Monthly, we have a feature, from our very own Kelly Simants,
written to make your business life run simpler. Take it away Kelly…
In our last Simplify with Sage post we looked at ways to de-clutter your desk. This week we’re going to be looking at ways to de-clutter your email inbox!
Did you just read that and get a pit in your stomach thinking about your inbox that says you have 1042 emails? And let me guess, out of the 1042 sitting in your inbox most of them have been marked as read, and you’ve even replied to most of them, so maybe you only have 35 unread…but you still feel overwhelmed with all of those emails sitting in front of you? I compare that to having a cluttered desk –it’s like having 1042 pieces of paper piled up + no filing system in place = you feel overwhelmed. I know, because I used to be like that – I didn’t know how to best manage my inbox and it drove me nuts! Although I am by no means perfect now when it comes to managing my email, I have learned a lot of great tips from others that have helped me be more productive and organized so I’m excited to share these with you as well….so here we go!
As I’m writing this post, I only have 10 emails sitting in my inbox and 51 folders where all of my messages are stored and nicely filed away so I can easily reference them. However, at one point over the weekend I had 148 unread emails. If I hadn’t taken the time to manage those 148 messages they would just start to accumulate in my inbox, and by the end of this week I might easily have 1000 emails to clean up. So, you may be wondering how did I bring that number down to only 10 in my inbox?
Here are 5 easy tips for how to clean-up your inbox AND keep it clean (which is the hardest part, right?)
1. Schedule your email time: Just like you would schedule a meeting with a client, schedule time in your day to read and respond to your email. I have found it works best if you schedule a chunk of time in the morning and a chunk of time in the late afternoon or evening. How much time you allocate depends on your personal work situation – but for instance, I spend a lot of time on email so for me, I allocate 2 hours in the morning and at least 1 hour in the early afternoon. By scheduling your time, you’re able to focus on email only and the rest of your day you can clearly focus on projects, keeping up with your accounting, meeting with clients, colleagues, etc. By the way, be sure to try and turn off Twitter and Facebook while you’re working through your email – those are two of the biggest distractions I’ve seen people get bogged down by…social media is wonderful, it’s just that you need to allocate a separate chunk of time for tweeting and facebooking. If you receive email on your phone throughout the day, I would still recommend setting aside blocks of time for email – most likely you’ll have time to read emails on your phone, but it’s tricky to always respond to emails that way.
Simplify with Sage Tip: Set aside time in your calendar now and allocate email-only time!
2. Prioritize and Respond: I first recommend setting a standard email response time that you want to hold yourself accountable for. I have decided that I strive to respond to all email within 24 hours. Now, I will be the first to admit that of course there are days this isn’t possible because I’ve been in meetings all day and only have an hour at night to sit and respond to email…and I just can’t physically reply to all unread email. However, if you have a mindset of making sure you do everything in your control to respond within a certain timeframe, you will be much more likely to be prompt with responding. At a recent local wedding association meeting, there was a panel of former brides. They indicated that response time from vendors was one of THE most important things to them when it came down to selecting their vendors. They said if they didn’t hear back from someone within 24 hours, they would write them off because they didn’t want to work with someone who wasn’t responsive to their needs. This might sound tough, but brides want to know that they can connect with you when needed and that you are responsible to get back to them. With that said, here is how I would recommend prioritizing your email and deciding who to respond to first:
a. Client email or Potential Client Inquiries – absolutely, without a doubt, respond to your client and potential client emails at LEAST within 24 hours. If you need more time to provide them with a more thoughtful response, or maybe more research is needed on your end – just let them know that! All they will want to know is that you received their email and you’re working on responding to them. Be sure to give them a timeframe of when you anticipate you’ll be able to fully respond with the information they need, and more than often they will be completely content with that response.
b. Wedding Professionals – my relationships with my colleagues are ultra important to me. These are the people who send me referrals, who I can rely on if I have a question or want to bounce ideas off of…so I never want to compromise that relationship by being delayed with my email response time to them. Again, if I need more time to respond to them I try to at least send a quick note to acknowledge I received their email and will be back in touch with them shortly with more info.
