There are lots of email management best practices and tips out there to help users improve email management and get on top of the high volume of emails.
The tips don’t change much from site to site, however, users are still not managing emails better and the fundamental reason why is that they are still using the same email system.
The tips rely on users changing their habits with little or no help from the actual email system. In this blog, we delve a bit deeper into these tips and how SEDNA helps users to implement these tips, stick to them and get back 2 hours per day.
Easier said than done
Some of the most common but hard-to-achieve best practice includes Prioritizing 20% of Emails; Defering 80% and Keeping Unnecessary Mail Out of Your Inbox.
Easier said than done, right? The 20/80 rule is the idea that 20% of inputs are responsible for 80% of the outputs in any situation. Hence, to be effective, we should focus on 20% of inputs that lead to 80% of outputs. We also know statistically 62% of emails are important so keeping unnecessary emails out of your inbox is a major challenge that many have tried and failed.
The 20/80 rule is quite easy to achieve if, for example, you receive less than 50 emails per day where you can skim-read the subject or sender, quickly apply the rule and continue on with your day. When a SEDNA user typically receives up to 300 emails in their inbox overnight and they are faced with 300 emails the moment they open up, applying the 20/80 is easier said than done.
SEDNA, however, is constantly working to apply this 20/80 rule and keep unnecessary emails out of your inbox. Our Important tab is built with this in mind. Emails that deserve your attention are routed into one convenient location, ready for you to read, process and action. Emails are routed here by you so SEDNA is helping you prioritize the 20% you need to pay attention to.
SEDNA routes emails to the Important tab when you are Following an email, marking a Job or Contact as important or a colleague @mention you in a comment. Usually, these are the emails you should be prioritising as part of your 20%, the rest you can defer for a later time or date that suits you.
Another common tip is to Send The Fewest Emails Possible. In particular, don’t ‘Reply All’ and don’t ‘Forward’, as this alone cuts down the number of emails your colleagues receive and if they are also following this habit, you get fewer emails from them as well, thus avoiding email overload.
Organisations and users can’t control incoming emails but by not forwarding or reply all emails, users and organisations are able to control the amount of internal email volume. Using Comments to triage and discuss emails with colleagues or simply @mention colleagues and sharing to shared inboxes to make relevant colleagues aware of emails can reduce internal email volume by as much as 50%.
This means you free up time to focus on the external emails that have a direct impact on your revenue and bottom line.
Good email habits require the right email system
Some email systems say that they help you manage emails better and some advocate inbox zero is possible, however, most users still struggle to achieve inbox zero, build good email habits and make the best practice and tips become the norm.
SEDNA is built from the ground up to manage high-volume email environments and so we know that good email habits are hard to implement and even harder to keep doing. Our platform enables and supports good email practice but more importantly, we ensure you don’t slip into your old habits.