I was in the process of writing this, one of my very first blogs, when I happened to read a forum post asking for help to organize e-mail. This is one of the first areas I would train my management staff in. Let’s face it—in today’s technological world, not handling a request sent via e-mail or not responding can cost you customers!
When snail mail was the only source of written communication, you could always say “it never came”. With e-mail, that’s kind of hard to pull off. “My computer crashed” can only be an excuse so many times. Besides, don’t you want to keep your customer happy? Don’t you want to respond? Of course you do—your business depends on it. It’s hard to follow through on this if you inbox is cluttered and disorganized.First, let’s clean up that inbox, then we’ll tackle the different rules and functions you can use on an on-going basis to keep it organized. The first thing I do to clean up is sort your e-mail by name. We all have that cousin who sends us 20 jokes a day. We never read them, but we don’t want to hurt their feelings by blocking them. Or, we read them and just keep them sitting in your inbox. Either delete them entirely, or set up a folder labeled “Aunt Sue” and put them all in there. Next, find all the “junk” that your spam filter did not catch. Right click and send them to the junk pile. Those are the easy fixes—now we move on to organizing the e-mail you should keep.
As many people do, I have all of my e-mail accounts going to one program—Outlook. Because I get both business and personal mail in this one program, it’s imperative that I set up a folder system to confine it all. To keep it simple (because I like to see all my folders on my screen), I start out with a few basic folders and then add sub-folders to each category if I need them.
1. Clients
2. Network
3. Personal
4. Research
5. RSS Feeds
6. Tools
7. Vendors
You can then assign subfolders as shown below:
2. Personal
a) Aunt Sue
b) Mom & Dad
c) Verizon
5. Network
a) IVAA
b) LinkedIn
c) MySpace
d) VANA
e) Virtual Chamber
You are well on your way to organizing your existing mail. My next blog will focus on rules for new incoming e-mail.
Pat Zappavigna is the owner of Instant Office Assistant, an administrative support services company. You can contact Pat at pazappa@verizon.net or through the website. www.instantofficeassistant.com
