This month, we’re gearing up for a highly productive year by streamlining your life and work with innovative tech solutions! With the expertise of our founder, Cheryl Salazar, a vital member of the Technology and Innovations Committee for the World Waterpark Association, we’ve gained invaluable insights from her extensive tech tool research. Remember to consult your Tech Team before integrating new solutions to ensure seamless compatibility with your existing systems.
Let’s kick-start this journey with our first focus: Clearing Your Inbox Clutter! We all know an unorganized communication channel can quickly snowball into various complications, creating chaos along the way. Managers need straightforward and efficient solutions to manage these challenges. During this month’s series, we’ll dive into a variety of strategies customized for various business areas to address this widespread challenge. Get ready to declutter and simplify your communication!
Your Email Client Already Comes with Tech Solutions
Lucky You! Your email client (Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail, etc.) already offers ways to organize your inbox! As much as we love new gadgets and tools to play with, we’re going to show you how to use what you already have at your fingertips.
- Use folders and labels – create folders or labels to categories emails based on projects, teams, or priority. Move emails immediately out of the main inbox into relevant folders to reduce clutter.
- Set up filters – Establish filters to automatically categorize incoming emails into specific folders according to sender, subject, or keywords. This approach expands on the previous one, streamlining and automating the organizational process, sparing you the task of manually relocating them to folders.
- Prioritize emails – Use the “priority” or “star” feature to mark important emails that require immediate attention. Many email clients allow you to customize the prioritization and create priority levels. Be sure to regularly review and address high-priority emails first!
- Unsubscribe and filter junk – unsubscribe from newsletters or promotional emails that are not relevant. Set up filters to automatically move spam or less important emails to a separate folder.
- Whitelist emails you want -Whitelist the emails you want to receive, ensuring that desired emails bypass the spam filter and land in your main inbox. For newsletters or tips and tricks emails, like the ones we offer at High Road (insert link here to our newsletter sign-up), set up a folder with an automated rule to sort them for reading later at your convenience.
- Schedule inbox cleanup time – allocate dedicated time in your schedule for inbox cleanup, this could be 5 minutes each morning or weekly. Regularly review and archive or delete old emails that are no longer relevant.
- Delegate and collaborate – create and delegate tasks from emails when possible. Use the tasks tool in your email client to track tasks from beginning to completion.
Using some or all of these strategies will certainly aid in decluttering your inbox. For each of these strategies you are going to want to develop a systematic approach to organizing emails based on your workflow and preferences. Encourage team members to use clear subject lines and follow email etiquette to facilitate better communication and organization for everyone.
Regularly review and update your organization system to ensure it adapts to changes in priorities and projects. Implementing these tactics can help you maintain a clean and organized inbox, resulting in improved efficiency, reduced stress, and better communication.
Inbox Cleanup Tech Solutions
Several tech tools can assist in organizing and decluttering your email inbox. These tools and features are designed specifically for email cleanup, organization, and management, catering to various user preferences and needs.
Leave Me Alone & Unroll.Me – both feature a system that bundles all of your subscription emails and you choose what to keep in your inbox, what to add to a rollup, or unsubscribe from. A rollup is a personalized collection of your favorite newsletters, sent as a single daily digest email. Leave Me Alone, Unroll.Me
Mailstrom – identifies bundles of related emails to allow you to act on them as a group. It provides an additional level of spam protection as well as a faster and easier way to unsubscribe from unwanted emails. It is customizable to your particular way of managing your inbox. Mailstrom
SaneBox – is a teachable A.I. system that identifies important email and automatically organizes the rest to help you stay focused. SaneBox will send you daily updates about what was sorted and other email activity so you don’t miss anything important. If you already know how to use inbox folders, they say you know how to use SaneBox. SaneBox
Have You Considered Inbox Consolidation?
How many of us have somehow ballooned how many email addresses we have? If you’re like me, I have two company email addresses, our general info email addresses, and two personal email addresses – one is for subscriptions, so we know that one is a mess! Even if you aren’t that inundated with email accounts, chances are you are still juggling 2-3.
You can many times do this in many of the current operating systems (Windows, iOS, etc.) available. However toggling back and forth between different accounts with no safety net of emailing from the wrong account can be a little nerve wracking.
Mailbird – is a little different in that it is a downloadable tech solution that allows you to manage all email inboxes in one place. It even has many integrations with popular social media, business productivity and team collaboration apps (which you can read about more in a blog releasing later this month). Mailbird
BlueMail – is a free cross platform email and calendar app, capable of managing an unlimited number of mail accounts from various providers. It is designed to streamline the process of summarizing and writing emails in a faster, more efficient way. They could be a replacement for your stock email app. BlueMail
Spark – is a fast, cross-platform email app designed to filter out the noise. The app features are designed to heighten your focus and allow you to develop workflows that suit your needs. Spark Mail
Polymail – is an email software that helps you save time and work more efficiently with tools like email tracking, contact profiles, and follow up reminders. You can even set up automated email outreach and meeting scheduling. Polymail
Additionally, platforms like Zapier and Integromat can be integrated to automate email-related tasks and workflows, further enhancing inbox organization and efficiency.
Conclusion
To assist in streamlining your inbox, we’ve shared some solutions that won’t require diving into overly technical territories. Simply utilizing folders, labels, filters, prioritization, and unsubscribing can significantly declutter your inbox. Keeping this momentum ongoing, a scheduled weekly or monthly inbox cleanup can maintain its tidiness without solely relying on tech solutions. Leveraging your email client’s task function for delegation and collaboration can streamline specific task-related conversations, keeping your inbox clearer.
For those keen on integrating new tech solutions, choosing the right tool is pivotal. Assess your specific needs, seek tools aligning with your email workflow, and ensure seamless integration with your existing software and apps. Regularly updating and assessing your tools’ effectiveness is crucial. Lastly, collaborate with your IT department to adhere to security guidelines, preventing any potential breaches.
Combining your current email client’s features with these tech solutions allows you to tailor an email management system to suit your preferences, amplifying inbox organization and efficiency. The key is finding tools that complement each other and align with your workflow and organizational goals.
