Managing your email inbox properly is one of the most important things you can do to stay organized and productive. Your inbox can quickly become a nightmare if left unmanaged for too long. Thankfully, Gmail makes managing your inbox easy, offering plenty of useful features that ensure that you’ll never miss another important email again, as well as let you better control the flow of your emails. Google’s popular cloud-based email platform currently has over 1.5 billion active users, with businesses around the world using Gmail to increase employee productivity and streamline communication.
Use tabs to better organize your inbox
Gmail tabs are a great way to organize your inbox, especially when looking to prioritize emails and filter out unnecessary clutter. Tabs are accessible from the “Inbox settings” menu, where you can select tabs that include Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums, helping you better organize person-to-person emails, promotional updates, social media updates, bills and receipts, and more. Once appropriate tabs have been generated, you can then drop and drag messages into each to move emails into the desired tab.
Labels for email storage and custom filters
Labels are one of the most powerful inbox management tools available to Gmail users, letting you categorize emails under easy-to-create labels. Labels function similarly to traditional email folders, but without the many restrictions held by folders. Multiple labels can be assigned to emails, allowing more flexibility when managing your inbox. They can be easily accessed and created from the sidebar in your Gmail inbox, letting you create custom labels for any campaign, project, time period, client, colleague, or team. When viewing an email, you can assign labels to the email by clicking on the “label” button and selecting the appropriate ones, or click “Move to” to move the email from your primary inbox to a subfolder, helping you better identify and store important emails.
Creating rules to filter incoming emails is an easy way to automatically process the flow of incoming emails and to assign these emails with labels, allowing you to categorize emails related to specific projects and campaigns. Creating filters allows you to automatically send emails to specific labels, or to be deleted, archived, forwarded, or starred. Not only does this help to reduce the number of undesired emails, but filters also go a long way in cutting through a chaotic inbox. Filters can be created by clicking on the “Show search options” button in Gmail’s search bar - selecting this will bring up a form that prompts you to create custom filters.
Snooze and mute emails until you have time to address them
If you find that you’re too busy to reply to lower priority emails, but still wish to give them your attention at a later time, Gmail’s new snooze feature lets you do exactly that. When you select to snooze an email, you’ll be given options regarding when to snooze the email until, letting you put it off until tomorrow, next week, or other custom times. This takes the pressure off you to address every email immediately, giving you time to focus on high priority items first. The mute feature is another great addition to Gmail, letting you mute conversations without deleting emails.
Muted emails are automatically archived, hiding them from your primary inbox and storing them so that you can go back to them at a later time. All new emails to muted conversations will be automatically archived, making it a great tool for group projects you’ve completed, or emails in which you’ve been cc’d but have addressed. Don’t forget to review your muted emails later to ensure that you don’t miss anything important.
Third-party tools enable organization of a shared inbox
If your organization needs a shared inbox for departments, such as sales or support, UpCurve Cloud can install a third-party tool that allows for collaborative inbox. If, for example, your sales department has a general email such as sales@yourcompany.com, all emails would go to a shared inbox and the tool will help you delegate emails from there. This is a much better way of dealing with general emails than having them forwarded to one person. You can also generate reports on response time, who answered emails, and other items to monitor team performance.
Gmail lets your team work more productively by giving them the tools needed to maintain a well-organized inbox, cutting out the clutter and helping to focus attention on high priority conversations. Join the millions of businesses currently using Gmail today by making the switch to G Suite. To find out how UpCurve Cloud can improve the way you do business by seamlessly implementing and integrating solutions like G Suite into your workplace, contact us today.
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