Mamas On The Web

Getting your email under control

June 11th, 2008

Generally, people who make a living by working online can expect to receive a lot more email than most people. Not only do we receive the regular emails and forwards from our friends and family, but we also have:

• comment moderation emails from our blogs
• newsletters and announcements that we’ve signed up for from other blogs and websites
• feedback/questions/comments from blog and website readers
• joint venture requests from other internet marketers
• quote requests (if you offer a service online)
• customer service requests (if you handle all your support issues yourself)
• payment notifications (for when your make a sale on your own product or through an affiliate program)

There are plenty more that I could list, but hopefully you get the idea.

It’s not uncommon for some of us to wake up, open our email program, and receive hundreds of new emails a day.

Sorting through these and responding to the ones that require a response can eat up a huge chunk of your day. Here are some ways that I try and tackle my flooded inbox.

Only open your email program twice a day. First thing in the morning, I open my emails and sort through and respond accordingly. Once everything is taken care of, I close my program for most of the day. Unless I’m expecting an important message, I’ll leave it closed until the end of the day. I’ll check it again before bedtime and do the usual routine of sorting and responding.

Keep separate email addresses. I like to have a few different email addresses for separate uses. I have one that only my friends and family use. I have another one for work related emails, such as comments, contact form emails, JV requests, payments, invoices, etc.. I have yet another one for any newsletters and websites I want to sign up for. Last but not least, I have one for signing up for competitor sites and related feeds and newsletters to see what my “niche” is up to. I can check on this one as infrequently as I like because none of it requires any response on my end.

Use Windows Live Mail. Everyone has their own preference when it comes to which email program they use, but I really like Windows Live Mail because I can read all the emails from each email address in one program. It has a lot of other handy features too. You can manage your RSS feeds, update your MSN status, or look at “Quick Views” which will show you all your unread emails from all your accounts in one window. Importing messages from Google gmail, Hotmail, Outlook Express, etc. is ridiculously easy.

Setting “filters” or “rules”. Under each email account I like to create subfolders. Then I set a rule so that any email that meets certain criteria gets sorted automatically into its own subfolder. Blog comments go into one, Google Alerts goes into another, etc. By doing this I can easily dictate which emails need to be dealt with quickly while others can be put off until later.

Keeping a “swipe file”. If I read an email that gets me to take action, I usually send those to my “swipe file”. I like to go over these once in awhile so I can analyze them and incorporate similar tactics into my own newsletters. Having this swipe file allows me to keep everything that inspires me in one place, instead of having to search through hundreds of emails trying to find that one I read the other week that had a good idea in it.

Do regular maintenance. Every couple months or so I like to go through and decide which newsletters I want to remain subscribed to, and which ones I can unsubscribe from. If Joe from Idaho is sending me a newsletter every few days but I never read it, I promptly unsubscribe. If it isn’t benefiting me in some way (teaching me something, making me laugh, etc.) then I don’t need to be a subscriber. Doing these type of maintenance regularly really cleans up the clutter in my inbox.

Laying the smackdown on your inbox clutter can save you a ton of time which frees up precious minutes of your day to do other important things.

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Entry Filed under: working efficiently