c. Other Wedding Related Inquiries – this could be anyone from someone inquiring about an internship to someone asking you if you’d like to advertise with their publication. I know a lot of people who ignore these emails and choose not to respond because they don’t have time, aren’t interested in the person’s request, etc. I really recommend that you at least give people the courtesy of at least responding back to let them know you don’t have any internships available, but recommend checking into “XYZ” networking association…or that you’re not interested in advertising with them, etc. I always try to think how I feel when I don’t receive an email back from someone – and that I want to always be approachable, so I try to exhibit this in how I respond to ALL of my emails and at least acknowledge and thank everyone who contacts me.
d. Personal email – unless you receive a personal email that is urgent, I recommend responding to these last. Personal emails are often the first ones that I WANT to respond to because they are fun, usually don’t require a lot of thinking on my part, etc. However, they can easily take up a chunk of time that I should instead be using to respond to client inquiries, vendor emails, etc. I try to do my personal email when I need a 30 minute break during the day, or at night after I feel good about my progress with my business related email. I’m not trying to suggest that you should put your friends or family last (quite the opposite as you should be putting them first!) – just simply trying to raise the point that I know personal email can be a huge distraction and the reality is, most of the personal emails I receive aren’t urgent.
Simplify with Sage Tip: Determine what your email response time should be and make it a personal goal to keep yourself accountable to it!
3. File Your Messages – the reason you might have 1042 emails in your inbox is likely because you either don’t have appropriate folders set up, or you don’t have folders set up at all. So what do you do when you check your email in the morning and you have 57 new messages? First, try to prioritize them using the above system, respond to them as you read them, and then FILE them accordingly. If there are still emails that require a response or you owe more information to the sender, file them in a folder titled “To Do” or “Follow Up”. If you just read and replied to an email from a Photographer, then file that email immediately in the appropriate folder. For example, I have a filing system for all Texas Wedding Professionals that I work with so if I receive an email from a Photographer, I find my “Texas Vendors” folder and then have a sub-folder titled “Photographers” where I keep all Photographer related email. See example below for how to set up folders and sub-folders. Depending on the email system you use, your folder options will vary – I use Outlook but I know a lot of you are on Gmail and there are great labeling and folder options to utilize.
Simplify with Sage Tip: Take one morning this week to create folders, and spend 15 minutes each day filing email from your inbox into the appropriate folders.
4. Filter Your Messages – Filtering is a great way to help you organize email. You can assign rules in your email so that a certain person’s email will be automatically filed in a folder, or email with a certain subject line will be automatically sent to a folder…so, why would you do this? Well, for instance Michelle and I send each other quite a few emails every day – we could easily spend all day responding back and forth to each other when some of the messages may not be urgent and we should instead be focusing on other projects or deliverables. So, we both have each other’s emails set to be sent to a folder so that when we have time to sit and focus all of our emails are already chunked together in a folder for easy access. That way they’re already out of the inbox and filed away – and to be sure they don’t get lost, I title my folder “New Michelle Lorett a email”. Once I’ve responded to her messages, then they are archived in the appropriate folder.
Simplify with Sage Tip: Think about people who send you a lot of email, or maybe you receive fun blog posts via email – set up a filtering system for these messages to help clean up your inbox.
5. Pick up the Phone – I often will receive an email from someone who is asking a one liner question, but my response requires much more than one line back. In that situation, I often will pick up the phone and call the sender. Although our technology age is wonderful, there are just certain situations where it makes so much more sense to pick up the phone. Example – I receive an inquiry from a client asking me for rehearsal dinner venue ideas. Instead of me responding to ask all sorts of questions via email, I try to pick up the phone so we can have a conversation instead of going back and forth over email – which usually saves both of us a ton of time and also helps make sure we have clear communication so I understand the bride’s needs and she can clearly convey her vision. Going back to our example, once you have that phone call you can follow up with an email providing your client with rehearsal dinner venue ideas. Sounds simple, but I have to continually remind myself that phone calls are sometimes the best way to respond depending on the situation!
Simplify with Sage Tip: Go through the emails still sitting in your inbox that are requiring follow-up and determine if there are any you can respond to with a phone call instead. After all, there still is nothing better than human connection when you’re doing business!
Tomorrow we’ll be reviewing email etiquette, so stay tuned for tips on the “Do’s and Dont’s of email”
by Kelly Simants
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