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Does the thought of opening your email each day and seeing your 14,000 messages make you cringe? Do you find yourself falling down the never-ending inbox rabbit hole? Boy, has this scenario changed. Our excitement years ago when you’d hear those 3 awesome words, “You’ve Got Mail” has turned to despair - from the influx of email messages we receive on a regular basis. But, I’m here to share with you 6 email management strategies for managing and organizing your inbox from the pros here at Elite Virtual Assistants that will help you get started on a cleaner, fresher path to managing those emails today!

Are your eyes lighting up at the thought of having a zero or near-zero inbox to wake up to each morning? It really is a possibility to have an organized and streamlined process once you set everything up. Below are 6 email management strategies you can use starting today:

• Set up folders. Decide what system works best for you and create new folders so you can easily decide what you need to address and when. Some examples are:
  • Hot Folder. These are tasks that need to be handled by you ASAP.
  • For Review Folder. These could be publications or emails that you like to keep on your radar and review at your leisure.
  • Project Folders. These would be emails attached to a specific project or client, helping keep everything together and easy to find.
• Create filters. You can easily set up filters in your settings to specify which folders the new incoming emails should be routed to automatically.
• Create templates. If you find yourself sending the same emails out on a regular basis, set these templates up ahead of time on your email platform so you can easily pull them up when needed and edit any information necessary.
• Schedule Send. If you’re someone (like me) who tends to think of things after hours or on weekends and don’t want to bug your team during these off-peak times, you can “schedule” your email to go out at a more appropriate time.

Now that you have your inbox set up and organized, let’s set some boundaries around how often you check your email. In addition to an unorganized email system, not having designated times to check your email leads you down another rabbit hole of constant interruptions. Here are a couple of tips that have really helped me over the years:

• Schedule 2 or a maximum of 3 times each day to check your email, and don’t derail from this. Some people check in the morning, and again at 4 pm (you can throw in Noon if you really need to check it more frequently). Set this time aside on your calendar to check and respond to your emails and then SHUT IT DOWN! Checking email at random times throughout the day takes you away from work that you REALLY need to be doing.
• Use DND (Do Not Disturb). This is an add-on feature where you can schedule your new emails coming in to be “snoozed” during certain times of the day (between check-in times) and deliver any new messages that come in at designated times.

Organizing how, where, and when your emails come in, along with how often you check them, will save you hours of reading, filtering, and responding, which for many of us can be a full-time job in itself.

If you need someone to get these processes set up for you, the pros at Elite Virtual Assistants can help! Our talented team is standing by to help you be more organized and productive so you can focus on what really matters.