Let’s face it, when it comes to emails at work, we are absolutely inundated! We need effective strategies to reduce the number of work emails that we receive in order to not experience overwhelm and fall seriously behind!
Here are my 28 strategies which are practical and effective
- Turn off the ‘ding’ notification of emails; just view emails in batches; ie morning, noon and late afternoon.
- For the person who emails you back 2 seconds later with a further convo; avoid instant response; even if you use ‘delay delivery’ so as to not encourage the immediate back and forth every other minute. Essentially, avoid the back and forth 3 or more times; in fact, adopt the ‘rule of 3’. More than 3, pick up the phone and call.
- Be clear of the content of your emails. Make sure it is very understandable so that people will avoid emailing you with questions.
- Don’t ramble or waffle. Generally, if it’s going to be more than 2 short paragraphs, it’s more likely a phone call. If you want an audit trail, call first, discuss and then briefly dot point confirm via email afterwards.
- Train your team to not respond ‘thanks’ to every email; it’s just filling your inbox.
- Avoid cc’ing everyone and train your team to do the same. Ask yourself ‘who REALLY needs to see this?’
- Do not use the ‘Reply All’ button unless absolutely necessary.
- If you do work with committees, endeavor to have one representative who works with you; to avoid exactly the above. On that note, generally if you are being cc’d (or bcc’d) then you don’t need to respond; if you are one of the recipients, then a response may be suitable.
- Make your subject super clear and a little detailed; this also helps you in responding and being organised. If the person sending the email has ‘replied’ to an old email which is NOT that subject; change the subject yourself so it’s got a subject which actually reflects the true content of that email.
- Don’t mix subjects. The subject says one thing, but you cover another in the same email, just causes confusion for all involved and often means having extra emails, asking for things given, but given under the wrong subject title. By not mixing subjects it also helps in email management or those who file emails.
- Adopt the ‘touch once’ principle. This used to happen with paper; touch it once and either Do, Delete, Ditch or Destroy (bin it). Try to use this principle with emails; rather than opening and closing and opening and closing …. Just open, read, manage and move on. Rather than scanning all emails, just do one at a time!
- Use internal sharing sites. Often, we have common documents that are emailed back and forth between team members. This overloads the inbox repeatedly. This also causes confusion on what is the most current version. Make this task more efficient by saving these documents on a central site that everyone can access real-time.
- The first two lines of the email should have your main point, request or assignment. When you put the main point in your first two sentences, this avoids misinterpretations. The readers are then focused right from the get-go of exactly what you want.
- Re-read your email; do you have all the information? Give people deadlines, rather than “when do you want this?” and ensure all the information is included. Has the person everything they need?
- Avoid disputes, reprimands or saying anything negative via email. If you are complaining, or reprimanding a team member (or client) then call and say your thoughts.
- Hold regular (BUT SHORT) meetings with team to keep updated. Avoid having them come to the office for a meeting, instead use Zoom and be time effective. Have an agenda and stick to planning time allowances per agenda item.
- Unsubscribe. We need to know if there is indeed value from all of our subscriptions. You simply need to hit that unsubscribe button if all you do is keep hitting the delete button. To set a rule for the item to go to another folder, in case you think you might want to read it later – such as good newsletters you might find time to visit later – although if you’re honest with yourself, if you don’t look now, you probably won’t at all.
- Setup email rules; perhaps a newsletter you really want to look at later, or something on a subject you need to revisit later, or perhaps someone who is a friend or family member, but uses your work email, you might send those to your private email account.
- Follow up – some programs have a function you can set “reminder” to an email so that you get prompted to follow up on that email. Alternatively, you can bcc yourself and set up a rule to those emails BCC’d from self to self that they go into a ‘Follow up email’ account.
- Ditch email for the team; using apps such as Trello, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams or Monday.
- Avoid micromanaging and help your team to be more self-reliant and not check in with you all the time, which will in turn reduce the amount of emails. Give them permission and encourage them to problem-solve.
- If you are working nights or weekends, consider not sending the email then, but rather setting it to go say 8am next business day. The reason is that if someone sees you’re emailing, they might (a) ring you, thinking, well you’re working or (b) start a back and forth conversation with you (c) wonder if you’re inefficient as you have to work weekends.
- Focus on one thing at a time; if you’re tackling a certain project, client, subject, hit all those emails at once.
- Save time by creating email templates. Many emails are repetitive; either the wording or the message, especially sending out info, new client onboarding, new staff onboarding, handling an enquiry etc. Talk to Donna more about how to create awesome templates for your business; this can be a HUGE time saver!
- Save time by having commonly used information pre-written for an easy cut and paste. Alternatively, have links handy to just copy and paste if someone is still asking that question, even though they should have seen it. “That’s covered well on our FAQ page, eg: https://www.donna-stone.com.au/faq/ (Don’t’ actually click on, I don’t have a FAQ). Be proactive, rather than reactive; anticipate what people want and give it to them at once, in advance.
- Set reasonably good spam filter levels. But you will need to check spam folders, it’s super quick to just scan and bulk delete from a spam filter once every day or two than to sort through your main box.
- Have a system. I tell team to use the “High Priority” button, only if it’s urgent. Don’t use always; it’s like the “little boy who cried wolf” and will get ignored if over used. I also have a process for my inbox and follow it religiously. Consider software and apps like Sanebox or Simply File to assist with email filing.
- If you’re not using an online system like 365, and emails are sitting on your hard drive, then too many can cripple your system, slow it down and even crash it. Purge or archive regularly to keep things clean.
Email management is just a one-time management strategy that I work with my business coaching and life coaching clients; the less time you’re stuck handling emails the more time you have for other things. If you need help, just reach out via my Contact page.
