Email marketing is a volatile environment and digital marketing strategy, just like the rest. In fact, the entire digital environment is very volatile, as new trends keep coming up and many popular trends vanish.
What does that mean? It means that, as a wise man once said, “Nothing’s new under the sun”. This means that every possible concept has already existed in the mind/reality of somebody else, therefore, what remains is to reproduce that concept by applying our own twist.
The majority of people I know hate to deal with their emails. Whether they’re simple employees, marketing managers, or CEOs, most of them consider the email management duty a necessary yet unpleasant duty. How so?
Well, for starters, managing a lot of emails is not an easy job, especially if each email will partly influence the performance of a professional or of a company.So – if things get harder, what do we do? We can ignore the circumstances and the situation, or we can deal with it.
That’s what this post is all about. In today’s article, I’m teaching you 7 email management strategies that you may or may not have heard before. If you did, you haven’t heard them in my version. What’s my point here? Like I have developed my own version (which I present now), you should take my version and create your own. Study. Don’t follow!

1. Only Check for New Emails Once a Day
The best way to limit the distractions of emails is to disable your email notifications and decide to reply to every day’s emails once a day. You can establish your favorite hour, an hour that suits you and your lifestyle. For example, I always check my emails early in the morning while I drink my coffee.
I reply to all the “critical emails” (I categorized them), and to all the emails that take less than 1 minute to reply (1-minute strategy). Then, I delete and assign different emails according to my priorities and I get it all done in a matter of 25 minutes. That’s it. After that, I put all my attention into more important aspects that can easily improve my business performance.

2. Establish a Few “Email Days” and Stick to It
If your business allows it, you can limit your email management activities to a few days per week. If your business doesn’t require immediate replies every day, you can surely plan 3 or 4 days of the week (and the hours of those days) that’ll serve as “email days”. This way, you can save time and energy, and attention!

3. Leverage Templates
What if you can answer your emails in the same way, only with a few adjustments? That would be such a time-saver wouldn’t it be?
That’s what email templates are for. In case your followers and customers send you the same type of emails or address the same type of questions, you can automate your replies by starting them the same way or ending them according to certain templates.

4. Skim – Don’t Read
Mark Parson, HR manager at essaygeeks.co.uk, notes that “Some emails are definitely not worth your attention. For example, there are many emails that, straight from their subject line, don’t inspire too much trust. There are promotional emails that sound too “salesy” from the beginning, and from the topic itself, you can immediately understand that they are probably less important.”
Also, when you start reading an email, try to skim it first. Look at the headline, at the introduction, in the middle of the email, and at the end. By doing so, you can save yourself time, energy, and attention again!

5. Develop Email Categories
To be better organized when replying to you pressing emails, you should develop categories that will serve you in the longer term. For example, my categories look like this: “Critical, Urgent, Important, Delayable, Sunday, Social, Trash”. That’s it. Every mail has a place in these categories, and that keeps me organized and attentive!

6. Use the “1 Minute Rule”
If an email demands 1 minute (or less) of your time, you should immediately reply to it. That’s because every time you get one task done, you’re gaining momentum and you’re gaining confidence. Simply put, you’re progressing, and your actions are proving it!

7. Unsubscribe from Everything that’s Not Truly Relevant
Unwanted emails should never be neglected and ignored. Your email inbox should be a sacred place, in which only the most relevant emails are ought to arrive. If your email is spammed by marketers and spammers, you’re likely to enjoy your email management duties even less.
I suggest you unsubscribe from every service and company that sends you emails on a consistent basis, emails that you never open and you could care less if they wouldn’t arrive anymore.

Takeaways
Managing your emails isn’t rocket science, really. It’s all about testing, failing, testing again, noting down a few comments, paying attention to the latest mistakes, and optimizing until success.
Or, you can skip all of these by hiring a virtual assistant who is specifically trained to deal with such things. Some entrepreneurs are control freaks, and that’s a flaw that wouldn’t let them reassign the email management duty. Either way, you choose, don’t neglect your emails for your company can suffer great consequences!