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New Year, New Inbox!
Are you one of those people with thousands of unread and spam messages sitting in your inbox? Does that 4 or 5 digit, unread number glare at you as you tell yourself, "One day I'll go through these messages and clear my inbox out"? Well, you're in luck! I am completely obsessive when it comes to keeping my inbox clean (I have three and I manage a few email accounts for my clients). Here are five (5) tips on how you can clean up your email inbox and keep it that way!
1. Organize Messages with Folders/Labels
You can find any message in your inbox by doing a search, but don't just leave the message there to take up inbox real estate. Create folders named for frequent senders of emails that you want to keep and put them there immediately after responding or once you're done with the message. Speed matters! Move it now.
2. Open in Link New Tab and Delete the Email
When I get emails for sales that I am interested in, I open the link in the email in a new tab and IMMEDIATELY delete the email. It forces me to make a quick decision on just how important it really is to shop at that moment (usually it's not) and then I'm not reminded of the sale multiple times when I see the subject line later that day when I check email again. This method also can help save money!
3. Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe
Obviously, if you did subscribe, there was something of value that helped you to decide to give your email address. However, if a month or two goes by and you realize the newsletter you subscribed to is not being opened or read, unsubscribe!
4. The Mass Delete
You don't need that weekly sale ad from 2013 but you do need your e-receipt sent to you last week from your favorite brands. I created a folder titled "Confirmations" and any and all confirmations, receipts, and tracking numbers go in this folder. To clean up your inbox of the hundreds of emails you receive from a particular company/brand that are NOT confirmations, do an email search for that specific company. Take a quick glance to confirm if you need to save any of the messages from them. If not, select all and DELETE. Repeat until all of the emails are deleted.
5. The Shortcut
This is a last resort, just need to get it done tip... Create a folder labeled with the range of years that your inbox spans. Move all of the messages to that folder. Done. Start fresh and organize as you go!