A decluttered and organized inbox frees up storage space and time in your schedule. A good email management system helps you get through messages faster, so email takes up less of your day.
Here are nine email management tips you can start using this week.
Key takeaways
The average worker spends more than 11 hours a week on email, so small changes to how you process it add up.
Check email at set times instead of reacting to every notification. Twice a day is usually enough.
Labels, filters, and templates handle the sorting and replying you’d otherwise do by hand.
If the inbox still eats your day after all this, a virtual assistant can take it over for you.
1. Block Off Time to Check Your Email
Email feels less intrusive than a phone call, but the average worker can spend more than 11 hours of their workweek on email. Scheduling fixed blocks of time for your inbox leaves the rest of the day open for other work.
Setting a specific time also stops you from checking your inbox every time a notification goes off. Twice a day is usually enough to catch anything important.
2. Organize Your Inbox by Categories
Use labels and subfolders to sort your messages into a clear hierarchy. You can build a folder structure by project, client, or subject, which makes it easier to see what needs a reply first.
An uncluttered inbox also saves you time. Searches turn up the right message faster, and there’s less on screen to pull your attention away.
3. Apply the 80/20 Rule in Processing Emails
Also known as the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule says that 20% of your input leads to 80% of your output.
Applied to email management, roughly 20% of your messages can generate revenue for your business, so those need immediate attention and a fast reply. You can take your time with the other 80%.
A quick way to find your 20%: look at the last month of sent mail and note which threads led to a sale, a signed contract, or a renewal. Those senders and subject lines are the ones worth a filter and a same-day reply.
4. Turn Group Email Accounts into Shared Inboxes
Group emails aren’t relevant to everyone on the thread, and that noise disrupts your team’s workflow. Email collaboration tools let you sort those messages so they reach the right person. Here are some of the most common options.
| Tool | What it is | Good fit for |
|---|---|---|
| Google Collaborative Inbox | A shared inbox built into Google Groups | Teams already on Google Workspace who want something free |
| Outlook Shared Mailbox | A shared mailbox included with Microsoft 365 | Teams already running Outlook |
| Teamwork Desk | Help desk software with ticketing | Support teams that need to track tickets, not just email |
| Help Scout | Shared inbox and help desk in one | Customer-facing teams handling high message volume |
| Gmelius | A Gmail add-on for shared inboxes and assignments | Teams that want to stay inside Gmail |
| Hiver | A Gmail add-on with assignment and response tracking | Gmail teams that need reporting on reply times |
A shared inbox keeps all existing emails along with the team’s calendar. You can message a teammate or assign a task without forwarding anything, which gives you real-time updates and keeps individual inboxes clear.
5. Create Templates and Signatures for Responses
Templates, canned responses, and signatures save you time on the emails you send over and over. Use them for transactional emails, inquiries, feedback requests, and thank you notes.
Go through your sent folder and draft templates based on the replies you write most often. You can adjust each one for the person you’re writing to, and you can set up multiple signatures for different types of recipients.
No commitment
Hand your inbox to someone else
Magic sources, screens, and onboards an assistant who can run your email. You meet them first, and you aren’t charged until you start working together.
6. Unsubscribe from Emails You Don’t Read
Spam and junk mail get overlooked in most email management advice. Deleting unnecessary emails and unsubscribing from promotional newsletters clears a lot of clutter out of your inbox.
Turn off your social media email notifications while you’re at it. Fewer messages means less exposure to phishing attempts, and you stop spending time on the daily chore of deleting mail you never open.
7. Maintain a Quarterly Archive
If you aren’t sure whether to delete an email, archive it. Archiving moves the message out of your inbox without getting rid of it.
You can go a step further and segment your archive by business quarter. That makes old emails easier to find, and it gives you a natural point every three months to review the batch and delete what you no longer need.
8. Use Automated Sorting Tools
Filters are simple to set up and they sort your mail for you. Most email clients let you color-code messages or send them straight into a specific folder as they arrive.
Set a filter for anything predictable, like invoices from a vendor or notifications from a tool your team uses. Important emails still surface, and you skip the manual sorting.
9. Practice the “Only Handle It Once” (OHIO) method
The OHIO method means you deal with each email once. Take whatever action it needs, close it, and move to the next one. Give yourself about a minute per message.
This keeps you from opening the same email three times across the day. It helps most when you’re working through a large volume of mail.
Hire an Email Manager with Magic
Email shouldn’t take up most of your workday. You can free up your schedule by outsourcing email management to a remote worker.
Magic sources, screens, and qualifies candidates for you using our multi-step hiring process and the specifications you give us. Assistants are based in the Philippines and Latin America, and they work US hours.
A Magic Assistant can act as your email manager and take over the inbox. Here’s what that covers:
- Cleaning and managing your inbox
- Handling and organizing your contact list
- Drafting replies and outbound emails
- Setting up filters and automation tools
- Sorting and verifying prospect email addresses
Pricing is a flat weekly rate, billed every four weeks, with no long-term contract.
| Plan | Hours per week | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Part-time assistant | 20 hours | $270 a week ($13.50 an hour) |
| Full-time assistant | 40 hours | $540 a week ($13.50 an hour), includes Magic 24/7 |
| Magic 24/7 only | Round-the-clock coverage | $199 a week |
You can see the full breakdown on our pricing page, or run the numbers against your current costs with the savings calculator. The same assistant can take on other work alongside email:
- Data entry
- File and document management
- Online research
- Calendar management
- Cold calling
- CRM clean-up
- Customer query management
If you want to see how this works for other businesses first, read through our customer reviews. Tell us what your business needs and we’ll find someone who can do it.
Get started
Get your inbox off your plate.
Magic sources, screens, and onboards an assistant to manage your email. You meet them before anything is signed, and you aren’t charged until you start working together.
