Best practices for email: How to use tags to make sure that your emails get answered
I often get asked why I am not complaining that I get too many emails, like most people. Well, maybe I don’t or maybe the way I got organized work well for me.
As I thought there’s a chance that the latter may the reason, I decided to share so that more of you also stop complaining.
I wrote here about archiving email , this one is about using tags (or flags, depending on your system) in order to make sure that your emails get actually answered.
- Archive your outgoing mail, and tag those that need answers.
As indicated in my previous post (here), do not file your emails, just archive all emails in one single archive. But for each email you drop in the archive, ask yourself if you want to make sure to get an answer to your message. If so, tag (or flag) it. Personally, I only use a few types, like
- customer service
- product team
- sales manager
- in general - Check emails waiting
Once in a while (I try to do it once a day or every other day while droping my sent mails into my archive) check if you got answers on the flagged emails, and take the appropriate action:
- supress the flag of the tag if you already got an answer
- write a follow-up
- or talk to the person on whom you’re waiting - Use it in your 1:1 meetings
If some of your team members frequently not respond, use your tag-list when meeting him, I bet they will start to answer your emails :-) - People will naturally answer YOUR emails
Of course, as people figure that you always send follow-ups, chances are they will answer you more quickly to save everybody the hassle of your constant reminders.