Organizing your Email is Crucial in Business
If you have an organized email system, you will spend less time searching and more time sending emails and doing other things to grow your business.
One way to organize your email is to organize your contacts. This way you won’t search through emails trying to find the correct email address or you won’t have to call that person to ask for it.
If you use your email for all contact information for a person, that’s ok. It’s a great way to keep it all in one place without building a spreadsheet for it. Depending on the email system you use, you should have room for their full name, title, company name, phone numbers, and address. You can use this as your electronic rolodex if you choose. This is a very good way to organize your contacts and have a clean desk at the same time.
If you use your email for contact information, it’s a good idea to add the information or make changes as soon as you are aware of it. If this is not possible, you should consider calendaring time each week to do these changes or outsource it to a Virtual Assistant if possible.
Another way to organize your email is to use the distribution list feature in your email. If you have groups of people that you continually send items to and it’s always the same people every time, you should consider creating these. Use a name that you will always remember and something that will match what you send. That way you won’t forget. Then you add these people to the list. Then you will only have to type in that list name and all of the people within that group will receive your email.
A great feature of distribution lists is you can have one person in as many distribution lists as you want. So if you have three lists and one person should be in all three, that’s ok because you can do that easily.
Distribution lists are easy to edit and add people to. This makes it easy to create all sorts of lists and save yourself so much time. Probably the hardest thing you will have to do is remind yourself to add people to them if you have someone new come along.
One important way to organize your email is set up folders for your different groups, and set up rules for each one. When you set up rules, your emails from certain people are transferred right to the appropriate file. This keeps your inbox free of clutter. There is one important thing to remember, and that is to check the emails in these files each day. You can also set up files like these for those emails that you receive from companies soliciting your business, that you may want to read later, but are a nuisance in your inbox. When these are moved to their own file, you can read then when you have time. By setting up files and rules, you save yourself the job of cleaning out your inbox.
You can also set up a rule to move mail with certain words in the subject straight to junk mail. Spammers are very sneaky and will do anything they can to get their email to your inbox. If you have a rule for these types of emails you can get ahead of the game concerning junk email.
Now you know how to organize your email and you are ready to get started. Follow these tips and you will be well on your way to an organized inbox and you will save yourself time each day.
Is your Computer Organized?
Do you use your computer for business only or maybe for the family? Organizing your computer is a must in either case. It’s important and will save time in the long run. You will need to organize your files and your e-mail to make the best of this tip.
Let’s start with the computer first and then work our way to the e-mail.
Whether your computer is strictly for business or if you use it for the family as well, these tips will work either way. Let’s focus on the business side in this article
• Files
Create a file for each business you run. If you have clients, you may want to consider creating one for each client. Within each of these files you will need to categorize your files based on what they are. If you have a number of documents that are the same type, they should all go in a file together.
Creating as many files as you can will help you find documents easier. When you do this it will save you so much time because you won’t have to search through each document. You will go right to the file you need and the document will be right there.
This process will take a while at first, but keeping up on this process with each document you create or save will be easy to do. Make it a habit to do this every time and you will be thankful you did.
If you have space issues on your computer, you may want to consider using an external hard drive for some or all of your files. I recommend using it for files that either you won’t use anymore, but don’t want to delete or ones that you don’t use that often. If you have a laptop, it may be a little difficult to keep the hard drive plugged in all the time so this is one reason why you may want to use it for files you won’t use a lot.
If you receive a large amount of e-mails from one person, you will want to create a folder for them. Any e-mails you send to this person or receive from them, you’ll want to put them in this folder. You can also create a folder for newsletters, training e-mails, or e-mails you will want to review later.
The main reason you will want to create these folders is to clean up your e-mail so you won’t have any rejected do to space limits. When you move your files over, you will have more space. Another reason you will want to do this is so you will spend less time searching for files from a specific person or topic. Some e-mail company’s delete files after a certain amount of time has pasted. This could cause a problem later on if you need to go back to one that passes this date.
Another option for your e-mails would be to save them as documents on your hard drive. This will help you keep them out of your e-mail, but if your computer crashes they will be gone if you don’t back it up regularly. It is an option that you may want to consider.
Creating folders for documents and e-mails is a must when you are trying to organize your computer. Files will keep your computer clean and tidy and it will save you time and stress each time you go to look for a document or e-mail. Give it a try today!
