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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 61 – 65

Guest post by: Paul Puckridge

Article Overview: there are more important projects and tasks that we have to undertake. While e-mail is an important tool, many professional people had never learnt the strategies in managing their inbox.

How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 61 – 65

What would you do if you were able to find an extra 30 minutes to one hour a day of extra time and productivity, simply by managing your e-mail and your inbox better? What would you do with your time? I'm sure like most of us, there are more important projects and tasks that we have to undertake. While e-mail is an important tool, many professional people had never learnt the strategies in managing their inbox. That's why I have put together my new book called "The E-mail Manual". It is the book you should have received when you first started using e-mail. I think if everybody had a copy of this book on their desks and read it before they started using e-mail, there would be a fewer problems and issues with using and managing e-mail. Please enjoy these 5 email strategies. Be on the lookout for my other articles on how to better manage your e-mail and reduce the size of your inbox.

61. Use the drafting option

Not many people are aware that you can work on an email in Outlook for as long as you like and if you don't finish it, it will be saved for you to work on later. There is an Outlook Folder called ‘Drafts'. This folder will hold any Emails you want to save to be sent later. By not filling in the addressee (‘To ;'), those Emails are safe in the Drafts folder for you to decide how to use them at a later time.



62. Cultural references don't translate well in email

If the recipient of your email is not from your own country or culture, be mindful of colloquialisms, humour or references that only a local person would understand. After all, you want to get your point across, not alienate a potential business contact.

If you are communicating with colleagues or customers overseas, ‘swat up' on their culture and learn what is and isn't acceptable to write.



63. Be concise in your business email

An email is no place to build a case to change someone's mind. If you need to accomplish substantive business with the person you are Emailing, make an appointment and speak to them face-to-face or over the phone.

Don't preface your statements with a lot of lead up. In fact, when at all possible, state your business in the first few sentences of your Email.

If it is going to be a long email to explain something, say so with an opening line like ‘I need to spell out how this works.'

Then use a bulleted list in the email to make it easy to read.

When writing Emails, the rule is: ‘less is more'.

Be brief and to the point.



64. Make sure you reply to the correct person

Making sure you have the right email address in the ‘To' column when sending an outgoing email is a simple strategy for avoiding trouble when sending out replies or forwarding email with sensitive or important content.

As incredible as it sounds, sending an email to the wrong addressee is one of the most common and embarrassing mistakes people make using Email.

When you get an email that may have several or many email addresses, it would be easy to hit ‘reply' and just answer the primary contact. Be sure that is what you want to do. If you actually intended the email to go to one of the other contacts, you can reach them by clicking on their name in the hyperlinked text of the email or choosing them from your address book.

Double checking your email addressee (especially when you have contacts with the same first or last name in your address book) avoids this mistake.

65. Make your subject line clear and specific

We all receive dozens of Emails during a typical work day and none of us have the time to figure out the content of a message by trying to decipher a cryptic subject line.

People should able to evaluate what your email is about very quickly, so state the purpose of your message succinctly in the subject line.

A mistake that is very easy to fall into is to never change the subject line on a string of Emails that travels from associate to associate when forwarding or CC-ing Emails.

If nobody updates the subject line, you or the person you are Emailing could easily find many Emails in his or her Inbox with the same subject line. Break that habit and change the subject line with each email to be clear and specific.

WRONG: RE: ...

RIGHT: I need your feedback by this Friday afternoon.

WRONG: The meeting.

RIGHT: I am confirming the date for the next meeting is July 24th.

WRONG: Help please.

RIGHT: John, I need your help with the calculations on the Jones Proposal.

WRONG: Wanna catch up?

RIGHT: Do you have time for a coffee Friday am, (re coaching follow up)?

WRONG: No, we shouldn't be doing that!

RIGHT: Janice, here's what's bothering me about the Acme refund.

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Article Tags: control your email, eliminate email overload, email management, manage your inbox, paul puckridge, reduce email overload, work smarts, work smarts coach, zero inbox



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