Yes I admit it I'm over-organised.
And if you want to stop drowning in a sea of "useful email", "the must have ezine", "the just in case email" or "blind copy email" you need to get your email organised too.
And it really doesn't matter what email program you have because what I say applies to all the popular programs.
I like to put stuff where it belongs. And to that end I've organised all the ezines I subscribe to so that they automatically go into their own folder in Outlook.
Then all the other email I get goes into different folders, according to who sent it, what it's about and whether it's junk or not.
Setting up rules in Outlook has always been very simple, except I now have hundreds of rules.
What Rules Do I Use? I tend to stick to my favourites and the steps the rules go through are these:
- Identify the email address or standard part of the subject heading on the email and use it to send to it's own folder
- For any ezine I'm no longer interested in - auto delete
- For an email from a customer, supplier or business partner - flag it's arrival and say who it's from
- Short-term rule check on Internet Marketing campaigns to set the read flag to yes so that I don't bother looking at every email on a new campaign
What About Junk Mail?
Outlook has its own spam recognition aspect, however although I set it up to filter out various unsavoury and irritating emails quite a few still got through. I then looked at other 3rd party add ons for Outlook.
I tried Spambayes which picked out quite a few of the spam emails but not all of them. I then moved to ZoneAlarm (my personal firewall) which now offers junk mail checking too. I've found that Zonealarm picks out a lot more of the unwanted emails. The slight downside is that it does pick out some legitimate email too.
That said both these programs got rid of over 3,500 spam messages I never got round to reading or deleting.
Does Folder Organisation Help?
The simple answer is yes. The reason is that although I simply don't have time to read all the marketing and selling information I can get from the Internet I can store it.
A picture of how my folders are set-up are shown on a related email advice post on my blog The picture shows about one fifth of the folders I've set-up to hold processed email. I also note a great book for helping to avoid email faux-pas and downright career or business-limiting mistakes.
Then when I have a particular aspect I'm interested in I can use the advanced search in Outlook to find other opinions on the subject.
These same principles apply in all the other email programs I've used over the years.
Jim Symcox, is an SEO copywriter, direct mail copywriter, business process coach, and the author of "How to Leap Ahead Of Your Competitors".
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