Coffee, emails about upcoming sales, and Google search results. What do these three things have in common? They’re all things that can be filtered!
I recently worked with a client who subscribed to a lot of mailing lists. Lists for continuing education courses, lists for sales and promotions, and lists for professional chatter (forum activity). She received so many of these emails that her action item emails were getting lost in the mess. Because she didn’t want to unsubscribe – but didn’t need to see these emails right away – filters were the best answer.
Filters allow you to take a specific type of email – from a certain person or company – and have it skip the inbox, going instead into a designated folder. The email is still there and marked as unread, but it isn’t competing with more urgent action emails in your inbox.
Each email system has its own method of setting up filters or rules as they are sometimes called. It takes a little bit of work on the front end to set up filters, but the resulting increase in productivity makes it worthwhile. Once you have those relevant but not urgent emails in their own folder, you can read them when you are ready.
If you are a Gmail user, your email may already be doing some of this if you utilize the multi-tab – Priority, Social, Updates, Promotions, and Forums – approach.
If you need help setting up your email filters, let’s talk! Schedule a Discovery Call and together we’ll figure out the best approach.
