Conquer Your Inbox Brown Bag Re-Cap

This week we hosted another workshop in our free brown bag series - Conquer Your Inbox: Tips & Tricks for Managing Email. The brown bag conversation focused on tips to more effectively organize and manage incoming emails, from changes in behavior to making use of tech tools that automate email processes.

Elissa leads the charge for better email management!

Email Issues, Strategies, & Tools

Did you know that in 2011, the average worker sent and received around 120 emails each day, adding up to nearly 2 ½ hours of time spent handling email? Overload can occur after 50 emails, so the time and energy that goes into managing all these messages is becoming a significant obstacle to organizational productivity.

Strategies that can help combat the flood of communication include disabling new email alerts, setting the inbox to “work offline” and only checking email at specified times of the day. Another tip that can be quite handy is to help your organization find other tools for processes such as document collaboration, scheduling meetings or managing projects.

Email services now provide all sorts of tools for providing better inbox organization, from color-coded categories to sophisticated rules that enable email users to define specific functions like auto-archiving for messages with set criteria.

In addition, Gmail is taking auto-responses one step farther than the “vacation-rule” with “Canned Responses,” a Labs service that allows users to insert text into an email - - paired up with a filter, Gmail can even automatically send out the auto-message!  A similar function in Outlook is called “Quick Parts” and provides users with the option of saving text to insert into emails, similar to a signature. 

See the full offering of tips & tricks from the presentation in NPower’s Knowledge Center.

Looking for more Info?

If you want to read more about strategies for handling email demands, the Microsoft at Work blog is a helpful resource, as well as Inbox Zero.

For videos and tutorials specific to Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers, there is a vast amount of documentation available online.  In particular, I recommend visiting:

Microsoft's Outlook training courses
How to Unclutter Your Outlook Inbox webinar
Become a Gmail Ninja advanced tips 
Gmail Labs

Coming up next week

The next installment of our free brown bag series takes place Wednesday, June 20, with Social Media Fundraising 101.

- Elissa Thomas