The volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business.The average knowledge worker today gets 133 emails a day and 77 instant messages, she spends half her working day on email, constantly tethered to her smartphone, responding to short bursts of communication and creating email overload. It is estimated that managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week just reading and writing emails. Furthermore, we are all using social media networking more and spending around 25 per cent of our time searching for information.
- By the end of 2015, more than half of all new digital content will be the result of updates to, and the editing of, existing information
- Online social networking is now more popular than email and search
- Middle managers spend more than 25% of their time searching for information
- As long ago as 2010 Corporate users received some 200 mails per day, 18% of which were spam, and the numbers have risen dramatically since then.
- Initial feedback on the adoption of social collaboration platforms to share and keep track of ideas on subjects from innovation and Lean Management through to sales and support indicates that the use of these types of tools can reduce email by between 10 and 20% immediately.
Company Tactics
1. Stop Using Email
 | For a lot of internal communication with co-workers email is just not the right communications option. Often it is better just to pick up the phone or walk over to their desk and speak in person. But where written communication is needed, or for geographically distributed teams, consider using a social collaboration platform such as MangoApps, Podio or Bitrix as your primary method of communication within the organisation and cut out email altogether. |
These social intranets are quicker, more collaborative and simply a better way of working as a team - and the knowledge in your organisation is enhanced, as is aggregated in one central location where it can be searched by everyone, rather than dissipated in many personal inboxes, where it can't.
2. Use a Helpdesk
 | If your support team are suffering from inbox overload, if they are still using Gmail or Outlook for support emails and losing track of customers, then you need to deploy a Helpdesk solution, such as Freshdesk. Rather than trying to jury rig an email tool to provide support, just connect the Helpdesk to a central support inbox, such as [email protected] and bring order to your email support. |
Using a social intranet and a Helpdesk application will mean a change in the way you work, but it should result in an immediate reduction in email within your organisation of about 20%. It will also dramatically improve the quality of the interactions between co-workers and customers. Integrate the social intranet application and the Helpdesk for even tighter co-operation between different teams.
3. Use Google Apps
 | If you haven't already, take a look at Google Apps for Work and consider using Gmail for your business email. You can keep your existing email address and business domain ([email protected]), but there are three more good reasons to do so. Firstly, it is a cheaper option to hosting your own MS Exchange server. Secondly, you can access your email from anywhere and on any device and finally, there are a number of applications that integrate tightly with Gmail and can help you improve personal email management. |
We switched to Gmail when we established SmartCloud back in 2010. I have to admit that it took me a while to adjust to the Gmail interface compared to Outlook, but now I wouldn't switch back. For the diehards you can make Gmail look more like Outlook or you can configure Outlook to work with Google Apps, but many of the services listed below work with native Gmail and may not work with Outlook.
Personal Email Tactics
As an individual knowledge worker you are probably not in a position to influence what applications are used within your company, but there are still tactics that you can use to reduce your individual email load.
It is a challenge, but I like to keep my Inbox as tidy as I can. However, keeping the clutter to a minimum is difficult. I was getting over 100 emails a day, including dozens of updates from LinkedIn Groups, newsletters and messages from the various sites I had signed up to when testing their business applications. It was becoming harder and harder to separate the wheat from the chaff and I was struggling with the volume of emails - most of which were, if not spam, just not particularly important.
As a result I was spending at least an hour a day reading, deleting and archiving mails that I probably did not need to read at all. So I set out to find a better way to manage and tame my inbox.
I now use all of the following tools and my email load has reduced from over a hundred items a day to a couple of dozen. I may not feel quite as important as I once did, but that is a small price to pay for a tidy inbox!
It is a challenge, but I like to keep my Inbox as tidy as I can. However, keeping the clutter to a minimum is difficult. I was getting over 100 emails a day, including dozens of updates from LinkedIn Groups, newsletters and messages from the various sites I had signed up to when testing their business applications. It was becoming harder and harder to separate the wheat from the chaff and I was struggling with the volume of emails - most of which were, if not spam, just not particularly important.
As a result I was spending at least an hour a day reading, deleting and archiving mails that I probably did not need to read at all. So I set out to find a better way to manage and tame my inbox.
I now use all of the following tools and my email load has reduced from over a hundred items a day to a couple of dozen. I may not feel quite as important as I once did, but that is a small price to pay for a tidy inbox!
1. Inbox by Gmail
 | Inbox by Gmail is an email app by Google for Android, iOS, as well as the browsers Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. The app is focused on improving email productivity and organization by allowing the user to snooze messages for a later time, bundle similar emails together, and receive Google Now-style cards for things such as flight times. While Inbox is available on the web, you'll need to activate Inbox on your mobile device first. |
2. Sanebox
 | SaneBox is now an essential part of my email life. SaneBox intelligently filters and organises emails based on their importance, before they reach your inbox. By removing unimportant emails from your inbox you can concentrate on only what is urgent. You receive a daily summary of the diverted messages and can train Sanebox, so its performance is always improving. |
3. Mailstrom
 | Mailstrom is the perfect tool for email triage, power through thousands of messages in just a few clicks. Quickly delete bulk emails and reduce your inbox to just those emails you want to keep. Inbox zero is now within reach! |
4. Unroll.me
 | Unroll.me enables you to unsubscribe from the emails you no longer want to receive with one click. After you sign up, see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe instantly from whatever you don’t want. And that's it. |
5. rapportive
 | Imagine relationship management built into your email inbox. Rapportive is FREE and shows everything about your contacts right inside your inbox. You can immediately see what people look like, where they're based and what they do. Grow your network by connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more. Record thoughts by leaving notes. |
6. EverContact
 | EverContact is another indispensable tool which automagically updates your Gmail and Outlook contacts. Keep your address book up-to-date through the semantic analysis of email signatures. Then synchronise your address book with your CRM to ensure you always have the latest contact information for your customers and prospects. |
7. MailTrack.io
 | MailTrack enables you to track email in real-time. See if, when, how often and where an email was opened, and the device or browser used. Get actionable insight to make better selling decisions. One green ✓ means the message was sent and a second ✓ confirms your recipient read it. Know who and when they opened your email! Free & Unlimited for Gmail Accounts. |
8. Mailbox
 | Mailbox is a mobile app for iOS and Android which is well worth checking out if you use Gmail on your phone. Mailbox have redesigned the inbox to make email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash and scan entire conversations in a chat-like view. It's a whole new inbox. |
If you are using Gmail, a little know and seldom used feature that you should enable is the 'Send+Archive' Button. Turned off by default, this add-on was tested in Google Labs and got the thumbs-up from users in 2012. But if you don’t know it exists, you can’t take advantage of its inbox-cleaning capability. Simply access the Settings page when you’re in Gmail and click the option that says "Show ‘Send & Archive’ in Reply." When you reply to an email, you’ll have the option to Send & Archive or simply Send, which keeps the original in your inbox.
Finally, make sure you have your email system integrated with a CRM, such as Nimble, Zoho, ProsperWorks or PipelineDeals so that you can track your interactions with your contacts simply by looking up their contact record in the CRM and finding all of the emails you have ever sent to or received from that person in the one spot - no more searching through your Inbox or folders to find missing mail.
Email is never going to disappear, but it can be reduced - dramatically. By implementing the solutions above at either the corporate or personal level (and preferably both), you will see your email volumes drop significantly, freeing up your time to be used more productively.
Email is never going to disappear, but it can be reduced - dramatically. By implementing the solutions above at either the corporate or personal level (and preferably both), you will see your email volumes drop significantly, freeing up your time to be used more productively.
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