as soon as the notification goes off. Train yourself to hold back—develop the mindset that emails are only a conduit to getting your work done, not the work itself. Multitasking is a popular buzzword these days, but in truth, it only distracts you from the most important tasks you need to complete.
Furthermore, the people sending these emails or contributing to an ongoing conversation don’t expect responses within seconds, minutes, or even an hour.
You should have nothing to worry about as long as you set a standard timeline for replying to emails. To set expectations across the board, you can add a default note to every email informing the recipient that you will respond to them within a certain period.
You can also make it a strict habit to send replies to emails within 24 hours max.
Taking such a mindful approach can do wonders to boost your productivity and help keep distractions at bay.
Set specific time slots for checking your emails. For most workers, two times a day is enough to stay on top of things without wasting too much time.
It’s also a good practice to refrain from checking your emails first thing in the morning—you’re at your productive best until lunchtime. Use these hours for more urgent tasks instead of scrolling through your inbox.
Clear the Clutter
Organize your inbox so you can instantly identify urgent emails from the ones that can wait. You can easily segregate your emails based on type, action required, and priority.
There are multiple ways to do this:
Use Labels
Categorize emails and label them. You can add multiple labels to one email for organization and future segmentation. Assign labels based on priority so you know which email needs what action and when.
Click on the label to access these emails whenever you check your inbox.
Create Folders
Another excellent way to stay organized is by segregating emails into designated folders. For example, you can create a different folder for every department within your organization. This ensures easy access to information you might need to look up.
Use Filters
The easiest and fastest way to clean up your inbox is to set filters so emails are automatically redirected to designated folders. It saves a ton of time and keeps your inbox manageable.
You can leverage filters however you want. But at the end of the day, don’t forget to stick to the golden rule of organizing your inbox: label/delete/archive your emails as soon as you read them. Do not put it off for later.
Organizing your inbox helps you take a step towards achieving Inbox 0, a concept popularized by Merlin Mann. Per this ideology, you should have zero unread emails at all times—this level of decluttering adds to email productivity.
Executing Inbox 0 will take patience and practice. And when you achieve it, you’ll be surprised by how much time and effort you will save daily.
Use Email Trackers
If you’re a marketer or a sales lead for whom avoiding emails is impossible, consider using an email tracker. This tool automatically monitors the activity of emails you send as a part of your marketing campaign.
It can tell you:
If your email has been opened/read
When and how many times your email has been read
If the recipient has clicked on the CTA or links you’ve embedded in the email
If you’ve received a response to your email
When to send a reply to the emails you have received
And much more
Cutting-edge trackers like Mailtrack allow you to share documents with restricted access, exchange signatures, and send customized mass campaigns. It’s like Gmail’s built-in mail merge, but better.
This type of cold email marketing software is particularly helpful if you routinely send cold emails. You can check the status of your emails by just looking at your inbox—you don’t need to click on an individual message. Similarly, you will get notifications when an email requires a specific action.
A tool like Mailtrack will help you work smarter and boost your email productivity.
4. Set Reminders
Reminders can help you stay organized and on top of things, even on busy days.
This is a two-pronged process. The first step is to create a work calendar with specific tasks for each day of the week and affix a time for each of them. This includes a reminder to check your emails.
The second step is to set email reminders.
If you use Outlook, you can follow these steps to set reminders for your emails:
Click on Compose and draft your email
Go to Settings and toggle on Automatic Reminders
You can specify all the criteria you want in the pop-up
Each email you send out will have a reminder banner in it. You can click on them and customize your reminder preferences for individual emails if you wish to do so.
This feature is available to Outlook users. If you’re unable to access it, it’s best to contact your admin for support.
Automated reminders are a clever productivity hack that you can adopt if you want to maximize your output. You can also opt for third-party service providers instead of solely relying on Outlook.
5. Create Templates
And finally, you can create a library of templates for all the different types of emails you send. You can use Google Docs or any other dedicated email marketing tool to do so.
Mailtrack also offers email templates as a premium feature on some of its paid subscription plans.
Why create templates, though?
This is the best solution if you write certain emails over and over. It is a waste of productive hours if you keep composing them from scratch. Templates will help you save big on time.
You can also A/B test your templates to evaluate them and determine which ones convert better. Emails can be easily tracked for their performance, and you can eliminate the guesswork from your digital marketing campaigns with the help of the correct templates.
Not only will you be able to work at greater speed, but it will also help you make efficiency gains. It’s a win-win!
Granted, it may require considerable time and effort to create templates. But this one-time task will lead to so many benefits moving forward—you can use them every time you send an email in the future.
If you have been struggling with email productivity, follow these tips to maximize your time and improve your workflow.
Source:
https://medium.com/swlh/9-powerful-email-productivity-practices-to-adopt-right-now-5a30429eff9f
https://hbr.org/2019/01/how-to-spend-way-less-time-on-email-every-day#
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-ways-become-email-productivity-ninja-leonard-alexandru
https://asana.com/resources/inbox-zero
https://sendgrid.com/blog/6-tips-for-responding-to-your-email-recipients/#
https://dansilvestre.com/email-productivity/