It seems these days that everyone is collecting your contact information. Rather they are asking your email address to confirm a doctor’s appointment or your favorite restaurant’s loyalty club, our inboxes are getting hit at an alarming rate.
It’s now commonplace for people to have hundreds, if not thousands, of unread messages in their Inbox. According to lifewire.com, the average office worker receives 121 work related emails per day. When you add in the personal and promotional emails, it’s possible for a single person to receive almost 200 emails per day. At that rate, it’s easy for your Inbox to get out of control.
So how do you control your inbox? Let’s look at a few simple tricks.
- Have separate email addresses for different purposes.
The average person has 1.75 email addresses, according to Zettasphere.com. This means some people are using a single email address for both personal and work email. Many employers discourage this, as it can lead to company information accidentally being sent to a personal contact. It also adds to the company’s email load.
In addition to separating work and personal emails, you can set up a separate email address for store loyalty programs, promotions and mailing lists. Sometimes this is referred to as your “junk email”, because it is used for emails where the messages are not your priority.
Divorced parents will sometimes set up a joint email address for school communications. This eliminates the worry that one parent wouldn’t communicate to the other parent in a timely manner.
- Review your email settings.
Go into your settings and review your options. If you are using Outlook, go to File – Options to access these settings. You might want it to always check spelling before sending, which is under the Mail Tab. Under Mail – Message Handling, you can set it to empty your Deleted items folder when signing out of your email, another useful option.
- Set up filters or rules to sort your email.
Many email programs allow you to use filters or rules to handle email, including moving emails to folders, automatically forwarding them, flagging them for follow up. If you want to keep a single Inbox, for example, you can set up a rule so that promotion emails are sent automatically a folder to be reviewed later, then when you want that Free Entrée coupon for your birthday, it’s there! You can also set up a “Read Later” folder for newsletters and subscriptions.
- Review your Spam folder at least weekly, delete and unsubscribe from any mass emails that you don’t read or are not useful to you.
Many of us end up on mailing lists or subscriptions that we didn’t intend to be on or no longer have a use for. Maybe a restaurant you visited on vacation gave you an appetizer for giving them your email; you’re now on their mailing list, but not there to enjoy their deals. Take a moment and unsubscribe to the emails. Schedule some time, maybe every Friday afternoon, to review your Spam Folder and mark any emails that shouldn’t be spam and go through and unsubscribe from mailing lists that no longer interest or provide useful information to you. Just don’t unsubscribe from the Techno Advantage Report! 🙂
Any other challenges with your email? Comment below and let us help.
