Manage your email better

Manage your email better

Tired of irrelevant emails that clog your inbox each day? Here’s how to streamline your mailing processes

QUALITY TRUMPS QUANTITY Are you one of those people who loves to share links of emails/songs/messages/ pictures and so on of what you happen to be reading? Sharing options on our communications devices have become all too easy today, fooling us into believing that everything we read might be important or relevant to someone else. Instead, how about simply lifting the telephone and calling someone? At the workplace, while being efficient, emails can also be misunderstood. If you don’t have the time to call, a quick SMS gets the message across, too. You already know about the need to be concise on e-mail. Accordingly, don’t let your email run into paragraphs and reams of prose. Save your Shakespearean impulses for that blog you’ve been planning. If you send a certain kind of email to a group of people, use saved templates for greater efficiency. 

GET WITH THE ‘PROGRAM’
    Automated programs, that is. If you look under the hood of your email provider’s settings, you’ll find that you have the ability to filter emails. If you already have folders in your inbox for sorting various emails, then filters are no different or difficult. Additionally, colourlabelling messages gets things more organised.
    Gmail already has a smart filter that marks certain emails as important. This is applied to emails sent by people in your contact list or emails that have an urgent subject line. You can make as many folders and subfolders as you like, but then again, avoid going overboard as it could overcomplicate things once again.
    Furthermore, move messages into appropriate folders for a reason. It’s called an ‘inbox’ and not a ‘storage depot’ for a reason. 

ALIAS ADDRESSES It happens all the time. You call up a service to get a phone number, and the operator asks you for your email. you fill up a customer feedback form at a restaurant and it asks for your email. You fill out a frequent flyer form and — you guessed it — it asks for your email! Do not give out your primary email for these purposes as you
    will soon find your inbox
    flooded with useless junk. Besides, email address (and phone number) lists are sometimes sold to third parties for telemarketing. If you want to create a self-destructing email a d d re s s, you have many options. Try out guerillamail.com or 10minutemail.com or getairmail. com, for example. All are free and eminently disposable.

THE ‘CC’ AND ‘BCC’ FIELDS When was the last time you were irked by being on the receiving end of emails from say, a political activist group, which has no relevance to you? Depending on how public or private the profile is of your line of work, you might find yourself being added to various discussion threads as your email might be in the public domain. While this can be pestering, ‘BCC’ is a better bet when sending mass email to people you know, rather than strangers. It works when people in your email list might not know each other or you simply don’t want them all to see who else is being emailed.