Just about every email service or software (such as Outlook or Thunderbird) has ways to filter all the mail you receive. Check each one for the steps necessary to make sure you see the mail you want, and reroute the spam and other unwanted mail. This is a timesaver for both your personal life and your and work life.
How to manage multiple email addresses
You might think that using multiple emails can exponentially create frustration and confusion. If done correctly, however, it can be a huge timesaver. The process takes a little upfront design time and organization of what email to use with different people and offers.Try to avoid forwarding all emails from different email addresses to one central warehouse location for email. Many people do this, but it defeats the purpose and efficiency of using multiple addresses in the first place. It does allow you to easily leave one of your email addresses behind if you or a sender gets hacked or the address gets sold to a spammer.
If you are an executive, a key decision maker, or an entrepreneur, marketers and salespeople are targeting you. You are the big fish they want to land as an account. If your email address is posted on your website or can easily be figured out by looking at all the others posted on your or your company’s website —such as [email protected] — you are bound to get a volume of solicitation emails on a regular basis.
Route those emails to key staff members, who can review them, respond as necessary, and forward the ones that require your direct attention. Use a “secret” email that only your best clients and key strategic partners have access to. This enables you to save large amounts of time when reading and responding to emails.
Organizing and storing email
Managing, organizing, categorizing, and filing your email is a practice that can serve you much like maintaining a well-organized paper filing system. Many of your email messages, especially business correspondence, are probably important to you as references.Your email program includes many valuable tools that help you keep information as close as the click of a mouse. Most email programs include various folder and filing systems that serve as a virtual lateral file cabinet — but searching and finding what you want is a lot easier with just a little experience. You can sort and store your email by a number of categories, grouping them by sender, date, project, importance, or subject. Here are just some ways you can use the features your email service or software provides:
- Set up your email program so that certain messages — periodic newsletters, for example — automatically route to a specific folder. (This tool works on the same concept as spam blockers, except these items go in a folder you want to see.) With the help of filtering software, you can flag specific email addresses and automatically send them to a folder — or even delete them — before they reach your inbox. Most people use only a small portion of what their filtering features can do. Take a few minutes to explore your options — setting up filtering takes only a few minutes.
- Create a new-arrivals folder, defining new as a day, a week, or whatever you determine.
- Establish a dump folder that you clean out once a month or as often as you choose.
Don’t look at all the email in the dump folder before you dump them. That takes too much time. You’ve filtered them enough to be able to let them go.
- Make specific project folders where you can save relevant email, providing a record of all conversations for the future. When you no longer need the file because the project is long completed, you can delete it. This setup also functions as a great backup system.
- Employ the search function to track down any correspondence about a certain topic. For example, if you’re looking for an email outlining details for a trip to the Bahamas, you can type “Bahamas” in the search field and all inbox email with Bahamas somewhere in the body or subject line will come up.