Email remains an essential component of modern business, but a lot of its features are annoyingly primitive. A lot of issues we take for granted in messaging platforms are present when using emails. For starters, a chat box is much less stressful than seeing hundreds of unread messages in your inbox.
Sure, it’s not exactly difficult to navigate, but it is time consuming. Think of how much spam there is, and the number of mundane questions and general online clutter you have to work through just to get to the messages you want can be extremely frustrating.
That simply just won’t do. Today, let’s talk about a few tools you could use to make your inbox a lot more manageable and improve your email marketing strategies.
Built-In Functions
Before we talk about any 3rd party email tools, let’s discuss what you already have on hand.
Both Gmail and Outlook have built-in rules and filters systems that you can use to streamline your inbox in several ways. For starters, you can set rules for high-priority email addresses to go to a specific folder so you don’t have to dig through hundreds of emails to find them.
Another thing people commonly do is filter all the repetitive task emails, such as reports, into their own folders as well.
There are also built-in cleaners that clear out messages from your inbox based on specific criteria. For example, if you feel like you no longer need emails from two years ago, you could delete or archive them. This significantly helps make your inbox search faster and reduces storage on your device.
Before you include any add-ons, ensure that you have all of these built-in functions set up first, as it saves a lot of work.
EmailAnalytics
An all-in-one app that easily integrates with your Google account, this app lets you see graphs of important statistics about your team’s performance, how organized their respective inboxes are, and on what days they have the most activity.
These features allow you to quickly and easily identify whose inboxes need cleaning. Cluttered inboxes are a curse on productivity, so knowing which employees are hampered by this issue lets you deal with it at its root cause.
SaneBox
Sanebox works with all email platforms and is a more advanced way to sort your emails. While rules are definitely effective on their own, SaneBox has an integrated automation feature that identifies non-essential emails and filters them into their own folders.
SaneBox also has a more robust folders and tabs system for your messages, allowing you to easily stay organized.
Boomerang
Boomerang is a great tool for informing the user about which emails they’ve sent that already have replies. This is incredibly useful for organizing your inbox and keeping track of communications.
Additionally, Boomerang comes with other useful features such as scheduled emails, automatic writing improvements, and auto-replies to emails you forgot to reply to.
Mailstrom
For those who just want to focus purely on cleaning their inbox and none of the other fancy features, Mailstrom is for you. Mailstrom has an advanced filtering system with wider criteria than the built-in filters of your email service.
Once you filter messages like this, you then have the option to send them to a specific folder, or simply delete them. Mailstrom also lets you automatically unsubscribe from all those pesky newsletters you’ve been putting up with.
It may be a short and simple app, but Mailstrom is a powerful tool for cleanup.
Grammarly
Proper grammar is an under appreciated aspect of email etiquette. First impressions can go a long way, and if your sales pitch has a major typo, it could mean potential leads will be turned off by your message.
“If they can’t even send a proper email, why would I trust them with my business?” those leads may end up thinking. It’s harsh, but it’s just what some people might be thinking.
Grammarly fixes this issue. After you’re done with your message, you can let Grammarly go through your message and fix not just typos, but also sentence structure and misused words. Grammarly’s a simple tool, and its free plan is plenty useful for your individual needs.
Unroll.me
Unnecessary newsletters are the bane of every small business owner. Many inboxes that would otherwise be clean are plagued by companies pitching things irrelevant to your business. Oftentimes, you don’t even remember how you ended up subscribing to the email newsletters.
Unroll.me is a tool that categorizes all of your subscriptions in a user-friendly list. Next to the company’s name, there is an unsubscribe button. From there, it’s easy enough to figure out what you do.
Alternatively, you could also just compile all of your subscriptions with a “Rollup” tool that consolidates all of the news into one easy list that Unroll.me sends to you.
Conclusion
These tools make email organization much easier and more efficient. A messy inbox could spell disaster for your team’s overall productivity, so the benefits of email tools are essential to your success.
While the tools on this list far from cover all the options available, they provide a good foundation for your business to find what it needs.
If you are in need of additional tips to streamline your business, schedule a call so we can discuss how 910 West can help you.