3 Powerful Strategies to Conquer Email Overload
Let’s get real.
How many emails are in your primary inbox? My wild guess is several thousand, and a good number of these emails say "unread."
I understand the struggles because I was that girl.
I was bombarded with messages when I logged into my inbox every day. It was more than I could handle.
You're undoubtedly sick of not being able to locate the most important emails when you need them. I was, and that is why I decided to act.
I confronted the issue head-on and improved my situation. On any given day, you'll find that I have fewer than 10 emails in my inbox.
Where did they all go?
Let's talk about it.
Organizing Your Emails Using Labels
If you had a filing cabinet at home, would you randomly throw documents into any folder? That might keep everything hidden, but could you find your documents when you need them?
Your Gmail inbox is like a filing cabinet. You want to be able to locate anything you need when necessary, so you must carefully organize folders for safekeeping.
That's where labels come in handy.
Labels function similarly to a file system. You may use labels to organize and sort similar emails.
For example, I've given labels to my team so that I can keep track of their correspondence more easily. When one of my virtual assistants sends me an email, it is filed in a certain label. This makes keeping track of emails from a specific team member easier.
When I'm finished reading information from the label, I simply click off to close it, just as you would with a physical folder/docket in hand.
Finding what you need is simple once you've organized your emails into labels, and when you open your inbox, you're happy with how tidy it is.
Filtering All Your Mails in Their Proper Places
Have you created your labels yet? Good!
Now here’s where the fun starts. You know how much I love automation.
It not only makes my daily life simpler but also takes care of regular things, so I don't have to worry about doing so repeatedly.
Filters are quick and easy ways to organize the emails you receive in your real estate business. You may choose where in your inbox particular emails should be placed and how they're dealt with.
Let's return to the filing cabinet example. Physical folders and dockets do not spontaneously fill themselves. You must physically sort your papers and file them away manually.
You could manually file your emails in labels but consider how many emails you receive every day and the effort of sitting down to put them in their appropriate locations. Because you'd be so preoccupied with this task, you wouldn't have a minute to speak with your clients.
When you use filters to automate Gmail, you eliminate the time-consuming step of doing it one by one. Filters allow you to direct all of your buyers and sellers to specific client folders, so you know exactly where to look if you want to go back and review a message or see what correspondence you've gotten from them.
Weed Out Emails You Don’t Want
Newsletters you sign up for but never read are a major cause of inbox clutter. Remove these. You don't have to get rid of all these emails (unless you want to). You might create labels for your newsletters and keep them there. That does not, however, stop them from cluttering up your inbox.
What's the solution?
Unsubscribe from emails that you no longer want or find useful. However, this may take time, which we don't need. Unroll.me allows you to unsubscribe from emails you don't want to receive quickly and easily. The greatest advantage is that several users have reported that it's simple to use and feels like they are playing a game.
A Smart Inbox
If you want to improve your organizational efforts even further, Sanebox is a useful tool. This intelligent inbox management software learns your email behavior and adapts its algorithm to match your patterns.
Sanebox has similar features and some additional interesting things to Google's built-in filtering system. However, there is a catch. While the company does allow you to test out the tool’s premium features for about 14 days, you will need to subscribe to a premium account after the trial.
For more information on Sanebox, click here.
This is the kind of organization I teach my clients in my Group Systems Rehab Program as an Online Business Manager. I've worked with clients with over 10,000 emails who reduced that number by a significant amount and cleaned out their mailbox. They even colored all of their labels to make things more appealing and fun to work with.
Click here to learn more about my Group Systems Rehab Program and how it may help you work smarter and make more money.
meet Sheena
Backed by two decades of demonstrated experience, I help purpose-driven women in real estate grow their businesses and achieve ultimate success with proven systems.
