How to work with email as a professional
10 simple rules that make you a professional in email communication
The main rule is: “Respect those who will read your letters”
Mail is one of the main working communication channels
- between you and your colleagues,
- between you and your partners,
- between you and your client.
I have seen a lot of people’s email inbox accounts. What I saw — there was a horror. It was a long long list of emails and nobody can’t understand which emails were important and which were not.
In this article I will share with you a few simple advice, that makes your work with emails effective:
1. Keep your INBOX folder clean. Your INBOX email folder should contain only emails that you haven’t answered yet or didn’t read yet.
- remove all the garbage emails, right after you read it;
- unsubscribe from all unnecessary emails lists;
- unsubscribe from all notifications from different services (new friends notifications, notifications about comments, or other notifications) and delete this email after you read it. You do not need to store it in your mailbox. It is just a notification. You can read them and delete them immediately. DELETE it. Do not put such emails in an archive folder. You will never need it. What are they for? There is a service that sends you this notification. And there in the service, you will always find all details. And this email only notifies you about something. Usually, you have a limit for you Inbox folder, so keep free storage space for important emails (not notifications from different services)
2. Archive important emails. If you need to save an important email — archive it or move to a separate folder (for example Instructions, Registration, Clients Projects.). You can always use the advanced search mail instrument to find any emails among archived emails.
3. Snooze emails. Some email services (such as Google) allow you to snooze an email for a while (it disappears from the Inbox folder, but appears there at the moment that you choose). This is very convenient. You can temporarily remove non-urgent messages from your Inbox and then return to them later.
4. Answer emails. Good manners are to answer emails. If you can’t respond to the email immediately (or within 2–3 days), please respond to the email that you need time to respond to it.
5. When replying to an email, leave everyone who was in a copy of the email. Click the REPLY TO ALL button. Configure the REPLY TO ALL option in your email client by default.
6. Attachments and images. Please no, attach images or big documents to the emails. It is better to upload a document or image somewhere in the cloud or storage (Dropbox, Google.Drive, Yandex.Disk) and send only a link to the document in the email. If you still need to insert the image in the email, then do it as an attachment, not by inserting the image into the text. Many people check emails from different devices (phones, desktops, smart watches), and your picture inserted in the text may simply not be displayed correctly. Plus, minimize the size and weight of the image before sending it.
7. The subject of the message must match the content of the message. If you see that the conversation in the email no longer corresponds to its subject, please create a new email with a new subject and continue the conversation there. Or you can create several emails with different topics related to different issues.
8. Periodically check the SPAM folder. Sometimes important emails can get there. Please check the SPAM folder a minimum of once a week.
9. Turn off email notifications (PUSH notifications) on your phone. You control the emails, not emails control you. Check your email inbox when you have time, but don’t check it immediately when you receive a notification.
10. Check your email at least 3 times a day. In the morning, at lunch, and evening. In this case, you don’t miss important emails.
If you have any suggestions and tricks on how to work with emails effectively? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
