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Email Management Tips And Techniques

Dealing with email can often be an overwhelming task for a small business. Email overload is an unwelcome struggle, and while you might be tempted to ignore the growing clutter in your inbox, there are a number things you can do to help manage your email more effectively and to streamline your responses...

1. Timely Responses
Respond to email queries in a timely fashion. Schedule specific time in your work day to deal with your email queries. It is recommend that you respond to queries in blocks, rather than monitoring your email hourly. For example, set aside two or three blocks of dedicated time in your work schedule each day to deal with your email messages.

2. Grammar Matters
Business emails should be treated as professional communications, so they should include grammatically correct sentence structure and proper punctuation.

3. Capitalization
It is incredibly unprofessional to send email text using ALL CAPITAL letters, just as it is also very unprofessional to send an email in all lower-case letters. Follow proper capitalization rules when sending or responding to business emails.

4. Related
Subject When sending email, always include a "Subject" line, and make sure that it relates to the actual content of the message being sent. Leaving the Subject line blank increases the risk of your message being filtered as spam, and a proper Subject line also makes it much easier for everyone to search for and find the message later.

5. Personalize
If you are sending an email to an individual, be sure to use their name when addressing them. Personalizing the email can often make your message stand out from others.

6. Formatting
The email should be properly formatted, and should use consistent line-wraps at standard intervals throughout. Don't use an email editor that inserts hard line breaks, which can cause lines to wrap strangely at the recipient's end, making it difficult to read and understand.

7. Use Tools
Utilize a macro tool like Type Pilot or Macro Scheduler to handle commonly-used and recurring responses. Establishing a pre-written series of often-used responses will reduce the amount of time you spend creating responses, which in turn will increase your ability to respond to emails in a timely fashion. And, it will insure that each person receives exactly the same information each time.

8. Sign It
Include a signature and website URL on all email correspondence. This will provide the recipient with the ability to further research the company or organization that you represent if they want to learn more.

9. In-line Replies
When responding to a query, leave the initial query text in place, so that the recipient can easily follow the flow of the email message, as well as to reference exactly what you are responding to.

10. Spam Filtering
Inevitably, unwanted and unsolicited emails will arrive in your email inbox. It is important that you put a spam filter in place to eliminate those unwanted emails. Automatically filtering out these emails will minimize the quantity of email received each day, and that will make your inbox much more manageable.

Follow these simple tips and techniques to reduce your email burden, and make your correspondence more effective.

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